TERMS STARTING WITH
Confused: (Ger. verworren) In Husserl: Not given distinctly, articulatedly, with respect to implicit components. In Descartes, sensations are confused ideas. -- D.C.
confuse ::: a. --> Mixed; confounded. ::: v. t. --> To mix or blend so that things can not be distinguished; to jumble together; to confound; to render indistinct or obscure; as, to confuse accounts; to confuse one&
confused ::: 1. Lacking logical order or sense. 2. *adj. Disordered and difficult to understand or make sense of. *3. Chaotic; jumbled.
confused ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Confuse
confusedly ::: adv. --> In a confused manner.
confusedness ::: n. --> A state of confusion.
confused with him) who is invoked in the conjura¬
confusely ::: adv. --> Confusedly; obscurely.
TERMS ANYWHERE
abash ::: v. t. --> To destroy the self-possession of; to confuse or confound, as by exciting suddenly a consciousness of guilt, mistake, or inferiority; to put to shame; to disconcert; to discomfit.
Abrahadabra: The formula of the Great Work (q.v.). Abra is the Sun in the form of a ram, Amen; Amen was a title (not a name) of Sebek or Sevekh, the Draconian deity of the Typhonians in ancient Egypt. It was the Cult of this deity that the high priest, Ankh-fn-Khonsu revived in the XXVIth Dynasty. Had is the secret name of Sebek-Ra, (who is also Shaitan), and the formula of his magick power. The final Abra indicates that he is the son of the Mother, and therefore Typhonian.Abrahadabra is not to be confused with
addle ::: n. --> Liquid filth; mire.
Lees; dregs. ::: a. --> Having lost the power of development, and become rotten, as eggs; putrid. Hence: Unfruitful or confused, as brains; muddled.
Advanced Power Management "hardware" (APM) A feature of some displays, usually but not always, on {laptop computers}, which turns off power to the display after a preset period of inactivity to conserve electrical power. Monitors with this capability are usually refered to as "green monitors", meaning environmentally friendly. Not to be confused with a {screen blanker} which is {software} that causes the display to go black (by setting every {pixel} to black) to prevent {burn-in}. (1997-08-25)
Advanced Power Management ::: (hardware) (APM) A feature of some displays, usually but not always, on laptop computers, which turns off power to the display after a preset period of inactivity to conserve electrical power. Monitors with this capability are usually refered to as green monitors, meaning environmentally friendly.Not to be confused with a screen blanker which is software that causes the display to go black (by setting every pixel to black) to prevent burn-in. (1997-08-25)
Afterwards all gets surcharged with the spiritual consciousness and there is an automatic right perception and right action of the different parts because they are controlled entirely from above and do not falsify or resist or confuse its dictates.
Aladdin Enterprises ::: (company) A small, privately owned, US software consulting and development company, founded in 1986, best known as the original developer of Ghostscript.Address: San Francisco Peninsula, California, USA.Not to be confused with Aladdin Systems, Inc.. .(2003-09-24)
Aladdin Enterprises "company" A small, privately owned, US software consulting and development company, founded in 1986, best known as the original developer of {Ghostscript}. Address: San Francisco Peninsula, California, USA. Not to be confused with {Aladdin Systems, Inc.}. {Aladdin Enterprises Home (http://aladdin.com/)}. (2003-09-24)
Aladdin Systems, Inc. ::: (company) The company that developed and distributes Stuffit and other utility programs for the Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and Palm handheld computers.Not to be confused with Aladdin Enterprises. .(2003-09-20)
Aladdin Systems, Inc. "company" The company that developed and distributes {Stuffit} and other {utility software} for the {Macintosh}, {Microsoft Windows}, and {Palm} {handheld computers}. Not to be confused with {Aladdin Enterprises}. {Aladdin Systems Home (http://aladdinsys.com/)}. (2003-09-20)
An inert passivity is constantly confused with the real sur- render, but out of an inert passivity nothing true and powerful can come. It is the inert passivity of physical Nature that leaves it at the mercy of every obscure or undivlne influence. A glad and strong and helpful submission Is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the
Another dvipa mentioned in the Puranas, Saka-dvipa, has not yet come into existence and is now mainly under the floors of the oceans. It may be called the sixth continent. Both Sveta-dvipa and Saka-dvipa have been confused by some writers with the islands called Ruta and Daitya, which have both disappeared: Ruta between 800 and 900 thousand years ago, and the smaller Daitya at a much later date but still several hundred thousand years ago. Ruta and Daitya were remnants of the fourth or Atlantean continent.
any key ::: (humour, hardware) The key that particularly confused users look for on their computer keyboards when instructed to Press any key to continue. But my keyboard doesn't have a key labelled 'any'!. .(2003-09-30)
any key "humour, hardware" The key that particularly confused {users} look for on their computer keyboards when instructed to "Press any key to continue". "But my keyboard doesn't have a key labelled 'any'!". {Compaq FAQ (http://web14.compaq.com/falco/detail.asp?FAQnum=FAQ2859)}. (2003-09-30)
A person is entranced in various minor degrees when he is temporarily absent-minded, or is absorbed in a brown study, and even in a certain sense when he is asleep. Many persons of mediumistic or psychic constitution become negatively absent from their ordinary senses, or they cultivate such a state for the purpose of becoming conscious on the astral plane. These unfortunates, who yield to the psychic lure of the unknown, receive nothing but a confused and unreliable vision. Worse yet, they thus open their own natures to the invasion and possible possession by astral entities of all kinds, even by excarnate actively evil beings — the elementaries — seeking physical satisfaction of unexpended intense desires. Not a few of such victims become such from their craving to get out in the astral, and to cultivate powers for the controlling of others, as taught by various pseudo-occultists who brazenly advertise their appeals to selfish human nature.
Argha (Sanskrit) Argha [from the verbal root arh to be worthy of, merit] Worth, value; respectful reception of a guest of distinction by various offerings, such as flowers, durva grass, or water in a small boat-shaped vessel or container; often confused with the Chaldean Argha. See also ARGHYA
Arian Heresy Originated by Arius (d. 336), a presbyter in Alexandria who did not confuse the cosmic Logos with its ray on earth, the Christ entity, whose human expression was called Jesus. Arius could not accept a consubstantial trinity with the human Son as the first or second remove from its Father aspect — he made a sharp distinction between the three Logoi and any human expression of such logoic triad manifesting on earth as an inspired man. Arius in consequence taught that God was alone, unknowable, and separate from every created being; that the Son, or creative Logos was created by God, who through this Logos brought forth the world and all that is in it. He held, therefore, that Christ was not God in the fullest sense and should be worshiped as a secondary deity, and that at the incarnation the Logos assumed a body but not a human soul. Arianism was condemned as heretical at the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381).
Aroeris, Haroiri (Greek) Heru-ur (Egyptian) Ḥeru-ur [from ḥeru he who is above + ur the aged] Horus the elder, as distinguished from Heru-pa-khart (Horus the younger) — these two gods are often confused because there are the cosmic Osiris and Isis known as Ra (the sun god) and Hathor, whose son was the Older Horus, and there are likewise the more commonly known Osiris and Isis of our own globe, whose son was the Younger Horus. Aroeris is a deity associated with the sun, and the head of a triad of deities, the other two members being his consort Ta-sent-nefert and their son P-neb-taui (the child). His principal seats of worship were at Sekhemet (Latopolis) and at Ombos where Heru-ur absorbed all the characteristics and qualities of Shu, while his consort took on the characteristics of Tefnut. Heru-ur is depicted in the form of a man (or lion) with the head of a hawk, wearing the crowns of the South and North Egypt united — meaning cosmogonically, the material and the spiritual universes — surmounted by a crown of plumes, uraei, and the disk of the sun.
array 1. "programming" A collection of identically typed data items distinguished by their indices (or "subscripts"). The number of dimensions an array can have depends on the language but is usually unlimited. An array is a kind of {aggregate} data type. A single ordinary variable (a "{scalar}") could be considered as a zero-dimensional array. A one-dimensional array is also known as a "{vector}". A reference to an array element is written something like A[i,j,k] where A is the array name and i, j and k are the indices. The {C} language is peculiar in that each index is written in separate brackets, e.g. A[i][j][k]. This expresses the fact that, in C, an N-dimensional array is actually a vector, each of whose elements is an N-1 dimensional array. Elements of an array are usually stored contiguously. Languages differ as to whether the leftmost or rightmost index varies most rapidly, i.e. whether each row is stored contiguously or each column (for a 2D array). Arrays are appropriate for storing data which must be accessed in an unpredictable order, in contrast to {lists} which are best when accessed sequentially. Array indices are {integers}, usually {natural numbers}, whereas the elements of an {associative array} are identified by strings. 2. "architecture" A {processor array}, not to be confused with an {array processor}. (2007-10-12)
array ::: 1. (programming) A collection of identically typed data items distinguished by their indices (or subscripts). The number of dimensions an array can have depends on the language but is usually unlimited.An array is a kind of aggregate data type. A single ordinary variable (a scalar) could be considered as a zero-dimensional array. A one-dimensional array is also known as a vector.A reference to an array element is written something like A[i,j,k] where A is the array name and i, j and k are the indices. The C language is peculiar in the fact that, in C, an N-dimensional array is actually a vector, each of whose elements is an N-1 dimensional array.Elements of an array are usually stored contiguously. Languages differ as to whether the leftmost or rightmost index varies most rapidly, i.e. whether each row is stored contiguously or each column (for a 2D array).Arrays are appropriate for storing data which must be accessed in an unpredictable order, in contrast to lists which are best when accessed sequentially.See also associative array.2. (architecture) A processor array, not to be confused with an array processor. (1995-01-25)
ashamed ::: a. --> Affected by shame; abashed or confused by guilt, or a conviction or consciousness of some wrong action or impropriety.
aumery ::: n. --> A form of Ambry, a closet; but confused with Almonry, as if a place for alms.
aurochs ::: n. --> The European bison (Bison bonasus, / Europaeus), once widely distributed, but now nearly extinct, except where protected in the Lithuanian forests, and perhaps in the Caucasus. It is distinct from the Urus of Caesar, with which it has often been confused.
Babel ::: Amal: “‘Babel’ alludes to a legend in antiquity that at Babylon there were so many nations gathered to build a tower that their various tongues got mixed up and confused. It is the confusion that is referred to in Sri Aurobindo’s line and called ‘the babel’.”
babel ::: n. --> The city and tower in the land of Shinar, where the confusion of languages took place.
Hence: A place or scene of noise and confusion; a confused mixture of sounds, as of voices or languages.
babylonish ::: n. --> Of or pertaining to, or made in, Babylon or Babylonia.
Pertaining to the Babylon of Revelation xiv. 8.
Pertaining to Rome and papal power.
Confused; Babel-like.
baffled ::: 1. Confused, bewildered, or perplexed. 2. Frustrated or confounded; thwarted. baffles, baffling.
Confused: (Ger. verworren) In Husserl: Not given distinctly, articulatedly, with respect to implicit components. In Descartes, sensations are confused ideas. -- D.C.
be confused with the Rahab of Joshua 2, the harlot
befog ::: v. t. --> To involve in a fog; -- mostly as a participle or part. adj.
Hence: To confuse; to mystify.
befuddle ::: v. t. --> To becloud and confuse, as with liquor.
bemuddle ::: v. t. --> To muddle; to stupefy or bewilder; to confuse.
Bernard of Chartres: (died c. 1130) Has been called the "most perfect Platonist of his century'" by John of Salisbury (Metalogicus, IV, 35, PL 199, 938) but he is known only at second-hand now. He taught in the school of Chartres from 1114-1119 and was Chancellor of Chartres from 1119-1124. According to John of Salisbury, Bernard was an extreme realist in his theory of universals, but he taught that the forms of things (formae nativae) are distinct from the exemplary Ideas in the Divine Mind. A treatise, De expositione Porphyrii has been attributed to him. He is not to be confused with Bernard Silvestris of Chartres, nor with Bernard of Tours. E. Gilson. "Le platonisme de Bernard de C.", Revue Neoscolastique, XXV (1923) 5-19. -- V.J.B.
bewilder ::: to confuse utterly; puzzle completely. bewildered.
bewilder ::: v. t. --> To lead into perplexity or confusion, as for want of a plain path; to perplex with mazes; or in general, to perplex or confuse greatly.
blend ::: v. t. --> To mix or mingle together; esp. to mingle, combine, or associate so that the separate things mixed, or the line of demarcation, can not be distinguished. Hence: To confuse; to confound.
To pollute by mixture or association; to spoil or corrupt; to blot; to stain. ::: v. i.
blur ::: v. t. --> To render obscure by making the form or outline of confused and uncertain, as by soiling; to smear; to make indistinct and confused; as, to blur manuscript by handling it while damp; to blur the impression of a woodcut by an excess of ink.
To cause imperfection of vision in; to dim; to darken.
To sully; to stain; to blemish, as reputation. ::: n.
Boolean search "information science" (Or "Boolean query") A query using the {Boolean} operators, {AND}, {OR}, and {NOT}, and parentheses to construct a complex condition from simpler criteria. A typical example is searching for combinatons of keywords on a {web} {search engine}. Examples: car or automobile "New York" and not "New York state" The term is sometimes stretched to include searches using other operators, e.g. "near". Not to be confused with {binary search}. See also: {weighted search}. (1999-10-23)
Boolean search ::: (information science) (Or Boolean query) A query using the Boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT, and parentheses to construct a complex condition from simpler criteria. A typical example is searching for combinatons of keywords on a World-Wide Web search engine.Examples: car or automobile The term is sometimes stretched to include searches using other operators, e.g. near.Not to be confused with binary search.See also: weighted search. (1999-10-23)
Both Yah and Yaho were Hebrew mystery-names; Yah is “a later abbreviation [of Yaho] which, from containing an abstract ideal, became finally applied to, and connected with, a phallic symbol — the lingham of creation” (TG 374). Thus Yaho and Yah are two forms of the same original Shemitic god-name found throughout Asia Minor, and which appeared in its Greek form as Iao. The Gnostics revived the Chaldean and Phoenician mystery-god Iao, placing it above the seven heavens as representing spiritual light. Its ray was nous, standing for the Demiurge as well as the divine manas. “Y-ha-ho was a sacred word in the Egyptian mysteries, which signified ‘the one eternal and concealed deity’ in nature and in man; i.e., the ‘universal Divine Ideation,’ and the human Manas, or the higher Ego” (TG 375). Yaho in consequence must not be confused with Yehowah or Jehovah, for Jehovah was merely the inferior reflection in the higher material worlds of the spiritual light called Yaho. Yaho, therefore, is equivalent in type, standing, and character to atman, the universal, of theosophical literature.
Brahman(Sanskrit) ::: A word of which the root, brih, means "expansion." It is that part of the celestial being whichfirst initiates manifestation through the various Brahmas, the expansion of the one into the many. It iswhat is called the unmanifest Logos. It may also be called the impersonal and uncognizable principle ofthe universe, and must be sharply distinguished from the masculine Brahma of which there are many in auniverse.Note: In early theosophical literature, as well as in translations of the Hindu writings, Brahman issometimes spelled Brahma or even Brahm; but this should not be confused with Brahma. (See alsoParabrahman, Brahma)
brawling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Brawl ::: a. --> Quarreling; quarrelsome; noisy.
Making a loud confused noise. See Brawl, v. i., 3.
brawl ::: v. i. --> To quarrel noisily and outrageously.
To complain loudly; to scold.
To make a loud confused noise, as the water of a rapid stream running over stones. ::: n. --> A noisy quarrel; loud, angry contention; a wrangle; a
bustling ::: n. --> of Bustle ::: a. --> Agitated; noisy; tumultuous; characterized by confused activity; as, a bustling crowd.
“But this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind.” The Synthesis of Yoga
calamary ::: n. --> A cephalopod, belonging to the genus Loligo and related genera. There are many species. They have a sack of inklike fluid which they discharge from the siphon tube, when pursued or alarmed, in order to confuse their enemies. Their shell is a thin horny plate, within the flesh of the back, shaped very much like a quill pen. In America they are called squids. See Squid.
Chaos: (Gr. chaos) The formless, confused, completely disorderly, absolutely lawless. -- H.H.
chaos ::: n. --> An empty, immeasurable space; a yawning chasm.
The confused, unorganized condition or mass of matter before the creation of distinct and orderly forms.
Any confused or disordered collection or state of things; a confused mixture; confusion; disorder.
chaotic ::: a. --> Resembling chaos; confused.
Chinmatra (Sanskrit) Cinmātra [from cit thought + mātra elementary thought, intelligence] Essential thought, mind per se; used in Vedanta philosophy, particularly the Advaita, for the germ of cosmic ideation existing at every geometrical point of the infinite chidakasa (field of cosmic ideation). Not to be confused with collateral Vedantic terms mulaprakriti (undifferentiated elemental cosmic matter) or chidakasa. These three are considered from a subjective standpoint as aspects of parabrahman. In the human constitution it is the seventh principle or atman.
chirm ::: v. i. --> To chirp or to make a mournful cry, as a bird. ::: n. --> Clamor, or confused noise; buzzing.
class hierarchy "programming" In {object-oriented programming}, a set of {classes} related by {inheritance}. Each class is a "subclass" of another class - its "superclass". The subclass contains all the features of its superclass, but may add new features or redefine existing features. The features of a class are the set of {attributes} (or "properties") that an object of that class has and the {methods} that can be invoked on it. If each class has a just one superclass, this is called {single inheritance}. The opposite is {multiple inheritance}, under which a class may have multiple superclasses. Single inheritance gives the class hierarchy a {tree} structure whereas multiple inheritance gives a {directed graph}. Typically there is one class at the top of the hierarchy which is the "object" class, the most general class that is an ancestor of all others and which has no superclass. In computing, as in genealogy, trees grow downwards, which is why subclasses are considered to be "below" their superclasses. When {invoking a method} on an {object}, the method is first looked for in the object's class, then the superclass of that class, and so on up the hierarchy until it is found. Thus a class need only define those methods which are specific to it and it will inherit all other methods from all its superclasses. An object of the subclass can do everything that an object of the superclass can and possible more. {C++} calls the superclass the "base class" and the subclass the "derived class" (not to be confused with a {derived type}). (2014-09-06)
cloudy ::: n. --> Overcast or obscured with clouds; clouded; as, a cloudy sky.
Consisting of a cloud or clouds.
Indicating gloom, anxiety, sullenness, or ill-nature; not open or cheerful.
Confused; indistinct; obscure; dark.
Lacking clearness, brightness, or luster.
Marked with veins or sports of dark or various hues, as
clutter ::: n. --> A confused collection; hence, confusion; disorder; as, the room is in a clutter.
Clatter; confused noise.
To clot or coagulate, as blood. ::: v. t. --> To crowd together in disorder; to fill or cover with
Comparing this fourfold classification of the human constitution with the sevenfold division commonly set forth in theosophical literature: atman (the essential principle of selfhood and therefore the highest) is the same in both; karana-sarira is equivalent to buddhi and the higher manas; sukshma-sarira comprises manas and kama; while sthula-sarira takes in the three lower principles — prana, linga-sarira, and sthula-sarira. The reason for the two classifications is that Subba Row fastened “attention on the monads, looking upon the universe as a vast aggregate of individualities; while H. P. B. for that time of the world’s history saw the need to give to the inquiring Western mind . . . some real explanation of what the composition of the universe is as an entity — what its ‘stuff’ is, and what man is as an integral part of it. Now the seven principles are the seven kinds of ‘stuff’ of the universe. . . . [however] we must not have our minds confused with the idea that the seven principles are one thing, and the monads are something else which work through the principles as disjunct from them” (FSO 443-4). See also PRINCIPLES.
complication ::: n. --> The act or process of complicating; the state of being complicated; intricate or confused relation of parts; entanglement; complexity.
A disease or diseases, or adventitious circumstances or conditions, coexistent with and modifying a primary disease, but not necessarily connected with it.
confounded ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Confound ::: a. --> Confused; perplexed.
Excessive; extreme; abominable.
confound ::: v. t. --> To mingle and blend, so that different elements can not be distinguished; to confuse.
To mistake for another; to identify falsely.
To throw into confusion or disorder; to perplex; to strike with amazement; to dismay.
To destroy; to ruin; to waste.
confus ::: a. --> Confused, disturbed.
confusability ::: n. --> Capability of being confused.
confusable ::: a. --> Capable of being confused.
confuse ::: a. --> Mixed; confounded. ::: v. t. --> To mix or blend so that things can not be distinguished; to jumble together; to confound; to render indistinct or obscure; as, to confuse accounts; to confuse one&
confused ::: 1. Lacking logical order or sense. 2. *adj. Disordered and difficult to understand or make sense of. *3. Chaotic; jumbled.
confused ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Confuse
confusedly ::: adv. --> In a confused manner.
confusedness ::: n. --> A state of confusion.
confused with him) who is invoked in the conjura¬
confusely ::: adv. --> Confusedly; obscurely.
confusing ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Confuse
confusion ::: n. --> The state of being mixed or blended so as to produce indistinctness or error; indistinct combination; disorder; tumult.
The state of being abashed or disconcerted; loss self-possession; perturbation; shame.
Overthrow; defeat; ruin.
One who confuses; a confounder.
Conjunction: See Logic, formal, § 1. Connexity: A dyadic relation R is cilled connected if, for every two different members x, y of its field, at least one of xRy, yRx holds. Connotation: The sum of the constitutive notes of the essence of a concept as it is in itself and not as it is for us. This logical property is thus measured by the sum of the notes of the concept, of the higher genera it implies, of the various essential attributes of its nature as such. This term is synonymous with intension and comprehension; yet, the distinctions between them have been the object of controversies. J. S. Mill identifies connotation with signification and meaning, and includes in it much less than under comprehension or intension. The connotation of a general term (singular terms except descriptions are non-connotative) is the aggregate of all the other general terms necessarily implied by it is an abstract possibility and apart from exemplification in the actual world. It cannot be determined by denotation because necessity does not always refer to singular facts. Logicians who adopt this view distinguish connotation from comprehension by including in the latter contingent characters which do not enter in the former. Comprehension is thus the intensional reference of the concept, or the reference to universals of both general and singular terms. The determination of the comprehension of a concept is helped by its denotation, considering that reference is made also to singular, contingent, or particular objects exhibiting certain characteristics. In short, the connotation of a concept is its intensional reference determined intensionally; while its comprehension is its intensional reference extensionally determined. It may be observed that such a distinction and the view that the connotation of a concept contains only the notes which serve to define it, involves the nominalist principle that a concept may be reduced to what we are actually and explicitely thinking about the several notes we use to define it. Thus the connotation of a concept is much poorer than its actual content. Though the value of the concept seems to be saved by the recognition of its comprehension, it may be argued that the artificial introduction into the comprehension of both necessary and contingent notes, that is of actual and potential characteristics, confuses and perverts the notion of connotation as a logical property of our ideas. See Intension. -- T.G.
control flow ::: (programming) (Or flow of control) The sequence of execution of instructions in a program. This is determined at run time by the input data and by the control structures (e.g. if statements) used in the program.Not to be confused with flow control. (1997-09-14)
control flow "programming" (Or "flow of control") The sequence of {execution} of the {instructions} in a {program}. Control flow is linear, executing the instructions in the order they were written, unless it is changed at {run time} by {control structures} such as {if statements}, {loops} or {goto} statements). These {high-level} language statements are translated by the {compiler} or {interpreter} into {machine instructions}, most commonly {conditional branch} instructions. {Interrupts} and {exception handling} also change the sequence of execution of instructions but are not part of normal control flow. Not to be confused with "{flow control}". (2017-07-30)
copybroke "security" /kop'ee-brohk/ (Or "copywronged" - a play on "{copyright}") 1. Used to describe an instance of a {copy-protected} program that has been "broken"; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme disabled or removed. 2. Copy-protected software which is unusable because of some {bit-rot} or {bug} that has confused the {copy protection}. 3. Used to describe data damaged because of a side effect of a copy protection system. [{Jargon File}] (1997-03-16)
copybroke ::: (security) /kop'ee-brohk/ (Or copywronged - a play on copyright) 1. Used to describe an instance of a copy-protected program that has been broken; that is, a copy with the copy-protection scheme disabled or removed.2. Copy-protected software which is unusable because of some bit-rot or bug that has confused the copy protection.3. Used to describe data damaged because of a side effect of a copy protection system.[Jargon File] (1997-03-16)
cosmic Self ::: Sri Aurobindo: "When one has the cosmic consciousness, one can feel the cosmic Self as one"s own self, one can feel one with other beings in the cosmos, one can feel all the forces of Nature as moving in oneself, all selves as one"s own self. There is no why except that it is so, since all is the One.” Letters on Yoga (See also Cosmic Spirit)
"Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; . . . .” *The Life Divine
"An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme reality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, — an infinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all personality, — is the reality and meaning of self-existence: so too the cosmic Self, Spirit, Being, Person is the reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the same Self, Spirit, Being or Person manifesting its multiplicity is the reality and meaning of individual existence.” The Life Divine
"But this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"It is the Cosmic Self and Spirit that is in and behind all things and beings, from which and in which all is manifested in the universe — although it is now a manifestation in the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga*
dash ::: v. t. --> To throw with violence or haste; to cause to strike violently or hastily; -- often used with against.
To break, as by throwing or by collision; to shatter; to crust; to frustrate; to ruin.
To put to shame; to confound; to confuse; to abash; to depress.
To throw in or on in a rapid, careless manner; to mix, reduce, or adulterate, by throwing in something of an inferior quality;
daze ::: v. t. --> To stupefy with excess of light; with a blow, with cold, or with fear; to confuse; to benumb. ::: n. --> The state of being dazed; as, he was in a daze.
A glittering stone.
dazzle ::: v. t. --> To overpower with light; to confuse the sight of by brilliance of light.
To bewilder or surprise with brilliancy or display of any kind. ::: v. i. --> To be overpoweringly or intensely bright; to excite
DEC Wars ::: A 1983 Usenet posting by Alan Hastings and Steve Tarr spoofing the Star Wars movies in hackish terms. Some years later, ESR (disappointed by Hastings and Tarr's failure to exploit a great premise more thoroughly) posted a 3-times-longer complete rewrite called Unix WARS; the two are often confused.[Jargon File]
DEC Wars A 1983 {Usenet} posting by Alan Hastings and Steve Tarr spoofing the "Star Wars" movies in hackish terms. Some years later, ESR (disappointed by Hastings and Tarr's failure to exploit a great premise more thoroughly) posted a 3-times-longer complete rewrite called "Unix WARS"; the two are often confused. [{Jargon File}]
deep space 1. The notional location of any program that has gone {off the trolley}. Especially used of programs that just sit there silently grinding long after either failure or some output is expected. "Uh oh. I should have had a prompt ten seconds ago. The program's in deep space somewhere." Compare {buzz}, {catatonic}, {hyperspace}. 2. The metaphorical location of a human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric form of {bogosity} that he or she no longer responds coherently to normal communication. [{Jargon File}]
deep space ::: 1. The notional location of any program that has gone off the trolley. Especially used of programs that just sit there silently grinding long after ten seconds ago. The program's in deep space somewhere. Compare buzz, catatonic, hyperspace.2. The metaphorical location of a human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric form of bogosity that he or she no longer responds coherently to normal communication.[Jargon File]
Delirium Tremens (Latin) [from delirare to rave + tremere to tremble] Trembling delirium; the delirium arising from alcoholic poisoning, characterized by constant tremor, insomnia, great exhaustion, distressing illusions, and hallucinations. The abnormal consciousness displayed in this condition is graphic evidence of the existence of the astral realm interpenetrating and influencing the physical world. The characteristic hallucinations are of grotesque, vicious enemies and of various horrible animals and insects actively seeking to terrify and injure the agitated, confused sufferer who is evidently conscious on the low levels of the astral plane. Here, among the dregs in the astral light, all the vile and cruel thoughts and deeds of human life, and the worst animal impulses, are reflected back upon the earth, mankind, and beasts. Here, also, the actively evil elementaries or kama-rupic entities are instinctively drawn to any human victim who unconsciously invades their realm, attracted and vitalized by the fumes of the alcoholic liquors with which the person has saturated his body.
digital carrier ::: (hardware, communications) A medium which can carry digital signals; broadly equivalent to the physical layer of the OSI seven layer model of can include direct current (DC), whereas broadband carriers are modulated by various methods into frequency bands which do not include DC.Sometimes a modem (modulator/demodulator) or codec (coder/decoder) combines several channels on one transmission path. The combining of channels is called division multiplexing (FDM) and codecs with time division multiplexing (TDM) though this grouping of concepts is somewhat arbitrary.If the medium of a carrier is copper telephone wire, the circuit may be called T1, T3, etc. as these designations originally described such.T1 carriers used a restored polar line coding scheme which allowed a baseband signal to be transported as broadband and restored to baseband at the receiver. T1 is not used in this sense today, and indeed it is often confused with the DS1 signal carried. (1996-03-31)
digital carrier "hardware, communications" A medium which can carry {digital} signals; broadly equivalent to the {physical layer} of the {OSI} seven layer model of networks. Carriers can be described as {baseband} or {broadband}. A baseband carrier can include direct current (DC), whereas broadband carriers are modulated by various methods into frequency bands which do not include DC. Sometimes a {modem} (modulator/demodulator) or {codec} (coder/decoder) combines several channels on one transmission path. The combining of channels is called {multiplexing}, and their separation is called demultiplexing, independent of whether a modem or codec bank is used. Modems can be associated with {frequency division multiplexing} (FDM) and codecs with {time division multiplexing} (TDM) though this grouping of concepts is somewhat arbitrary. If the medium of a carrier is copper telephone wire, the circuit may be called {T1}, {T3}, etc. as these designations originally described such. T1 carriers used a restored polar line coding scheme which allowed a baseband signal to be transported as broadband and restored to baseband at the receiver. T1 is not used in this sense today, and indeed it is often confused with the {DS1} signal carried. (1996-03-31)
din ::: n. --> Loud, confused, harsh noise; a loud, continuous, rattling or clanging sound; clamor; roar.
To strike with confused or clanging sound; to stun with loud and continued noise; to harass with clamor; as, to din the ears with cries.
To utter with a din; to repeat noisily; to ding. ::: v. i.
disarray ::: v. t. --> To throw into disorder; to break the array of.
To take off the dress of; to unrobe. ::: n. --> Want of array or regular order; disorder; confusion.
Confused attire; undress.
disconcert ::: v. t. --> To break up the harmonious progress of; to throw into disorder or confusion; as, the emperor disconcerted the plans of his enemy.
To confuse the faculties of; to disturb the composure of; to discompose; to abash. ::: n.
disentangle ::: v. t. --> To free from entanglement; to release from a condition of being intricately and confusedly involved or interlaced; to reduce to orderly arrangement; to straighten out; as, to disentangle a skein of yarn.
To extricate from complication and perplexity; disengage from embarrassing connection or intermixture; to disembroil; to set free; to separate.
disorient ::: v. t. --> To turn away from the cast; to confuse as to which way is east; to cause to lose one&
distinct ::: a. --> Distinguished; having the difference marked; separated by a visible sign; marked out; specified.
Marked; variegated.
Separate in place; not conjunct; not united by growth or otherwise; -- with from.
Not identical; different; individual.
So separated as not to be confounded with any other thing; not liable to be misunderstood; not confused; well-defined;
distinctly ::: adv. --> With distinctness; not confusedly; without the blending of one part or thing another; clearly; plainly; as, to see distinctly.
With meaning; significantly.
Distinctness: (Ger. Deutlichkeit) In Husserl: Explicit articulatedness with respect to syntactical components. (See Confused). Distinctness is compatible with emptiness or obscurity of material content. See Descartes, Leibniz. -- D.C.
distract ::: a. --> Separated; drawn asunder.
Insane; mad. ::: v. t. --> To draw apart or away; to divide; to disjoin.
To draw (the sight, mind, or attention) in different directions; to perplex; to confuse; as, to distract the eye; to
dizzy ::: superl. --> Having in the head a sensation of whirling, with a tendency to fall; vertiginous; giddy; hence, confused; indistinct.
Causing, or tending to cause, giddiness or vertigo.
Without distinct thought; unreflecting; thoughtless; heedless. ::: v. t.
Dreams of physical mind and yogic dreams ; The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind-faculties disconnected from the will and reason, the bttddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the bram-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co-ordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, wnlh brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear pos- session of itself, though not of the physical world, works cohe- rently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelli- gence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of communication with material things ; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflec- tion, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the distractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have their after-consequences on the waking state subsequent to the cessa- tion of the trance.
drive "storage" A {peripheral} device that allows a computer to read or/or write some storage medium such as a {hard disk}, {floppy disk}, {magnetic tape}, {compact disc} or {DVD}. These would be called a {disk drive}, {magnetic tape drive}, etc. CD and DVD drives are known collectively as {optical drives}. When unqualified the term probably refers to a hard disk drive. The term "drive" refers particularly to the electrical components such as electric motors and head positioning system, read-write heads and associated electronics. Of the above storage media, typically only hard disks are fixed, the rest being removable. Most PCs in 2009 include one disk drive and one optical drive housed in the main PC enclosure. Extra drives can be connected externally via {USB}, {SCSI} or {Firewire}. Magnetic tape is always removable and tape drives are typically external. Not to be confused with a "driver" meaning {device driver} - software used to access a peripheral device. (2009-12-01)
drumble ::: v. i. --> To be sluggish or lazy; to be confused.
To mumble in speaking.
dudder ::: v. t. --> To confuse or confound with noise. ::: v. i. --> To shiver or tremble; to dodder. ::: n.
dumfound ::: v. t. --> To strike dumb; to confuse with astonishment.
Eighth Sphere or Planet of Death ::: A term used in the more esoteric or inner part of the teachings about which little can be said, for over thispart of the doctrine there has always been drawn a thick veil of secrecy and silence.Frequently the term is confused with avichi, but this is incorrect, because the two, while closelyconnected, are nevertheless quite distinct. While avichi is a state where very evil human beings "die andare reborn without interruption," yet not without hope of final redemption -- something which canactually take place even on our physical plane in the cases of very evil or soulless men -- the EighthSphere represents a degree of psychomental degeneration still more advanced. As just hinted, even inavichi there is a possibility of reinsoulment by the ray of the spiritual monad; whereas in the EighthSphere or Planet of Death such possibility finally vanishes, and the entity which has sunk to the Planet ofDeath is what is technically called in the esoteric philosophy a "lost soul." In the Eighth Sphere the lostsouls are ground over and over in nature's laboratory, and are finally dissipated into their componentpsycho-astral elements or life-atoms. The Eighth Sphere or Planet of Death is an actual globe. It is also ofcourse a state or condition of being; whereas the avichi is almost exclusively a state or condition in whichan entity may find itself, although obviously this entity must have position or place and therefore localityin space -- on our earth or elsewhere.
Electronic Report Management "storage" (ERM, Enterprise Report Management) The capture, archiving and publishing, in digital form, of (typically {mainframe} generated) documents such as accounting and financial reports. ERM often replaces systems based on paper or {microfilm}. ERM usually captures data from {print streams} and stores it on {hard drives}, {storage area networks} or {optical disk} drives. The data is indexed and can be retreived at the desktop with a {web browser} or a {fat client}. ERM systems are part of {enterprise content management} or {electronic document management}. An example application is {PearlDoc QuickFile Information Management System (http://pearldoc.com/)} (IMS). An early replacement for {greenbar} printed reports was Computer Output on Microfilm (COM, not to be confused with {Microsoft}'s {Component Object Model}). This was superseded by Computer Output to Laser Disk (or Disc - COLD) which used optical media. In 1999 the {AIIM} renamed COLD to ERM/COLD to reflect the variety of media in use. This was promoted, in 2002, by Mason Grigsby - widely reputed as "The Father of COLD" for his seminal work with {INSCI} in the late 1980s. Judging from their website, AIIM don't seem too sure whether ERM is "Electronic", "Enterprise" or both. (2007-07-25)
E. L. Thorndike, Human Nature and the Social Order. See Freud, Gestalt, Introspection, Mind, Subconscious. Psychology of Religion: A scientific, descriptive study of mental life and behavior with special reference to religious activities. The aim of this study is not to criticize or evaluate religion (see Philosophy of Religion) but to describe its forms as they reflect the mental processes of men. As an extended chapter in the field of general psychology, psychology of religion reflects the various types of psychology now current. As a scientific study this subject began its fruitful career at the beginning of this century, making illuminating disclosures on the nature of conversion, varieties of religious experience, the origin and character of beliefs in God and immortality, the techniques of mystics, types of worship, etc. Due to the confused state of psychology-in-general and especially to the recent vogue of behaviorism this subject has fallen somewhat into an eclipse -- at least for the present. Cf. Wm. James: Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902. -- V.F.
embarrass ::: v. t. --> To hinder from freedom of thought, speech, or action by something which impedes or confuses mental action; to perplex; to discompose; to disconcert; as, laughter may embarrass an orator.
To hinder from liberty of movement; to impede; to obstruct; as, business is embarrassed; public affairs are embarrassed.
To involve in difficulties concerning money matters; to incumber with debt; to beset with urgent claims or demands; -- said of a person or his affairs; as, a man or his business is embarrassed
embrangle ::: v. t. --> To confuse; to entangle.
embroil ::: v. t. --> To throw into confusion or commotion by contention or discord; to entangle in a broil or quarrel; to make confused; to distract; to involve in difficulties by dissension or strife.
To implicate in confusion; to complicate; to jumble. ::: n. --> See Embroilment.
Enhanced Capabilities Port "hardware" (ECP) The most common {parallel printer interface} on current (1997) {IBM PC} compatibles. Enhanced Capabilities Port is defined in standard IEEE 1284. It is bi-directional and faster than earlier parallel ports. Not to be confused with {Extended Capabilities Port}. (1997-12-01)
Enhanced Capabilities Port ::: (hardware) (ECP) The most common parallel printer interface on current (1997) IBM PC compatibles.Enhanced Capabilities Port is defined in standard IEEE 1284. It is bi-directional and faster than earlier parallel ports.Not to be confused with Extended Capabilities Port. (1997-12-01)
enorthotrope ::: n. --> An optical toy; a card on which confused or imperfect figures are drawn, but which form to the eye regular figures when the card is rapidly revolved. See Thaumatrope.
entangled ::: 1. Ensnarled; intertwined; enmeshed. 2. Confused or perplexed. entangling, entanglement, star-entangled.
entanglement ::: n. --> State of being entangled; intricate and confused involution; that which entangles; intricacy; perplexity.
entangle ::: v. t. --> To twist or interweave in such a manner as not to be easily separated; to make tangled, confused, and intricate; as, to entangle yarn or the hair.
To involve in such complications as to render extrication a bewildering difficulty; hence, metaphorically, to insnare; to perplex; to bewilder; to puzzle; as, to entangle the feet in a net, or in briers.
Euclid of Megara identified the good and the One. The many are unreal. Not to be confused with the great geometer who lived at Alexandria (c. 300 B.C.), author of the Elements in 13 books. -- M.F.
Explication: (Ger. Auslegung) In Husserl: Synthesis of identification between a confused, non-articulated (internally indistinct, unseparated) sense and a subsequently intended distinct, articulated, sense. The latter is the explicate (Explikat) of the former. See Explanation. -- D.C.
Extended Capabilities Port "hardware" (ECP) A {parallel printer interface} for {IBM PC} compatibles, supported by several, mainly US, manufacturers. Not to be confused with the more common {Enhanced Capabilities Port}. (1997-12-01)
Extended Capabilities Port ::: (hardware) (ECP) A parallel printer interface for IBM PC compatibles, supported by several, mainly US, manufacturers.Not to be confused with the more common Enhanced Capabilities Port. (1997-12-01)
Extended Video Graphics Array ::: (hardware, graphics) (EVGA) A display standard introduced by VESA in 1991.It offers a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels (non-interlaced) and a 70 Hz refresh rate.EVGA should not be confused with the older EGA (Enhanced Graphics Array) or XGA (eXtended Graphics Array).[Same as eXtended Video Graphics Array (XVGA)?] (1999-08-01)
Extended Video Graphics Array "hardware, graphics" (EVGA) A {display standard} introduced by {VESA} in 1991. It offers a maximum {resolution} of 1024 x 768 {pixels} ({non-interlaced}) and a 70 Hz {refresh rate}. EVGA should not be confused with the older {EGA} (Enhanced Graphics Array) or {XGA} (eXtended Graphics Array). [Same as "{eXtended Video Graphics Array}" (XVGA)?] (1999-08-01)
farrago ::: n. --> A mass composed of various materials confusedly mixed; a medley; a mixture.
field circus A derogatory pun on "field service". The field service organisation of any hardware manufacturer, but especially {DEC}. There is an entire genre of jokes about DEC field circus engineers: Q: How can you recognise a DEC field circus engineer with a flat tire? A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat. Q: How can you recognise a DEC field circus engineer who is out of gas? A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat. See {Easter egging} for additional insight on these jokes. There is also the "Field Circus Cheer" (from the {plan file} for {DEC} on MIT-AI): Maynard! Maynard! Don't mess with us! We're mean and we're tough! If you get us confused We'll screw up your stuff. (DEC's service HQ is located in Maynard, Massachusetts). [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-01)
fluster ::: v. t. --> To make hot and rosy, as with drinking; to heat; hence, to throw into agitation and confusion; to confuse; to muddle. ::: v. i. --> To be in a heat or bustle; to be agitated and confused. ::: n.
for The Rest Of Us "abuse" (From the {Macintosh} slogan "The computer for the rest of us") 1. Used to describe a {spiffy} product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe {spiffy} but very overpriced products. 2. Describes a program with a limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-{orthogonal}ity, inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not "confuse" a naïve user. This places an upper bound on how far that user can go before the program begins to get in the way of the task instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to {Macintosh} software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor {luser} might not be able to handle them. Becomes "the rest of *them*" when used in third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also {point-and-drool interface}, {user-friendly}. [{Jargon File}] (2000-08-08)
freeware "legal" {Software}, often written by enthusiasts and distributed at no charge by users' groups, or via the {web}, {electronic mail}, {bulletin boards}, {Usenet}, or other electronic media. At one time, "freeware" was a trademark of {Andrew Fluegelman}. It wasn't enforced after his death. "Freeware" should not be confused with "{free software}" (roughly, software with unrestricted redistribution) or "{shareware}" (software distributed without charge for which users can pay voluntarily). {Jim Knopf's story (http://freewarehof.org/sstory.html)}. [{Jargon File}] (2003-07-26)
freeware ::: (legal) Software, often written by enthusiasts and distributed at no charge by users' groups, or via the World-Wide Web, electronic mail, bulletin boards, Usenet, or other electronic media.At one time, freeware was a trademark of Andrew Fluegelman. It wasn't enforced after his death.Freeware should not be confused with free software (roughly, software with unrestricted redistribution) or shareware (software distributed without charge for which users can pay voluntarily). .[Jargon File](2003-07-26)
Freya, the goddess of love and beauty, corresponds to the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus. As the higher intelligence of the planet Earth, she is the sponsor and supporter of motherhood, the family, and of the human race. She wears on her breast the “fiery jewel” Brisingamen, representing humanity’s finest characteristics. Often confused with Frigga, she is in certain respects interchangeable with her, inasmuch as the divinities of the solar system have strong correspondences with one another. Sacred to Freya is Friday (as Vendredi is to Venus).
Frigga, Frigg (Scandinavian, Icelandic) In the Norse Edda, the consort of Allfather Odin and wise mother of the aesir (gods) and of all creation. She spins the clouds (nebulae) and knows every being’s destiny. In Valhalla she “receives half the fallen” — Odin’s warriors who battle daily on Vigridsslatten (the plain of consecration); she has been connected with the planet Venus, but this properly belongs to Freya, with whom Frigg is sometimes confused.
galimatias ::: n. --> Nonsense; gibberish; confused and unmeaning talk; confused mixture.
Gay, John: (1669-1745) English schohr and clergyman, not to be confused with his contemporary, the poet and dramatist of the same name. He is important in the field of ethics for his Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality. This little work influenced David Hartley in his formulation of Associationism in Psychology and likewise sened to suggest the foundation for the later English Utilitarian School. -- L.E.D.
General Electric ::: (company) (GE) A US company that manufactured computers from 1956 until 1970, when it sold its computer division to Honeywell and left the computer business. Notable GE computers were the GE-265, which supported the Dartmouth Time-sharing System (DTSS), and the GE-645 used for Multics development.See also GCOS.Not to be confused with the General Electric Company (GEC) in the UK (where FOLDOC's first seeds were sown).(2002-02-27)
General Electric "company" (GE) A US company that manufactured computers from 1956 until 1970, when it sold its computer division to {Honeywell} and left the computer business. Notable GE computers were the {GE-265}, which supported the {Dartmouth Time-sharing System} (DTSS), and the {GE-645} used for {Multics} development. See also {GCOS}. Not to be confused with the General Electric Company (GEC) in the UK (where FOLDOC's first seeds were sown). (2002-02-27)
gossypium ::: n. --> A genus of plants which yield the cotton of the arts. The species are much confused. G. herbaceum is the name given to the common cotton plant, while the long-stapled sea-island cotton is produced by G. Barbadense, a shrubby variety. There are several other kinds besides these.
haze ::: 1. An aggregation in the atmosphere of very fine, widely dispersed, solid or liquid particles, or both, giving the air an opalescent appearance that subdues colours. 2. Reduced visibility in the air as a result of condensed water vapour, dust, etc., in the atmosphere. 3. Vagueness of obscurity, as of the mind or perception; confused or vague thoughts, feelings, etc.
hazily ::: adv. --> In a hazy manner; mistily; obscurely; confusedly.
hazy ::: n. --> Thick with haze; somewhat obscured with haze; not clear or transparent.
Obscure; confused; not clear; as, a hazy argument; a hazy intellect.
history ::: “History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” The Human Cycle etc.
hotchpotch ::: n. --> A mingled mass; a confused mixture; a stew of various ingredients; a hodgepodge.
A blending of property for equality of division, as when lands given in frank-marriage to one daughter were, after the death of the ancestor, blended with the lands descending to her and to her sisters from the same ancestor, and then divided in equal portions among all the daughters. In modern usage, a mixing together, or throwing into a common mass or stock, of the estate left by a person
hubbub ::: v. i. --> A loud noise of many confused voices; a tumult; uproar.
huckleberry ::: n. --> The edible black or dark blue fruit of several species of the American genus Gaylussacia, shrubs nearly related to the blueberries (Vaccinium), and formerly confused with them. The commonest huckelberry comes from G. resinosa.
The shrub that bears the berries. Called also whortleberry.
huddle ::: v. i. --> To press together promiscuously, from confusion, apprehension, or the like; to crowd together confusedly; to press or hurry in disorder; to crowd. ::: v. t. --> To crowd (things) together to mingle confusedly; to assemble without order or system.
hugger-mugger ::: n. --> Privacy; secrecy. Commonly in the phrase in hugger-mugger, with haste and secrecy. ::: a. --> Secret; clandestine; sly.
Confused; disorderly; slovenly; mean; as, hugger-mugger doings.
hullabaloo ::: n. --> A confused noise; uproar; tumult.
hurry-skurry ::: adv. --> Confusedly; in a bustle.
hurry ::: v. t. --> To hasten; to impel to greater speed; to urge on.
To impel to precipitate or thoughtless action; to urge to confused or irregular activity.
To cause to be done quickly. ::: v. i. --> To move or act with haste; to proceed with celerity or
hurtle ::: v. t. --> To meet with violence or shock; to clash; to jostle.
To move rapidly; to wheel or rush suddenly or with violence; to whirl round rapidly; to skirmish.
To make a threatening sound, like the clash of arms; to make a sound as of confused clashing or confusion; to resound.
To move with violence or impetuosity; to whirl; to brandish.
To push; to jostle; to hurl.
Identity, law of: Given by traditional logicians as "A is A." Because of the various possible meanings of the copula (q.v.) and the uncertainty as to the range of the variable A, this formulation is ambiguous. The traditional law is perhaps best identified with the theorem x = x, either of the functional calculus of first order with equality, or in the theory of types (with equality defined), or in the algebra of classes, etc. It has been, or may be, also identified with either of the theorems of the propositional calculus, p ⊃ p, p ≡ p, or with the theorem of the functional calculus of first order, F(x) ⊃x F(x). Many writers understand, however, by the law of identity a semantical principle -- that a word or other symbol may (or must) have a fixed referent in its various occurrences in a given context (so, e.g., Ledger Wood in his The Analysis of Knowledge). Some, it would seem, confuse such a semantical principle with a proposition of formal logic. -- A.C.
IGL ::: Interactive Graphic Language. Used primarily by Physics Dept at Brooklyn Poly, uses numerical methods on vectors to approximate continuous function problems that don't have closed form solutions.[Is this being confused with Tektronix's graphics library by the same name?]
IGL Interactive Graphic Language. Used primarily by Physics Dept at Brooklyn Poly, uses numerical methods on vectors to approximate continuous function problems that don't have closed form solutions. [Is this being confused with Tektronix's graphics library by the same name?]
imbrangle ::: v. t. --> To entangle as in a cobweb; to mix confusedly.
immethodical ::: a. --> Not methodical; without method or systematic arrangement; without order or regularity; confused.
immethodically ::: adv. --> Without method; confusedly; unsystematically.
immethodize ::: v. t. --> To render immethodical; to destroy the method of; to confuse.
imperative language ::: (language) Any programming language that specifies explicit manipulation of the state of the computer system, not to be confused with a procedural language, which specifies an explicit sequence of steps to perform.An example of an imperative (but non-procedural) language is a data manipulation language for a relational database management system. This specifies changes to the database but does not necessarily require anyone to specify a sequence of steps.(2003-06-23)
imperative language "language" Any {programming language} that specifies explicit manipulation of the state of the computer system, not to be confused with a {procedural language}, which specifies an explicit sequence of steps to perform. An example of an imperative (but non-procedural) language is a {data manipulation language} for a {relational database management system}. This specifies changes to the database but does not necessarily require anyone to specify a sequence of steps. Both contrast with {declarative languages}, which specify neither explicit state manipulation nor a sequence of steps. (2007-10-02)
inconfused ::: a. --> Not confused; distinct.
indefinite ::: a. --> Not definite; not limited, defined, or specified; not explicit; not determined or fixed upon; not precise; uncertain; vague; confused; obscure; as, an indefinite time, plan, etc.
Having no determined or certain limits; large and unmeasured, though not infinite; unlimited; as indefinite space; the indefinite extension of a straight line.
Boundless; infinite.
Too numerous or variable to make a particular
Indian Ethics: Ethical speculations are inherent in Indian philosophy (q.v.) with its concepts of karma, moksa, ananda (q.v.). Belief in salvation is universal, hence optimism rather than pessimism is prevalent even though one's own life is sometimes treated contemptuously, fatalism is embraced or the doctrine of non-attachment and desirelessness is subscribed to. Social institutions, thoughts, and habits in India are interdependent with the theory of karma and the belief in universal law and order (cf. dharma). For instance, caste exists because dharma is inviolable, man is born into his circumstances because he reaps what he has sown. Western influence, in changing Indian institutions, will eventually also modify Indian ethical theories. All the same, great moral sensitiveness is not lacking, rather much the contrary, as is proven by the voluminous story and didactic fable literature which has also acted on the West. Hindu moral conscience is evident from the ideals of womanhood (symbolized in Sita), of loyalty (symbolized in Hanuman), of kindness to all living beings (cf. ahimsa), of tolerance (the racial and religious hotchpotch which is India being an eloquent witness), the great respect for the samnyasin (who, as a member of the Brahman caste has precedence over the royal or military). Critics confuse -- and the wretched conduct of some Hindus confirm the indistinction -- practical morality with the fearless statements of metaphysics pursued with relentless logic "beyond good and evil."
indiscriminate ::: a. --> Not discriminate; wanting discrimination; undistinguishing; not making any distinction; confused; promiscuous.
indistinct ::: a. --> Not distinct or distinguishable; not separate in such a manner as to be perceptible by itself; as, the indistinct parts of a substance.
Obscure to the mind or senses; not clear; not definite; confused; imperfect; faint; as, indistinct vision; an indistinct sound; an indistinct idea or recollection.
indistinctly ::: adv. --> In an indistinct manner; not clearly; confusedly; dimly; as, certain ideas are indistinctly comprehended.
inextricable ::: a. --> Incapable of being extricated, untied, or disentangled; hopelessly intricate, confused, or obscure; as, an inextricable knot or difficulty; inextricable confusion.
Inevitable.
“In speaking of the monad, we must not confuse it with the laya-center. . . . the neutral center, in matter or substance, through which consciousness passes — and the center of that consciousness is the monad” (Fund 375).
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
Interactive Data Language ::: (IDL) A commercial array-oriented language with numerical analysis and display features, first released in 1977. It supports interactive reduction, analysis, and visualisation of scientific data. It is sold by Research Systems, Inc.Version: 3.6.1 runs under Unix, MS-DOS, MS Windows, VAX/VMS and Macintosh.Not to be confused with any of the other IDLs. .E-mail: . (1994-10-07)
Interactive Data Language (IDL) A commercial {array}-oriented language with numerical analysis and display features, first released in 1977. It supports interactive {reduction}, analysis, and {visualisation} of scientific data. It is sold by {Research Systems, Inc.} Version: 3.6.1 runs under {Unix}, {MS-DOS}, {MS Windows}, {VAX}/{VMS} and {Macintosh}. Not to be confused with any of the other {IDLs}. {(ftp://gateway.rs.inc.com/pub/idl)}. E-mail: "info@rsinc.com". (1994-10-07)
Interface Definition Language ::: (IDL) 1. An OSF standard for defining RPC stubs.[Details?]2. Part of an effort by Project DOE at SunSoft, Inc. to integrate distributed object technology into the Solaris operating system. IDL provides the standard interface between objects, and is the base mechanism for object interaction.The Object Management Group's CORBA 1.1 (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) specifies the interface between objects. IDL (Interface Definition Language) is the base mechanism for object interaction.The SunSoft OMG IDL CFE (Compiler Front End) version 1.2 provides a complete framework for building CORBA 1.1-compliant preprocessors for OMG IDL. To use it Sun's current RPCL compiler. The IDL compiler front end allows integration of new back ends which can translate IDL to various programming languages.Several companies including Sunsoft are building back ends to the CFE which translate IDL into target languages, e.g. Pascal or C++, in the context of planned CORBA-compliant products. IDL requires C++ 2.1.Not to be confused with any of the other IDLs.E-mail: . , .Telephone: Mache Creeger, SunSoft, Inc. +1 (415) 336 5884. (1993-05-04)
Interface Definition Language (IDL) 1. An {OSF} standard for defining {RPC} stubs. [Details?] 2. Part of an effort by {Project DOE} at {SunSoft, Inc.} to integrate distributed {object} technology into the {Solaris} {operating system}. IDL provides the standard interface between objects, and is the base mechanism for object interaction. The {Object Management Group}'s {CORBA} 1.1 (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) specifies the interface between objects. IDL (Interface Definition Language) is the base mechanism for object interaction. The SunSoft OMG IDL CFE (Compiler Front End) version 1.2 provides a complete framework for building CORBA 1.1-compliant preprocessors for OMG IDL. To use it you write a back-end. A complete compiler of IDL would translate IDL into {client} side and {server} side routines for remote communication in the same manner as {Sun}'s current {RPCL} compiler. The IDL compiler front end allows integration of new back ends which can translate IDL to various programming languages. Several companies including Sunsoft are building back ends to the CFE which translate IDL into target languages, e.g. {Pascal} or {C++}, in the context of planned CORBA-compliant products. IDL requires C++ 2.1. Not to be confused with any of the other {IDLs}. E-mail: "idl-cfe@sun.com". {(ftp://omg.org/pub/omg_idl_cfe.tar.Z)}, {(ftp://omg.org/pub/OMG_IDL_CFE_1.2/)}. Telephone: Mache Creeger, SunSoft, Inc. +1 (415) 336 5884. (1993-05-04)
Interface Description Language (IDL) A language designed by Nestor, Lamb and Wulf of {CMU} in 1981 for describing the data structures passed between parts of an application, to provide a language-independent intermediate representation. It forms part of Richard Snodgrass "rts@cs.arizona.edu"'s {Scorpion} environment development system. Not to be confused with any of the other {IDLs}. Mailing list: info-idl@sei.cmu.edu. ["The Interface Description Language: Definition and Use," by Richard Snodgrass, Computer Science Press, 1989, ISBN 0-7167-8198-0]. [SIGPLAN Notices 22(11) (Nov 1987) special issue]. (1994-11-11)
Interface Description Language ::: (IDL) A language designed by Nestor, Lamb and Wulf of CMU in 1981 for describing the data structures passed between parts of an application, to provide a language-independent intermediate representation.It forms part of Richard Snodgrass 's Scorpion environment development system.Not to be confused with any of the other IDLs.Mailing list: [The Interface Description Language: Definition and Use, by Richard Snodgrass, Computer Science Press, 1989, ISBN 0-7167-8198-0].[SIGPLAN Notices 22(11) (Nov 1987) special issue]. (1994-11-11)
intermediate zone ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers. ::: It is not necessary for everyone to struggle through the intermediate zone. If one has purified oneself, if there is no abnormal vanity, egoism, ambition or other strong misleading element, or if one is vigilant and on one"s guard, or if the psychic is in front, one can either pass rapidly and directly or with a minimum of trouble into the higher zones of consciousness where one is in direct contact with the Divine Truth.
Intermediate Zone ::: The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higherMind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels, but one can receive something from them, even from the Overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 118
In the Hebrew Qabbalah, ruah had the same general meaning, equivalent to buddhi-manas in the theosophical classification of human principles. But modern Western Qabbalists have confused ruah with the kama-rupa, or even sometimes with kama-manas, precisely as they have confused it with nephesh, the animal vitality connected with appetitive desire or kama.
inturbidate ::: v. t. --> To render turbid; to darken; to confuse.
Invisible Worlds ::: The ancient wisdom teaches that the universe is not only a living organism, but that physical humanbeings live in intimate connection, in intimate contact, with invisible spheres, with invisible andintangible realms, unknown to man because the physical senses are so imperfectly evolved that weneither see these invisible realms nor feel nor hear nor smell nor taste them, nor cognize them except bythat much more highly evolved and subtle sensorium which men call the mind. These inner realmsinterpenetrate our physical sphere, permeate it, so that in our daily affairs as we go about our duties weactually pass through the dwellings, through the mountains, through the lakes, through the very beings,mayhap, of the entities of and dwelling in these invisible realms. These invisible realms are built ofmatter just as this our physical world is, but of a more ethereal matter than ours is; but we cognize themnot at all with our physical senses. The explanation is that it is all a matter of differing rates of vibrationof substances.The reader must be careful not to confuse this theosophical teaching of inner worlds and spheres withwhat the modern Spiritism of the Occident has to say on the matter. The "Summerland" of the Spiritistsin no wise resembles the actuality which the theosophical philosophy teaches of, the doctrine concerningthe structure and operations of the visible and invisible kosmos. The warning seems necessary lest anunwary reader may imagine that the invisible worlds and spheres of the theosophical teachings areidentic with the Summerland of the Spiritists, for it is not so.Our senses tell us absolutely nothing of the far-flung planes and spheres which belong to the ranges andfunctionings of the invisible substances and energies of the universe; yet those inner and invisible planesand spheres are actually inexpressibly more important than what our physical senses tell us of thephysical world, because these invisible planes are the causal realms, of which our physical world oruniverse, however far extended in space, is but the effectual or phenomenal or resultant production.But while these inner and invisible worlds or planes or spheres are the fountainhead, ultimately, of all theenergies and matters of the whole physical world, yet to an entity inhabiting these inner and invisibleworlds or planes, these latter are as substantial and "real" -- using the popular word -- to that entity as ourgross physical world is to us. Just as we know in our physical world various grades or conditions ofenergy and matter, from the physically grossest to the most ethereal, precisely after the same general plando the inhabitants of these invisible and inner and to us superior worlds know and cognize their owngrossest and also most ethereal substances and energies.Man as well as all the other entities of the universe is inseparably connected with these worlds invisible.
involve ::: v. t. --> To roll or fold up; to wind round; to entwine.
To envelop completely; to surround; to cover; to hide; to involve in darkness or obscurity.
To complicate or make intricate, as in grammatical structure.
To connect with something as a natural or logical consequence or effect; to include necessarily; to imply.
To take in; to gather in; to mingle confusedly; to
jackstraw ::: n. --> An effigy stuffed with straw; a scarecrow; hence, a man without property or influence.
One of a set of straws of strips of ivory, bone, wood, etc., for playing a child&
jargon ::: n. --> Confused, unintelligible language; gibberish; hence, an artificial idiom or dialect; cant language; slang.
A variety of zircon. See Zircon. ::: v. i. --> To utter jargon; to emit confused or unintelligible sounds; to talk unintelligibly, or in a harsh and noisy manner.
jumblement ::: n. --> Confused mixture.
jumbler ::: n. --> One who confuses things.
jumble ::: v. t. --> To mix in a confused mass; to put or throw together without order; -- often followed by together or up. ::: v. i. --> To meet or unite in a confused way; to mix confusedly. ::: n.
jumblingly ::: adv. --> In a confused manner.
karan.a (karana; karanam) ::: cause; causal; "the Causal Idea which, by supporting and secretly guiding the confused activities of Mind, Life and Body ensures and compels the right arrangement of the Universe", same as vijñana or vijñanamaya; (especially in Bengali) consecrated wine, used in Tantric rituals. k karana-indriya
KL1 ::: Kernel Language 1.An experimental AND-parallel version of KL0 for the ICOT project in Japan. KL1 is an implementation of FGHC.Not to be confused with KL-ONE.[Design of the Kernel Language for the Parallel Inference Machine, U. Kazunori et al, Computer J (Dec 1990)]. (1994-10-24)
KL1 Kernel Language 1. An experimental {AND-parallel} version of {KL0} for the {ICOT} project in Japan. KL1 is an implementation of {FGHC}. Not to be confused with {KL-ONE}. ["Design of the Kernel Language for the Parallel Inference Machine", U. Kazunori et al, Computer J (Dec 1990)]. (1994-10-24)
KL-ONE ::: A frame language.Not to be confused with KL1.[An Overview of the KL-ONE Knowledge Representation System, R.J. Brachman and J. Schmolze, Cognitive Sci 9(2), 1985]. (1994-11-18)
KL-ONE A {frame language}. Not to be confused with {KL1}. ["An Overview of the KL-ONE Knowledge Representation System", R.J. Brachman and J. Schmolze, Cognitive Sci 9(2), 1985]. (1994-11-18)
kludge ::: (jargon) /kluhj/ (From the old Scots kludgie meaning an outside toilet) A Scottish engineering term for anything added in an ad hoc (and possibly engineers met Americans and the meaning, spelling and pronunciation of kludge became confused with that of kluge.The spelling kludge was apparently popularised by the Datamation cited below which defined it as An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.The result of this tangled history is a mess; in 1993, many (perhaps even most) hackers pronounce the word /klooj/ but spell it kludge (compare the pronunciation drift of mung). Some observers consider this appropriate in view of its meaning.[How to Design a Kludge, Jackson Granholme, Datamation, February 1962, pp. 30-31].[Jargon File] (1998-12-09)
kludge "jargon" /kluhj/ (From the old Scots "kludgie" meaning an outside toilet) A Scottish engineering term for anything added in an ad hoc (and possibly unhygenic!) manner. At some point during the Second World War, Scottish engineers met Americans and the meaning, spelling and pronunciation of kludge became confused with that of "{kluge}". The spelling "kludge" was apparently popularised by the "Datamation" cited below which defined it as "An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole." The result of this tangled history is a mess; in 1993, many (perhaps even most) hackers pronounce the word /klooj/ but spell it "kludge" (compare the pronunciation drift of {mung}). Some observers consider this appropriate in view of its meaning. ["How to Design a Kludge", Jackson Granholme, Datamation, February 1962, pp. 30-31]. [{Jargon File}] (1998-12-09)
Koinoboi (Greek) A body of mystics in Egypt of the early Christian era, often confused with the Therapeutae.
Kr.s.n.akali (Krishnakali; KrishnaKali; Krishna-Kali; Krishna Kali) —Krsnakali (also called Kalikr.s.n.a) the union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali, forming the "subjective base" of karma; Kali as prakr.ti surrendering herself in a relation of (madhura) dasya to Kr.s.n.a, the purus.a; "a complete union of the two sides of the Duality" of isvara-sakti which, when it rules one"s consciousness, can draw it "altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance"; the same union of Kr.s.n.a and Kali seen everywhere in the vision (darsana) of the external world, a perception which because of its "vivid personality" is regarded as superior to that of purus.a-prakr.ti; short for Kr.s.n.akali bhava or Kr.s.n.akali darsana.Kr Krsnakali bhava (Krishnakali bhava; Krishna-Kali -; Krishna Kali -). s.n.akali bhava
Kwan-shai-yin is often confused with Kwan-yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion, the feminine Logos and counterpart of Kwan-shai-yin; but “Kwan-shai-yin — or the universally manifested voice ‘is active — male; and must not be confounded with Kwan-yin, or Buddhi the Spiritual Soul (the sixth Pr.) and the vehicle of its “Lord.” ’ It is Kwan-yin that is the female principle or the manifested passive, manifesting itself ‘to every creature in the universe, in order to deliver all men from the consequences of sin’ . . . while Kwan-shai-yin, ‘the Son identical with his Father’ is the absolute activity, hence — having no direct relation to objects of sense is — Passivity” (ML 344).
Lazy Standard ML ::: (language) (LSML) A lazy varient of SML, allowing cyclic val definitions, by Prateek Mishra .Latest version: 0.43-1, as of 1993-11-15.Not to be confused with LML. . (1999-08-30)
Lazy Standard ML "language" (LSML) A {lazy} varient of {SML}, allowing cyclic val definitions, by Prateek Mishra "mishra@sbcs.sunysb.edu". Not to be confused with {LML}. {(ftp://sbcs.sunysb.edu/pub/lsml)}. (1999-08-30)
leapfrog attack ::: Use of userid and password information obtained illicitly from one host (e.g. downloading a file of account IDs and passwords, tapping TELNET, etc.) to compromise another host. Also, the act of TELNETting through one or more hosts in order to confuse a trace (a standard cracker procedure).[Jargon File]
leapfrog attack Use of userid and password information obtained illicitly from one {host} (e.g. {download}ing a file of account IDs and passwords, tapping {TELNET}, etc.) to compromise another host. Also, the act of TELNETting through one or more hosts in order to confuse a trace (a standard {cracker} procedure). [{Jargon File}]
lucid ::: n. --> Shining; bright; resplendent; as, the lucid orbs of heaven.
Clear; transparent.
Presenting a clear view; easily understood; clear.
Bright with the radiance of intellect; not darkened or confused by delirium or madness; marked by the regular operations of reason; as, a lucid interval.
lurry ::: n. --> A confused heap; a throng, as of persons; a jumble, as of sounds.
macaronic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or like, macaroni (originally a dish of mixed food); hence, mixed; confused; jumbled.
Of or pertaining to the burlesque composition called macaronic; as, macaronic poetry. ::: n. --> A heap of thing confusedly mixed together; a jumble.
marbled ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Marble ::: a. --> Made of, or faced with, marble.
Made to resemble marble; veined or spotted like marble.
Varied with irregular markings, or witch a confused blending of irregular spots and streaks.
masker ::: n. --> One who wears a mask; one who appears in disguise at a masquerade. ::: v. t. --> To confuse; to stupefy.
maze ::: n. --> A wild fancy; a confused notion.
Confusion of thought; perplexity; uncertainty; state of bewilderment.
A confusing and baffling network, as of paths or passages; an intricacy; a labyrinth. ::: v. t.
medley ::: n. --> A mixture; a mingled and confused mass of ingredients, usually inharmonious; a jumble; a hodgepodge; -- often used contemptuously.
The confusion of a hand to hand battle; a brisk, hand to hand engagement; a melee.
A composition of passages detached from several different compositions; a potpourri.
A cloth of mixed colors.
MEGO /me"goh/ or /mee'goh/ ["My Eyes Glaze Over", often "Mine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over", attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also "MEGO factor". 1. A {handwave} intended to confuse the listener and hopefully induce agreement because the listener does not want to admit to not understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior management by engineers and contains a high proportion of {TLAs}. 2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics. 3. Among non-hackers, often refers not to behaviour that causes the eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which may be triggered by the mere threat of technical detail as effectively as by an actual excess of it.
melee ::: n. --> A fight in which the combatants are mingled in one confused mass; a hand to hand conflict; an affray.
meta-data ::: (data) /me't*-day`t*/, or combinations of /may'-/ or (Commonwealth) /mee'-/; /-dah`t*/ (Or meta data) Data about data. In data processing, meta-data is definitional data that provides information about or documentation of other data managed within an application or environment.For example, meta-data would document data about data elements or attributes, (name, size, data type, etc) and data about records or data structures (length, associated, ownership, etc.). Meta-data may include descriptive information about the context, quality and condition, or characteristics of the data.Not to be confused with Metadata. (1997-04-06)
Metempsychosis(Greek) ::: A compound vocable which may be rendered briefly by "insouling after insouling," or "changingsoul after soul." Metempsychosis contains the specific meaning that the soul of an entity, human or other,moves not merely from condition to condition, migrates not merely from state to state or from body tobody; but also that it is an indivisible entity in its inmost essence, which is pursuing a course along itsown particular evolutionary path as an individual monad, taking upon itself soul after soul; and it is theadventures which befall the soul, in assuming soul after soul, which in their aggregate are groupedtogether under this word metempsychosis.In ordinary language metempsychosis is supposed to be a synonym for transmigration, reincarnation,preexistence, and palingenesis, etc., but all these words in the esoteric philosophy have specific meaningsof their own, and should not be confused. It is of course evident that these words have strict relationswith each other, as, for instance, every soul in its metempsychosis also transmigrates in its own particularsense; and inversely every transmigrating entity also has its metempsychosis or soul-changings in its ownparticular sense. But these connections or interminglings of meanings must not be confused with thespecific significance attached to each one of these words.The essential meaning of metempsychosis can perhaps be briefly described by saying that a monadduring the course of its evolutionary peregrinations throws forth from itself periodically a newsoul-garment or soul-sheath, and this changing of souls or soul-sheaths as the ages pass is calledmetempsychosis. (See also Transmigration, Reincarnation, Preexistence, Palingenesis)
Microsoft Networking ::: (networking) Microsoft's name for the networking subsystems of Windows 95 and later. Not to be confused with The Microsoft Network.Microsoft networking uses the SMB file sharing protocol. It is implemented as file system drivers i.e. installable file systems (IFS).The network redirector Client for Microsoft Networks, is implemented in the VREDIR.VXD virtual device driver. Peer resource sharing is provided by File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks (VSERVER.VXD).Windows 95's support for Netware (NCP) networks is provided in a similar way via NWREDIR.VXD and NWSERVER.VXD. (1999-08-08)
Microsoft Networking "networking" {Microsoft's} name for the networking subsystems of {Windows 95} and later. Not to be confused with {The Microsoft Network}. Microsoft networking uses the {SMB} file sharing protocol. It is implemented as file system drivers i.e. "{installable file systems}" (IFS). The {network redirector} "Client for Microsoft Networks", is implemented in the VREDIR.VXD {virtual device driver}. {Peer} resource sharing is provided by "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" (VSERVER.VXD). Windows 95's support for {Netware} ({NCP}) networks is provided in a similar way via NWREDIR.VXD and NWSERVER.VXD. (1999-08-08)
Microwave Hardware Description Language ::: (language, hardware) (MHDL) A Hardware Description Language by David Barton[?] from Intermetrics incorporating Haskell 1.2.Not to be confused with other MHDLs.(2000-11-14)
Microwave Hardware Description Language "language, hardware" (MHDL) A {Hardware Description Language} by David Barton[?] from {Intermetrics} incorporating {Haskell} 1.2. Not to be confused with other {MHDLs}. (2000-11-14)
mingledly ::: adv. --> Confusedly.
mingle ::: v. t. --> To mix; intermix; to combine or join, as an individual or part, with other parts, but commonly so as to be distinguishable in the product; to confuse; to confound.
To associate or unite in society or by ties of relationship; to cause or allow to intermarry; to intermarry.
To deprive of purity by mixture; to contaminate.
To put together; to join.
To make or prepare by mixing the ingredients of.
Missing definition "introduction" First, this is an (English language) __computing__ dictionary. It includes lots of terms from related fields such as mathematics and electronics, but if you're looking for (or want to submit) words from other subjects or general English words or other languages, try {(http://wikipedia.org/)}, {(http://onelook.com/)}, {(http://yourdictionary.com/)}, {(http://www.dictionarist.com/)} or {(http://reference.allrefer.com/)}. If you've already searched the dictionary for a computing term and it's not here then please __don't tell me__. There are, and always will be, a great many missing terms, no dictionary is ever complete. I use my limited time to process the corrections and definitions people have submitted and to add the {most frequently requested missing terms (missing.html)}. Try one of the sources mentioned above or {(http://techweb.com/encyclopedia/)}, {(http://whatis.techtarget.com/)} or {(http://google.com/)}. See {the Help page (help.html)} for more about missing definitions and bad cross-references. (2014-09-20)! {exclamation mark}!!!Batch "language, humour" A daft way of obfuscating text strings by encoding each character as a different number of {exclamation marks} surrounded by {question marks}, e.g. "d" is encoded as "?!!!!?". The language is named after the {MSDOS} {batch file} in which the first converter was written. {esoteric programming languages} {wiki entry (http://esolangs.org/wiki/!!!Batch)}. (2014-10-25)" {double quote}
moither ::: v. t. --> To perplex; to confuse. ::: v. i. --> To toil; to labor.
MPEG-3 ::: (compression, standard, algorithm, file format) A proposed variant of the MPEG video and audio compression algorithm and file format. MPEG-3 was intended as an extension of MPEG-2 to cater for HDTV but was eventually merged into MPEG-2.Not to be confused with MP3 - MPEG-1 layer 3.[Technical details?] (1999-01-06)
MPEG-3 "compression, standard, algorithm, file format" A proposed variant of the {MPEG} {video} and {audio} {compression} {algorithm} and {file} format. MPEG-3 was intended as an extension of {MPEG-2} to cater for {HDTV} but was eventually merged into MPEG-2. Not to be confused with MP3 - {MPEG-1 layer 3}. [Technical details?] (1999-01-06)
muddily ::: adv. --> In a muddy manner; turbidly; without mixture; cloudily; obscurely; confusedly.
muddle ::: v. t. --> To make turbid, or muddy, as water.
To cloud or stupefy; to render stupid with liquor; to intoxicate partially.
To waste or misuse, as one does who is stupid or intoxicated.
To mix confusedly; to confuse; to make a mess of; as, to muddle matters; also, to perplex; to mystify.
muddy ::: superl. --> Abounding in mud; besmeared or dashed with mud; as, a muddy road or path; muddy boots.
Turbid with mud; as, muddy water.
Consisting of mud or earth; gross; impure.
Confused, as if turbid with mud; cloudy in mind; dull; stupid; also, immethodical; incoherent; vague.
Not clear or bright.
munch ::: To transform information in a serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation. To trace down a data structure. Related to crunch and nearly synonymous with grovel, but connotes less pain.Often confused with mung.[Jargon File] (1995-01-10)
munch To transform information in a serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation. To trace down a data structure. Related to {crunch} and nearly synonymous with {grovel}, but connotes less pain. Often confused with {mung}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-10)
munge /muhnj/ 1. A derogatory term meaning to imperfectly transform information. 2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or the whole program. This term is often confused with {mung} and may derive from it, or possibly vice-versa. One correspondent believes it derives from the french "mange" /monzh/, eat. [{Jargon File}] (2002-04-15)
munge ::: /muhnj/ 1. A derogatory term meaning to imperfectly transform information.2. A comprehensive rewrite of a routine, data structure or the whole program.This term is often confused with mung and may derive from it, or possibly vice-versa. One correspondent believes it derives from the french mange /monzh/, eat.[Jargon File](2002-04-15)
murmur ::: v. i. --> A low, confused, and indistinct sound, like that of running water.
A complaint half suppressed, or uttered in a low, muttering voice.
To make a low continued noise, like the hum of bees, a stream of water, distant waves, or the wind in a forest.
To utter complaints in a low, half-articulated voice; to feel or express dissatisfaction or discontent; to grumble; -- often
muss ::: n. --> A scramble, as when small objects are thrown down, to be taken by those who can seize them; a confused struggle.
A state of confusion or disorder; -- prob. variant of mess, but influenced by muss, a scramble.
A term of endearment. ::: v. t.
Mysticism, p. 362, Domiel is mistakenly confused
Nadir: The lowest point below the Earth; the opposite point to the Zenith. It should not be confused with the Imum Cœli (q.v.).
Nazarenes One of two early sects of Christians, the other sect being the Ebionites, which go back in their origin before the Christian era. They were disciples of that Jeshua ben Panthera who was an initiated teacher living in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, who ruled over the Jews from 104-79 BC, and around whom, some state, that the Gospels story of Jesus was built (cf IU 2:201). The Greek for this name is Nazoraioi, confused both with Nazarenoi (inhabitants of Nazareth) and with the Jewish sect of Nazarites; for Matthew 2:23 says that Jesus came and dwelt in Nazareth, that the Jewish prophecy that he should be called a Nazoraios might be fulfilled. This word has been translated Nazarene, as is also the case in Acts 24:5, where Paul is said to belong to the sect of the Nazoraios. It would appear that the Jews claimed Jesus as a Nazarite [from Hebrew nazar to set apart, consecrate; cf nazar].
NetBEUI ::: NetBIOS Extended User Interface. The network transport protocol used by all of Microsoft's network systems and IBM's LAN Server based systems.NetBEUI is often confused with NetBIOS. NetBIOS is the applications programming interface and NetBEUI is the transport protocol.
NetBEUI {NetBIOS} Extended User Interface. The network transport {protocol} used by all of {Microsoft}'s network systems and {IBM}'s {LAN Server} based systems. NetBEUI is often confused with {NetBIOS}. NetBIOS is the {applications programming interface} and NetBEUI is the transport protocol.
Net:X "company" A Canadian company. Not to be confused with {NetX}. {(http://netx.ca/)}. [Summary?] (1998-06-25)
Net:X ::: (company) A Canadian company. Not to be confused with NetX. .[Summary?] (1998-06-25)
NetX ::: (company) A LukeCo Company that designs web pages and web software. Not to be confused with Net:X. . (1996-12-15)
NetX "company" A LukeCo Company that designs {web pages} and web software. Not to be confused with {Net:X}. {(http://members.aol.com/netx11/index.html)}. (1996-12-15)
noise ::: n. --> Sound of any kind.
Especially, loud, confused, or senseless sound; clamor; din.
Loud or continuous talk; general talk or discussion; rumor; report.
Music, in general; a concert; also, a company of musicians; a band. ::: v. i.
Not to be confused with Svayambhuva, a name of the first manu.
Nous(Greek) ::: This is a term frequently used by Plato for what in modern theosophical literature is usuallycalled the higher manas or higher mind or spiritual soul, the union and characteristics of thebuddhi-manas in man overshadowed by the atman. The distinction to be drawn between the nous on theone hand, and the animal soul or psyche and its workings on the other hand, is very sharp, and the twomust not be confused. In occultism the kosmic nous is the third Logos, and in the case of man's ownconstitution, or in human pneumatology, the nous is the buddhi-manas or higher manas or spiritualmonad.
NSA line eater "messaging, tool" The National Security Agency trawling program sometimes assumed to be reading the net for the US Government's spooks. Most hackers describe it as a mythical beast, but some believe it actually exists, more aren't sure, and many believe in acting as though it exists just in case. Some netters put loaded phrases like "KGB", "Uzi", "nuclear materials", "Palestine", "cocaine", and "assassination" in their {sig blocks} to confuse and overload the creature. The {GNU} version of {Emacs} actually has a command that randomly inserts a bunch of insidious anarcho-verbiage into your edited text. There is a mainstream variant of this myth involving a "Trunk Line Monitor", which supposedly used speech recognition to extract words from telephone trunks. This one was making the rounds in the late 1970s, spread by people who had no idea of then-current technology or the storage, {signal-processing}, or {speech recognition} needs of such a project. On the basis of mass-storage costs alone it would have been cheaper to hire 50 high-school students and just let them listen in. Speech-recognition technology can't do this job even now (1993), and almost certainly won't in this millennium, either. The peak of silliness came with a letter to an alternative paper in New Haven, Connecticut, laying out the factoids of this Big Brotherly affair. The letter writer then revealed his actual agenda by offering - at an amazing low price, just this once, we take VISA and MasterCard - a scrambler guaranteed to daunt the Trunk Trawler and presumably allowing the would-be Baader-Meinhof gangs of the world to get on with their business. [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-13)
Number 5 Electronic Switching System "communications" (5ESS) An electronic {circuit switching} product sold by {Alcatel Lucent} (formerly {Western Electric}/{AT&T Network Systems}/{Lucent Technologies}), used by many telephone exchange carriers and service providers. Succeeded the Number 4 Electronic Switching System (4ESS) and reached widespread use in the 1980s. Not to be confused with the {Class 5 Switch}. (2013-09-14)
obfuscate ::: a. --> Obfuscated; darkened; obscured. ::: v. t. --> To darken; to obscure; to becloud; hence, to confuse; to bewilder.
Obscuration should not be confused with pralaya, dissolution or death; obscuration is rest or dormancy, analogous to sleep:
O "character" {ASCII} code 79, The letter of the alphabet, not to be confused with 0 ({zero}) the digit. (1999-02-07)
O ::: (character) ASCII code 79, The letter of the alphabet, not to be confused with 0 (zero) the digit. (1999-02-07)
of Islam I, 502, Mohammed confused Gabriel
omnium-gatherum ::: n. --> A miscellaneous collection of things or persons; a confused mixture; a medley.
one-dimensional array "types" An {array} with only one {dimension}; the simplest kind of array, consisting of a sequence of items ("elements"), all of the same type. An element is selected by an integer {index} that normally starts at zero for the first element and increases by one. The index of the last element is thus the length of the array minus one. A one-dimensional array is also known as a {vector}. It should not be confused with a {list}. In some languages, e.g. {Perl}, all arrays are one-dimensional and higher dimensions are represented as arrays of {pointers} to arrays (which can have different sizes and can themselves contain pointers to arrays and so on). A one-dimensional array maps simply to memory: the address of an element with index i is A(i) = A0 + i * s where A0 is the base address of the array and s is the size of storage used for each element, the "stride". Elements may be padded to certain {address boundaries}, e.g. {machine words}, to increase access speed, in which case the stride will be larger than the amount of data in an element. (2014-03-22)
"One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us. "Letters on Yoga
“One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us.”Letters on Yoga
out-of-band ::: 1. (communications) The exchange of call control information on a dedicated channel, separate from that used by the telephone call or data transmission.2. Sometimes used to describe what communications people call shift characters, such as the ESC that leads control sequences for many terminals, or the level shift indicators in the old 5-bit Baudot codes.3. In personal communication, using methods other than electronic mail, such as telephone or snail-mail.4. (software) Values returned by a function that are not in its natural range of return values, but rather signal some kind of exception. Many C functions that normally return a non-negative integer return -1 to indicate failure.This use confuses out-of-band with out-of-range. It is actually a clear example of in-band signalling since it uses the same channel for control and data.Compare hidden flag, green bytes, fence.[Jargon File](2001-04-08)
out-of-band 1. "communications" The exchange of {call control} information on a dedicated channel, separate from that used by the telephone call or data transmission. 2. Sometimes used to describe what communications people call "shift characters", such as the ESC that leads control sequences for many terminals, or the level shift indicators in the old 5-bit {Baudot} codes. 3. In personal communication, using methods other than {electronic mail}, such as telephone or {snail-mail}. 4. "software" Values returned by a {function} that are not in its "natural" {range} of return values, but rather signal some kind of {exception}. Many {C} functions that normally return a non-negative integer return -1 to indicate failure. This use confuses "out-of-band" with "out-of-range". It is actually a clear example of {in-band} signalling since it uses the same "channel" for control and data. Compare {hidden flag}, {green bytes}, {fence}. [{Jargon File}] (2001-04-08)
overriding "programming" Redefining in a {child class} a {method} or function member defined in a {parent class}. Not to be confused with "{overloading}". (1996-12-21)
overriding ::: (programming) Redefining in a child class a method or function member defined in a parent class.Not to be confused with overloading. (1996-12-21)
ozone ::: n. --> A colorless gaseous substance (O/) obtained (as by the silent discharge of electricity in oxygen) as an allotropic form of oxygen, containing three atoms in the molecule. It is a streng oxidizer, and probably exists in the air, though by he ordinary tests it is liable to be confused with certain other substances, as hydrogen dioxide, or certain oxides of nitrogen. It derives its name from its peculiar odor, which resembles that of weak chlorine.
Parts of the Being ::: In the Yoga one becomes aware of the different parts and their proper action, and puts each in its place and to its proper action under the control of the higher consciousness or else under the control of the Divine Power. Afterwards all gets surcharged with the spiritual consciousness and there is an automatic right perception and right action of the different parts because they are controlled entirely from above and do not falsify or resist or confuse its dictates.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 80-81
PASSIVITY. ::: An inert passivi^ is constantly confused with the real surrender, but out of an inert passivity nothing true and
Peano, Giuseppe, 1858-1932, Italian mathematician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Turin, 1890-1932. His work in mathematical logic marks a transition stage between the old algebra of logic and the newer methods. It is inferior to Frege's by present standards of rigor, but nevertheless contains important advances, among which may be mentioned the distinction between class inclusion (⊂) and class membership (∈) -- which had previously been confused -- and the introduction of a notation for formation of a class by abstraction (q. v.). His logical notations are more convenient than Frege's, and many of them are still in common use.
pellmell ::: adv. --> In utter confusion; with confused violence.
pell-mell ::: n. 1. A confused mixture or crowd, a medley. adv. 2. In frantic disorderly haste; headlong.
Permanent Self Used by Blavatsky (Key, sec 8) for the incarnating ego, as contrasted with the earth vehicle, the personal self or ego; not to be confused with its own divine-spiritual monadic source or focus, the higher self (atman), the essential and eternally perduring divine selfhood per se.
perplex ::: a. --> To involve; to entangle; to make intricate or complicated, and difficult to be unraveled or understood; as, to perplex one with doubts.
To embarrass; to puzzle; to distract; to bewilder; to confuse; to trouble with ambiguity, suspense, or anxiety.
To plague; to vex; to tormen.
Intricate; difficult.
perplexed ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Perplex ::: a. --> Entangled, involved, or confused; hence, embarrassd; puzzled; doubtful; anxious.
Perseity: (Lat. per se) The condition of being per se, by itself, that is being such as it is from its very nature. Perseity must not be confused with aseity The former implies independence of a subject in which to inhere, whereas the latter demands a still higher degree of independence of any efficient or producing agency whatsoever, it is predicated of God alone. Thomas Aquinas held: Quod est per se, semper est prius eo quod est per aliud. That which exists per se is always a substance. This mode of existence is distinguished from that which is per accidens, that is something which is not essential, but only belongs to a subject more or less fortuitously. A thing is per se owing to its internal constitution, or essence, but that which is per accidens is due rather to external or non-essential reasons. Thomas Aquinas taught that that which is per accidens, non potest esse semper et in omnibus, whereas that which belongs to something per se, de necessitate et semper et inseparabiliter et inest. Duns Scotus held that per se esse may be understood in the sense of being incommunicable, incommunicabiliter esse, or per se subsistere, subsisting by itself, not by another. In human acts that which is directly intended is per se, while that which is per accidens is praeter intentionem. Rational beings tend toward the good, or that which is regarded as good. If the good is intended for itself it is bonum per se, otherwise it is a bonum per accidens or secundum quid, that is relatively good. -- J.J.R.
Personal Computer Memory Card International Association ::: (body, hardware, standard) (PCMCIA, or PC Card) An international trade association and the standards they have developed for devicies, such as modems and external hard disk drives, that can be plugged into notebook computers. A PCMCIA card is about the size of a credit card.For some unfathomable reason, around 1995(?) they decided to rename PCMCIA cards PC Cards, perhaps to encourage sales to confused purchasers. .Address: PCMCIA Administration, 1030 East Duane Avenue, Suite G, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA.Telephone: +1 (408) 720 0107. Fax: +1 (408) 720 9416. BBS: +1 (408) 720 9388. (1996-10-16)
Personal Computer Memory Card International Association "body, hardware, standard" (PCMCIA, or "PC Card") An international trade association and the {standards} they have developed for devicies, such as {modems} and external {hard disk} drives, that can be plugged into {notebook computers}. A PCMCIA card is about the size of a credit card. For some unfathomable reason, around 1995(?) they decided to rename PCMCIA cards "PC Cards", perhaps to encourage sales to confused purchasers. {(ftp://ftp.sidewinder.com/pub/Portables/PCMCIA)}. Address: PCMCIA Administration, 1030 East Duane Avenue, Suite G, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA. Telephone: +1 (408) 720 0107. Fax: +1 (408) 720 9416. BBS: +1 (408) 720 9388. (1996-10-16)
perturb ::: v. t. --> To disturb; to agitate; to vex; to trouble; to disquiet.
To disorder; to confuse.
Petites Perceptions: (Fr. little perceptions) Term by which Leibniz designates confused and unconscious perceptions. (Cf. The Monadology Sects. 21, 23 ) The Leibnizian theory of petites perceptions anticipates the modern theory of unconscious mind See Unconscious Mind. -- L.W.
Phoenicians confused Isis with Ashteroth who, in
pi ::: n. --> A mass of type confusedly mixed or unsorted. ::: v. t. --> To put into a mixed and disordered condition, as type; to mix and disarrange the type of; as, to pi a form.
pod ::: Not to be confused with P.O.D..1. (printer) (Allegedly from abbreviation POD for Prince Of Darkness) A Diablo 630 (or, latterly, any letter-quality impact printer). From the DEC-10 PODTYPE program used to feed formatted text to it.2. (text) Plain Old Documentation.[Jargon File] (1998-12-18)
pod Not to be confused with {P.O.D.}. 1. "printer" (Allegedly from abbreviation POD for "Prince Of Darkness") A {Diablo} 630 (or, latterly, any {letter-quality} {impact printer}). From the {DEC-10} {PODTYPE} program used to feed formatted text to it. 2. "text" {Plain Old Documentation}. [{Jargon File}] (1998-12-18)
pop "programming" To remove something from the top of a {stack}. Opposite of {push}. (Not to be confused with {Post Office Protocol} or {POP-1} the language). [{Jargon File}] (1996-02-18)
pop ::: (programming) To remove something from the top of a stack.Opposite of push.Not to be confuse with POP or PoP.[Jargon File] (1996-02-18)
Pragmatism: (Gr. pragma, things done) Owes its inception as a movement of philosophy to C. S. Peirce and William James, but approximations to it can be found in many earlier thinkers, including (according to Peirce and James) Socrates and Aristotle, Berkeley and Hume. Concerning a closer precursor, Shadworth Hodgson, James says that he "keeps insisting that realities are only what they are 'known as' ". Kant actually uses the word "pragmatic" to characterize "counsels of prudence" as distinct from "rules of skill" and "commands of morality" (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 40). His principle of the primacy of practical reason is also an anticipation of pragmatism. It was reflection on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason which originally led Peirce to formulate the view that the muddles of metaphysics can be cleared up if one attends to the practical consequences of ideas. The pragmatic maxim was first stated by Peirce in 1878 (Popular Science Monthly) "Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object". A clearer formulation by the same author reads: "In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception, and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception". This is often expressed briefly, viz.: The meaning of a proposition is its logical (or physical) consequences. The principle is not merely logical. It is also admonitory in Baconian style "Pragmatism is the principle that everv theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose onlv meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the impentive mood". (Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, 5.18.) Although Peirce's maxim has been an inspiration not only to later pragmatists, but to operationalists as well, Peirce felt that it might easily be misapplied, so as to eliminate important doctrines of science -- doctrines, presumably, which hive no ascertainable practical consequences.
procedural language "language" Any {programming language} in which the programmer specifies an explicit sequences of steps to follow to produce a result (an {algorithm}). The term should not be confused with "{imperative language}" - a language that specifies explicit manipulation of state. An example (non-imperative) procedural language is {LOGO}, which specifies sequences of steps to perform but does not have an internal state. Other procedural languages include {Basic}, {Pascal}, {C}, and {Modula-2}. Both procedural and imperative languages are in contrast to {declarative languages}, in which the programmer specifies neither explicit steps nor explicit state manipulation. (2004-05-17)
procedural language ::: (language) Any programming language in which the programmer specifies an explicit sequences of steps to follow to produce a result.The term should not be confused with imperative language. An example (non-imperative) procedural language is LOGO, which specifies sequences of steps to perform but does not have an internal state.Other procedural languages include Basic, Pascal, C, and Modula-2.Both these types of language are in contrast to declarative languages, in which the programmer specifies neither explicit sequences of actions nor internal state manipulation.(2004-05-17)
Prolog-III ::: A. Colmerauer, U Aix-Marseille, ca 1984. Marseille Prolog, with unification replaced by constraint resolution. [deferred goals too?] (Not to be confused with Prolog 3, a commercial product?)Version 1.2 for MS-DOS.[Opening the Prolog-III Universe, BYTE 12(9):177-182 (Aug 1987)].[An Introduction to Prolog III, A. Colmerauer, CACM 33(7):69-90 (1990)].
Prolog-III A. Colmerauer, U Aix-Marseille, ca 1984. Marseille Prolog, with unification replaced by constraint resolution. [deferred goals too?] (Not to be confused with Prolog 3, a commercial product?) Version 1.2 for MS-DOS. ["Opening the Prolog-III Universe", BYTE 12(9):177-182 (Aug 1987)]. ["An Introduction to Prolog III", A. Colmerauer, CACM 33(7):69-90 (1990)].
promiscuous ::: a. --> Consisting of individuals united in a body or mass without order; mingled; confused; undistinguished; as, a promiscuous crowd or mass.
Distributed or applied without order or discrimination; not restricted to an individual; common; indiscriminate; as, promiscuous love or intercourse.
Psuchikos, Psychikos (Greek) The adjective of psuche or psyche, manas in conjunction with kama. In its mental aspects psyche is the distorted reflection of the higher aspect of manas, whereas the nous is manas overenlightened by buddhi. In the New Testament psuchikos is translated “natural” (1 Cor 15:46) and “sensual” (James 3:15) and thus is confused with the vital-emotional or corporeal parts of man, and the teaching of the duality of the human being is lost sight of. The correct word for the vital-physical or “natural” part of man is somatikos. See also PSYCHIC POWERS
pudder ::: v. i. --> To make a tumult or bustle; to splash; to make a pother or fuss; to potter; to meddle. ::: v. t. --> To perplex; to embarrass; to confuse; to bother; as, to pudder a man.
Pulse Code Modulation "data" (PCM) A method by which an audio signal is represented as digital data. Virtually all digital audio systems use PCM, including, {CD}, {DAT}, F1 format, 1630 format, DASH, DCC, and MD. Many people get confused because "PCM" is also slang for Sony's F1 format which stores PCM digital audio on videotape. (1995-02-09)
puzzle-headed ::: a. --> Having the head full of confused notions.
Pythagoreanism: The doctrines (philosophical, mathematical, moral, and religious) of Pythagoras (c. 572-497) and of his school which flourished until about the end of the 4th century B.C. The Pythagorean philosophy was a dualism which sharply distinguished thought and the senses, the soul and the body, the mathematical forms of things and their perceptible appearances. The Pythagoreans supposed that the substances of all things were numbers and that all phenomena were sensuous expressions of mathematical ratios. For them the whole universe was harmony. They made important contributions to mathematics, astronomv, and physics (acoustics) and were the first to formulate the elementary principles and methods of arithmetic and geometry as taught in the first books of Euclid. But the Pythagorean sect was not only a philosophical and mathematical school (cf. K. von Fritz, Pythagorean Politics in Southern Italy, 1941), but also a religious brotherhood and a fellowship for moral reformation. They believed in the immortality and transmigration (see Metempsychosis) of the soul which they defined as the harmony of the body. To restore harmony which was confused by the senses was the goal of their Ethics and Politics. The religious ideas were closely related to those of the Greek mysteries which sought by various rites and abstinences to purify and redeem the soul. The attempt to combine this mysticism with their mathematical philosophy, led the Pythagoreans to the development of an intricate and somewhat fantastic symbolism which collected correspondences between numbers and things and for example identified the antithesis of odd and even with that of form and matter, the number 1 with reason, 2 with the soul, etc. Through their ideas the Pythagoreans had considerable effect on the development of Plato's thought and on the theories of the later Neo-platonists.
Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal "humour" Back in the good old days - the "Golden Era" of computers, it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called "Real Men" and "Quiche Eaters" in the literature). During this period, the Real Men were the ones that understood computer programming, and the Quiche Eaters were the ones that didn't. A real computer programmer said things like "DO 10 I=1,10" and "ABEND" (they actually talked in capital letters, you understand), and the rest of the world said things like "computers are too complicated for me" and "I can't relate to computers - they're so impersonal". (A previous work [1] points out that Real Men don't "relate" to anything, and aren't afraid of being impersonal.) But, as usual, times change. We are faced today with a world in which little old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12-year-old kids can blow Real Men out of the water playing Asteroids and Pac-Man, and anyone can buy and even understand their very own Personal Computer. The Real Programmer is in danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high-school students with {TRASH-80s}. There is a clear need to point out the differences between the typical high-school junior Pac-Man player and a Real Programmer. If this difference is made clear, it will give these kids something to aspire to -- a role model, a Father Figure. It will also help explain to the employers of Real Programmers why it would be a mistake to replace the Real Programmers on their staff with 12-year-old Pac-Man players (at a considerable salary savings). LANGUAGES The easiest way to tell a Real Programmer from the crowd is by the programming language he (or she) uses. Real Programmers use {Fortran}. Quiche Eaters use {Pascal}. Nicklaus Wirth, the designer of Pascal, gave a talk once at which he was asked how to pronounce his name. He replied, "You can either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or call me by value, 'Worth'." One can tell immediately from this comment that Nicklaus Wirth is a Quiche Eater. The only parameter passing mechanism endorsed by Real Programmers is call-by-value-return, as implemented in the {IBM 370} {Fortran-G} and H compilers. Real programmers don't need all these abstract concepts to get their jobs done - they are perfectly happy with a {keypunch}, a {Fortran IV} {compiler}, and a beer. Real Programmers do List Processing in Fortran. Real Programmers do String Manipulation in Fortran. Real Programmers do Accounting (if they do it at all) in Fortran. Real Programmers do {Artificial Intelligence} programs in Fortran. If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in {assembly language}. If you can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing. STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING The academics in computer science have gotten into the "structured programming" rut over the past several years. They claim that programs are more easily understood if the programmer uses some special language constructs and techniques. They don't all agree on exactly which constructs, of course, and the examples they use to show their particular point of view invariably fit on a single page of some obscure journal or another - clearly not enough of an example to convince anyone. When I got out of school, I thought I was the best programmer in the world. I could write an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program, use five different computer languages, and create 1000-line programs that WORKED. (Really!) Then I got out into the Real World. My first task in the Real World was to read and understand a 200,000-line Fortran program, then speed it up by a factor of two. Any Real Programmer will tell you that all the Structured Coding in the world won't help you solve a problem like that - it takes actual talent. Some quick observations on Real Programmers and Structured Programming: Real Programmers aren't afraid to use {GOTOs}. Real Programmers can write five-page-long DO loops without getting confused. Real Programmers like Arithmetic IF statements - they make the code more interesting. Real Programmers write self-modifying code, especially if they can save 20 {nanoseconds} in the middle of a tight loop. Real Programmers don't need comments - the code is obvious. Since Fortran doesn't have a structured IF, REPEAT ... UNTIL, or CASE statement, Real Programmers don't have to worry about not using them. Besides, they can be simulated when necessary using {assigned GOTOs}. Data Structures have also gotten a lot of press lately. Abstract Data Types, Structures, Pointers, Lists, and Strings have become popular in certain circles. Wirth (the above-mentioned Quiche Eater) actually wrote an entire book [2] contending that you could write a program based on data structures, instead of the other way around. As all Real Programmers know, the only useful data structure is the Array. Strings, lists, structures, sets - these are all special cases of arrays and can be treated that way just as easily without messing up your programing language with all sorts of complications. The worst thing about fancy data types is that you have to declare them, and Real Programming Languages, as we all know, have implicit typing based on the first letter of the (six character) variable name. OPERATING SYSTEMS What kind of operating system is used by a Real Programmer? CP/M? God forbid - CP/M, after all, is basically a toy operating system. Even little old ladies and grade school students can understand and use CP/M. Unix is a lot more complicated of course - the typical Unix hacker never can remember what the PRINT command is called this week - but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. People don't do Serious Work on Unix systems: they send jokes around the world on {UUCP}-net and write adventure games and research papers. No, your Real Programmer uses OS 370. A good programmer can find and understand the description of the IJK305I error he just got in his JCL manual. A great programmer can write JCL without referring to the manual at all. A truly outstanding programmer can find bugs buried in a 6 megabyte {core dump} without using a hex calculator. (I have actually seen this done.) OS is a truly remarkable operating system. It's possible to destroy days of work with a single misplaced space, so alertness in the programming staff is encouraged. The best way to approach the system is through a keypunch. Some people claim there is a Time Sharing system that runs on OS 370, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion that they were mistaken. PROGRAMMING TOOLS What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front panel of the computer. Back in the days when computers had front panels, this was actually done occasionally. Your typical Real Programmer knew the entire bootstrap loader by memory in hex, and toggled it in whenever it got destroyed by his program. (Back then, memory was memory - it didn't go away when the power went off. Today, memory either forgets things when you don't want it to, or remembers things long after they're better forgotten.) Legend has it that {Seymore Cray}, inventor of the Cray I supercomputer and most of Control Data's computers, actually toggled the first operating system for the CDC7600 in on the front panel from memory when it was first powered on. Seymore, needless to say, is a Real Programmer. One of my favorite Real Programmers was a systems programmer for Texas Instruments. One day he got a long distance call from a user whose system had crashed in the middle of saving some important work. Jim was able to repair the damage over the phone, getting the user to toggle in disk I/O instructions at the front panel, repairing system tables in hex, reading register contents back over the phone. The moral of this story: while a Real Programmer usually includes a keypunch and lineprinter in his toolkit, he can get along with just a front panel and a telephone in emergencies. In some companies, text editing no longer consists of ten engineers standing in line to use an 029 keypunch. In fact, the building I work in doesn't contain a single keypunch. The Real Programmer in this situation has to do his work with a "text editor" program. Most systems supply several text editors to select from, and the Real Programmer must be careful to pick one that reflects his personal style. Many people believe that the best text editors in the world were written at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for use on their Alto and Dorado computers [3]. Unfortunately, no Real Programmer would ever use a computer whose operating system is called SmallTalk, and would certainly not talk to the computer with a mouse. Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into editors running on more reasonably named operating systems - {Emacs} and {VI} being two. The problem with these editors is that Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor - complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. TECO, to be precise. It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more entertaining games to play with TECO is to type your name in as a command line and try to guess what it does. Just about any possible typing error while talking with TECO will probably destroy your program, or even worse - introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine. For this reason, Real Programmers are reluctant to actually edit a program that is close to working. They find it much easier to just patch the binary {object code} directly, using a wonderful program called SUPERZAP (or its equivalent on non-IBM machines). This works so well that many working programs on IBM systems bear no relation to the original Fortran code. In many cases, the original source code is no longer available. When it comes time to fix a program like this, no manager would even think of sending anything less than a Real Programmer to do the job - no Quiche Eating structured programmer would even know where to start. This is called "job security". Some programming tools NOT used by Real Programmers: Fortran preprocessors like {MORTRAN} and {RATFOR}. The Cuisinarts of programming - great for making Quiche. See comments above on structured programming. Source language debuggers. Real Programmers can read core dumps. Compilers with array bounds checking. They stifle creativity, destroy most of the interesting uses for EQUIVALENCE, and make it impossible to modify the operating system code with negative subscripts. Worst of all, bounds checking is inefficient. Source code maintenance systems. A Real Programmer keeps his code locked up in a card file, because it implies that its owner cannot leave his important programs unguarded [5]. THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT WORK Where does the typical Real Programmer work? What kind of programs are worthy of the efforts of so talented an individual? You can be sure that no Real Programmer would be caught dead writing accounts-receivable programs in {COBOL}, or sorting {mailing lists} for People magazine. A Real Programmer wants tasks of earth-shaking importance (literally!). Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers. Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding Russian transmissions. It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies. Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operating systems for cruise missiles. Some of the most awesome Real Programmers of all work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Many of them know the entire operating system of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft by heart. With a combination of large ground-based Fortran programs and small spacecraft-based assembly language programs, they are able to do incredible feats of navigation and improvisation - hitting ten-kilometer wide windows at Saturn after six years in space, repairing or bypassing damaged sensor platforms, radios, and batteries. Allegedly, one Real Programmer managed to tuck a pattern-matching program into a few hundred bytes of unused memory in a Voyager spacecraft that searched for, located, and photographed a new moon of Jupiter. The current plan for the Galileo spacecraft is to use a gravity assist trajectory past Mars on the way to Jupiter. This trajectory passes within 80 +/-3 kilometers of the surface of Mars. Nobody is going to trust a Pascal program (or a Pascal programmer) for navigation to these tolerances. As you can tell, many of the world's Real Programmers work for the U.S. Government - mainly the Defense Department. This is as it should be. Recently, however, a black cloud has formed on the Real Programmer horizon. It seems that some highly placed Quiche Eaters at the Defense Department decided that all Defense programs should be written in some grand unified language called "ADA" ((C), DoD). For a while, it seemed that ADA was destined to become a language that went against all the precepts of Real Programming - a language with structure, a language with data types, {strong typing}, and semicolons. In short, a language designed to cripple the creativity of the typical Real Programmer. Fortunately, the language adopted by DoD has enough interesting features to make it approachable -- it's incredibly complex, includes methods for messing with the operating system and rearranging memory, and Edsgar Dijkstra doesn't like it [6]. (Dijkstra, as I'm sure you know, was the author of "GoTos Considered Harmful" - a landmark work in programming methodology, applauded by Pascal programmers and Quiche Eaters alike.) Besides, the determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language. The Real Programmer might compromise his principles and work on something slightly more trivial than the destruction of life as we know it, providing there's enough money in it. There are several Real Programmers building video games at Atari, for example. (But not playing them - a Real Programmer knows how to beat the machine every time: no challenge in that.) Everyone working at LucasFilm is a Real Programmer. (It would be crazy to turn down the money of fifty million Star Trek fans.) The proportion of Real Programmers in Computer Graphics is somewhat lower than the norm, mostly because nobody has found a use for computer graphics yet. On the other hand, all computer graphics is done in Fortran, so there are a fair number of people doing graphics in order to avoid having to write COBOL programs. THE REAL PROGRAMMER AT PLAY Generally, the Real Programmer plays the same way he works - with computers. He is constantly amazed that his employer actually pays him to do what he would be doing for fun anyway (although he is careful not to express this opinion out loud). Occasionally, the Real Programmer does step out of the office for a breath of fresh air and a beer or two. Some tips on recognizing Real Programmers away from the computer room: At a party, the Real Programmers are the ones in the corner talking about operating system security and how to get around it. At a football game, the Real Programmer is the one comparing the plays against his simulations printed on 11 by 14 fanfold paper. At the beach, the Real Programmer is the one drawing flowcharts in the sand. At a funeral, the Real Programmer is the one saying "Poor George, he almost had the sort routine working before the coronary." In a grocery store, the Real Programmer is the one who insists on running the cans past the laser checkout scanner himself, because he never could trust keypunch operators to get it right the first time. THE REAL PROGRAMMER'S NATURAL HABITAT What sort of environment does the Real Programmer function best in? This is an important question for the managers of Real Programmers. Considering the amount of money it costs to keep one on the staff, it's best to put him (or her) in an environment where he can get his work done. The typical Real Programmer lives in front of a computer terminal. Surrounding this terminal are: Listings of all programs the Real Programmer has ever worked on, piled in roughly chronological order on every flat surface in the office. Some half-dozen or so partly filled cups of cold coffee. Occasionally, there will be cigarette butts floating in the coffee. In some cases, the cups will contain Orange Crush. Unless he is very good, there will be copies of the OS JCL manual and the Principles of Operation open to some particularly interesting pages. Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year 1969. Strewn about the floor are several wrappers for peanut butter filled cheese bars - the type that are made pre-stale at the bakery so they can't get any worse while waiting in the vending machine. Hiding in the top left-hand drawer of the desk is a stash of double-stuff Oreos for special occasions. Underneath the Oreos is a flowcharting template, left there by the previous occupant of the office. (Real Programmers write programs, not documentation. Leave that to the maintenance people.) The Real Programmer is capable of working 30, 40, even 50 hours at a stretch, under intense pressure. In fact, he prefers it that way. Bad response time doesn't bother the Real Programmer - it gives him a chance to catch a little sleep between compiles. If there is not enough schedule pressure on the Real Programmer, he tends to make things more challenging by working on some small but interesting part of the problem for the first nine weeks, then finishing the rest in the last week, in two or three 50-hour marathons. This not only impresses the hell out of his manager, who was despairing of ever getting the project done on time, but creates a convenient excuse for not doing the documentation. In general: No Real Programmer works 9 to 5 (unless it's the ones at night). Real Programmers don't wear neckties. Real Programmers don't wear high-heeled shoes. Real Programmers arrive at work in time for lunch [9]. A Real Programmer might or might not know his wife's name. He does, however, know the entire {ASCII} (or EBCDIC) code table. Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores aren't open at three in the morning. Real Programmers survive on Twinkies and coffee. THE FUTURE What of the future? It is a matter of some concern to Real Programmers that the latest generation of computer programmers are not being brought up with the same outlook on life as their elders. Many of them have never seen a computer with a front panel. Hardly anyone graduating from school these days can do hex arithmetic without a calculator. College graduates these days are soft - protected from the realities of programming by source level debuggers, text editors that count parentheses, and "user friendly" operating systems. Worst of all, some of these alleged "computer scientists" manage to get degrees without ever learning Fortran! Are we destined to become an industry of Unix hackers and Pascal programmers? From my experience, I can only report that the future is bright for Real Programmers everywhere. Neither OS 370 nor Fortran show any signs of dying out, despite all the efforts of Pascal programmers the world over. Even more subtle tricks, like adding structured coding constructs to Fortran have failed. Oh sure, some computer vendors have come out with Fortran 77 compilers, but every one of them has a way of converting itself back into a Fortran 66 compiler at the drop of an option card - to compile DO loops like God meant them to be. Even Unix might not be as bad on Real Programmers as it once was. The latest release of Unix has the potential of an operating system worthy of any Real Programmer - two different and subtly incompatible user interfaces, an arcane and complicated teletype driver, virtual memory. If you ignore the fact that it's "structured", even 'C' programming can be appreciated by the Real Programmer: after all, there's no type checking, variable names are seven (ten? eight?) characters long, and the added bonus of the Pointer data type is thrown in - like having the best parts of Fortran and assembly language in one place. (Not to mention some of the more creative uses for
rhapsodic ::: a. --> Alt. of Rhapsodic
Of or pertaining to rhapsody; consisting of rhapsody; hence, confused; unconnected.
riddle ::: a person or thing that puzzles, perplexes, or confuses; enigma. riddles.
rigmarole ::: n. --> A succession of confused or nonsensical statements; foolish talk; nonsense. ::: a. --> Consisting of rigmarole; frovolous; nonsensical; foolish.
roar ::: v. i. --> To cry with a full, loud, continued sound.
To bellow, or utter a deep, loud cry, as a lion or other beast.
To cry loudly, as in pain, distress, or anger.
To make a loud, confused sound, as winds, waves, passing vehicles, a crowd of persons when shouting together, or the like.
To be boisterous; to be disorderly.
To laugh out loudly and continuously; as, the hearers
Root-race, Sixth The root-race which will succeed the present fifth root-race, sometimes called the Aryan race in theosophical literature because the Aryan Hindus were a part of the original first subrace of the fifth root-race. Care should be taken not to confuse the sixth root-race with the sixth subrace of the fifth root-race which was stated by Blavatsky to be in process of forming in America as seeds — the earliest pioneers, although already beginning to appear, will not be numerous for several thousand years. The preparation for the sixth root-race will take place during the sixth and seventh subraces of the fifth root-race in the Americas. When the time arrives, this future sixth root-race will be predominant on the earth, new lands will have appeared, and many of the present lands will be submerged. The surface of the globe will, in time of course, be entirely changed, and there will then be more land than water (as also was the case during the fourth root-race).
Ruah (Hebrew) Rūaḥ Also ruahh. Vital breath, wind, air, very much in the sense that the Greek pneuma means spirit, wind, air, and breath; a breath, exhalation; the rational soul or mind, possessing counsel, purpose, and will — often confused with the vital principle placed in the breath and with the principle of life.
Sabean, Sabaean, Sabian, Sabianism [from Hebrew tsaba host, army, celestial hosts] A name given by the Shemitic peoples to those who worship the spiritual beings in the universe; and because the celestial bodies were the most evident manifestations of some classes of these spiritual beings, this religion naturally became confused with the worship of the celestial bodies themselves as the dwellings or mansions of the regents above, in, and behind the visible orbs. Hence the Sabeans were called astrolaters or star-worshipers; but it was not the physical bodies of the celestial orbs which were worshiped, but the spiritual entities, powers, or spirits which ensouled these orbs. This was one of the very archaic religions of the human race, found all over the globe in various forms; and in its origins Sabianism was undoubtedly an outpouring of occult teaching from the archaic Mysteries.
Samadhi and norma! sleep, between the dream*state of Yoga and the physical state of dream. The latter belongs to the physical mind ; in the former the mind proper and subtle is at work liberated from the immixture of the physical mentality. The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind*faculttes disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain>memory, partly of refieclions from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflec- tions which arc, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co- ordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the Yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear possession of itself, though not of the physical world, works coherently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelligence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of conununicatinn with maJerJal things ; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflection, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the dis- tractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have
Satyrs [from Greek satyroi] The luxuriant psychovital powers of nature, associated with Dionysos or Pan. They were represented in mythology as having bristly hair, snub nose, pointed ears, incipient horns, a tail; when they became confused with the Latin fauns they acquired goat’s horns and hoofs. They loved the music of the pipes, dance, song, and wine; and like Puck and nature spirits of Western Europe, they were elfish and given to pranks.
say A human may "say" things to a computer by typing them on a terminal. "To list a directory verbosely, say "ls -l"." Tends to imply a {newline}-terminated command (a "sentence"). A computer may "say" things to you, even if it doesn't have a speech synthesiser, by displaying them on a terminal in response to your commands. This usage often confuses {mundanes}. [{Jargon File}]
scrambling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Scramble ::: a. --> Confused and irregular; awkward; scambling.
scrimmage ::: n. --> Formerly, a skirmish; now, a general row or confused fight or struggle.
The struggle in the rush lines after the ball is put in play.
scuffle ::: v. i. --> To strive or struggle with a close grapple; to wrestle in a rough fashion.
Hence, to strive or contend tumultuously; to struggle confusedly or at haphazard. ::: n. --> A rough, haphazard struggle, or trial of strength; a
Sentential function has been used by some as a syntactical term, to mean a sentence (q.v.) containing free variables. This notion should not be confused with that of a propositional function (q.v.), the relationship is that a propositional function may be obtained from a sentential function by abstraction (q. v.) -- A.C.
shambolic link /sham-bol'ik link/ A Unix symbolic link, particularly when it confuses you, points to nothing at all, or results in your ending up in some completely unexpected part of the file system. [{Jargon File}]
shamefaced ::: n. --> Easily confused or put out of countenance; diffident; bashful; modest.
shim "jargon, memory management" A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired {memory alignment} or other addressing property. For example, the {PDP-11} {Unix} {linker}, in split I&D (instructions and data) mode, inserts a two-{byte} shim at location 0 in data space so that no data object will have an address of 0 (and be confused with the {C} null pointer). See also {loose bytes}. [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-21)
shuffle ::: v. t. --> To shove one way and the other; to push from one to another; as, to shuffle money from hand to hand.
To mix by pushing or shoving; to confuse; to throw into disorder; especially, to change the relative positions of, as of the cards in a pack.
To remove or introduce by artificial confusion. ::: v. i.
Sibyl [from Greek sibylla probably from sios bylla Doric for dios boule she that tells the will of Zeus] Often confused with the Greek Pythia, Sibyls are reputed to have been possessed of occult knowledge, the power of prophecy and divination, and the inner sight. Practically nothing is known about their occult life, though in many cases they seem to have been initiates. Greek and Latin writers name ten, of whom the most famous is the Sibyl of the Cave of Cumae whom Aeneas consulted just before going down to Avernus (Aen 4:10) — a veiled record of one stage in the initiation journey. Others were the Delphian, Babylonian, Libyan, Cimmerian, Erythraean, Samian, Hellespontine, Phrygian, and Tiburtine Sibyls.
Siddhas (Sanskrit) Siddha-s [from the verbal root sidh to attain] Perfected one, one who has attained relative perfection in this manvantara through self-devised efforts lasting through many imbodiments towards that end. A buddha is in this sense at times called a siddha. Generally, a hierarchy of dhyani-chohans who, according to Hindu mythology, inhabit the space between the earth and heaven (bhuvar-loka); the Vishnu-Purana states that there are 88,000 of them occupying the regions of the sky north of the sun and south of the seven rishis (the Great Bear). In later mythology they are confused with or take the place of the sadhyas, but in the Vedas the siddhas are those who are possessed from birth of superhuman powers — the eight siddhis — as also of knowledge and indifference to the world (Svetasvatara-Upanishad).
SISAL "language" (Streams and Iteration in a Single Assignment Language) A general-purpose {single assignment} {functional programming language} with {strict} semantics, automatic parallelisation and efficient {arrays}. Outputs a dataflow graph in {IF1} (Intermediary Form 1). Derived from {VAL}, adds {recursion} and finite {streams}. {Pascal}-like syntax. Designed to be a common high-level language for numerical programs on a variety of {multiprocessors}. Implementations exist for {Cray X-MP}, {Cray Y-MP}, {Cray-2}, {Sequent}, {Encore Alliant}, {dataflow} architectures, {transputers} and {systolic arrays}. Defined in 1983 by James McGraw et al, {Manchester University}, {Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory}, {Colorado State University} and {DEC}. Revised in 1985. First compiled implementation in 1986. Performance superior to {C} and competitive with {Fortran}, combined with efficient and automatic parallelisation. Not to be confused with {SASL}. E-mail: John Feo "feo@llnl.gov", Rod Oldehoeft "rro@cs.colostate.edu". David C. Cann has written an {Optimising SISAL Compiler (ftp://sisal.llnl.gov/pub/sisal)} (OSC) which attempts to make efficient use of {parallel processors} such as {Crays}. ["A Report on the SISAL Language Project", J.T. Feo et al, J Parallel and Distrib Computing 10(4):349-366 (Dec 1990)]. (2000-07-07)
Sleep In sleep the ego becomes unconscious on the physical plane in its brain — except in the cases of dreaming; the connection between the mind and the bodily senses is quiescent and there is no direct self-conscious cognition of physical objects and events. In short, the ego is functioning on a different plane of consciousness. On awaking, we have confused recollections of experiences of the state of imperfect sleep which fringes the waking and sleeping states, but the sleeping state is not a single state. Many planes of consciousness are enumerated, of which what we call the waking state is one. One Hindu system has a fourfold division of consciousness into jagrat, the waking state; svapna, the dream state; sushupti, the state of dreamless sleep; and, highest, the turiya, which is relatively complete egoic or spiritual consciousness on interior planes. From this last state of perfect awakenment, the jagrat or physical waking state is the farthest removed; what is to us the dream state (svapna) is a closer approach; and sushupti, which to us is complete loss of physical brain-mind consciousness, is actually the closest approach to the complete consciousness experienced by the ego in turiya. Turiya is the complete oblivion to the outside world, for the ego is functioning in its spiritual vehicle of consciousness.
SORROW. ::: Sorrow is not a way to sM/i / ; it confuses and weakens and distracts the mind, depresses the vital forces, darkens the spirit. A relapse from joy and vital elasticity and Ananda to sorrow, self-distrust, despondency and weakness is a recoil from a greater to a lesser consciousness.
Soulless Beings Men and women who are still connected, but usually quite unconsciously, with the monad, the spiritual essence within them, but not self-consciously so; they live very largely in the brain-mind and in the fields of sensuous consciousness. “We elbow soulless men in the streets at every turn,” wrote Blavatsky. This does not mean that those people have no soul, but that the spiritual part of these human beings is unable to manifest itself through the unawakened brain-mind and feelings. They are animate humans with an animate working brain-mind, but otherwise soulless in the sense that the soul is insufficiently expressive. This is what Pythagoras meant when he spoke of the living dead, or the spiritually useless portion of mankind. They live in the ordinary mind and in the body, thinking only of and in these small and restricted spheres of consciousness. Such “soulless” people are very numerous. Soulless beings are not to be confused with lost souls.
sparry ::: a. --> Resembling spar, or consisting of spar; abounding with spar; having a confused crystalline structure; spathose.
splutter ::: v. i. --> To speak hastily and confusedly; to sputter. ::: n. --> A confused noise, as of hasty speaking.
Sri Aurobindo: "History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” *The Human Cycle etc.
srutivipratipanna ::: perplexed and confused. led in different directions by the sruti. [Gita 2.53]
St Andrews Static Language "language" (SASL) A {functional programming} language designed by Professor {David Turner} in 1976 whilst at St. Andrews University. SASL is a derivative of {ISWIM} with {infinite data structures}. It is fully {lazy} but {weakly typed}. It was designed for teaching functional programming, with very simple {syntax}. Example syntax: def fac n = n = 0 -" 1 ; n x fac(n-1) A version of the {expert system} {EMYCIN} has been written in SASL. SASL was originally known as "St Andrews Standard Language". Not to be confused with {SISAL}. {(ftp://a.cs.uiuc.edu/uiuc/kamin.distr/distr/sasl.p)}. See also {Kamin's interpreters}. ["A New Implementation Technique for Applicative Languages", D.A. Turner, Soft Prac & Exp 8:31-49 (1979)]. (2007-03-21)
subconscient (the) ::: the subconscient or subconscious of the individual is that submerged part of his being in which there is no waking conscious and coherent thought, will, feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up; from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements can surge up into dream or into the waking state. In the ordinary man the subconscient includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and the secret body-consciousness. It is not to be confused with the subliminal: the subliminal is an inner consciousness larger than our surface existence.
subject index "information science" An information resource that contains references to other resources, categorised by subject, usually in a {hierarchy}. {Yahoo} is the most popular {Internet} subject index. Like most {other subject indices (http://yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Searching_the_Web/Web_Directories/)}, Yahoo is arranged {ontologically}. Subject indices are not to be confused with {search engines}, which are based not on subject, but instead on {relevance}, although (1) this difference is often (possibly rightly) hidden from the unsophisticated user, and (2) future integration of {knowledge representation} into relevance ranking {algorithms} will make this a hazy distinction. (1997-04-09)
Suggested additional material: Many experts in ancient Hebrew hold that the name of the old Syriac desert spirit/deity Azazel (Azazyel from the Ethiopian text) was confused with the Hebrew term “oz-oz-el” which literally meant “A goat that goes away.” This confusion was fueled by the use of a sacrificial goat “for Azazel” (actually released, not killed) in the Jewish Old Testament rite of atonement. Later, in comparatively modern times, the term “azazel” became synonymous with the idea of the scapegoat. While a firm connection has never been established, it seems likely that the 3,000-year-old Syriac Azazel is the same one mentioned about 200 BC in the apocryphal “Book of Enoch” (Henoch) as the eventual leader of the “Sons of God” or “Watchers” sent to earth to watch over mankind, but later punished for taking human wives and teaching hidden knowledge to mankind. Confined to a thousand years’ bondage in the “abyss,” he was guarded by Archangels Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Phanuel. Although modern Christians often equate Azazel with Satan (Lucifer/Heylel), there is little scholarly evidence to support this view. A more likely view holds that the ancient worshippers of Yahweh sought to incorporate a link to existing, older belief systems while demonizing competing deities.
Sukshma-sarira (Sanskrit) Sūkṣma-śarīra [from sūkṣma fine, ethereal, subtle + śarīra body] Subtle body, popularly astral body; often confused with the linga-sarira. Blavatsky remarks that the sukshma-sarira is a “ ‘dream-like’ illusive body, with which are clothed the inferior Dhyanis of the celestial Hierarchy” (SD 1:132).
Suttee therefore has been confused by the West as the custom of the burning of widows itself; but the word really means the widow herself who, because of her great virtue in unfailing fidelity to her one husband, prefers to sacrifice her life on the funeral pyre rather than to live on earth alone after his death. The custom is not commanded or even approved by Vedic or other Hindu scriptural authority, but on the contrary is, indirectly if not directly, forbidden. How the custom ever arose is still obscure, but may be ascribed to a mixture of priestcraft and unreasoning sentimental and religious devotion on the part of the ignorant masses.
Svabhavat(Sanskrit) ::: The neuter present participle of a compound word derived from the verb-root bhu, meaning "tobecome," from which is derived a secondary meaning "to be," in the sense of growth.Svabhavat is a state or condition of cosmic consciousnesssubstance, where spirit and matter, which arefundamentally one, no longer are dual as in manifestation, but one: that which is neither manifestedmatter nor manifested spirit alone, but both are the primeval unity -- spiritual akasa -- where mattermerges into spirit, and both now being really one, are called "Father-Mother," spirit-substance.Svabhavat never descends from its own state or condition, or from its own plane, but is the cosmicreservoir of being, as well as of beings, therefore of consciousness, of intellectual light, of life; and it isthe ultimate source of what science, in our day, so quaintly calls the energies of nature universal.The northern Buddhists call svabhavat by a more mystical term, Adi-buddhi, "primeval buddhi"; theBrahmanical scriptures call it akasa; and the Hebrew Old Testament refers to it as the cosmic "waters."The difference in meaning between svabhavat and svabhava is very great and is not generallyunderstood; the two words often have been confused. Svabhava is the characteristic nature, thetype-essence, the individuality, of svabhavat -- of any svabhavat, each such svabhavat having its ownsvabhava. Svabhavat, therefore, is really the world-substance or stuff, or still more accurately that whichis causal of the world-substance, and this causal principle or element is the spirit and essence of cosmicsubstance. It is the plastic essence of matter, both manifest and unmanifest. (See also Akasa)
Symbolic Link "file format" (SYLK) A {Microsoft} file format for {spreadsheets}, (not to be confused with {symbolic link}). SYLK format existed in one form or another in as early as 1987, and was part of {Excel} v1.0. It is is an outgrowth of {VisiCalc} {DIF} file format. SYLK format is ascii text and represents information about both formula, value, and some formatting information, which makes it something like an {RTF} for spreadsheets. It is used as a general tabular data exchange format. {(http://netghost.narod.ru/gff/graphics/summary/micsylk.htm)}. [Reference?] (2004-04-08)
tangle ::: 1. A confused intertwined mass. 2. A jumbled or confused state or condition. tangle-dance.
tangled ::: interlaced or intertwined in a complicated and confused manner; matted, mixed up confusedly. Fig. complicated, intricate. green-tangled.
tangle ::: n. --> To unite or knit together confusedly; to interweave or interlock, as threads, so as to make it difficult to unravel the knot; to entangle; to ravel.
To involve; to insnare; to entrap; as, to be tangled in lies.
Any large blackish seaweed, especially the Laminaria saccharina. See Kelp.
TelEnet The old name for {Sprintnet}. TELENET used to provide a service called {PC Pursuit}. Not to be confused with {telnet} the program and {protocol}. (1994-10-17)
text 1. Executable code, especially a "pure code" portion shared between multiple instances of a program running in a {multitasking} {operating system}. Compare {English}. 2. Textual material in the mainstream sense; data in ordinary {ASCII} or {EBCDIC} representation (see {flat ASCII}). "Those are text files; you can review them using the editor." These two contradictory senses confuse hackers too. [{Jargon File}] (1995-03-16)
The atomo-mechanical theory of physics starts with atoms and a vacuum and then tries to fill the vacuum; here the notion of emptiness has become confused with spatial extension, giving rise to the idea that there can be an extended and measurable void, and raising the difficulty of the transmission of influence across it.
The Edda’s frost giants should not be confused with the giants and their daughter giantesses, or giant maidens, which represent periods of life and activity. The gods are energic consciousnesses (monads) at all-varying stages of evolution; the giants are their physical expressions or forms, whose lifetimes, however long, are limited. The giants’ daughters represent lesser life periods, several daughter races together comprising their father-race.
The Holy of Holies, however, must not be confused with initiation chambers also contained in many temples and caves of antiquity, in which during the rites of initiation the neophyte entered, was initiated, and thereafter left the sacred precincts as reborn. In ancient Egypt the holy of holies par excellence of this latter type was the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid; and the coffer there was the sarcophagus used for initiation purposes. The sarcophagus was symbolic of the female principle, as from the feminine principle of nature, as a mother, was born the new “child” or disciple, now become a twice-born. The idea of the twice-born was that the physical birth came from the human mother, while the mystic birth took place from the womb of nature, of which the initiation chamber was the emblem. Hence at a much later date arose the phallic idea of the Jews that the human female womb was the maqom (the place).
“The intermediate zone means simply a confused condition or passage in which one is getting out of the personal consciousness and opening into the cosmic (cosmic Mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical, something perhaps of the cosmic higher Mind) without having yet transcended the human mind levels. One is not in possession of or direct contact with the divine Truth on its own levels , but one can receive something from them, even from the overmind, indirectly. Only, as one is still immersed in the cosmic Ignorance, all that comes from above can be mixed, perverted, taken hold of for their purposes by lower, even by hostile Powers.
The Mahatma Letters state that phlogiston is the lowest and densest form of a universal essence and serves as the vehicle for dhyanis of a corresponding degree (p. 56); and the name is also given to the magnetic electric aura of the photosphere (p. 164). The idea of phlogiston overlaps that of caloric, with which is it sometimes confused.
The Microsoft Network "networking" (MSN) {Microsoft}'s {ISP} and online content service, launched in October 1996. Not to be confused with {Microsoft Networking}. MSN was originally based on custom software and protocols, however Microsoft saw the error of their ways and adopted Internet standards. MSN now provides standard {WWW} and {email} facilities, albeit with Microsoft's {Internet Explorer} {web-browser} and the {Outlook Express} email software. The service also provides "Community Services" including {newsgroups}, {forums}, and {chat}. {(http://msn.com/)}. (1998-08-11)
The more subtle forms of force-matter or astral light form the links between the physical earth and the mental state of the living beings upon it; and rapid and more or less violent physical cataclysms may be regarded as the final effects of a sudden release of tension in those higher realms. That unusual psychic conditions perceptible to animals and even to humans precede earthquakes many hours before a shock, and long before the seismographs show the smallest tremor, is well-authenticated. “It is absolutely false, and but an additional demonstration of the great conceit of our age, to assert (as men of science do) that all the great geological changes and terrible convulsions have been produced by ordinary and known physical forces. For these forces were but the tools and final means for the accomplishment of certain purposes, acting periodically, and apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse mixed up with, but beyond their material nature. There is a purpose in every important act of Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and periodical. But spiritual Forces having been usually confused with the purely physical, the former are denied by, and therefore have to remain unknown to Science, because left unexamined” (SD 1:640).
The original from which the Hebrew Genesis was later compiled is lost. Yet even as the latter has reached us — first veiled, then probably remodeled by Ezra with shiftings that confuse the chronology — despite important words and clauses mistranslated by European scholars, its resemblance to the esoteric account is unmistakable. For Jehovah, who gave the human body and (physical) breath of life, is the hyparxis of Saturn and an earthly, not a celestial, hierarchy. The human mind and spirit are essentially emanations from the immortal spiritual monad coeval with the universe, and subsequent human evolutionary development was both from and aided by the elohim, a spiritual host. Adam and Eve, once mind appeared in them, enter the path of self-directed evolution, a reference to the second and third Eves mentioned above. The eating of the fruit of the tree is the awakening or lighting of mind in man. It shows Eve as consorting with spiritual, not demoniacal, forces and incidentally reconciles the two creation stories. Like the serpent, the tree is an ancient and universal symbol of sacred and esoteric knowledge. To eat of its fruit is to acquire the knowledge that only the gods possess, and the possession confers immortality under the law.
The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit — thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning. “The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were ‘male and female,’ ” i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135). See also DEITY
"The progress of Life involves the development and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in conflict with each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground of unity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make possible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, must be increasingly the common aim of humanity in its active life-evolution, if it at all means to rise out of life"s more confused, painful and obscure movement, out of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience of Matter. This can only be truly and satisfactorily done when the soul discovers itself in its highest and completest spiritual reality and effects a progressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth their standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements, and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other.” *The Human Cycle, etc.
“The progress of Life involves the development and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in conflict with each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground of unity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make possible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, must be increasingly the common aim of humanity in its active life-evolution, if it at all means to rise out of life’s more confused, painful and obscure movement, out of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience of Matter. This can only be truly and satisfactorily done when the soul discovers itself in its highest and completest spiritual reality and effects a progressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth their standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements, and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other.” The Human Cycle, etc.
There are three synonymous words in modern Persian often interchangeably used — Sufi, Aref, and Darvish — each with its own nuance. Sufi represents the most institutionalized Islamic mysticism, while Aref and Erfan (school of thought-cognition) conveys cognitive aspects of mystic teachings and are more philosophic; Dervish and Darvishi (state of being Dervish) conveys freedom from attachments to worldly possessions. Hafi (the most loved and best known of the mystic poets) often refers to Sufis as those who rigidly adhere more to religious teachings than cognitive aspects of truth. These differences occurred when the mystics, due to religious persecution, had to veil their ancient beliefs with religious teachings. This made their teachings appear ambiguous, as a result of which, some confused esoteric mysticism with esoteric religion.
The same general story is found in St. George and the Dragon, Michael and Satan, etc. Apap, the serpent of evil, is slain by Aker, Set’s serpent, showing the twofold meaning of the serpent symbol. Cosmologically this means the bringing into order of the confused and turbulent principles in chaos; in the human being it refers to the trials of initiation; in astronomy, to eclipses.
These desires and drives, however, tend to stray beyond their proper provinces and to become intermingled and confused in attempts to identify truth, goodness, and beauty, to turn justifications into explanations, to regard subsistent ideals as concretely existent facts, and to distort facts into accordance with desired ideals. It is the business of reason and philosophy to clear up this confusion by distinguishing human drives and interests from one another, indicating to each its proper province and value, and confining each to the field in which it is valid and in which its appropriate satisfaction may be found. By so doing, they dispel the suspicion and antagonism, with which the scientist, the moralist, the artist, and the theologian are wont to view one another, and enable a mind at harmony with itself to contemplate a world in which subsistent and the existent form a harmonious whole. --
The term "empiricism" has been used with extreme looseness and confused with numerous related propositions, practices, and attitudes. Many definitions here listed are themselves ambiguous, but to remove their ambiguity would require misrepresentation of usage of the term. See also Scepticism, Sensationalism, Pluralism, Phenomenalism, Pragmatism, Positivism, Intuitionalism, Nativism, Rationalism, A Priorism, Intellectualism, Idealism, Transcendentalism, Scientific Empiricism. -- M.T.K.
The word is used relatively to signify the absence of something, as the absence of physical matter in an evacuated bulb. But another form of matter is still present, for we can transmit light as well as many other forms of radiation. Thus proceeding by successive steps we come to the logical limit in the conception of the cosmic void — which nevertheless from the spiritual viewpoint is a pleroma or utter fullness. The physical vacuum of the laboratory has become confused with the scientific and mystical void of the archaic philosophy.
tintamar ::: n. --> A hideous or confused noise; an uproar.
Titans (Greek) In Greek mythology, builders of worlds, often called cosmocratores, and as microcosmic entities the progenitors of human races; as such, of various orders, so that in mythology they were considered good or bad, as angels or entities of matter. Hesiod’s original heaven-dwelling titans, six sons and six daughters of Ouranos and Gaia (heaven and earth), were Oceanos, Coios, Creios, Hyperion, Iapetos, Kronos, Theia, Rheia, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys, but other names were later included, such as Prometheus and Epimetheus; and later still the name was given to any descendant of Ouranos and Gaia. Rebellions taking place against the rulers of heaven, followed by falls and castings out, refer to the descent of creative powers to form new worlds and races. In the rebellion of titans, first against Ouranos in favor of Kronos, then against Kronos in favor of Zeus, the titans are mixed up with other sons of heaven and earth — Hecatoncheires (hundred-handed), Cyclopes, etc. — and the accounts in detail are extremely intricate and confused.
tracking "text" The horizontal spacing between {characters} in a line of {text}. Tracking is set when a {font} is designed but can often be altered in order to change the appearance of the text or for special effects. It applies to both {proportional fonts} and {monospaced fonts}. Tracking should not be confused with {kerning} which deals with the spacing between certain pairs of characters in a proportional font. See also {leading}. (2013-12-05)
Trinity The divine powers at the head of every theogony. In the Christian Trinity, the original idea of a triune divinity is preserved but has become confused and adapted to theological speculation. If the Holy Ghost is regarded as feminine, as it was in primitive Christianity, we have the trinity of Father-Mother-Son. The present manner of the procession of the Holy Ghost in the Occident is due to the early theological quarrels which was one of the main causes of the final rupture between the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches — the filioque (“and from the son”) controversy. The Orthodox held with the original procession of Father, Holy Ghost, and Son, while in the West the Holy Ghost or Spirit has become a kind of emanation from the Father or Son, or both of them, and is scarcely distinguishable in its attributes from the Son; while the place of Mother has been filled in the Roman Catholic Church by Mary who, though the mother of Jesus, nevertheless is not a member of the Trinity.
trouble ::: v. t. --> To put into confused motion; to disturb; to agitate.
To disturb; to perplex; to afflict; to distress; to grieve; to fret; to annoy; to vex.
To give occasion for labor to; -- used in polite phraseology; as, I will not trouble you to deliver the letter.
The state of being troubled; disturbance; agitation; uneasiness; vexation; calamity.
That which gives disturbance, annoyance, or vexation;
tumult ::: n. --> The commotion or agitation of a multitude, usually accompanied with great noise, uproar, and confusion of voices; hurly-burly; noisy confusion.
Violent commotion or agitation, with confusion of sounds; as, the tumult of the elements.
Irregular or confused motion; agitation; high excitement; as, the tumult of the spirits or passions.
tumultuary ::: a. --> Attended by, or producing, a tumult; disorderly; promiscuous; confused; tumultuous.
Restless; agitated; unquiet.
tumultuous ::: a. --> Full of tumult; characterized by tumult; disorderly; turbulent.
Conducted with disorder; noisy; confused; boisterous; disorderly; as, a tumultuous assembly or meeting.
Agitated, as with conflicting passions; disturbed.
Turbulent; violent; as, a tumultuous speech.
tumultuous ::: greatly agitated, confused, or disturbed.
T'ung: Mere identity, or sameness, especially in social institutions and standards, which is inferior to harmony (ho) in which social distinctions and differences are in complete concord. (Confucianism). Agreement, as in "agreement with the superiors" (shang t'ung). The method of agreement, which includes identity, generic relationship, co-existence, and partial resemblance. "Identity means two substances having one name. Generic relationship means inclusion in the same whole. Both being in the same room is a case of co-existence. Partial resemblance means having some points of resemblance." See Mo chi. (Neo-Mohism). --W.T.C. T'ung i: The joint method of similarities and differences, by which what is present and what is absent can be distinguished. See Mo chi. --W.T.C. Tung Chung-shu: (177-104 B.C.) was the leading Confucian of his time, premier to two feudal princes, and consultant to the Han emperor in framing national policies. Firmly believing in retribution, he strongly advocated the "science of catastrophic and anomalies," and became the founder and leader of medieval Confucianism which was extensively confused with the Yin Yang philosophy. Extremely antagonistic towards rival schools, he established Confucianism as basis of state religion and education. His best known work, Ch-un-ch'iu Fan-lu, awaits English translation. --W.T.C. Turro y Darder, Ramon: Spanish Biologist and Philosopher. Born in Malgrat, Dec. 8 1854. Died in Barcelona, June 5, 1926. As a Biologist, his conclusions about the circulation of the blood, more than half a century ago, were accepted and verified by later researchers and theorists. Among other things, he showed the insufficiency and unsatisfactoriness of the mechanistic and neomechanistic explanations of the circulatory process. He was also the first to busy himself with endocrinology and bacteriological immunity. As a philosopher Turro combated the subjectivistic and metaphysical type of psychology, and circumscribed scientific investigation to the determination of the conditions that precede the occurrence of phenomena, considering useless all attempt to reach final essences. Turro does not admit, however, that the psychical series or conscious states may be causally linked to the organic series. His formula was: Physiology and Consciousness are phenomena that occur, not in connection, but in conjunction. His most important work is Filosofia Critica, in which he has put side by side two antagonistic conceptions of the universe, the objective and the subjectne conceptions. In it he holds that, at the present crisis of science and philosophy, the business of intelligence is to realize that science works on philosophical presuppositions, but that philosophy is no better off with its chaos of endless contradictions and countless systems of thought. The task to be realized is one of coming together, to undo what has been done and get as far as the original primordial concepts with which philosophical inquiry began. --J.A.F. Tychism: A term derived from the Greek, tyche, fortune, chance, and employed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to express any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos. Also the hypothesis that evolution occurs owing to fortuitous variations. --J.J.R. Types, theory of: See Logic, formal, § 6; Paradoxes, logical; Ramified theory of types. Type-token ambiguity: The words token and type are used to distinguish between two senses of the word word. Individual marks, more or less resembling each other (as "cat" resembles "cat" and "CAT") may (1) be said to be "the same word" or (2) so many "different words". The apparent contradiction therby involved is removed by speaking of the individual marks as tokens, in contrast with the one type of which they are instances. And word may then be said to be subject to type-token ambiguity. The terminology can easily be extended to apply to any kind of symbol, e.g. as in speaking of token- and type-sentences. Reference: C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, 4.517. --M.B. Tz'u: (a) Parental love, kindness, or affection, the ideal Confucian virtue of parents. (b) Love, kindness in general. --W.T.C. Tzu hua: Self-transformation or spontaneous transformation without depending on any divine guidance or eternal agency, but following the thing's own principle of being, which is Tao. (Taoism). --W.T.C. Tzu jan: The natural, the natural state, the state of Tao, spontaneity as against artificiality. (Lao Tzu; Huai-nan Tzu, d. 122 B.C.). --W.T.C. U
turbid ::: a. --> Having the lees or sediment disturbed; roiled; muddy; thick; not clear; -- used of liquids of any kind; as, turbid water; turbid wine.
Disturbed; confused; disordered.
typeface "text" The style or design of a {font}. Other independent parameters are size, boldness (thickness of lines), and obliqueness (a sheer transformation applied to the characters, not to be confused with a specifically designed italic font). (1996-08-02)
undefine ::: v. t. --> To make indefinite; to obliterate or confuse the definition or limitations of.
unembarrassed ::: a. --> Not embarrassed.
Not perplexed in mind; not confused; as, the speaker appeared unembarrassed.
Free from pecuniary difficulties or encumbrances; as, he and his property are unembarrassed.
Free from perplexing connection; as, the question comes into court unembarrassed with irrelevant matter.
unravel ::: v. t. --> To disentangle; to disengage or separate the threads of; as, to unravel a stocking.
Hence, to clear from complication or difficulty; to unfold; to solve; as, to unravel a plot.
To separate the connected or united parts of; to throw into disorder; to confuse. ::: v. i.
unsettle ::: v. t. --> To move or loosen from a settled position or state; to unfix; to displace; to disorder; to confuse. ::: v. i. --> To become unsettled or unfixed; to be disordered.
virtual circuit "networking" A {connection-oriented} {network} service which is implemented on top of a network which may be either connection-oriented or {connectionless} ({packet switching}). The term "switched virtual circuit" was coined needlessly to distinguish an ordinary virtual circuit from a {permanent virtual circuit}. (One of the perpetrators of this confusion appears to be ["Networking Essentials", 1996, Microsoft Press, ISBN 1-55615-806-8], a book aimed at people preparing for the {MCSE} exam on {LANs} and {WANs}). Not to be confused with {switched virtual connection}. (2001-10-26)
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam "education, body" The "Free University of Amsterdam", founded in 1880 by Abraham Kuyper (who later became Prime Minister of The Netherlands). Originally only open to Reformed Christians, it is now open to all. {Andrew Tanenbaum} is a professor there. Not to be confused with the much older Universiteit van Amsterdam. {(http://vu.nl/)}. (2005-11-05)
welter ::: a confused mass; a jumble; a jumble or muddle.
X terminal "hardware" An {intelligent terminal} which operates as an {X server} directly connected to {Ethernet}. Not to be confused with the program {xterm} which is an {X client}. (1996-08-23)
Yogacharya (Sanskrit) Yogācārya [from yoga union + ācārya teacher] A teacher of yoga; a mystic and highly esoteric school founded by the original Aryasangha, who lived at a date long preceding the pseudo-Aryasangha of the 5th or 6th century who taught the doctrines of the Tantra besides some of the elements of the Yogacharya system. The earlier Aryasangha was an arhat and founded the original Yogacharya school, a thoroughly esoteric institution; the latter’s school is a branch of the Mahayana, and is of a truly spiritual type, its teachings being identical in essence with those of theosophy. This Yogacharya school must not be confused with the Mahatantra school which was founded by Samantabhadra, whose teachings were later collected and glossed around the 6th century by the pseudo-Aryasangha in connection with litanies, formularies, spells, etc. This school is wholly exoteric, popular, and its works are largely composite of Tantric worship and ritualism that can lead the student only to black magic and sorcery.
KEYS (10k)
1 Unknown
1 Swami Vijnanananda
1 Sheng-yen
1 Seneca
1 Paulo Coelho
1 Moses Maimonides
1 Fred Rogers
1 E. W. Dijkstra
1 Alan W. Watts
1 Sri Aurobindo
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
17 Anonymous
7 Patrick Rothfuss
7 Colleen Hoover
6 Rick Riordan
6 Mason Cooley
6 Haruki Murakami
5 John Steinbeck
5 Jean Paul Sartre
5 Jack Kerouac
5 F Scott Fitzgerald
5 Bren Brown
5 Alan Watts
4 Toba Beta
4 Timothy Ferriss
4 Steve Maraboli
4 Richelle Mead
4 Pope Francis
4 Paulo Coelho
4 Nassim Nicholas Taleb
4 Kim Harrison
1:Confuse them with your silence, and amaze them with your actions." ~ Unknown, #KEYS
2:If moment by moment you can keep your mind clear then nothing will confuse you." ~ Sheng-yen, #KEYS
3:Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes." ~ Alan W. Watts, #KEYS
4:Take care that the reading of numerous writers and books of all kinds does not confuse and trouble thy reason. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
5:I wonder if we confuse strength and other words - like aggression and even violence. Real strength is neither male nor female; but is, quite simply, one of the finest characteristics that any human being can possess." ~ Fred Rogers, #KEYS
6:The biggest intellects can make errors of the worst kind and confuse Truth and falsehood, if they have not the contact with Truth or the direct experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Intellect and the Intellectual, #KEYS
7:Do not confuse peace of mind with a spaced-out insensitivity. A truly peaceful mind is very sensitive, very aware." ~ Tenzin Gyatso, (b. 1935), 14th Dalai Lama. During the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the Dalai Lama fled to India, where he currently lives as a refugee, Wikipedia., #KEYS
8:[Computer science] is not really about computers -- and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes...and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use. ~ Harold Abelson, Introductory lecture to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, #KEYS
9:Don't confuse having no violence in your heart with having no violence in the real world, if required. Your duty may or may not include violence, but let us not forget that there are indeed occasions where violence ends violence or, I should say, reflecting the messiness and microscopically incremental nature of Eros: there are occasions where violence replaces a grosser violence with a subtler violence, a lesser devil on the way to a vaguely greater good. The Zen-inspired code of the Samurai warrior is still as good a guide as any: the best fight is not to fight; the real sword is no sword-but if you think that means a Samurai warrior never used his sword, you are tad naive, I fear. ~ Ken Wilber?, #KEYS
10:But in what circumstances does our reason teach us that there is vice or virtue? How does this continual mystery work? Tell me, inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago, Africans, Canadians and you, Plato, Cicero, Epictetus! You all feel equally that it is better to give away the superfluity of your bread, your rice or your manioc to the indigent than to kill him or tear out his eyes. It is evident to all on earth that an act of benevolence is better than an outrage, that gentleness is preferable to wrath. We have merely to use our Reason in order to discern the shades which distinguish right and wrong. Good and evil are often close neighbours and our passions confuse them. Who will enlighten us? We ourselves when we are calm. ~ Voltaire, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Don't confuse small with insignificant. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 2:Never confuse motion with action. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 3:Never confuse movement with action. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 4:Don't confuse wealth with success. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 5:Never confuse activity with action. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 6:Never confuse activity with accomplishment. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 7:We should not confuse information with knowledge. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 8:Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 9:Don't ever confuse motion with progress. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 10:You confuse what's important with what's impressive. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove 11:You never want to confuse activity with accomplishment. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 12:Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 13:Don't confuse who you are with the results that you produce. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove 14:Here again you confuse and mix everything up in your usual way. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 15:He who sees his soul is more than his life does not confuse the two. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 16:May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 17:Lectures often confuse our kids, but the example we set is crystal clear. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 18:Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other. ~ erma-bombeck, @wisdomtrove 19:In any case you mustn't confuse a single failure with a final defeat. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 20:All the raves were just words. You don't want to let words confuse you. Words come cheap. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 21:Don't do what you sincerely don't want to do. Never confuse movement with action. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 22:Reading without thinking will confuse you.Thinking without reading will place you in danger. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 23:Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove 24:It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 25:The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 26:Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 27:.. does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 28:Don't say yes until I've finished talking. - Attributed to many Hollywood executives Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 29:A blow to the head will confuse a man's thinking, a blow to the foot has no such effect, this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 30:Don't confuse poor decision-making with destiny. Own your mistakes. It's ok; we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you! ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 31:Don’t confuse poor decision- making with destiny. Own your mistakes. It’s ok; we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you! ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 32:Most of us, I believe, admire strength... Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words like aggression or even violence. ~ fred-rogers, @wisdomtrove 33:When the mind is full of worldly desires, it is their very nature to confuse the mind. Withdraw the mind from outer things and turn it inwards. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 34:The effect of life in society is to complicate and confuse our existence, making us forget who we really are by causing us to become obsessed with what we are not. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 35:Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 36:It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself-to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed and then to find yourself still in bed. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 37:Fear is a psychic tyrant that has no intention of letting its slave go free. It will say whatever it needs to say to confuse your thinking... It will always seek to preserve itself. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 38:Never confuse yourself by visions of an entire lifetime at once... remember that it is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 39:Now that knowledge is taking the place of capital as the driving force in organizations worldwide, it is all too easy to confuse data with knowledge and information technology with information. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 40:It's very easy to confuse confident motion with being productive - and they're not the same thing. Productive to me means measurable outcomes that apply to my most important to-dos that positively affect my life. That's it. ~ tim-ferris, @wisdomtrove 41:Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 42:We shouldn't confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, "My character this, and my character that." Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don't have to explain it to me. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 43:Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 44:If you know Christ, you don't need to beg for the Holy Spirit to come into your life; He is already there- whether you "feel" His presence or not. Don't confuse the Holy Spirit with an emotional feeling or a particular type of spiritual experience. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 45: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, @wisdomtrove 46:Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 47:I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 48:Even though artists of all kinds claim to put their hearts and souls into their works, it will only confuse you, for example, if you try to discern a painter by his paintings. His masterpiece may be the master because of its iridescence; it may display a hundred different perspectives through his single face. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 49:Many people confuse authority and the power of efficiency, as if the first role of people with responsibility is to take decisions, command effectively and so exercise power. But their role first of all is to be a person to whom others can turn for help and advice, to provide security, to affirm, to support, to encourage and to guide. ~ jean-vanier, @wisdomtrove 50:What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 51:Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger. We tend to confuse the two because in humans and other mammals intelligence goes hand in hand with consciousness. Mammals solve most problems by feeling things. Computers, however, solve problems in a very different way. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove 52:All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near, make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are to lure him; feign disorder and strike him. When he concentrates, prepare against him; where he is strong, avoid him. Anger his general and confuse him. Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 53:Using an artful tool does not make one a dry technician. It seems to me that people that are anxious about our technical advancement, confuse means and ends. Naturally a person that only works for material gain will not harvest something that is worth living for. But the machine is not an end in itself. The airplane is not an end. It is a tool. Just like the plough. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 54:Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words‚Äîlike & 55:I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history ‚ true or feigned‚ with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 56:One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 57:Desire is a powerful force that can be used to make things happen. Yet do not confuse desire with expectation, or with need. Desire has an entirely different quality to it. You can desire something without needing or requiring it. That little difference makes everything work. That little difference is the whole trick. Desire, do not Require. To desire propels. To require compels. Life will not be compelled, but it can be coaxed. ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove 58:Hollywood parties not only confuse me, but they often disillusion me. The disillusion comes when I meet a movie star I’ve been admiring since childhood. I always thought that movie stars were exciting and talented people full of special personality. Meeting one of them at a party I discover usually that he (or she) is colorless and even frightened. I’ve often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 59:We must sometimes get away from the Authorized Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear, but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity, the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed, and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame, or struck dumb with terror, or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 60:Nothing is more dangerous than to stop working. It is a habit that can soon be lost, one that is easily neglected and hard to resume. A measure of day-dreaming is a good thing, like a drug prudently used ... But too much submerges and drowns. Woe to the intellectual worker who allows himself to lapse wholly from positive thinking into day-dreaming. He thinks he can easily change back, and tells himself that it is all one. He is wrong! To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse poison with a source of nourishment. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 61:What good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world - temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Disharmony prevails when you confuse ~ Rumi, #NFDB
2:Don't confuse close with happy ~ Sarah Connor, #NFDB
3:Don't confuse meaning with truth. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
4:Don’t ever confuse broken for weak. ~ A L Jackson, #NFDB
5:Don't confuse activity with action. ~ Mark Sanborn, #NFDB
6:Don't confuse facts with reality. ~ Robert Ballard, #NFDB
7:Don't confuse symmetry with balance. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
8:Confuse your trail, lose your trail. ~ Vikas Swarup, #NFDB
9:Don’t confuse progress with winning. ~ Mary T Barra, #NFDB
10:Never confuse activity with results. ~ Lou Gerstner, #NFDB
11:Never confuse honor with stupidity! ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB
12:People confuse me. Food doesn't. ~ Anthony Bourdain, #NFDB
13:Don't confuse your grief with guilt. ~ Veronica Roth, #NFDB
14:If you can't beat 'em, confuse 'em. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
15:Don't confuse comfort with happiness. ~ Dean Karnazes, #NFDB
16:Don't confuse honours with achievement. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
17:Never confuse motions with action. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
18:Never confuse Motion with Action. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
19:Never confuse motion with action. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
20:Do not confuse humility with humiliation. ~ Alan Cohen, #NFDB
21:If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em. ~ Sherry Argov, #NFDB
22:Never confuse movement with action. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
23:Don't confuse mercy for forgiveness. ~ Sarah Beth Durst, #NFDB
24:Never confuse activity with productivity. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
25:If you can't convince them, confuse them. ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
26:Never confuse activity with action. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
27:People confuse the person and the part. ~ Angela Bassett, #NFDB
28:we must not confuse the function with the ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
29:Bleeding hearts were the easiest to confuse. ~ S P Somtow, #NFDB
30:I'm trying to think, don't confuse me with facts. ~ Plato, #NFDB
31:It’s easy to confuse motion with progress. ~ David Gergen, #NFDB
32:Don’t confuse the mistake with the man. ~ Kimberly Kincaid, #NFDB
33:Don't confuse visibility with credibility. ~ Harvey Mackay, #NFDB
34:If you can't convince them, confuse them. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
35:Sometimes I'm so devious I confuse myself. ~ John Flanagan, #NFDB
36:We also confuse trust with familiarity. ~ Robert C Solomon, #NFDB
37:Don't confuse contentment with happiness... ~ Chris Wooding, #NFDB
38:Don't confuse legibility with communication. ~ David Carson, #NFDB
39:Don't confuse what you want and what you need. ~ Sarah Fine, #NFDB
40:It's a mistake to confuse pity with love. ~ Stanley Kubrick, #NFDB
41:It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
42:Hence he did not confuse manners with morals. ~ Linda Berdoll, #NFDB
43:People confuse early rising with moral worth; ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
44:We often confuse what we wish for with what is. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
45:We should not confuse information with knowledge. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
46:. . . they confuse everything I do with my life. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
47:We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. ~ Edward R Murrow, #NFDB
48:You confuse not speaking with not listening. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
49:Don't confuse what you do with who you are... ~ Jonathan Auxier, #NFDB
50:Might verse not best confuse itself with fate? ~ Marianne Moore, #NFDB
51:Some people confuse being blunt with being honest. ~ Thomas Amo, #NFDB
52:You should not confuse your career with your life. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
53:Don't confuse what FEELS right, for what IS right. ~ Todd Wagner, #NFDB
54:He did not confuse compassion with passivity. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
55:She laughed and said not to confuse pride with nobleness. ~ Brom, #NFDB
56:We very often confuse personality with leadership. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
57:Don't ever confuse motion with progress. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
58:I never confuse the cost of something with its value ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
59:Never confuse acquiring degrees with wisdom. ~ Marshall Goldsmith, #NFDB
60:We must never confuse elegance with snobbery ~ Yves Saint Laurent, #NFDB
61:We must never confuse elegance with snobbery. ~ Yves Saint Laurent, #NFDB
62:You confuse what's important with what's impressive. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
63:Don't confuse having a career with having a life. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
64:It is important not to confuse race and religion. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
65:It's what you always do. You confuse love for admiration. ~ Birdman, #NFDB
66:People confuse ego, lust, insecurity with true love. ~ Simon Cowell, #NFDB
67:I never want to confuse people or go over their heads. ~ Wiz Khalifa, #NFDB
68:I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know. ~ Bernard Malamud, #NFDB
69:It's annoying when people confuse you with the character. ~ Issa Rae, #NFDB
70:One should never confuse fashionable with beautiful ~ Beth Fantaskey, #NFDB
71:Nothing easier than to confuse busyness with goodness. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
72:When you’re young it's easy to confuse passion for love. ~ Lisa Unger, #NFDB
73:Confuse not the necessary expenses with thy desires. ~ George S Clason, #NFDB
74:Don't confuse good taste with the absence of taste. ~ William Bernbach, #NFDB
75:Never confuse the faith with the supposedly faithful. ~ R K Milholland, #NFDB
76:Too many people confuse being serious with being solemn. ~ John Cleese, #NFDB
77:Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
78:Don’t confuse me with the facts—I’ve already made up my mind. ~ Ann Rule, #NFDB
79:Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
80:People often confuse leadership with managerial skills. ~ Sylvain Neuvel, #NFDB
81:Try not to confuse longevity with a job well done. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
82:It is indeed a mistake to confuse children with angels ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
83:Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
84:Most sapients confuse working hard with being miserable. ~ Becky Chambers, #NFDB
85:Never confuse sitting on your side with being on your side. ~ Ian Paisley, #NFDB
86:Don't confuse having a career with having a life. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
87:My face is distinct. It's hard to confuse me with anyone else. ~ DJ Qualls, #NFDB
88:The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us; but ~ William Peter Blatty, #NFDB
89:We have come to confuse information with understanding. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
90:Information is not knowledge. Let's not confuse the two. ~ W Edwards Deming, #NFDB
91:We sleep together in the dark but confuse light with love. ~ Rae Armantrout, #NFDB
92:You can choose, don't confuse, win or lose, it's up to you. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
93:There is no reason to confuse television news with journalism. ~ Nora Ephron, #NFDB
94:Try loving your enemies. If nothing else, you'll confuse them. ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
95:We must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
96:You can’t confuse childlike faith with childish thinking. ~ John F MacArthur, #NFDB
97:You know men. You confuse ’em, they panic. Much like possum. ~ Beth Kendrick, #NFDB
98:Do not confuse reasons which sound good with good, sound reasons. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
99:I'm here to confuse you. Confusion is my right and left hook. ~ Mona Eltahawy, #NFDB
100:Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary, ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
101:I have already made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts. ~ Philip A Fisher, #NFDB
102:you mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
103:Do not confuse the command to love with the disease to please. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
104:Don’t confuse intensity of emotion with quality of emotion ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
105:Exposure to more information tends to confuse rather than inform us. ~ Amy Webb, #NFDB
106:Here again you confuse and mix everything up in your usual way. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
107:You can’t confuse childlike faith with childish thinking. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
108:It’s dangerous to confuse self-expression with communication. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
109:People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news. ~ A J Liebling, #NFDB
110:Some days they confuse the walls of their cage with their skin. ~ Traci Brimhall, #NFDB
111:He who sees his soul is more than his life does not confuse the two. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
112:Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
113:"Often we call self-delusion self-esteem. Don't confuse the two." ~ B. D. Schiers, #NFDB
114:The wise say many things, enough to confuse the rest of us ~ David Anthony Durham, #NFDB
115:I find it remarkable how often amateurs confuse courage with idiocy. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
116:Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
117:Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
118:Don't confuse the beginning of my world with the breakup of yours. ~ John Leguizamo, #NFDB
119:Entrepreneurs constantly confuse what they do with who they are. ~ Howard A Tullman, #NFDB
120:May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
121:You confuse lovers, mix up who had what scar, what car, what mother. ~ Lorrie Moore, #NFDB
122:Every now and then I like to do as I'm told, just to confuse people. ~ Tamora Pierce, #NFDB
123:It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness ~ Theodore Kaczynski, #NFDB
124:People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
~ A J Liebling,#NFDB
125:We must not confuse the command to love with the disease to please. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
126:we must not confuse the disease to please with the command to love. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
127:Don't confuse the evil of avoiding pregnancy by itself, with abortion. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
128:Never confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent. ~ Marlon Brando, #NFDB
129:Don't confuse being 'soft' with seeing the other guy's point of view. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
130:People confuse vulgar and naked with sexiness. You want the mystery! ~ Carolina Herrera, #NFDB
131:There was no one near to confuse me, so I was forced to become original. ~ Joseph Haydn, #NFDB
132:Tired is a feeling.
Lazy is a behavior.
Don't confuse the two. ~ Steve Maraboli,#NFDB
133:Please don't confuse love and logic ... They aren't even remotely related. ~ Shannon Lee, #NFDB
134:Some people confuse intensity for passion and challenge for attraction. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
135:Sometimes people confuse silence as wisdom when in fact it is compromise. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
136:Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other. ~ Erma Bombeck, #NFDB
137:In any case you mustn't confuse a single failure with a final defeat. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
138:Only a bitter little adolescent boy could confuse realism with pessimism. ~ Grant Morrison, #NFDB
139:There’s a hope that empowers, and a hope that enfeebles. Don’t confuse them. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
140:If moment by moment you can keep your mind clear then nothing will confuse you. ~ Sheng yen, #NFDB
141:You know, some people take peace of mind and confuse it with lack of passion. ~ Rob Van Dam, #NFDB
142:I do not believe the American people are going to confuse hatred for passion. ~ Ed Gillespie, #NFDB
143:More details explain things more, but less details confuse things less, ~ David James Duncan, #NFDB
144:Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. ~ Clement Mok, #NFDB
145:I thought, how do you confuse violent Russian mobsters? Well, by being silly! ~ Terry Gilliam, #NFDB
146:You’re a Frankenstein!”
“Don’t confuse the monster with the creator. ~ Stephen King,#NFDB
147:A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don't confuse a drawing with a map. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
148:All too easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
149:As long we confuse lust for love, we must take birth in this world again and again. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
150:It’s easy to confuse busyness with progress and accomplishments with pleasing Jesus. ~ Bob Goff, #NFDB
151:One tell-tale sign of a Wingnut: they always confuse partisanship with patriotism. ~ John Avlon, #NFDB
152:Don't confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
153:Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, one can confuse compassion with love. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
154:Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, one can confuse compassion with love. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon, #NFDB
155:Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
156:When I'm wrong it's never meant for you, so don't confuse my love with what I do. ~ Eric Clapton, #NFDB
157:Censors tend to do what only psychotics do; They confuse fantasy with reality. ~ David Cronenberg, #NFDB
158:Don't listen," whispered Faber. "He's trying to confuse. He's slippery. Watch out. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
159:I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi, #NFDB
160:Technology sometimes encourages people to confuse busyness with effectiveness. ~ Douglas B Reeves, #NFDB
161:Where there is truth, there is also light, but don't confuse light with the flash. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
162:Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion. ~ David Cronenberg, #NFDB
163:Don’t let my youthful good looks confuse you. I now have two lifetimes of experience ~ Chloe Neill, #NFDB
164:The purpose of technology is not to confuse the brain but to serve the body. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
165:There was nothing I could say in retaliation except something that would confuse her. ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
166:When people confuse their beliefs with reality, they get into arguments and conflicts, ~ Dave Gray, #NFDB
167:Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
168:Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
169:The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality. ~ Alan Kay, #NFDB
170:We are a purely idealistic Nation but let no one confuse our idealism with weakness. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
171:Don't do what you sincerely don't want to do. Never confuse movement with action. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
172:Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
173:We fill too many gutters while we argue unimportant points and confuse issues. ~ John Howard Griffin, #NFDB
174:We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them. ~ William James, #NFDB
175:Zealous men often confuse purity with intolerance, particularly when they're young. ~ R Scott Bakker, #NFDB
176:All I'm saying is, where relationships are concerned, don't confuse length with strength. ~ Matt Dunn, #NFDB
177:Don't confuse luck with skill when judging others, and especially when judging yourself. ~ Carl Icahn, #NFDB
178:Helpful is happy.
Selfish is sad.
(It's not uncommon to confuse the two.) ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
179:How did you get so grown up that you understand things that confuse your ancient mother? ~ John Green, #NFDB
180:There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. ~ Thomas Schelling, #NFDB
181:The transpersonal is more awe-inspiring, more exciting than the thing we confuse it for. ~ Ben Lerner, #NFDB
182:This is my social face,” he said lightly. “Don’t confuse it with the animal beneath. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt, #NFDB
183:Do not confuse manners for kindness. - STRONG: Powerful Philosophy for Timeless Thoughts. ~ Kailin Gow, #NFDB
184:Don't confuse correlation and causation. Almost all great records eventually dwindle. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
185:I always tell the truth, Stella replies. Although I sometimes confuse the facts. ~ Katherine Applegate, #NFDB
186:Never confuse someone else's inability to do something with its inability to be done. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
187:People tend to confuse determination and positive attitude with false optimism or naiveté. ~ Wes Moore, #NFDB
188:We'll go down and confuse the bastards until they can't understand each other. (11:7-8) ~ Steve Ebling, #NFDB
189:You did not need to overcomplicate matters or confuse yourself with fearful beliefs. ~ Spencer Johnson, #NFDB
190:"Most people confuse 'self-knowledge' with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
191:Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
192:You confuse me with something that is in you. I will not predict how you want to use me. ~ Jenny Holzer, #NFDB
193:A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant. ~ Lillian Hellman, #NFDB
194:I always tell the truth,” Stella replies. “Although I sometimes confuse the facts. ~ Katherine Applegate, #NFDB
195:Reading without thinking will confuse you.Thinking without reading will place you in danger. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
196:Some people give gifts in order to bewilder, confuse, and manipulate their recipients. ~ Mallory Ortberg, #NFDB
197:We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
198:Illusions are dangerous . . . Ideas are infallible, people are not. Don't confuse the two. ~ Kate Moretti, #NFDB
199:It is a blessing to be the color of earth
do you know how often flowers confuse me for home ~ Rupi Kaur,#NFDB
200:Twentieth-century philosophy is not unique in its ability to confuse puzzles with problems. ~ Susan Neiman, #NFDB
201:I don’t underestimate knowledge. But we get into trouble when we confuse it with truth. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
202:I think it’s easy
to confuse love with other things.
Lust, for one. Need, for another ~ Ellen Hopkins,#NFDB
203:We must neither confuse evangelism with doing justice, nor separate them from one another. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
204:Give up trying to convince people who you are, instead confuse them. It is a lot more fun! ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
205:Much everyday anger results when we confuse our own personal wants with general moral codes. ~ David D Burns, #NFDB
206:On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
207:A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire. ~ Laurie Anderson, #NFDB
208:The only way for you to keep your mind straight is to run from those who would confuse you. ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
209:Sometimes people want what they can't have and confuse that with feelings for another person. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
210:As Lysa TerKeurst says, “We must not confuse the command to love with the disease to please. ~ Jessica N Turner, #NFDB
211:Be sure to use different exercises with every workout. Always confuse the muscles in to new growth. ~ Shawn Ray, #NFDB
212:I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
213:I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
214:Do that thing you do where you use too many words to say something simple and confuse the issue. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
215:I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now i wish i could distinguish them. ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
216:Just because she has high standards, doesn't mean she’s high maintenance. Don’t confuse the two. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
217:But sometimes the memories feel so real, so visceral, so personal, that I confuse them with my own. ~ Gayle Forman, #NFDB
218:For those who confuse you, recognize that their confusion is theirs and your clarity is yours. ~ Barbara Marciniak, #NFDB
219:He was too astute a politician, too ambitious a Prince, to confuse friendship with statecraft. ~ Sharon Kay Penman, #NFDB
220:I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them. ~ John le Carre, #NFDB
221:parents often confuse the anomaly of developing fast with the objective of developing profoundly. ~ Andrew Solomon, #NFDB
222:Revolt by all means, but only on one issue at a time. To do more would be to confuse the whips. ~ Harold MacMillan, #NFDB
223:do not confuse what you hope to accomplish with your personal anger. It will only muddy things. ~ Tess Uriza Holthe, #NFDB
224:Inopportune questioning can confuse, without enlightening, as well as deflecting you from action. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
225:Sometimes people can be too intellegent for their own good. Too much thinking could confuse things. ~ John Flanagan, #NFDB
226:But Mr. Elton had only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at all to confuse his intellects. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
227:Inopportune questioning can confuse, without enlightening, as well as deflecting you from action. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
228:People confuse the subject of the joke with the target of the joke, and they're very rarely the same. ~ Ricky Gervais, #NFDB
229:The truth may not set you free, but used carefully, it can confuse the hell out of your enemies. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
230:We must not confuse distortion with innovation; distortion is useless change, art is beneficial change. ~ Chuck Jones, #NFDB
231:We should not confuse complete faith in God with complete faith in our ability to discern God's voice. ~ John Corvino, #NFDB
232:The French in particular confuse unadorned direct language with a lack of culture or intellectual elegance. ~ A A Gill, #NFDB
233:After we had sex?" I asked
Dank shook his head "No, Pagan, that was making love. Don't confuse the two ~ Abbi Glines,#NFDB
234:I don't think people should confuse fantasy and reality because no one is perfect - we all know that. ~ Erin Heatherton, #NFDB
235:Take care that the reading of numerous writers and books of all kinds does not confuse and trouble thy reason. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
236:To confuse knowledge for wisdom is a mistake often made by the knowledgeable but seldom made by the wise. ~ Scott Meyer, #NFDB
237:20O how terrible for those who confuse good with evil, right with wrong, light with dark, sweet with bitter. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
238:But he starting to confuse representing people with owning them, and soon even he going need a reckoning. ~ Marlon James, #NFDB
239:I'm afraid I'm not personally qualified to confuse cats, but I can recommend an extremely good service. ~ Graham Chapman, #NFDB
240:It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with guilt. ~ Veronica Roth, #NFDB
241:A desire for truth is by no means a need for certitude and it would be unwise to confuse one with the other. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
242:People, unless they're paying attention, tend to confuse fanciness with intelligence or authority. ~ David Foster Wallace, #NFDB
243:The goal is justice, the method? is transparency. It's important not to confuse the goal and the method. ~ Julian Assange, #NFDB
244:There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army. ~ John Ashbery, #NFDB
245:When we confuse the needs with the desires; all the struggles we take lead to failure and disappointment. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
246:The catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented - and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
247:There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
248:We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
249:Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don't have this when you play a computer. I can't confuse it ~ Judit Polgar, #NFDB
250:For vanity, too, inebriates; gratitude, too, intoxicates; tenderness, too, can blissfully confuse the senses. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
251:No, human. I don't know shit about this. I'm just rattling off randomness to confuse you."
Xypher ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
252:Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book. ~ Andre Dubus, #NFDB
253:Erotic names, robes, insignia of office, titles- the trappings of religion- confuse as much as they help. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
254:Never confuse desire with vision. Desire has to do with what we want. Vision has to do with what we need. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
255:Take me there. Or is this a kidnapping? Don't confuse rescue and kidnapping. I have not asked to be rescued. ~ Kameron Hurley, #NFDB
256:Where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for power . . . You should not confuse Malthus with nature. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
257:Do not confuse excellence with perfection. The first is possible to achieve, the second is probably not. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
258:Sometimes, the wicked will tell us things just to confuse us–to haunt our thoughts long after we've faced them. ~ Sarah J Maas, #NFDB
259:The interesting thing about the rich is that they like being told where to get off. They confuse it with honesty ~ Philip Kerr, #NFDB
260:Do not confuse beauty with beautiful. Beautiful is a human judgment. Beauty is All. The difference is everything. ~ Matthew Fox, #NFDB
261:Here in the dusk of the twenty-first century it was so easy to confuse murder with the amputation of a fingertip. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
262:We confuse ourselves with space-time events, when in fact we are the ones who generate these space-time events. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
263:Democracy is still a radical idea in a world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
264:Don't confuse my personality with my attitude. My personality is who I am, and my attitude depends on who you are. ~ Frank Ocean, #NFDB
265:I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make. ~ Christian Bale, #NFDB
266:I will take any liberty I want with facts as long as I don't trespass on the truth...We confuse facts with truth. ~ Farley Mowat, #NFDB
267:Most election analysts in the U.S. habitually confuse the sound of money talking with the voice of the people. ~ Thomas Ferguson, #NFDB
268:I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God's business. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
269:It's amazing how right you can be about a person you don't know; it's only the people you do know who confuse you. ~ Elaine Dundy, #NFDB
270:It’s easy to confuse feelings and emotions for something they aren’t, especially when eye contact is involved. I ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
271:Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
272:Oh, the audacity of authenticity. You’re going to confuse, piss-off and terrify lots of people – including yourself. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
273:Strength and weakness are tangled things,” the Aven Essen had said. “They look so much alike, we often confuse them, ~ V E Schwab, #NFDB
274:The essence of Capablanca's greatness is his rare talent for avoiding all that can complicate or confuse the conflict. ~ Max Euwe, #NFDB
275:Applause was designed to bemuse and confuse you until it explodes into a chorus that reminds us why we love pop music. ~ Lady Gaga, #NFDB
276:He did not confuse what he longed for with his gratitude for what he had. Extreme desires have their own sanctuary. ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
277:I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
278:That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
279:New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. ~ Sol LeWitt, #NFDB
280:Some people confuse the respect that has been earned by fear with the respect earned by love. They are not the same. ~ Ralph Helfer, #NFDB
281:there seem to be times of reception and times of creation and it is perhaps difficult not to confuse the two. ~ Margaret Wise Brown, #NFDB
282:Violet remembered that slap; later her mother had called it a "love tap," as if to further confuse love with pain. ~ Koren Zailckas, #NFDB
283:If you can't show the difference between religion and the Gospel, people will confuse morality with a changed heart ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
284:It's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em. It's an old political trick. But this time it won't work. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
285:Mankind's greatest error, the biggest deception of the past thousand years is this: to confuse poverty with stupidity. ~ Orhan Pamuk, #NFDB
286:We commonly confuse closeness with sameness and view intimacy as the merging of two separate I's into one worldview. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
287:how difficult it is to ferret out causes; they do not confuse correlation (A occurs before B) with causation (A caused B); ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
288:That’s what tyrants can do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
289:When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
290:If you are conscious of your own dreams, nobody can confuse you with their own goals. Wake up and live your dreams! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
291:We commonly confuse closeness with sameness and view intimacy as the merging of two separate “I’s” into one worldview. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
292:Don't confuse a kid whining for a treat with the argument of a rigorous, logical mind," he had said, as logical as ever. ~ Miyuki Miyabe, #NFDB
293:Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
294:One of the most annoying habits of liberals is their tendency to confuse their political agenda with moral virtue. ~ Robert Stacy McCain, #NFDB
295:To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
296:We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. ~ Edward R Murrow, #NFDB
297:I don't make changes to confuse anyone. I'm just searching. That's what causes me to change. I'm just searching for myself. ~ David Bowie, #NFDB
298:Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
299:Cubism is an anatomical chart of a way of seeing external objects. But I want to confuse the meaning of the act of looking. ~ Jasper Johns, #NFDB
300:I do believe that at times God opens some doors and closes others, but our mistake is to confuse an open door for an easy door ~ Kyle Lake, #NFDB
301:Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple—many are just emotionally difficult to act upon. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
302:Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
303:Emotions have cycles whereas love endures. Some people confuse emotions, which are ever-changing, with love's durability. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
304:It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
305:It's amazing how right you can sometimes be about a person you don't know; it's only the people you do know who confuse you. ~ Elaine Dundy, #NFDB
306:It’s amazing how right you can sometimes be about a person you don’t know; it’s only the people you do know who confuse you. ~ Elaine Dundy, #NFDB
307:No one can estimate the power of authority among poor and uneducated people in a world whose problems confuse even the wisest. ~ Joyce Cary, #NFDB
308:Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That’s what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first. . . . ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
309:Many people confuse religion with God and walk away from them both. The point isn't Christianity, the point is being a Christian. ~ Rob Bell, #NFDB
310:Perhaps you confuse virtue and convention, gentlemen. Conventionality is not morality, and self-righteousness is not religion. ~ Juliet Gael, #NFDB
311:Pray don’t allow the shock of it all to confuse you," she said. "Popular resurrections are a tedious pastime of Francis’s. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
312:Don't confuse my point of view with cynicism. The real cynics are the ones who tell you that everything's gonna be all right. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
313:Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple – many are just emotionally difficult to act upon. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
314:It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments... ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
315:That was the morning I committed the first sin of love, which was to confuse beauty and a good sound track with knowledge. ~ Stephanie Danler, #NFDB
316:Well, hello there,” I said, “you big, beautiful overgrown passageway.” I looked over to Lia. “Let’s confuse ’em a little. ~ Lisa Tawn Bergren, #NFDB
317:Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple �� many are just emotionally difficult to act upon. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
318:If time travel doesn’t confuse you from time to time, you’re probably doing it wrong.” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2109 ~ Nathan Van Coops, #NFDB
319:Mathematics is so much easier than words mathematics makes things clear that words merely muddle and confuse and mess up. ~ John Maynard Smith, #NFDB
320:Random events often look like nonrandom events, and in interpreting human affairs we must take care not to confuse the two. ~ Leonard Mlodinow, #NFDB
321:The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
322:Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
323:That was the morning I committed the first sin of love, which was to confuse beauty and a good sound track with knowledge. He ~ Stephanie Danler, #NFDB
324:People confuse goodness with weakness. It is weak people, not good people (goodness demands strength), who are taken advantage of. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
325:You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
326:Never confuse your right to say what you believe with a right to never be disagreed with and ridiculed for saying what you believe. ~ Ricky Gervais, #NFDB
327:One thing that does confuse me, is that there are more religions in this world than ever, yet there's only supposed to be one God. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
328:I immediately split the crowd. I thought about coming on every night and shouting, 'Gay pride, white power!' just to confuse people. ~ Doug Stanhope, #NFDB
329:If you tell too much too soon, you’ll overload them and they’ll give up. If you confuse them, they’ll ignore the message altogether. ~ Paco Underhill, #NFDB
330:It's not your fate to be well treated," Ignatius cried. "You're an overt masochist. Nice treatment will confuse and destroy you. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
331:Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right. ~ Marian Wright Edelman, #NFDB
332:A blow to the head will confuse a man's thinking, a blow to the foot has no such effect, this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
333: “I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people, to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole.” ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
334:Through art they confuse us and blind us to our enslavement. Art adorns our prison walls, keeps us silent and diverted and indifferent. ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
335:Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
336:And since, through lack of vocation or from habit, [Julie] was prone to confuse pity with boredom, she felt herself practically a prisoner... ~ Colette, #NFDB
337:people often confuse complex ideas that cannot be simplified into a media-friendly statement as symptomatic of a confused mind. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
338:Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
339:... Do not let the deeds and thoughts of other people confuse you; let them not prompt you to do or say anything evil! ~ Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov, #NFDB
340:Don't confuse poor decision-making with destiny. Own your mistakes. It’s ok; we all make them. Learn from them so they can empower you! ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
341:A lot of people confuse free climbing with free solo. Free climbing is when we use ropes, but we only make upward progress with our bodies. ~ Dean Potter, #NFDB
342:I learned not to confuse 'busy' with 'productive,' but I'm still far too addicted to email to resist its early-morning digital snuggles. ~ Chris Hardwick, #NFDB
343:Intelligent teenage girls were often instinctively theatrical, purposely eccentric, mouthing highly suggestive words to confuse people. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
344:Reading is too intimate,' Spofforth said. 'It will put you too close to the feelings and ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you. ~ Walter Tevis, #NFDB
345:"At a certain point, you can become so enchanted with the symbols that you entirely confuse them with the reality. The menu is not the meal." ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
346:I like my ladies lady-ish, feminine so to speak. I love jeans and hoodies, but the idea of being an ultimate tomboy does slightly confuse me. ~ Tom Felton, #NFDB
347:No, she love you. She don’t know how to show it. And her love for herself and her love for Michael—well, it gets in the way. It confuse her. ~ Jesmyn Ward, #NFDB
348:Pure intuitive faith differs as much from fanaticism as fire from smoke, or music from mere noise; those who confuse the two are like the deaf. ~ Jos Rizal, #NFDB
349:I think referendums are fantastic as long as the question is phrased in a way which is not meant to deliberately confuse or confound people. ~ Cate Blanchett, #NFDB
350:Reading is too intimate,’ Spofforth said. ‘It will put you too close to the feelings and the ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you. ~ Walter Tevis, #NFDB
351:Tears disturb and confuse men, but women know the relief they can bring. I didn't cry because I couldn't deal with my life, but because I could. ~ Megan Hart, #NFDB
352:We fail at romantic love when we have not learned the art of loving. It's as simple as that. Often we confuse perfect passion with perfect love. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
353:We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must not walk in fear of one another. We must not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. ~ George Clooney, #NFDB
354:Thus in using myth one must take care not to confuse image with fact, which would be like climbing up the signpost instead of following the road ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
355:We need to keep in mind the distinction between realism and reality. To confuse the two is to lose sight of the difference between art and life. ~ Peter Turchi, #NFDB
356:Thinking about work as a day job has made a big difference in the way I approach what I do. It also helped me not to confuse who I am with what I do. ~ Bob Goff, #NFDB
357:We can confuse love with dependency, manipulation, and neediness. None of those are love. Love is when we want other people to be who they are. ~ Melody Beattie, #NFDB
358:We must not confuse conformity to religious expectation and culture to an actual growth in intimacy with our Lord and maturity of our faith. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner, #NFDB
359:When the mind is full of worldly desires, it is their very nature to confuse the mind. Withdraw the mind from outer things and turn it inwards. ~ Anandamayi Ma, #NFDB
360:Do not confuse McGuinty's belief system with a true faith. It is a superstition, the tenets of which are capable of being scientifically disproven. ~ Ezra Levant, #NFDB
361:One of my biggest problems is I get bored too easily, and I like to experiment too much, to the point where I confuse myself and I confuse my fans. ~ Skylar Grey, #NFDB
362:The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
363:People are vulnerable during sex, it is easy to confuse feelings and emotions for somethings they are not especially when eye contact is involved ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
364:People confuse compassion with government being compassionate with other people's money versus people being compassionate with their own money. ~ Michele Bachmann, #NFDB
365:Power tends to confuse itself with virtue, and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor. ~ J William Fulbright, #NFDB
366:When you tell a man how you feel, most of the time he doesn’t understand what you’re talking about. You’ll probably just confuse and frustrate him. ~ Sherry Argov, #NFDB
367:Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity, and every profession’s jargon is meant to confuse and exclude those who aren’t part of the guild. ~ Jason Zweig, #NFDB
368:He knows that his plan will confuse and confound you. And he knows that real rest cannot be found in understanding. Real rest is found in trust. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
369:Second, our estimating techniques fallaciously confuse effort with progress, hiding the assumption that men and months are interchangeable. ~ Frederick P Brooks Jr, #NFDB
370:There is nothing wrong with psychoanalysis or finding out about your past as long as you don’t confuse knowing about yourself with knowing yourself. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
371:Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
372:Strength and weakness are tangled things,” the Aven Essen had said. “They look so much alike, we often confuse them, the way we confuse magic and power. ~ V E Schwab, #NFDB
373:I told you not to confuse forgetfulness with stupidity,” Allen said. “She’s extremely intelligent. Did you use the audio binder? Give her the Amneoset? ~ Kim Harrison, #NFDB
374:...no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head. ~ Rachel Cohn, #NFDB
375:You turn to me and ask, “Do you ever think about suicide?” I look away from you and close my eyes, eat the raspberries to confuse the blood in my mouth. ~ Joseph Fink, #NFDB
376:Don’t confuse creativity and imagination with “thinking” either. Ray Bradbury said that thinking is the enemy of creativity because it’s self-conscious. ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
377:God, you confuse me. I don’t think my head has stopped spinning since you walked in the door.” “You can be confused later. But come on my face now, please? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
378:Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor. ~ James Thurber, #NFDB
379:Rue bounced in happily. Everything was so pretty and colourful. She and Prim were dressed to confuse. Tea espionage was afoot. This was going to be fun. ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
380:R&D teams have a tendency to confuse product features with customer benefits. They assume that more features equals more benefits. This is not true. ~ James McQuivey, #NFDB
381:We must embrace the power of faith, but we must never confuse politics and piety. For me, may I say that it is against my religion to impose my religion. ~ John Ashcroft, #NFDB
382:One unanswered question is whether a Euro-Islam that combines Islam with democracy will be possible in the future. We mustn't confuse desire with reality. ~ Walter Kasper, #NFDB
383:Those who run to long words are mainly the unskillful and tasteless; they confuse pomposity with dignity, flaccidity with ease, and bulk with force. ~ Henry Watson Fowler, #NFDB
384:A pixie's true skin color is blue. Cookie Monster, Grover, and other lovable Muppets are also blue. Do not confuse the two. Muppets don't kill you. Usually. ~ Carrie Jones, #NFDB
385:Every dream is a masterpiece of symbolic communication. The unconscious speaks in symbols, not to confuse us, but simply because that is its native idiom. ~ Robert Johnson, #NFDB
386:You are commanded to get angry, not on your own behalf, but on behalf of your office and of God; you must not confuse the two, your person and your office. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
387:Today is April 1, April Fools' Day, a day that people try to fool their friends and relatives. Don't confuse that with April 15, when people try to fool the IRS. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
388:Who knew that the devil had a factory where he made millions of fossils, which his minions distributed throughout the earth, in order to confuse my tiny brain? ~ Lewis Black, #NFDB
389:few things enrage, confuse, and repulse audiences more than the suggestion that the primary visual purpose of a woman’s body is not the pleasure of men. ~ Anne Helen Petersen, #NFDB
390:In a self-betraying condition, how we present ourselves unavoidably becomes of the focus of our concern, and we mistakenly confuse it with how we really are. ~ C Terry Warner, #NFDB
391:It is the habit of utopians, of those who, like Dante, interpret politics as a wish, not of scientists, to confuse their desires with what is going to happen. ~ James Burnham, #NFDB
392:The effect of life in society is to complicate and confuse our existence, making us forget who we really are by causing us to become obsessed with what we are not. ~ Zhuangzi, #NFDB
393:I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
394:She didn't say it, I only thought she said it. So really it was my thought, my words, and not hers. How could I confuse "I love you" with "May I take your order? ~ Jarod Kintz, #NFDB
395:Thought is the work of the intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse a poison with a source of nourishment. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
396:From this moment forth, we’ve always got to be thinking in terms of countermeasures: escape, evade, and confuse. We make one mistake, and it’s life without parole. ~ Tim Tigner, #NFDB
397:Here is the guts of both self-and other-directed love. Never confuse your self-worth (which is a given) with your behavior, or the behavior of others toward you. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
398:People who confuse what they wish were true with what is really true create distorted pictures of reality that make it impossible for them to make the best choices. ~ Ray Dalio, #NFDB
399:The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us; but he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. His attack is psychological, Damien. And powerful. ~ William Peter Blatty, #NFDB
400:I think too many times as Christians, we confuse benefits with essence. We pursue the benefits of a relationship rather than the essence of that relationship. ~ Jefferson Bethke, #NFDB
401:Antifragile shows how people confuse risk of ruin with variations and fluctuations—a simplification that violates a deeper, more rigorous logic of things. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
402:My mistake was to confuse a destiny to love with a destiny to love a specific person. It was the error of thinking that Chloe, rather than love, was inevitable. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
403:To confuse the potential for resisting (which God provided) with the responsibility for resisting (which is ours) is to court disaster in our pursuit of holiness. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
404:Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
405:You mustn't confuse the need for effective chairmanship, which is part of the job of the boss, along with the ability to take tough decisions and to lead people. ~ Charles Kennedy, #NFDB
406:A true patriot does not confuse government with country. A patriot's loyalty is to his country, and loyalty to country requires holding government accountable. ~ Paul Craig Roberts, #NFDB
407:In the teen years, we often confuse self-image with self-esteem. Teenagers are very influenced by the image others have of them. All sorts of complexes come from this. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
408:Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
409:When the Liberals said they were going to create a million new jobs, I didn't think they were all going to be tax collectors. If you can't convince them, confuse them. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
410:Americans today confuse freedom with not being asked to sacrifice. The fact that you can't have everything you want exactly when you want it has somehow become un-American. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
411:Don’t confuse what you do with who you are, dearie. Besides, there’s no shame in humble work. Why, Aesop himself, the king of storytellers, was a slave his whole life. ~ Jonathan Auxier, #NFDB
412:emotions are not bad, but they must be examined. Know yourself. Feelings always seem valid, but they can confuse. And they can, as you have seen, be used against you. ~ G Norman Lippert, #NFDB
413:Just when you’ve squared up to the solemn realisation that life is a bitch, it turns round and does something nice, just to confuse you. - Emily Spitzer, The Better Mousetrap ~ Tom Holt, #NFDB
414:Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress. The same goes for verbalization. Even ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
415:You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
416:As Schelling puts it, “There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable.” But this is not an invitation to imagine the worst and to act on it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
417:Perhaps you could call your cat Meow so it could say it's own name. Or how about Stupid Cat Get Out Of Here. That would really confuse it if you tried to call it over to you. ~ Jade Puget, #NFDB
418:Dont confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesnt mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesnt mean it communicates the right thing. ~ David Carson, #NFDB
419:It is a depressing fact that Americans tend to confuse morality and art (to the detriment of both) and that, among the educated, morality tends to mean social consciousness. ~ Pauline Kael, #NFDB
420:The pupil is ... 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. ~ Ivan Illich, #NFDB
421:I can be very polite, and I think that people can confuse that for all sorts of things... But I'll take that over people assuming that I'm smart just because I'm short and rude. ~ Amy Adams, #NFDB
422:leaders confuse the mere transfer of information to an audience with the audience’s ability to understand, internalize, and embrace the message that is being communicated. ~ Patrick Lencioni, #NFDB
423:People confuse the fact that I discuss drinking openly with the idea that I'm a heavy drinker. I don't want girls at my show wasted, screaming and yelling out and vomiting. ~ Chelsea Handler, #NFDB
424:Fear and guilt are your only enemies. Love and awareness are your true friends. Do not confuse one with the other, for one will kill you, while the other gives you life. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
425:I am a comedian but it's usually not a compliment to be called a prop comedian but I guess I sometimes use props. And I always confuse humorist with comedian. That's strange. ~ Demetri Martin, #NFDB
426:It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with. ~ John Brunner, #NFDB
427:He turns off the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
428:I read recently that I was born in Arizona. I wasn't born in Arizona. I was born in New Mexico, but I can understand why people might confuse those two Southwestern desert states. ~ Baron Vaughn, #NFDB
429:Few people have courage enough to appear as good as they really are. Most people confuse greatness with power, despite the fact that greatness has nothing to do with power. ~ Julius Charles Hare, #NFDB
430:Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint to a life
It is a presence
it has a history a form
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence ~ Adrienne Rich,#NFDB
431:I think for a lot of people that are in performing arts, it's easy to fall into the trap of starting to confuse what's real life and what's not, because to your body it's all real. ~ Audra McDonald, #NFDB
432:Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers. ~ Henry Mintzberg, #NFDB
433:I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
434:Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
435:Don't confuse poor decision making with destiny. Take accountability for your life, cut out the drama, distance yourself from negativity, and move your life into a healthy direction. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
436:Be careful what you’re doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head ~ Rachel Cohn, #NFDB
437:Nobody ever told me, I found out for myself, You gotta believe in foolish miracles, it's not how you play the game, it's if you win or lose, you can choose, don't confuse, win or lose. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
438:Don’t confuse God’s love with the love of people. The love of people often increases with performance and decreases with mistakes. Not so with God’s love. He loves you right where you are. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
439:The problem was that public had no way to know that this “evidence” was part of an industry campaign designed to confuse. It was, in fact, part of a criminal conspiracy to commit fraud. ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
440:To imagine happiness as the achievement of all our wishes and passions is to confuse the legitimate aspiration to inner fulfillment with a utopia that inevitably leads to frustration. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
441:Burn your dream bright. Pursue it with the best of who you are. But don't confuse hustle with burnout. Hustle fills you up. Burnout empties you. Hustle renews your energy. Burnout drains it. ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
442:The English language was a delight to them, so illogical and fertile and well-suited to their natural desire to confuse, obfuscate, and generally side-step clear meaning whenever possible. ~ John Varley, #NFDB
443:Today, scientists sound the alarm on other environmental dangers. Vested interests still hire their own scientists to confuse the issue. But in the end, nature, will not be fooled. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
444:Anton steals a glance back at me and I smile and confuse him more. I understand. The way you can get caught up in things, find yourself floating, heading towards trouble you can hardly avoid. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
445:Fear is a psychic tyrant that has no intention of letting its slave go free. It will say whatever it needs to say to confuse your thinking... It will always seek to preserve itself. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
446:I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
447:It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself-to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed and then to find yourself still in bed. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
448:Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
449:If we confuse the gospel with response to the gospel, we will drift from what keeps the gospel on the ground, what makes it clear and personal, and the next thing you know, we will be doing ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
450:I’m really lucky with the people around me. They know me, so they don’t confuse the issues really. They know what a book is and they know who I am and they know the difference between the two. ~ Anne Enright, #NFDB
451:I shiver, thinking about how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-- to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
452:It's a gamble you take, the risk of alienating an audience. But there's a theory - sometimes it's better to confuse them for five minutes than let them get ahead of you for 10 seconds. ~ Paul Thomas Anderson, #NFDB
453:I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they’re good talkers, but they don’t have good ideas,” he said. “It’s so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
454:But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, or being inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
455:James II’s second wife, an Italian Catholic princess called Mary (at the time, there was an edict whereby all female royals were to be called Mary to confuse future readers of history books), ~ Stephen Clarke, #NFDB
456:I worry sometimes that we're apt to confuse forgiveness with forgetfulness. The potency of forgiveness comes precisely from the fact that it must be done while being goaded by an unhappy memory. ~ Patrick Gale, #NFDB
457:Now that knowledge is taking the place of capital as the driving force in organizations worldwide, it is all too easy to confuse data with knowledge and information technology with information. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
458:Adesso sono ai tuoi piedi, niente più ardore nel mio cuore, le ali spezzate, la bocca che schiuma un rimpianto parole troppo confuse per avere un senso. Questo voglio dirti: "Amore, sono tornato a casa ~ Ha Jin, #NFDB
459:Every writer has something to say, but those writers whose works endure have dared to say something about the things that frighten them, confuse them, challenge them, and occasionally delight them. ~ Holly Lisle, #NFDB
460:Gandhian economic boycott, however, combined refusal to buy English textiles with the collection of funds for the merchants precisely not to confuse the key issue by threatening their livelihood. ~ Johan Galtung, #NFDB
461:No sin has ever made any person happy. Sin simply cannot bring happiness, but it can deliver pleasure, and
when we confuse pleasure with happiness, we are wide open to the seduction of the enemy. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
462:Self-actualized people...live more in the real world of nature than in the man-made mass of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world. ~ Abraham Maslow, #NFDB
463:To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity. ~ Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, #NFDB
464:A cassock does not make a man a priest, any more than a fine dress makes a woman truly beautiful - or good or generous or intelligent. Don't confuse the way someone looks with the way they are. ~ Adriana Trigiani, #NFDB
465:Meditation will do you a disservice. It will confuse you more than clarify you. It will bring tremendous impurity in you - if you are allowing your mind to wander during the empowered experience. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
466:Entrepreneurs constantly confuse what they do with who they are. We're all certainly responsible for what we do, but failing doesn't make us bad people and succeeding doesn't make us omniscient. ~ Howard A Tullman, #NFDB
467:Self-actualized people...live more in the real world of nature than in the man-made mass of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world. ~ Abraham H Maslow, #NFDB
468:The more you practice your craft, the less you confuse worldly rewards with spiritual rewards, and vice versa. Even if your path never makes any money or furthers your career, that’s still worth a ton. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
469:Why are dumb brutes so damned smart, anyway?'
'Why are us smart folk so often stupidly brutal, Quick Ben?' Trull asked.
'Stop trying to confuse me in my state of animal terror, Edur. ~ Steven Erikson,#NFDB
470:In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
471:And yet this is a complicated kind of privilege. Drones let you see so much more of the Earth, at once more fully and minutely, in ways that confuse the normal relationship between intimacy and distance. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
472:Confuse the sacred and secular in your environment. Create a liminal, neither here nor there, milieu. It is always in the liminal places that significant things happen, so work at creating liminality. ~ Thomas Moore, #NFDB
473:D/s sessions can unsettle submissives, especially new ones. When you trust someone to care for you—and they do well for you—then a bond develops. It’s easy to confuse that tie with other feelings. ~ Cherise Sinclair, #NFDB
474:We come from a somewhat puritanical and chauvinistic point-of-view, so that when we're asked questions about women being empowered by sexuality, we often confuse it with women who are victimized by it. ~ Amber Heard, #NFDB
475:You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
476:Don't confuse [Father's Day] with Valentine's Day, and here's why. Boy, will you creep him out. I can just tell you from last year, uh, even if they do like chocolate, they don't want it from their son. ~ Jon Stewart, #NFDB
477:You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
478:One would not think that fish were so silly as to confuse feathers and a hook for a fly alighting on the water, but apparently fish were foolish creatures. Or perhaps they were simply very nearsighted. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt, #NFDB
479:When Beth struggles for words it means she's on the verge of saying something worth hearing. Her emotions confuse her. Maybe tonight, she'll finally find the courage to say the words I'm longing to hear. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
480:When these early settlers hunted, they would leave red herring along their trail because the strong smell would confuse wolves, which is the origin of the expression red herring, meaning “a false trail. ~ Mark Kurlansky, #NFDB
481:Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events. This deeper discovery is largely what religious people mean by “finding their soul. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
482:But, I have to smile, for the salt of the sea is in my blood, and there may be ten thousand roads over the land, but they shall never confuse me, for my heart's blood will ever return to its beautiful source. ~ John Fante, #NFDB
483:If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
484:People confuse friendship and relaxation. It's incredibly important to be relaxed - you don't have a chance if you're not relaxed. So I try very hard to relax any kind of tension. But friendship is different. ~ Bill Murray, #NFDB
485:Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
486:it’s easy to confuse progress with effectiveness. All progress is not true progress. It’s possible to gain ground for many days, weeks, months, or even years but be going in a completely wrong direction. That’s ~ Todd Henry, #NFDB
487:Third, it is helpful to seek advice from those who are spiritually mature and solid in their faith. A godly counselor or pastor can assist you in avoiding the common mistakes that confuse many young people. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
488:We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. ~ Edward R Murrow, #NFDB
489:every time you tell your daughter you yell at her out of love you teach her to confuse anger with kindness which seems like a good idea till she grows up to trust men who hurt her cause they look so much like you ~ Rupi Kaur, #NFDB
490:I just try to keep that connection to normalcy. I never want to lose that, being normal. People connect with me just as a cool, around-the-way type of guy. I never want to confuse people or go over their heads. ~ Wiz Khalifa, #NFDB
491:...(W)e lose when by official policy or by official negligence we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget . . . that which is our greatest strength: that we are different and better than our enemies. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
492:Many photographers are apt to confuse color with noise, and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down with screeching hues alone-a bebop of electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens. ~ Walker Evans, #NFDB
493:The biggest intellects can make errors of the worst kind and confuse Truth and falsehood, if they have not the contact with Truth or the direct experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Intellect and the Intellectual, #NFDB
494:In the United States, it is our weakness to confuse the numerical strength of an organization and the publicity attached to leaders with the germinating forces that sow the seeds of social upheaval in our community. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
495:Congratulations to Ohio State, your new college football champions. Coach Urban Meyer may be the greatest football coach of all time. Don't confuse him with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. That's urban quagmire. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
496:It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with. So SHUT UP, do you hear me? SHUT UP! ~ John Brunner, #NFDB
497:In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.” —MARCUS AURELIUS ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
498:Please don't speak Igbo to him,' Aunty Uju said. 'Two languages will confuse him.'
'What are you talking about, Aunty? We spoke two languages growing up.'
'This is America. It's different. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,#NFDB
499:She smiled unabashedly at him, pulled the door open, and slipped into the hallway. There. That ought to confuse him for a while. Serves him right for upsetting my image of him. He can’t be understanding. He just can’t. ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
500:And then I remember: it doesn’t matter. The fact that I sometimes don’t get it is my shit, and I should not confuse my shit with my job. My job is to just love my parishioners. And I do. Not perfectly, but I do. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
501:Some time ago," he said, "--how long it seems! -- I remember saying to a young friend of mine of the name of Spiller, 'Comrade Spiller, never confuse the unusual with the impossible.' It is my guiding rule in life. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
502:A great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is . It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint, and we tend to confuse the two. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
503:Do not confuse objectives with methods. When the nation becomes substantially united in favor of planning the broad objectives of civilization, then true leadership must unite thought behind definite methods. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
504:No age has been more prone to confuse the sin with the sinner, not by hating the sinner along with the sin but by loving the sin along with the sinner. We often use "compassion" as an equivalent for moral relativism. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
505:The only thing that separates any one of us from excellence is fear and the opposite of fear is faith. I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for, perfection is God’s business. ~ Michael J Fox, #NFDB
506:A cassock does not make a man a priest, any more than a fine dress makes a woman truly beautiful—or good or generous or intelligent. Don’t confuse the way someone looks with the way they are. Grace is a rare thing. ~ Adriana Trigiani, #NFDB
507:the overall aspect of life is not a state of need and hunger, but instead, wealth, bounty, even absurd squandering—where there is struggle, it is a struggle for power… One should not confuse Malthus with nature. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
508:It's perfectly possible to spend forty hours a week on a job that's meaningless, as long as you know what your real vocation is and find some way to express it. Then you won't confuse your job with the meaning of your life. ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
509:Cowards and men do not cry the same, and a man can cry with dignity and not confuse the two. But when women get going, they can sometimes throw ashtrays with the velocity of Sandy Koufax, and it is best to leave the house. ~ Tim Dorsey, #NFDB
510:We often confuse spiritual knowledge with spiritual attainment. Spirituality is not a matter of knowing scriptures and engaging in philosophical discussions. It is a matter of heart culture, of unmeasurable strength. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
511:Don't confuse the evil of avoiding pregnancy by itself, with abortion. Abortion is not a theological problem, it is a human problem, it is a medical problem. You kill one person to save another, in the best case scenario. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
512:There is a delicate balance that we need to honor as we try to find meaning in any event or state of mind: Many people confuse finding meaning with finding a reason, putting our finger on something or someone for blame. ~ Stephen Levine, #NFDB
513:Thinking is usually a waste of time and energy, since thinking is essentially a rehashing of what we already know. As a matter of fact, thinking is an easy way to confuse yourself. The more you think, the less you know. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
514:don’t confuse scepticism as an attitude, or a method, with scepticism as a philosophy. Socrates was sceptical in temperament, and his method was to question everything. But he believed in absolute truth; he was no sceptic. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
515:I do teach fiction and non-fiction, and usually I'm interested in works that confuse genre, but I'm very new to teaching creative writing, I don't have an MFA, or a PhD, I tend to approach it just through my own practice. ~ Kate Zambreno, #NFDB
516:Ironically, the term personality is derived from the Greek word for mask ( persona), reflecting our tendency to confuse the masks we wear with our true selves, even long after the threats of early childhood have passed. ~ Ian Morgan Cron, #NFDB
517:It meant different things to different people, but somehow it meant them all intensely. Shostakovich's words just confuse the issue. His symphony itself is what remains. Listen to it. It is your symphony to write with him. ~ M T Anderson, #NFDB
518:It's very easy to confuse confident motion with being productive - and they're not the same thing. Productive to me means measurable outcomes that apply to my most important to-dos that positively affect my life. That's it. ~ Tim Ferriss, #NFDB
519:Sometime I'll get around to asking why the English nobility have so blasted many names that a conversation about them is like reading a Russian novel. I have a private suspicion it's done on purpose to confuse foreigners. ~ Jeanne M Dams, #NFDB
520:I won’t desecrate beauty with cynicism anymore. I won’t confuse critical thinking with a critical spirit, and I will practice, painfully, over and over, patience and peace until my gentle answers turn away even my own wrath. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
521:Being a siddha master is indeed a great accomplishment, but it is not the same as being enlightened. People confuse siddha masters, who have the power to perform miracles, with enlightened masters who can enter into samadhi. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
522:Falling in love (or lust) and fear feel a lot alike. They both give you that anxious butterfly feeling in your stomach, a sense of excitement, and a general unease physically and mentally. It’s easy to confuse love with fear. ~ Greg Behrendt, #NFDB
523:Feeling in love (or lust) and fear feel a lot alike. They both give you that anxious butterfly feeling in your stomach, a sense of excitement, and a general unease physically and mentally. It's easy to confuse love with fear. ~ Greg Behrendt, #NFDB
524:Labels only confuse people. The smarter people recognize artists who transcend categories. But I always try to entertain. It's in my nature; writers are born to entertain. If that means working ostensibly within a genre, fine. ~ John Shirley, #NFDB
525:So many of our problems arise because, in our naive untrained state, we confuse our thoughts with actual reality. We seize on the content of our thoughts as real and build our entire perception and response to reality on it. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
526:3. There are three stages. Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being.
33. Do not confuse the first and third stages. Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few. ~ Chad Harbach,#NFDB
527:Onlookers frequently confuse edge with style...Edge means generating excess returns because of mispricing. Style suggests being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes edge and style overlap, sometimes they don't. ~ Michael Mauboussin, #NFDB
528:And the news got worse. It appeared that there was this whole other person Jesus Christ whose birthday a lot of people tended to confuse with mine. I was personally outraged. It was a long time before I forgave the Lord for that. ~ Ava Gardner, #NFDB
529:There are many kinds of leaders. Too often we confuse a forceful personality with leadership. This is a mistake. Those with different talents and styles can reach the same mountaintop; they just take different paths to get there. ~ Henry H Neff, #NFDB
530:We shouldn't confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, "My character this, and my character that." Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don't have to explain it to me. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
531:Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
532:When you start to confuse Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae and Fannie Mae with members of your family, and you remember 2,000 stock symbols but forget the children's birthdays, there's a good chance you've become too wrapped up in your work. ~ Peter Lynch, #NFDB
533:As long as I remember that the glory is His and not my own. When I confuse that, I get in trouble. We think that we glorify ourselves, and the object is to glorify God first, and in doing that you become glorified, you get glorified. ~ Lauryn Hill, #NFDB
534:Judgement is either to confuse someone's unconscious behavior with who they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person and mistake that for who they are. ~ Eckhart Tolle (#ThePowerofNow pg.160)[ 📷 instagram.com/michellestock_…], #NFDB
535:Women are more evolved biologically and emotionally, that’s well known
and it’s obvious. But they confuse sex and the spirit; they don’t
separate. Men, as you know, always separate: they separate
their human and dog natures. ~ Jeet Thayil,#NFDB
536:He pointed at Abby’s electric-blue pumps. “Women wear these evil creations around to confuse us. Sure, they make a girl’s legs look good, but that’s the black magic, my friends. They want us to feel their pain and not understand why. ~ Tessa Bailey, #NFDB
537:In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.51 ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
538:Quality effective leaders have the confidence to trust others to try, succeed, and sometimes to fail. We very often confuse personality with leadership. In other words, leadership is not about being a nice person or not a nice person. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
539:We’re getting out of here,” she said. “The store will try to stop us. It’ll disorient you, get inside your head, try to confuse you and control you. But if you stay focused, you can block it out. You have to fight, do you understand? ~ Grady Hendrix, #NFDB
540:Exotic names, robes, insignia of office, titles - the trappings of religion - confuse as much as they help. They endorse the assumption of the existence of an elite whose explicit commitment grants them implicit extraordinariness. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
541:This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
542:We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expecting constant good health for example- then I set myself up for crashing disappointment. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
543:every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
544:I actually didn't listen to the Beatles song 'Nowhere Man' when I was writing my book of the same name. What I listened to a lot was 'Abbey Road.' Its disjointedness and its readiness to confuse only to delight were inspiring to me. ~ Aleksandar Hemon, #NFDB
545:I don’t have a death wish. I’m just confused and trying to sort stuff out, trying to find a point to all of this. Life. It confuses the hell out of me. People, they confuse the hell out of me. Hell, I confuse the hell out of myself. ~ Jessica Sorensen, #NFDB
546:Al tornar de la mente, che si chiuse
dinanzi a la pietà d'i due cognati,
che di trestizia tutto mi confuse,
novi tormenti e novi tormentati
mi veggio intorno, come ch'io mi mova
e ch'io mi volga, e come che io guati. ~ Dante Alighieri,#NFDB
547:The majority of men are born with constricted understanding and circumscribed intellect. So intensive education would not only be useless in their case but would only confuse and frustrate them, and incite them to anger and resentment. ~ Taylor Caldwell, #NFDB
548:The most disturbing part of working on all these issues is the amount of money spent by corporations to confuse, mislead and misinform the public. This is one of the reasons why we are always taking two steps forward and three steps back. ~ Laurie David, #NFDB
549:Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves... They do everything but watch television. ~ Lewis Thomas, #NFDB
550:Don't confuse drive and passion. Drive pushes you forward. It's a duty, an obligation. Passion pulls you. It's the sense of connection you feel when the work you do expresses who you are. Only passion will get you through the tough times. ~ Randy Komisar, #NFDB
551:...every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
552:I'm going to say this once,' he said, 'so you had better listen. You're twelve years old and you have a lot of ideas in your head, but nothing will wreck you quicker than if you let yourself confuse what's real and what isn't, you hear me? ~ Adam Haslett, #NFDB
553:We have to start with the little babies who are born now, socialize them in freedom and critical thinking. We don't have to throw away their faith. People confuse the two, thinking if you are enlightened that means apostasy. It doesn't. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
554:Doray may be rather superstitious but she is a good Catholic, and I hate to destroy anyone’s faith. Pure intuitive faith differs as much from fanaticism as fire from smoke, or music from mere noise; those who confuse the two are like the deaf. ~ Jos Rizal, #NFDB
555:every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love
you teach her to confuse
anger with kindness
which seems like a good idea
till she grows up to
trust men who hurt her
cause they look so much
like you. ~ Rupi Kaur,#NFDB
556:There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered seriously looks strange; what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not be considered seriously. ~ Nate Silver, #NFDB
557:Nook people confuse emotional truth with other varieties of truth. They are a composite of the last person who complimented them and the next person who might ignore them, and also whomever or whatever they consider themselves a child of. ~ Durga Chew Bose, #NFDB
558:Sometimes fate brings you to a place in life for a reason. It’s not up to you to figure out what that reason is. It’s only up to you to decide what you’re going to make of it.” It seemed like such a profound comment even if it did confuse me. ~ Aly Martinez, #NFDB
559:Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, #NFDB
560:Do not confuse calm with inertia. Calm is self-possessed strength, quiet and conscious energy, mastery of the impulses, control over the unconscious reflexes. In work calm is the source of efficiency and an indispensable condition for perfection. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
561:[...] every time we excercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
562:In my opinion, using creation and evolution as topics for critical-thinking exercises in primary and secondary schools is virtually guaranteed to confuse students about evolution and may lead them to reject one of the major themes in science. ~ Eugenie Scott, #NFDB
563:People often confuse "goal" and "purpose." A goal is something tangible; a purpose is a direction. A goal can be achieved; a purpose is fulfilled in each moment. We can set ad achieve many goals; a purpose remains constant for life. ~ Roger Delano Hinkins, #NFDB
564:Don’t confuse the process with the goal. Working on our processes to make them better, easier, and more efficient is an indispensable activity and something we should continually work on—but it is not the goal. Making the product great is the goal. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
565:Everybody wants to be good, but not many are prepared to make the sacrifices it takes to be great. To many people, being nice in order to be liked is more important. There's equal merit in that, but you must not confuse being good with being liked. ~ Paul Arden, #NFDB
566:The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough. ~ Josh Kaufman, #NFDB
567:American Green Berets have been on the ground reaching out to some of the factions there. But don't confuse them with combat troops. So we're only talking about airstrikes now. If there are any troops that go in there it will likely be the Italians. ~ Tom Bowman, #NFDB
568:Dogs’ sensitivity to social signals also puts a new twist on the old notion of human as “pack leader.” While it is easy to confuse being a pack leader with being dominant, that is a mistake that has harmed more dogs than any other piece of advice. ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
569:Every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love
you teach her to confuse
anger with kindness
which seems like a good idea
till she grows up to
trust men who hurt her
cause they look so much
like you. ~ Rupi Kaur,#NFDB
570:If you know Christ, you don't need to beg for the Holy Spirit to come into your life; He is already there- whether you "feel" His presence or not. Don't confuse the Holy Spirit with an emotional feeling or a particular type of spiritual experience. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
571:Some young women confuse their self-worth with their ability to attract the attention of men, and so pour all their energies into makeup, clothing, and jewelry. If only they realized that virtue, honor, and self-respect are the marks of a true beauty. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
572:Human strength is defined in asserting boundaries. God, it seems, is in the business of dissolving boundaries. So we enter into paradox—what’s Three is one and what’s One is three. We just can’t resolve that, and so we confuse unity with uniformity. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
573:A child certainly allows himself to be impressed by the grand talk of his parents, but ...actually it is the parents’ lives that educate the child—what they add by word and gesture at best serves only to confuse him. The same holds good for the teacher. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
574:And now, as a germination of planetary dimensions, comes the thinking layer which over its full extent develops and intertwines its fibres, not to confuse and neutralise them but to reinforce them in the living unity of a single tissue. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
575:God is with you in your moments of darkness because he will never leave you. But your darkness isn’t dark to him. Your mysteries aren’t mysterious to him. Your surprises don’t surprise him. He understands all the things that confuse you the most. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
576:I appreciate my my sleep In sleep my conversation is witty My home is dusted My office work is up to date The dog is even well behaved And food is on the table on time But then when I'm asleep I don't have you to clutter and confuse My hungry heart ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
577:The other two with their happy, objective minds would always be absorbed in the moment but she would look backward and remember, and look forward and be afraid, and the present would always confuse her because she would never entirely live in it. ~ Elizabeth Goudge, #NFDB
578:that there is no evidence of the possibility of large events, i.e., Black Swans. You are likely to confuse that statement, however, particularly if you do not pay close attention, with the statement that there is evidence of no possible Black ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
579:It helps to not confuse theological philosophers with evangelists. There is a difference but objectively neither better than the other: an evangelist's mission is to convert; a theological philosopher's mission is to build an understanding of a position. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
580:We confuse what is complex (raising a child, finding more meaning in our lives) with what is complicated (sending astronauts to the moon, doing our taxes). Confusing the two, leads us to complicated solutions for things that are actually complex instead. ~ Patti Digh, #NFDB
581:As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
582:It has never been recommended to confuse "loving" with "seeking to please"... ...Salome pleased Herod's guests; I can hardly believe she was burning with love for them. As for poor John the Baptist... ...she certainly did not envelop him in her love. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
583:Many people confuse a Dom personality with a Dom's position of authority. The two are not exactly the same or interchangeable. A true Dom dominates. Plain and simple. And by dominate, we mean does what it takes to get a job done. Even if that means submit. ~ Lucian Bane, #NFDB
584:Skills are often in the form of procedures: if the road curves left, turn the wheel left; if a deer jumps in front of you, slam on the brakes. (Unfortunately, as of this writing Google’s self-driving cars still confuse windblown plastic bags with deer.) ~ Pedro Domingos, #NFDB
585:The bottom line is that the choices we make often make sense to us but can confuse others. Somebody is always going to be disappointed with your life choice, and my rule of thumb is that as long as I’m not the one who is disappointed, I can live with that. ~ Jen Kirkman, #NFDB
586:Desperate times call for desperate measures. That's a saying, or a bit of advice, or a catchprase, or a string of words used to confuse people less intelligent than you. In any case, it means: Life is tough, so you'd better fight hard-or something like that. ~ Obert Skye, #NFDB
587:Indeed, as we shall see, it is a bad mistake to confuse life satisfaction and happiness; the former is an overall judgment about life that comes from consideration, while the latter is an emotion, a mood, or a feeling, which is part of experiencing life.16 ~ Angus Deaton, #NFDB
588:Belonging to me doesn’t mean I’ll make you do anything, it just means I consider you mine for as long as this lasts. It means I protect you, it means I take care of you. For another man, it might mean something different. Don’t confuse me with another man ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
589:Pecans are not cheap, my hons. In fact, in the South, the street value of shelled pecans just before holiday baking season is roughly that of crack cocaine. Do not confuse the two. It is almost impossible to make a decent crack cocaine tassie, I am told. ~ Celia Rivenbark, #NFDB
590:All live and die believing that they have known love, thinking it is a common thing, because they confuse it with animal satisfaction; but love is a privilege, love is a lottery of fate, like wealth, like beauty, which only a small minority enjoy.... ~ Vicente Blasco Ib ez, #NFDB
591:Each person must decide for himself what he wants each day. As a leader, I will expose you to the options and the likely consequences of those options. I'll even share my opinion if asked, but I'll never confuse it with the opinion, which simply doesn't exist. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
592:Forget words like 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you're saying it like it's never been said before. ~ William Bernbach, #NFDB
593:Unfortunately, many of our churches calibrate their life to these nominal Christians. The predictable result is that you get fake, hypocritical churches that confuse the message of the gospel and make it hard for others who are trying to do genuine evangelism. ~ Mark Dever, #NFDB
594:Everyone says that loves hurts, but that’s not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Everyone confuse these things with love but reality, love is the only thing in this world that covers up all the pain and makes us feel wonderful again. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
595:The John Birch Society is Communism's greatest ally. With its help we will divide and confuse the American people until they have lost faith in their Government, their nation has ceased to be a major world power, and their country is ripe for revolution. ~ Nikita Khrushchev, #NFDB
596:The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind only if he arrives there in full possession of his partial faculties--that is, providing he is perfectly aware of the precise nature of sight and does not confuse it with second sightnor with madness. ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
597:All too easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is. As semanticist Alfred Korzybski used to say, it is an urgent necessity to distinguish between the map and the territory and, he might have added, between the flag and the country. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
598:Parliament is a rumor mill staffed by trough-fed clods who abuse the tongue of their birth every time they open their mouths. They all gabble at once and confuse one another mightily, and when this confusion is committed to paper they refer to it as ‘policy. ~ Karl Schroeder, #NFDB
599:There is a phrase used commonly in medicine: "true, true, and unrelated." It is meant to remind physicians not to confuse coincidence with cause. That kind of skepticism, while a fundamental tenet of scientific research, is less easily understood by laymen. ~ Michael Specter, #NFDB
600:we are now so prone to confuse great building projects with great social achievements. We will have to admit that it is beyond the scope of anyone’s imagination to create a community. We must learn to cherish the communities we have, they are hard to come by. ~ James C Scott, #NFDB
601:American women. Why do you all want to be nearly invisible? Why not have a physical presence in the world? Women should have curves, not angles. ...One should never confuse fashionable with beautiful. ...Eat. Be happy to have curves. A presence. ~ Beth Fantaskey, #NFDB
602:...diverting one's attention from the past was not the same as envisioning and embarking upon a future. On the other hand, if the past were razed, the slate wiped clean, maybe fewer people would confuse it with the future, and that at least would be something. ~ Richard Russo, #NFDB
603:Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
604:Christianity doesn't come into it. George Bush and Tony Blair are not Christians. Religious people believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in the profits and how to get a piece of them. So don't ever confuse this with a war of civilizations. ~ George Galloway, #NFDB
605:Do not flee us. Do not flee this moment, this scene. Do not confuse dislike and abhorrence with angry denial of truths you do not wish to see. I accept your horror and expect no forgiveness. But if you deny, I name you coward. And I have had my fill of cowards. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
606:Do you know the German word, sehnsucht," he asked.
"Yes," I answered. "The idea of an inconsolable longing for what we don't understand. You believe that longing is for God. Or heaven. And that we can confuse it with longing for someone or something else. ~ Patti Callahan,#NFDB
607:We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary. ~ Wynton Marsalis, #NFDB
608:The sun touches Maine first among every state in the US. But Maine likes to confuse people and generally feels conflicted on the subject of light and warmth, so its shattered coastline of necks and points and isles hides from the sun, facing any direction but east. ~ John Hodgman, #NFDB
609:Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
610:There is power in naming the unnamed things. This is an important part of our decision-making practice and key to taking our next right step in love. Remember today is a plot point. See it honestly for what it is, but don't confuse the moment for the whole story. ~ Emily P Freeman, #NFDB
611:Too many people confuse real magic with magical thinking. Real magic isn't a trick and it transforms our lives. Magical thinking is denial.
Real magic is what happens when we break old belief patterns and have the courage to employ the native laws of the Universe ~ Jacob Nordby,#NFDB
612:every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love
you teach her to confuse
anger with kindness
which seems like a good idea
till she grows up to
trust men who hurt her
cause they look so much
like you - to fathers with daughters ~ Rupi Kaur,#NFDB
613:Her calculations were sometimes a little fuzzy, for the same reason that her checkbook sometimes did not balance; Becky Vesey (as she had been known as a child) had never really mastered the multiplication tables and she was inclined to confuse sevens with nines. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
614:I feel very sorry for the professionals whenever they find another confusing skull, something that belonged to the wrong sort of people, or whenever they find statues or artifacts that confuse them—for they’ll talk about the odd, but they won’t talk about the impossible, ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
615:Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him: because evil is but a chance misfortune, an illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement. ~ John of Kronstadt, #NFDB
616:You've changed my mind,' she said shyly. I noted her curious choice of words but refused to let her say any more. Additional conversation would only confuse the matter. If I could change her mind without knowing it, I could just as easily change it back again by accident. ~ Mike Gayle, #NFDB
617:The more that man is able to distinguish himself from the rest of creation, the more he becomes conscious of himself as subject, as an "I", to whom the whole world is Object, the more does he tend to confuse himself with God, to confuse his spirit with the Spirit of God. ~ Emil Brunner, #NFDB
618:Right now, when it comes to making an album, we really want to give our fans just Linkin Park. We don't want to water it down with anything else or confuse it with anything else. Meteora is just us and that's where our focus has been. So hopefully the fans can enjoy that. ~ Mike Shinoda, #NFDB
619:Have patience with all things - but first with yourself. Never confuse your mistakes with your value as a human being. You are perfectly valuable, creative, worthwhile person simply because you exist. And no amount of triumphs or tribulations can ever change that. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
620:Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It’s something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words like aggression and even violence. —FRED ROGERS, MR. ROGERS’ NEIGHBORHOOD ~ Demi Lovato, #NFDB
621:Grow attached, and you become addicted; Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger; Be angry & you confuse your mind; Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience; Forget experience, you lose discrimination; Lose discrimination & you miss life's only purpose ~ Bhagavad Gita, #NFDB
622:The Catholic Church created strict guidelines for the rite of exorcism back in 1614—guidelines that have remained largely unchanged in 400 years. However, one notable amendment came in 1952, when priests were warned not to confuse mental illness with demonic possession ~ Seth Grahame Smith, #NFDB
623:To assume that one’s existential task is completed when the individual is brought into right relation with society, that is, when the individual has been socialized, is to absolutize society and confuse society with God. ~ Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, p. 35, #NFDB
624:We have a terrible time understanding love, because we confuse it with desire. Desire and love are two utterly different kinds of things. Not only is desire not love; it is often opposed to love. Right action is the act of love, regardless of the desires of anyone involved. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
625:I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted. ~ Steve Coogan, #NFDB
626:Won't it confuse the fans? If you can keep up with seven warring factions' worth of intrigues, conspiracies, assassinations, blackmail plots, power plays, incestuous activities, treacheries, schemes, collusions and affairs, an actorly switcheroo shouldn't cause much of a problem. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
627:So, Carter, if you need to talk about anything, you know, about being gay. If there are things that you don't understand or things that confuse you, you can ask me. Anything. You can ask me anything."
Carter studied him for a moment and asked. "Who's your cell provider? ~ Marshall Thornton,#NFDB
628:Societies are preoccupied with just about everything other than making good people. For some, it is intelligence. Parents are often more concerned with their children’s IQs than their children’s characters. And many people confuse higher education with decency and moral insight. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
629:Sometimes there are ways to minimize the importance of gender in life, or to confuse gender categories so that they no longer have descriptive power. But other times gender can be very important to us, and some people really love the gender that they have claimed for themselves. ~ Judith Butler, #NFDB
630: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, #NFDB
631:And my name is the same word as for sun beams, as for winged and boneless sharks. But I’m far too solemn and inelegant to be named for either, and besides, my name is just another strange sound sent from the mouths of men to confuse you, to distract from your vocabulary of commands. ~ Sara Baume, #NFDB
632:If I said in one of my songs that my English teacher wanted to have sex with me in junior high, all I'm saying, is that I'm not gay, you know? People confuse the lyrics for me speaking my mind. I don't agree with that lifestyle, but if that lifestyle is for you, then it's your business. ~ Eminem, #NFDB
633:Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they 'ought to be.' And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope! ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
634:I never want to turn something down because I'm afraid to do it, because of some idea of image or whatever. That was never anything I set out to do. In fact, the opposite, I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make. ~ Christian Bale, #NFDB
635:Often your 'fixes' are actually removing capabilities that you had, because they were 'too confusing to the user'. GNOME seems to be developed by interface Nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'. ~ Linus Torvalds, #NFDB
636:people confuse power with will because so few of them have the foggiest idea what they want. Absent any knowledge, will remains impotent. A limp dick, as it were.” She regarded him, eyebrow arched. “The lucky few who happen actually to know what they want are said to have will-power. ~ Richard Russo, #NFDB
637:There is this absurd assumption that the revitalisation of the public sphere is always a good thing. I think people tend to confuse 'civic' and 'civil,' and they believe that everything that is done by citizens is necessarily a good thing because you build a network, an association. ~ Evgeny Morozov, #NFDB
638:Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary, sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge. ~ Sri Yukteswar Giri, #NFDB
639:Revolution might sound a little dramatic, but in this world, choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance. You’re going to confuse, piss off, and terrify lots of people—including yourself. One ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
640:Don’t confuse creativity and imagination with “thinking” either. Ray Bradbury said that thinking is the enemy of creativity because it’s self-conscious. When you think you sit calmly and try to reason through something in a structured, logical way. Creativity dances to a different tune. ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
641:Marilyn Manson has always been intended to confuse some, anger some and make some people feel at home. There's no way to misunderstand what I do - but everyone can understand it differently. That's the only way I've learned to embrace art - it has to be a question mark, not an answer. ~ Marilyn Manson, #NFDB
642:People say it is positive; People say it is negative; But they do not know. A smooth road, a rough road -- Even heaven cannot imagine. I have continued my zazen for many eons; I do not say this to confuse you.
~ Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia, 41 - People say it is positive (from The Shodoka)
,#NFDB
643:It is as well that the world knows only a fine piece of work and not also its origins, the conditions under which it came into being; for knowledge of the sources of an artist's inspiration would often confuse readers and shock them, and the excellence of the writing would be of no avail. ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB
644:Today, under the influences of Eastern religions and philosophies imported into the West, many Christians confuse God's Spirit with our spirit and think our spirit is a spark of the divine, "the God within everyone." That's not how the biblical writers thought about our spirits or souls. ~ Roger E Olson, #NFDB
645:My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic. ~ Frances Hardinge, #NFDB
646:Because if anything is clear in the aftermath of the Reformation, it has to be this: we human beings can interpret the Bible to say and mean an awful lot of different things. We can very easily confuse “The Bible says” with “I say the Bible says,” which we can then equate with “God says. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
647:When you’re in love, your brain secretes endorphins into your blood. Organic morphine leaks out of a gland in your skull, feels like a low-grade opium rush. Some people confuse the two, the head rush and the love. You think you’re in love with a person, but you’re in love with a syringe. ~ Craig Clevenger, #NFDB
648:I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That's where so many clergymen... go wrong ~ George MacDonald Fraser, #NFDB
649:Those called penny bags. Each of them got a brand-new penny on the bottom. The light reflecting off the penny supposed to confuse the flies, so they don’t come around and bother the food, although every time I see a fly, they confused enough already. Know what I mean?” Queenie chuckled. ~ Laura Lane McNeal, #NFDB
650:And I surely cannot tell him that I'm no more good for me or for him than I ever was, that I will disappoint and confuse him, that I've been alone my whole life, and that it may really be too hard and too late, not even desirable, after such long, familiar cold, to be known, and heard, and seen. ~ Amy Bloom, #NFDB
651:Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
652:Humans’ need for comfort is so powerful, and so many people confuse lust with love that it makes them vulnerable to predators like me. Women like Melissa crave the touch and love of a man so badly they’ll accept it from any source. She convinced herself I was a victim to sate her own conscience. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
653:If the people that believed the moon landing was staged on a movie lot had access to unlimited money from large carbon polluters or some other special interest who wanted to confuse people into thinking that the moon landing didn't take place, I'm sure we'd have a robust debate about it right now. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
654:Our dreams can teach us, instruct us, confuse us... sometimes I think they look to be considered. And in terms of like, they are an opportunity and I think they most certainly could be utilized to focus, to try and achieve - whether it's looking for someone, or influencing us, or inspiring us. ~ Keanu Reeves, #NFDB
655:Sometimes people confuse contrivance and authenticity, and sometimes I think authenticity can get in the way of a good excuse to do something theatrical. I just don't like wasting opportunity - if you're going to do a photo session, if you're going to walk on stage, why not make it interesting? ~ Johnny Marr, #NFDB
656:We struggle to maintain a dead past in the name of peace and refuse the new life that running water brings to everything. We confuse “stagnant” with “calm” and call it holiness. We miss the power of the paradox that peace is not passivity and that a living death is neither death nor life. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
657:However, do not confuse distraction with avoidance. When you avoid a distressing situation, you choose not to deal with it. But when you distract yourself from a distressing situation, you still intend to deal with it in the future, when your emotions have calmed down to a tolerable level. The ~ Matthew McKay, #NFDB
658:In a world that values the primacy of work, the most common question that we ask and get asked is, “What do you do?” I used to wince every time someone asked me this question. I felt like my choices were to reduce myself to an easily digestible sound bite or to confuse the hell out of people. Now ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
659:No, the Scriptures were not given to us to confuse us but rather to instruct us. Certainly God intends that we should believe His Word with all simplicity. A thousand years means a thousand years; a wolf means a wolf; a lion means a lion. If you read your Bible that way, a child can understand it. ~ M R DeHaan, #NFDB
660:When you confuse personal love and cosmic heroism you are bound to fail in both spheres. The impossibility of the heroism undermines the love, even if it is real. This double failure is what produces the sense of utter despair that we see in modern man... Love, then, is seen a religious problem ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
661:I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. There are subtleties which I cannot master at all - they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me - and this adverb plague is one of them. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
662:I felt for too long anyway that there was something creaky about this story. You needn’t try to understand, but when all the material clues manage to confuse matters rather than clarify them, it means they’ve been faked … and everything, without exception, is fake in this case. It all creaked. ~ Georges Simenon, #NFDB
663:Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
664:Judgment is either to confuse someone's unconscious behaviour with who they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person and mistake *that* for who they are.
If you are alert and present, you can point out behaviour without ego involvement (making the other person wrong). ~ Eckhart Tolle,#NFDB
665:The one-eyed man will be King in the country of the blind only if he arrives there in full possession of his partial faculties -- that is, providing he is perfectly aware of the precise nature of sight and does not confuse it with second sight, nor with the mind's eye's visions, nor with madness. ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
666:Although data on this are sparse, it also seems that US politicians of both parties are much wealthier than their European counterparts and in a totally different category from the average American, which might explain why they tend to confuse their own private interest with the general interest. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
667:Confuse the enemy. Keep him in the dark on your intentions. Sometimes what seems a victory isn't really a victory and sometimes a defeat isn't really a defeat. Whether in attacking, counterattacking, or defensive tactics, the idea of attacking should remain central, to always keep the initiative. ~ Vo Nguyen Giap, #NFDB
668:I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
669:It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, #NFDB
670:It’s Tolstoy, by the way,” I say as I open the door.
He turns around. “What?”
Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up.
“The writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a
pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you. ~ Melina Marchetta,#NFDB
671:Language is evidently one of the principle instruments or helps of thought; and any imperfection in the instrument, or in the mode of employing it, is confessedly liable, still more than in almost any other art, to confuse and impede the process, and destroy all ground of confidence in the result. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
672:Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will- to- action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens. ~ Arthur Gordon Webster, #NFDB
673:Love is sublime, truly, a precious gift. But also, alas, one of God's little pranks. It's naive of you to confuse love with happiness, as if they were somehow the samae thing. In fact love, once found, is more akin to gravity: too strong, too close, and it will crush you. Unless you're careful, always. ~ Wil McCarthy, #NFDB
674:We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way in which they are practiced in America with capitalism, federalism, and the two-party system, which are not moral principles but simply the preferred and accepted practices of the American people. ~ J William Fulbright, #NFDB
675:We must be vigilant that we don't sink into the morass of sectarianism, mixing, pettiness etc. We must not get involved in unprincipled slagging matches etc or into positions that are sectarian, anti-revolutionary, morally damaging that give succour to the enemy & that confuse & divide the working class ~ Thomas S Power, #NFDB
676:A biblical passion for justice as shalom might be precisely what pushes us to refuse this merely procedural standard of justice. That is not license to confuse the state with kingdom come, but it is an impetus to bear witness to—and lobby for—substantive visions of the good for the sake of our neighbors. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
677:Even though artists of all kinds claim to put their hearts and souls into their works, it will only confuse you, for example, if you try to discern a painter by his paintings. His masterpiece may be the master because of its iridescence; it may display a hundred different perspectives through his single face. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
678:I have come to see that our problem is that we don't know what happiness is. We confuse it with a life uncluttered by feelings of anxiety, rage, doubt, and sadness. But happiness is something entirely different. It's the ability to receive the pleasant without grasping and the unpleasant without condemning. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
679:In the networks' endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask what is the end value ... to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result ... to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitements, more drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability. ~ Spiro T Agnew, #NFDB
680:See, to appreciate a woman you have to appreciate a woman’s right to change. And to appreciate a woman’s right to change, you have to realize that she’ll do it with maddening frequency, usually just to confuse you so that you’ll never see her coming when she decides to rip your throat out and drink your blood. ~ Sam Sykes, #NFDB
681:I THINK THAT people confuse a woman with empathy with someone who has the emotional means to raise a child. I’m not mother material but I’m a nice person, sure. And I’m a nice person because I’m usually in a good mood and I’m usually in a good mood because I’m not responsible for raising a child I don’t want. ~ Jen Kirkman, #NFDB
682:Sometimes we struggle to grasp the biblical view of joy because of the way it is defined and described in Western culture today. In particular, we often confuse joy with happiness. In the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–11), according to the traditional translations, Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.… Blessed ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
683:Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary,” he remarked. “Sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Otherwise, continual intellectual study may result in vanity, false satisfaction, and undigested knowledge. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
684:It has driven men to extremes, to the impious arrogance of believing they alone can comprehend the vast mysteries of Scripture, let alone the mind of God. Such people are incapable of understanding even their own minds, for they confuse their own needs, for certainty or power, with God’s voice speaking to them. ~ C J Sansom, #NFDB
685:It's best to not confuse optimism with hope. Optimism is a psychological attitude toward life. Hope goes further. It is an anchor that one hurls toward the future, it's what lets you pull on the line and reach what you're aiming for and head in the right direction. Hope is also theological: God is there, too. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
686:Don’t confuse love with romance, young lady. Romance is beautiful, it’s a gesture, it’s a walk in a park with a pretty girl. Love is ugly sometimes. It’s a crawl into a war zone to save a friend. Romance whispers sweet nothings. Love tells painful truths. Romance gives an engagement ring. Love takes a bullet. ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
687:I appreciate my my sleep
In sleep my conversation
is witty
My home is dusted
My office work
is up to date
The dog
is even
well behaved
And food is on the table
on time
But then
when I'm asleep
I don't have you
to clutter and confuse
My hungry heart ~ Nikki Giovanni,#NFDB
688:The road will never swallow you. The river of destiny will always overcome evil. May you understand your fate. Suffering will never destroy you, but will make you stronger. Success will never confuse you of scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you. ~ Ben Okri, #NFDB
689:All right. But take my advice, Mr. Hel. Don’t let this chance get away. Opportunity doesn’t knock twice, you know.”
“Penetrating observation. Did you make up the epigram?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Very well. And ask the guard to knock on my cell door twice. I wouldn’t want to confuse him with opportunity. ~ Trevanian,#NFDB
690:Here’s what I tell the newly elected: the truth is gonna get out—it always does—but it’s gonna blend in with all the lies.” The Senator twirled a hand in the air. “You have to deny each lie and every truth with the same vinegar. Let those websites and blowhards who bitch about cover-ups confuse the public for you. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
691:Sarah Palin was delivering a speech and she said 'refudiate.' It's not a word – you have refute and repudiate, and she combined them. A lot of times that will happen and people will confuse combinations of words. I remember a couple years ago John McCain mistakenly combined the words Vice President and Palin. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
692:But the bigots always see those whom they hate as morally corrupt, as if they confuse their own aesthetics of disgust and fear with actual ethical critique, rationalizing their emotional response, and enforcing their moral certainties with passion, establishing them-selves, subtly or brutally, as arbiters of reason. ~ Hal Duncan, #NFDB
693:The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny that
the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them
by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent
of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipation
is imperative. ~ H l ne Cixous,#NFDB
694:But things never go according to plan. In fact, I think if you're really attached to controlling your future, you should plan for the opposite of what you want just to confuse the cosmic comedians whose sole job is to figure out what you think your future should hold so they can preclude it from ever happening. ~ Hollis Gillespie, #NFDB
695:The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. He does not confuse truth with plausibility, he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
696:A white handkerchief in the shade may be objectively darker than a lump of coal in the sunshine. We rarely confuse the one with the other because the coal will on the whole be the blackest patch in our field of vision, the handkerchief the whitest, and it is relative brightness that matters and that we are aware of. ~ E H Gombrich, #NFDB
697:A democracy isn’t about freedom, it’s about representation,” Corsia replied. “A people can choose representatives who strip away their freedoms—be it on purpose or otherwise—while a dictator can operate benevolently. Not that either always work that way, but do not confuse the right to vote in an election with freedom. ~ M D Cooper, #NFDB
698:Egli sapeva che del viaggio poco si ricorda. Passano fisionomie e s'accumulano confuse in un cantuccio della memoria, diventando collettività, nazioni, sessi, mai individui. Come nel sogno, ch'era tanto difficile da ricordare, perché piombava dalla notte oscura in un lapo di magnesio in cui s'agitavano cose e persone. ~ Italo Svevo, #NFDB
699:Please don’t confuse random with spontaneous. Spontaneous rocks. It emerges from a field of probabilities that you control, maintaining choice and meaning. It involves instinct and urge, hunches and feelings, imagination and belief. Random implies the opposite. Empty and pointless. Maybe or maybe not. Chance and luck. ~ Mike Dooley, #NFDB
700:A democracy isn’t about freedom, it’s about representation,” Corsia replied. “A people can choose representatives who strip away their freedoms—be it on purpose or otherwise—while a dictator can operate benevolently. Not that either always works that way, but do not confuse the right to vote in an election with freedom. ~ M D Cooper, #NFDB
701:It’s easy to confuse life with God,” he stated. “What do you mean?” “I mean, sometimes we assume that life is a reflection of God. But it’s not. Life is this way because God gave us a choice on how to live, and, as humans, we screw up. Therefore, we have a lot of ugliness around us. But that’s not a picture of God. ~ Christy Barritt, #NFDB
702:Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency, and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn't about what others can give you because your empty. It is about what you can give others because you're already full. ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
703:Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved? Does not the word "God" only confuse and make more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless and palpably absurd? ~ Joseph Lewis, The Philosophy of Atheism, #NFDB
704:How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer. ~ Janet Fitch, #NFDB
705:To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
706:Excel in your field: Whatever you do, try to be the best at it. There is too much mediocrity all around and we have learnt to live with it. However, awesomeness has no place for mediocrity. And do not confuse excellence with elitism. Being excellent at your work is different from considering yourself superior to others. ~ Chetan Bhagat, #NFDB
707:The danger with our commitment to the principle of racial equality is that it leads us to confuse tactics with principles. The principle of gaining equal educational opportunity for black children was and is right. But our difficulties came when we viewed racial balance and busing as the only means of achieving that goal. ~ Derrick A Bell, #NFDB
708:They will not be pleased. But they know we must catch the monsoon with a well-found ship; and they know they are in the Navy--they have chosen their cake, and must lie on it.'
You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it.'
No, no, it is not quite that either. I mean--I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen. ~ Patrick O Brian,#NFDB
709:When we speak of a calm state of mind or peace of mind, we shouldn't confuse that with an insensitive state of apathy. Having a calm or peaceful state of mind doesn't mean being spaced out or completely empty. Peace of mind or a calm state of mind is rooted in affection and compassion and is sensitive and responsive to others. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
710:Mine is a khopesh ,’ Carter said. ‘The original Egyptian version. What you’re holding is a kopis – a Greek design adapted from the Egyptian original. It’s the kind of sword Ptolemy’s warriors would’ve used.’
I looked at Sadie. ‘Is he trying to confuse me?’
‘No,’ she said brightly. ‘He’s confusing without trying. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
711:Opportunism is self interest seeking with guile often involving subtle forms of deceit, especially calculated efforts to mislead, distort, disguise, obfuscate, or otherwise confuse. This vastly complicates the problems of economic organisation. Plainly if it were not for opportunism all behaviour could be rule governed ~ Oliver E Williamson, #NFDB
712:Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
713:Love is bigger than us. So we confuse over it. And of course its vastness overwhelms. But then that is the only lesson in life. How to love. how to love well, with detached eye but a concerned hand. How to understand and surrender to its countless contradictions. Most importantly though, how to never stop loving. ~ Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, #NFDB
714:We must not confuse resting on our laurels with walking intimately with God. If we rely on our past victories, we’ll fail in our current battles. However, if we rest in God more than we trust ourselves—because we have a history with Him—He’ll cover us, equip us, empower us, and protect us whether we feel up for the battle or not. ~ Susie Larson, #NFDB
715:All of your emotions are going to try to fuck you up. They are there to try to confuse you, so know right now that they cannot be trusted at all. You will feel shy sometimes, and self-conscious, and you must deal with it like you deal with a pebble in your shoe. It’s uncomfortable, but you ignore it. It’s not part of the equation. ~ Neil Strauss, #NFDB
716:Don't confuse my respect for this family as weakness, Princess. I'm a bad bitch when I need to be and I can promise you, that's not a game you're willing to play." She scofs with an incredulous smile, "I don't pull hair, I break teeth. Choose your next words carefully or I might be provoked to show you just how petty my threats are. ~ Ellie Messe, #NFDB
717:The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
718:My favorite place in L.A. is Manhattan Beach. It's an intimate, friendly little beachside city within a city-smaller than most of its neighbors, so it reminds me of a British seaside resort. If my three teenage sons are in town, we'll play some cricket on the flat, hard sand where the water breaks, just to really confuse the locals! ~ Piers Morgan, #NFDB
719:We must not confuse letting go of past injuries with feeling an obligation to let the injurers back into our life. The freedom of forgiveness often includes a firm boundary and loving distance from those who have harmed us. As my father likes to say, "We can let them back into our hearts without ever letting them back into our house. ~ Noah Levine, #NFDB
720:Many people confuse authority and the power of efficiency, as if the first role of people with responsibility is to take decisions, command effectively and so exercise power. But their role first of all is to be a person to whom others can turn for help and advice, to provide security, to affirm, to support, to encourage and to guide. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
721:You will not grow through guilt, but only shrivel and die. Awareness is what you seek. But awareness is not guilt, and love is not fear. Fear and guilt, I say again, are your only enemies. Love and awareness are your true friends. Yet do not confuse the one with the other, for one will kill you, while the other gives you life. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
722:And the Savior said that the very elect would be deceived by Lucifer if it were possible [see Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:22]. [Lucifer] will use his logic to confuse and his rationalizations to destroy. He will shade meanings, open doors an inch at a time, and lead from purest white through all the shades of gray to the darkest black. ~ Spencer W Kimball, #NFDB
723:[I]t is typical of Zen that its style of action has the strongest feeling of commitment, of "follow-through." It enters into everything wholeheartedly and freely without having to keep an eye on itself. It does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
724:The enemy uses lies to confuse people and fill them with anxiety and fear. The apostle John said, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19). The enemy’s lies completely mess up our thinking and weaken us if we believe them. Every day we must combat his lies with God’s truth. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
725:Love is bigger than us. So we confuse ourselves over it.And of course, its vastness overwhelms. But then that is the only lesson in life.How to love. How to love well, with a detached eye but a concerned hand.How to understand and surrender to its countless contradictions. Most importantly, though, how to never stop loving. ~ Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, #NFDB
726:Thinking about sense-objects Will attach you to sense-objects; Grow attached, and you become addicted; Thwart your addiction, it turns to anger; Be angry, and you confuse your mind; Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience; Forget experience, you lose discrimination; Lose discrimination, and you miss life’s only purpose. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
727:You have to have a habitual vision of greatness … you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won’t confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won’t confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity … believe in fact that living is connected to giving. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
728:Im's offspring stare at stars and make clocks that calculate useless happenings like the angle of a hawk's claws as it strikes its prey. They demonstrate their contraptions and everyone marvels. My children get drunk, confuse a herd of cows with an enemy regiment, and slaughter the lot, screaming like lunatics until the entire army panics. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
729:I think I have more feelings for you than I should have,” he admitted. “Feelings aren’t supposed to make sense, though, right? They confuse the fuck out of me and make me twisted inside,” he whispered as he gently touched his forehead to hers. “Tell me it’s not just me who feels this connection,” he muttered.
“It’s not,” she whispered. ~ Amelia Hutchins,#NFDB
730:Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they’re a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role. ~ Keith Johnstone, #NFDB
731:You have to have a habitual vision of greatness ... you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won't confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won't confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity ... believe in fact that living is connected to giving. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
732:Don't give it to them all at once, make them work for it. Confuse them with detail, leave things out, go back on your tracks. Be testy, be cussed, be difficult. Drink like a fish; don't give way on the ideology, they won't trust that. They want to deal with a man they've bought; they want the clash of opposites, Alec, not some half-cock convert. ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
733:What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
734:The 14th Amendment, 2nd Amendment, there's nothing in the Constitution that says that if you are born to an illegal immigrant in America, that you are an American citizen. It's not there. People think it is. They confuse it with being born to an American citizen in America or overseas. But there's nothing in the law, nothing in the Constitution. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
735:What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
736:When programs, methods, and money produce impressive results, there is an inclination to confuse human success with divine blessing. Christians can actually behave like practical humanists, living as if God were not necessary. When that happens, passionate longing for God and yearning for His help will be missing—along with His empowerment. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
737:One of the differences between us was that Marc wanted very badly to climb the Eiger, while I wanted very badly only to have climbed the Eiger. Marc, understand, is at that age when the pituitary secretes an overabundance of those hormones that mask the subtler emotions, such as fear. He tends to confuse things like life-or-death climbing with fun. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
738:People often confuse leadership with managerial skills. I agree with their assessment. You certainly have the ability to inspire people. Minutiae, on the other hand, might not be your forte. That being said, even if you are not the most organized person in the world, it would be a shame not to let everyone benefit from your experience and wisdom. ~ Sylvain Neuvel, #NFDB
739:The force of life, and electrical energy: Are these not the most clear manifestations of these two principles? Life and electricity must be clearly distinguished. Thus, today there is a tendency to confuse them, and to reduce them to electricity alone. However, electricity is due to the antagonism of opposites, whilst life is the fusion of polarities. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
740:...to her, all familiar responses smell of entrapment. Sharing an old joke, singing an old song - these are admissions of defeat, of being satisfied with one's lot. In the sky, the Fates are watching, and when they hear such things, they murmur amongst themselves: Ah yes, that one is quite content as she is; changing her lot would only confuse her. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
741:Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfil obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. -Robert A. Heinlein ~ Christopher G Nuttall, #NFDB
742:Now, the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments. And that is, when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use. ~ Hal Abelson, #NFDB
743:Frenzy, the counterfeit of fervency, is a contrived attempt to simulate godly fervor. Those who deliberately manipulate
people's emotions are served warning here. There is something holy, something sovereign, about genuine spiritual fervor that cannot be manufactured artificially. It is easy to confuse frenzy and fervor, but the confusion is deadly. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
744:I think there's always an expectation when you're a first generation, especially a first-generation Nigerian, of sort of being a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. And so, you know, sort of my initial pursuits into the arts and that I was going to pursue film as a career didn't confuse them, but it was definitely something that they were scared about. ~ Terry Gross, #NFDB
745:When I think about capitalism, I think about all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in America for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families. And I don't think we should confuse what we have to do every so often in America, which is save capitalism from itself. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
746:There’s something very freeing about losing the anchors that have always defined you. Frightening, sad, but exhilarating in a poignant way, as well. You’re free to float to the moon and evaporate or sink to the bottom of the deepest ocean. But you’re free to explore. Some people confuse that with drifting, I suppose. I like to think of it as growing. ~ Deborah Smith, #NFDB
747:All human beings seek the happy life, but many confuse the means - for example, wealth and status - with that life itself. This misguided focus on the means to a good life makes people get further from the happy life. The really worthwhile things are the virtuous activities that make up the happy life, not the external means that may seem to produce it. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
748:There is no such “mother” as Mother Nature. Nature itself is powerless to produce life of any kind. In itself, nature is barren. The power to produce life resides in the Author of nature—God. To substitute nature as the source of life is to confuse the creature with the Creator. All forms of nature worship are acts of idolatry that are detestable to God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
749:Don't drive drunk. Ever. Don't shag anyone you don't like, or who doesn't like you. Get a look at how people live in a place where you don't. Suffering is over-rated, don't pursue it. Ask for help when you need it, don't when you don't, and learn to recognize the difference. Don't confuse movement and progress. Be kind. Be forgiving. Pay attention. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
750:It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer. . . . Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other. ~ Vera Nazarian, #NFDB
751:All designed tools and objects are sort of extensions of human abilities, and they do tend to make life richer for us. But, an awful lot of designs, especially in this country, make life a lot more inconvenient. I'm thinking, for instance, of high-fidelity units that have so many switches and toggles and buttons and things that they confuse most people. ~ Victor Papanek, #NFDB
752:Behind your reaction is a feeling that whatever is 'true' must be able to be expressed logically. Men, in particular, have a tendency to confuse correct logic with an accurate assessment of a situation. Be careful of any situation that you have to reason through logically, because if you have to work to reason it out, you're probably missing something. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
753:Fear
If you were here,
Hopes, dreams, ambitions, faith would disappear,
Drowned in your eyes; and I should touch your hand,
Forgetting all that now I understand.
For you confuse my life with memories
Of unrememberable ecstasies
Which were, and are not, and can never be; . . .
Ah! keep the whole earth between you and me.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
754:science is subordinated to the “science studies” of humanities scholars and the journalistic denial of objectivity. Such academics and reporters insist that all truth is subjective or derivative of one’s political identity group, and they confuse the process of science with the culture of scientists, thereby falsely equating knowledge with opinion. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
755:Statman, Thorley and Vorkink found that investors absolutely “confuse brains with a bull market,” attributing their own success to skill and not the fact that a rising tide had lifted all boats.69 As a result, trading volumes were found to rise dramatically following good times and fall precipitously in bad times, effectively buying high and selling low. ~ Daniel Crosby, #NFDB
756:Let us not confuse objectives with methods. Too many so-called leaders of the nation fail to see the forest because of the trees. Too many of them fail to recognize the vital necessity of planning for definite objectives. True leadership calls for the setting forth of the objectives and the rallying of public opinion in support of these objectives. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
757:Over the years my religion has changed and my spirituality has evolved. Religion and spirituality are very different, but people often confuse the two. Some things cannot be taught, but they can be awakened in the heart. Spirituality is recognizing the divine light that is within us all. It doesn't belong to any particular religion; it belongs to everyone. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
758:Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as “just following orders.” If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
759:I do believe that half a dozen commonplace attorneys could so mystify and misconstrue the Ten Commandments, and so confuse Moses' surroundings on Mount Sinai, that the great law-giver, if he returned to this planet, would doubt his own identity, abjure every one of his deliverances, yea, even commend the very sins he so clearly forbade his people. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
760:Podo and Nia exchanged a glance, and Podo waved a hand in the air. “Well, did the sea dragon also tell ye that his whole race is a bunch of scaly liars? Did he tell ye that they manipulate and confuse for the thrill of it? Sea dragons watch the doings of men with a wicked eye and would just as soon see you run off the cliff as run from Gnag the Nameless. ~ Andrew Peterson, #NFDB
761:Sadly, today, instead of having the positive experiences they need for healthy development, many children are having experiences that undermine it.
Today’s cultural environment bombards children with inappropriate and harmful messages. As children struggle to understand what they see and hear, they learn lessons that can frighten and confuse them. ~ Jean Kilbourne,#NFDB
762:I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
763:Never work just for money. Money alone won't save your soul or build a decent family life or help you sleep at night. We're the richest nation on Earth, with the highest number of imprisoned people in the world. Our drug addictions and child poverty are among the highest in the industrialized world. So don't ever confuse wealth or fame with character. ~ Marian Wright Edelman, #NFDB
764:Confidence is not lodged in people's brains, it comes from the support system that surrounds them. Let's not confuse confidence overall with just self-confidence. Self-confidence is only one part of confidence. People also need confidence in others - their colleagues and leaders - that they can count on them to do the right thing and not to let them down. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter, #NFDB
765:God in His answers to prayer often says "Yes." Sometimes He says "Wait." Often He says "No." In any case, His will is done, and true faith is to believe that what happened has happened for the best. If one does not take that attitude, he is setting his personal desire against the wisdom of God. Oftentimes we confuse with faith merely that which we desire. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
766:When the Vent begins, you might confuse [it] for a conversation. It's not. It's a Vent. It's a mental release valve and your job is to listen for as long as it takes. Don't problem solve. Don't redirect. Don't comfort. Yet. Your employee is doing mental house cleaning and interrupting this cleaning is missing the point. They don't want a solution, they want to be heard. ~ Rands, #NFDB
767:Many of us reject theonomy because we think that the Mosaic law is harsh. But the real problem is with us, not with the law (cf. Romans 7:12, 14). We have swallowed so much of the modern humanistic thinking that our own judgments and emotional reactions are corrupted. We confuse mercy with vague good will, justice with tolerance, love with sentimentality. ~ Vern Sheridan Poythress, #NFDB
768:We must first of all realize that we can never confuse Nietzsche with Rosenberg. We must be the
advocates of Nietzsche. He himself has said so, denouncing in advance his bastard progeny: "he who has
liberated his mind still has to purify himself." But the question is to find out if the liberation of the mind,
as he conceived it, does not preclude purification. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
769:It is important not to confuse “patriotism” with “nationalism.” As I define it, nationalism is a monologue in which you place your country in a position of moral and cultural supremacy over others. Patriotism, while deeply personal, is a dialogue with your fellow citizens, and a larger world, about not only what you love about your country but also how it can be improved. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
770:Most of us, I believe, admire strength. It's something we tend to respect in others, desire for ourselves, and wish for our children. Sometimes, though, I wonder if we confuse strength with other words—like 'aggression' and even 'violence'. Real strength is neither male nor female; but it is, quite simply, one of the finest characteristics that a human being can possess. ~ Fred Rogers, #NFDB
771:To AMAZE (AMA'ZE) v.a.[from a and maze, perplexity.]1. To confuse with terrour. Yea, I will make many people amazed at thee, and their kings shall be horribly afraid for thee, when I shall brandish my sword before them, and they shall tremble at every moment; every man for his own life in the day of the fall.BibleEzek.xxxii. 10.2. To put into confusion with wonder. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
772:...we must never confuse the positive things that America does with the kingdom of God, for the kingdom of God is not centered on being morally, politically, or socially positive *relative* to other versions of the kingdom of the world. Rather, the kingdom of God is centered on being *beautiful*, as defined by Jesus Christ dying on a cross for those who crucified him. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
773:Boomer had asked her once, in a telephone call from Virginia, “Why does this stuff, these hand-painted hallucinations that don’t do nothin’ but confuse the puddin’ out of a perfectly reasonable wall, why does it mean so much to you?” It was a poor connection, but he could have sworn he heard her say, “In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
774:Dialogue is a space where we may see the assumptions which lay beneath the surface of our thoughts, assumptions which drive us, assumptions around which we build organizations, create economies, form nations and religions. These assumptions become habitual, mental habits that drive us, confuse us and prevent our responding intelligently to the challenges we face every day. ~ David Bohm, #NFDB
775:Often people that tell others they are "extremely polite" when the situation calls for tact and bluntness are not actually polite people. Instead, they hide behind the word “polite” because they have low self esteem or hidden agendas. Sadly, they impolitely confuse the hell out of everyone, send mixed signals, which then makes people question their sanity and motives. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
776:A lot of people mistake the persona that I create in poetry and fiction with me. A lot of people claim to know me who don't really know me. They know the work, or they know the persona in the work, and they confuse that with me, the writer. They don't realize that the persona is also a creation and a fabrication, a composite of my friends and myself all pasted together. ~ Sandra Cisneros, #NFDB
777:(Dennis says) "Hey, you're playing confuse-the-unbeliever again. I have never been able to get a straight answer on whether you guys have two deities or dozens, taken from any pantheon you feel like mugging in a theological dark alley. Which is it? Number one or number two?"
"Yes," Juniper said, with all the other coven members joining in to make a ragged chorus... ~ S M Stirling,#NFDB
778:All warfare is based on deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near, make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are to lure him; feign disorder and strike him. When he concentrates, prepare against him; where he is strong, avoid him. Anger his general and confuse him. Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
779:Master stressed on other occasions the futility of mere book learning. “Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary,” he remarked. “Sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
780:All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts. ~ Richard Diebenkorn, #NFDB
781:(I)t is simply wrong to confuse cowardice with appeasement. Cowardice is a failing of character. Appeasement is a failure of policy. Stalin appeased Hitler when he signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Stalin was an evil character, to be sure. But cowardice really isn't the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Stalin ' that word is “sexy.” I'm kidding, I'm kidding. ~ Jonah Goldberg, #NFDB
782:So we see that God has made provision for our holiness. Through Christ He has delivered us from sin's reign so that we now can resist sin. But the responsibility for resisting is ours. God does not do that for us. To confuse the potential for resisting (which God provided) with the responsibility for resisting (which is ours) is to court disaster in our pursuit of holiness. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
783:I remembered what it was like to walk a gauntlet of strangers who stare—their eyes angry, confused, intrigued. Woman or man: they are outraged that I confuse them. The punishment will follow. The only recognition I can find in their eyes is that I am “other.” I am different. I will always be different. I will never be able to nestle my skin against the comfort of sameness. ~ Leslie Feinberg, #NFDB
784:Matrix passò il Rubicone in uno stato di trance psicologica, incapace di percepire le acque che gli mulinavano intorno. Era un ragazzino e stava scivolando in maniera lenta e inesorabile nella delinquenza. In qualche recesso della sua mente era consapevole che forse qualcosa non andava, ma nel cyberspazio le linee di demarcazione sono molto confuse, sempre che siano visibili. ~ Misha Glenny, #NFDB
785:O LORD, what are human beings that you should notice them, mere mortals that you should think about them? 4 For they are like a breath of air; their days are like a passing shadow. 5 Open the heavens, LORD, and come down. Touch the mountains so they billow smoke. 6 Hurl your lightning bolts and scatter your enemies! Shoot your arrows and confuse them! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
786:You can't just repurpose old material created for one platform, throw it up on another one, and then be surprised when everyone yawns in your face. No one would ever think it was a good idea to use a print ad for a television commercial, or confuse a banner ad for a radio spot. Like their traditional media platform cousins, every social media platform has its own language. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
787:You can’t just repurpose old material created for one platform, throw it up on another one, and then be surprised when everyone yawns in your face. No one would ever think it was a good idea to use a print ad for a television commercial, or confuse a banner ad for a radio spot. Like their traditional media platform cousins, every social media platform has its own language. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
788:No Arturo, there never was a sea. You dream and you wish, but
you go on through the wasteland. You will never see the sea again. It was a
myth you once believed.-But, I have to smile, for the salt of the sea is in my
blood, and there may be ten thousand roads over the land, but they shall never
confuse me, for my heart's blood will ever return to its beautiful source. ~ John Fante,#NFDB
789:Using an artful tool does not make one a dry technician. It seems to me that people that are anxious about our technical advancement, confuse means and ends. Naturally a person that only works for material gain will not harvest something that is worth living for. But the machine is not an end in itself. The airplane is not an end. It is a tool. Just like the plough. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, #NFDB
790:Why do [people] confuse probability and expectation, that is, probability [vs.] probability times payoff? Mainly because much... schooling comes from examples in symmetric environments... the... bell curve... is entirely symmetric. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001) Six: Skewness and Symmetry | The Median is Not the Message, #NFDB
791:Inexperience people think that books will lead the one of intellect to understanding. But the ignoramus doesn't know that in these books are ambiguos that will confuse even the most intelligent of people. If you try to learn this knowledge without a teacher you will go astray and affairs will become so confusing to you that you will be more astray than Toma*, the physician.
*توما الحكيم ~,#NFDB
792:How laudable it is for a prince to keep good faith and live with integrity, and not with astuteness, every one knows. Still the experience of our times shows those princes to have done great things who have had little regard for good faith, and have been able by astuteness to confuse men's brains, and who have ultimately overcome those who have made loyalty their foundation. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, #NFDB
793:We are less concerned with the social or artistic aspects of postmodern culture here than with the academic, political, and science-studies aspects, which sought to circumscribe science and reclaim it as a subset of the humanities. In so doing, postmodernism created the intellectual ammunition being used in the war on science to confuse the public about its role and function ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
794:To know another human being in their essence, you don’t really need to know anything about them - their past, their history, their story. We confuse knowing about with a deeper knowing that is non-conceptual. Knowing about and knowing are totally different modalities. One is concerned with form, the other with the formless. One operates through thought, the other through stillness. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
795:In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
796:I think it is dangerous to confuse the idea of democracy with elections. Just because you have elections doesn't mean you're a democratic country. They're a very vitally important part of a democracy. But there are other things that ought to function as checks and balances. If elections are the only thing that matter, then people are going to resort to anything to win that election. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
797:Survival is a short-term strategy. Don’t confuse it with living. Life isn’t about whether you live or die. Because we’re all gonna die—not a damn thing any of us can do about that.” “Right,” I snapped. “The war didn’t help me figure that out.” “Rather,” he went on, “life is about the grace. About making sure that while you are alive, you’re living for something bigger than yourself. ~ Barbara Nickless, #NFDB
798:Confusion is a good state to be in. It means you are looking, constantly looking. People ask me, "Why do you confuse us like this?" I want you to understand, if you can be confused by anybody, it means you do not know. If you are fanatical, you cannot be confused. Or if you are realized, you cannot be confused. Between ignorance and enlightenment is a very thin line. But they are worlds apart. ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
799:It is most certainly a good thing that the world knows only the beautiful opus but not its origins, not the conditions of its creation; for if people knew the sources of the artist's inspiration, that knowledge would often confuse them, alarm them, and thereby destroy the effects of excellence. strange hours! strangely enervating labor! bizarrely fertile intercourse of the mind with a body! ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB
800:People confuse science and scientists. Science is great, but individual scientists are dangerous. They are human; they are marred by the biases humans have. Perhaps even more. For most scientists are hard-headed, otherwise they would not derive the patience and energy to perform the Herculean tasks asked of them, like spending eighteen hours a day perfecting their doctoral thesis. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
801:We often confuse our identity with our habits, but the truth is, habits can be changed! Habits are things you do. They are not who you are! You have weaknesses, but you are not your weaknesses. You are a unique creation of God, flawed by your nature and choices, yet deeply loved by God. No man or woman will ever love you as much as God does. His love for you is not dependent on your habits. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
802:God has made provision for our holiness. Through Christ He has delivered us from sin's reign so that we now can resist sin. But the responsibility for resisting is ours. God does not do that for us. To confuse the potential for resisting (which God provided) with the responsibility for resisting (which is ours) is to court disaster in our pursuit of holiness." (The Pursuit of Holiness, 57) ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
803:I've studied the disease, I've lived in the swamp. It is my informed conclusion that we are suffering, as an ex-great nation, from top-down corporate rot. And that's not just the judgement of an ailing old fart. A lot of people in my Service make a profession of not seeing things in black and white. Do not confuse me with them. I'm a late-onset, red-toothed radical with balls. Still with me? ~ John le Carr, #NFDB
804:7Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
805:Fine,” Vanto said. The musculature of his throat relaxes partially, but not fully. “Personally, I’d be a lot more concerned about him, but that’s up to you. But I’m still the bottom man on the roster. Why do you even care about me?” “You are my translator. You hold my words in your hand, and their meanings. A misjudged translation will confuse or anger. A deliberate error could lead to death. ~ Timothy Zahn, #NFDB
806:Do not allow your thoughts to become greater than you. No matter what your thoughts tell you, don't listen. Remember your thoughts are not your friend. Your thoughts try to confound you, confuse you. And they will tell you all kinds of things. Do not listen to your thoughts, even your good thoughts. Transcend everything, go beyond your thoughts to your bliss, to your joy and to your happiness. ~ Robert Adams, #NFDB
807:Now I had babies confuse before. John Green Dudley, first word out a that boy's mouth was Mama and he was looking straight at me. But then pretty soon he calling everybody including hisself Mama and calling his daddy Mama too... Nobody worry bout it. Course when he start playing dress-up in his sister's Jewel Taylor twirl skirts and wearing Chanel No. 5, we all get a little concern. ~ Kathryn Stockett, #NFDB
808:Even in the realm of pure mathematics, the mathematician may use any set of symbols he desires within any given region of space-time; he may even go so far as to maintain that any one set of symbols fits the scheme as well as any other, but to erect this method into a philosophy and confuse independence of any one special meaning with independence of all meaning is unjustified and unwarranted. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
809:The first misconception is that we confuse fear with humility. We tend to say, “Oh, I could never do that,” and we think we’re being humble. But that is not humility. That is fear; that is a lack of faith. A truly humble person would say, “With God’s help, I can do it. With God’s blessing, I will do it. I may not be able to do it on my own, but with God’s help I will do it.” That’s real humility. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
810:There are many possibilities that people can choose from. There are bad and there are good ones. So, look carefully to choose for yourself the noble path... ... Do not let the deeds and thoughts of other people confuse you; let them not prompt you to do or say anything evil! Listen to others' advice and deliberate yourself. Only fools acts thoughtlessly, without consideration! ~ Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov, #NFDB
811:We must not confuse the command to love with the disease to please. And it’s not just because of the vicious cycles of people pleasing, although that’s part of it. I miss Best Yes opportunities sometimes because I simply don’t know they’re part of the equation. I get all twisted up in making the decision to check either the Yes or No box, not realizing there is a third box that reads Best Yes. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
812:I won't desecrate beauty with cynicism anymore. I won't confuse critical thinking with a critical spirit, and I will practice, painfully, over and over, patience and peace until my gentle answers turn away even my own wrath. I will breathe fresh air while I learn, all over again, grace freely given and wisdom honored; and when my fingers fumble, whenI sound flat or sharp, I will simply try again. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
813:He wondered if today was that day, if he’d wake up different, wake up someone else who remembered him fondly. A new Doctor. He wondered if he’d approve. Would he be more gentle? That might not be so bad. More vengeful? He hoped not. Maybe he’d be a girl. That was distantly possible. Never been a girl. The Corsair had been a girl for a while. New perspective. Confuse people. Keep life interesting. ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
814:I won’t desecrate beauty with cynicism anymore. I won’t confuse critical thinking with a critical spirit, and I will practice, painfully, over and over, patience and peace until my gentle answers turn away even my own wrath. I will breathe fresh air while I learn, all over again, grace freely given and wisdom honored; and when my fingers fumble, when I sound flat or sharp, I will simply try again. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
815:To some degree, all civilized people are out of touch with reality because we fail to distinguish between the way things are and the way they are described. For politicians this dichotomy has reached extreme proportions, but it affects everyone. We confuse money, which is an abstraction, with real wealth; we confuse the idea of who we are with the actual experience of our organic existence. During ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
816:When I am told (by those who confuse predestination with God's providence) that God already knows who will be saved and who will be damned, and therefore anything we do is useless, I usually answer with four truths that the bible spells out for us:God wants that everyone be saved; No one is predestined to go to hell; Jesus died for everyone; and everyone is given sufficient graces for salvation. ~ Gabriele Amorth, #NFDB
817:Botanists have done their best to intimidate and confuse the nature lover. But we should not allow ourselves to be discouraged; we have as much right to the enjoyment of wild flowers as they. So I will disregard the botanist and I will go looking for the pretty flower that I have named Merry Heart. It is always nodding and dancing in the breeze. It is a happy flower, deserving of a happy, light name. ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
818:I think movies in general should have more respect for the audience than they do. Too many films are afraid to confuse people, so all the information is given to them right away, and there's nothing left for the film to do. It ruins many stories, because everything becomes obvious and predictable. I want my films to engage people more and make them more actively involved in the story. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, #NFDB
819:I went to this dance with some of my friends and there were kids saying `I know who you are - you`re Aaron Carter!` It doesn`t bother me if people confuse us. I know we`re very different. I am who I am. I don`t wanna say I have a temperbut I do! I kind of sulk and sit there when I`m bitter. I won`t show you, but you can see it. Probably if you bring me Godiva chocolate, I`ll be your friend again! ~ Jesse McCartney, #NFDB
820:There is nothing to worry about! Absolutely nothing. You can spend the rest of your life, beginning right now, worrying about the future, and no amount of your worry will change a thing. Remember that worry is defined as being immobilized in the present as a result of things that are going or not going to happen in the future. You must be careful not to confuse worrying with planning for the future. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
821:My parents didn't raise me to be religious. The closest we come to worship is the Trinity of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. I think the Merryweather cheerleaders confuse me because I missed out on Sunday School. It has to be a miracle. There is no other explanation. How else could they sleep with the football team on Saturday night and be reincarnated as virginal goddesses on Monday? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson, #NFDB
822:Of course, it’s easy to confuse progress with effectiveness. All progress is not true progress. It’s possible to gain ground for many days, weeks, months, or even years but be going in a completely wrong direction. That’s why it’s important to have mechanisms in your life to help you decide whether your efforts are, in fact, helping you advance on your goals, or just feeding your need for forward motion. ~ Todd Henry, #NFDB
823:As much as I bad-mouth people in general and think the worst of them, I’m secretly waiting for them to surprise me. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to give up on them wholly. Even though they are nine and nine-tenths dirt, now and again they are capable of something angelic. I can’t say that it restores my faith, because I really had none in the first place, but when it happens it does confuse you. ~ Marcel Theroux, #NFDB
824:I weep without interruption. It's an unbroken flow of words and tears. With no pause for reflection. But I speak softer, every year a little softer. Perhaps. Slower too, every year a little slower. Perhaps. it is hard for me to judge. If so the pauses would be longer, between the words, the sentences, the syllables, the tears, I confuse them, the words and tears, my words are my tears, my eyes my mouth. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
825:I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
826:One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
827:I was the “feelings” child. Everything I did was a feeling, and it did not count. It is so difficult to talk about demons and gods and spirits without it seeming that you are mad, or sarcastic, or simple, or talking in pictures, or trying to confuse. Or trying to be interesting. It is difficult to talk about demons and make it understood that even if “spirit” is the best word available, it isn’t the right word. ~ Helen Oyeyemi, #NFDB
828:I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas. It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They're valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking. ~ Susan Cain, #NFDB
829:One of the reasons for its success is that science has built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition. Every ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
830:Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought. ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
831:I wouldn’t want to try to take this guy out with anything less than a scoped rifle. Which is something that’s hard to confuse with expiration by natural causes. The hell with it, I thought. Risks are one thing. This looks like suicide. If Tatsu wanted him dead that much, I’d recommend a six-man squad and firearms. Much as I would have liked to do something to buy Tatsu’s continued goodwill, this one wasn’t worth it. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
832:Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
833:On the one hand, the Republicans are telling industrial workers that the high cost of food in the cities is due to this government's farm policy. On the other hand, the Republicans are telling the farmers that the high cost of manufactured goods on the farm is due to this government's labor policy. That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." But this time it won't work. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
834:We need to be much clearer about what we do and do not know so that we don't continually confuse the two. If I could have one wish for education, it would be the systematic ordering of our basic knowledge in such a way that what is known and true can be acted on, while what is superstition, fad, and myth can be recognized as such and used only when there is nothing else to support us in our frustration and despair. ~ Benjamin Bloom, #NFDB
835:It seems that we frequently confuse indeterminacy and chance. Indeterminacy is the freedom available at each level which, however, cannot jump over the shadow of its own history. Evolution is the history of an unfolding complexity, not the history of random processes. Out of this fog emerge the contours of a world in which nothing is random but much is indetermined and free within limits. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
836:On the one hand, the Republicans are telling industrial workers that the high cost of food in the cities is due to this government's farm policy. On the other hand, the Republicans are telling the farmers that the high cost of manufactured goods on the farm is due to this government's labor policy.
That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." But this time it won't work. ~ Harry Truman,#NFDB
837:It is all too easy to confuse fundamentalism with passion. I may well appear passionate when i defend evolution against a fundamentalist creationist, but this is not because of a rival fundamentalism of my own. It is because the evidence for evolution is overwhelmingly strong and I am passionately distressed that my opponent can't see it - or, more usually, refuses to look at it because it contradicts his holy books. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
838:We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we’re well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of being inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
839:When we wrap God’s truth around us, it protects us by strengthening our core being. The enemy uses lies to confuse people and fill them with anxiety and fear. The apostle John said, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19). The enemy’s lies completely mess up our thinking and weaken us if we believe them. Every day we must combat his lies with God’s truth. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
840:Although our modern way of thinking has, of course, changed a great deal relative to the ancient one, the two have had one key feature in common: i.e. they are both generally ‘blinkered’ by the notion that theories give true knowledge about ‘reality as it is’. Thus, both are led to confuse the forms and shapes induced in our perceptions by theoretical insight with a reality independent of our thought and our way of looking. ~ David Bohm, #NFDB
841:So many people confuse attachment with love. Attachment to someone implies control; loving someone assumes unconditional acceptance. Attachment leads to grief and loneliness when the person is no longer
near—or even sometimes when he or she is in the very same room. Love is the realization that there is no distance between you and the other—whether they are across the room, around the world, or beyond the veil of death. ~ Darren Main,#NFDB
842:Denial is the secret sauce in this town,” he said. “It’s the flavor that holds all the other ingredients together. Here’s what I tell the newly elected: the truth is gonna get out—it always does—but it’s gonna blend in with all the lies.” The Senator twirled a hand in the air. “You have to deny each lie and every truth with the same vinegar. Let those websites and blowhards who bitch about cover-ups confuse the public for you. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
843:Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
844:She was coming. She was moving close to the hall. He felt himself slip away from his body into pure listening; yes, it was she. All the sounds of the night rose to confuse him, yet he caught it; a low irreducible sound which she could not veil, the sound of her breathing, of the beat of her heart, of a force moving through space at tremendous and unnatural speed, causing the inevitable tumult amid the visible and the invisible. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
845:Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
846:Do not let your picture of the whole of your life confuse you, do not dwell upon all the manifold troubles which have come to pass and will come to pass; but ask yourself in regard to every passing moment: what is there here that cannot be borne and cannot be endured? Then remind yourself that it is not the future or the past that weighs heavy upon you, but always the present, and that this gradually grows less. (Meditations, VIII, 36) ~ Luc Ferry, #NFDB
847:They're not celebrating anything, baby girl, they're asking for approval. These are advertising posters, they're shop windows displaying their wares, like, well, like prostitutes, frankly, like you see in the knocking-shop fronts in Amsterdam. Honestly, Rosie, some of them may as well put a price tag on and have done with it. I might be stuck in the ice age, my love, but at least we didn't confuse being attractive with being a commodity. ~ S E Lynes, #NFDB
848:You know,” Cole said. “My mom once told me a boy would know he’d become a man when he stopped putting himself first. She said a girl would come along and I wouldn’t be able to get her out of my mind. She said this girl would frustrate me, confuse me, and challenge me, but she would also make me do whatever was necessary to be a better man–the man she needed. With you, I want to be better. I want to be what you need. Tell me what you need. ~ Gena Showalter, #NFDB
849:Few would defend a small view of Alchemy as "Mother of Chemistry", and confuse its true goal with those external metal arts. Alchemy is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality, aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter. Not to suggest that material operations are ever abandoned. The adept holds to both the mystical and physical work. ~ Jim Morrison, in The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969), The Lords: Notes on Vision, #NFDB
850:These self-styled liberals and progressives are honestly convinced that they are true democrats. But their notion of democracy is just the opposite of that of the nineteenth century. They confuse democracy with socialism. They not only do not see that socialism and democracy are incompatible but they believe that socialism alone means real democracy. Entangled in this error, they consider the Soviet system a variety of popular government. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
851:The most important thing that a company can do in the midst of this economic turmoil is to not lose sight of the long-term perspective. Don't confuse the short-term crises with the long-term trends. Amidst all of these short-term change are some fundamental structural transformations happening in the economy, and the best way to stay in business is to not allow the short-term distractions to cause you to ignore what is happening in the long term. ~ Paul Saffo, #NFDB
852:She tried to understand what it meant to carry winter on your back, to hesitate over every step, to confuse words you don’t hear properly, to have the impression that the rest of the world is going about in a great rush; the emptiness, frailty, fatigue, and indifference toward everything not directly related to you, even children and grandchildren, whose absence was not felt as it once had been, and whose names you had to struggle to remember. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
853:You see, Dash -- I was never the girl in your head. And you were never the boy in my head. I think we both knew that. It's only when we try to make the girl or boy in our head real that the true trouble comes. I did that with Carlos, and it was a bad failure. Be careful what you're doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
854:Trust me, Mr. Dalton, no one would ever confuse you with a playful little monkey. Perhaps one of those terrifying gorillas at the zoo. The ones that beat their chests and roar.” He held up the back of his hands. “Got less hair.” “Not in certain places, you don’t.” Heat settled low in his groin. “Going to put that in my file, too?” “I’ll save that for my own personal records.” God, she was a saucy one! And damn him if it didn't make his mouth water. ~ Zoe Archer, #NFDB
855:Elliot Leighton spoke up. "The existence of fool's gold does not mean there isn't real gold in the mountains, Mr. Picotte. And the existence of hypocrites who misuse religion for themselves does not mean there isn't a God in heaven who loves His children and sent His Son to die for them." He stood up and stretched. "Never confuse professing Christians with Christ, Mr. Picotte. The former will disappoint you every time. Christ never will. ~ Stephanie Grace Whitson, #NFDB
856:Nothing makes fools of people quite like a luxurious life,” Achamian said, shaking his head and nodding. “Ajencis says they confuse decisions made atop pillows for those compelled by stones. When they hear of other people being deceived, they’re certain they would know better. When they hear of other people being oppressed, they’re certain they would do anything but beg and cringe when the club is raised …” “And so they judge,” Mimara said sourly. ~ R Scott Bakker, #NFDB
857:But we shouldn't confuse our personal testimonies with the gospel. Sharing our personal testimonies is not evangelism. It's merely pre-evangelism, sort of a warm-up for evangelism. Our testimonies may or may not be significant or meaningful to those with whom we are speaking. There are lots of folks who can relate to my story; they say, "Yeah, I know what he's talking about because I used to live like that too." But not everyone can relate to my story. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
858:Gentle Reminder: 1 Don't confuse protecting your heart with being too scared to try something new with someone else, there is a difference. A lot of us have given way too much power to our pasts. Not everyone who may want a chance is going to use that chance against you negatively. Yes, some folks may fool us, trick us and even hurt us but some is not all. Don't miss out on a good thing because your past is persuading you not to pursue your future. ~ Alexandra Elle, #NFDB
859:Now Let No Charitable Hope
Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am by nature none of these.
I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
What little nourishment I get.
In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.
~ Elinor Morton Wylie,#NFDB
860:Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. ~ Robert A Heinlein,#NFDB
861:Hollywood parties not only confuse me, but they often disillusion me. The disillusion comes when I meet a movie star I’ve been admiring since childhood. I always thought that movie stars were exciting and talented people full of special personality. Meeting one of them at a party I discover usually that he (or she) is colorless and even frightened. I’ve often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
862:told Jamie and I’ve told you—I don’t know about this internet shite. I don’t care about this internet shite.” “Tavish, I know your line of work might confuse you, but this is the twenty-first century. You’re . . . well, you’re not young, but even my grandmother has been using the internet since I was a child. Internet access has been classified as a human right. Enough with the acting like it’s some newfangled concept you can just avoid. It’s a business tool. ~ Alyssa Cole, #NFDB
863:The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A. ~ Max Horkheimer, #NFDB
864:This means that we have barely disembarked into life, that we've only just now been born, let's not fill our mouths with so many uncertain names, with so many sad labels, with so many pompous letters, with so much yours and mine, with so much signing of papers. I intend to confuse things, to unite them, make them new-born intermingle them, undress them, until the light of the world has the unity of the ocean, a generous wholeness, a fragrance alive and crackling. ~ Pablo Neruda, #NFDB
865:Then you’ve never been in love?”
“Never.”
She nodded. “Nor have I.”
“A pity,” he said, pursing his lips. “I wonder how it would feel? To be swept away by a grand passion? To give everything for only one person in the world?”
Her lips curved wryly. “So idealistic for a rake. Really, you do spoil my prior understanding of what the word entailed.”
“This is my social face,” he said lightly. “Don’t confuse it with the animal beneath. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,#NFDB
866:There were many designs and patterns. The Chippewa (Ojibwa) make moccasins with a puckered seam. Their name is said to mean “roast till puckered up,” referring to their moccasins.
Each tribe made and decorated their moccasins in a little different way. An Indian Scout in the old days could tell, from a discarded moccasin along the trail, what tribe had passed that way. Some of the Indians on a war party wore the moccasins of other tribes to confuse the enemy scouts. ~ W Ben Hunt,#NFDB
867:Worrying about inciting racial hatred in cartoons is legitimate, so that no group is racially targeted. It is why we don’t like anti-Semitic cartoons. This is entirely distinct from a “blasphemy” motivation for censorship, which aims to silence scrutiny of a powerful idea and its founder, inspiring to billions. We must not confuse these two different concerns. This is the core of what most of us, especially Muslims, must reflect on in the wake of the tragedy in France. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
868:And Grace calls out, 'You are not just a disillusioned old man who may die soon, a middle-aged woman stuck in a job and desperately wanting to get out, a young person feeling the fire in the belly begin to grow cold. You may be insecure, inadequate, mistaken or potbellied. Death, panic, depression, and disillusionment may be near you. But you are not just that. You are accepted.' Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
869:it is an old sin of biology to confuse the definition of a feature with the feature itself. If we define “beauty” as having blue eyes (and only blue eyes), then we will, indeed, find a “gene for beauty.” If we define “intelligence” as the performance on only one kind of problem in only one kind of test, then we will, indeed, find a “gene for intelligence.” The genome is only a mirror for the breadth or narrowness of human imagination. It is Narcissus, reflected. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
870:Don’t try to fit me in a box… My life is not one dimensional. I’m the summer breeze and the hurricane… I’m the serene lake and the raging ocean… I’m the gentle poet and the rough warrior… I can build and I can destroy... I can romance and I can ravage... I can be wise and I can be silly... I can and WILL be everything that the length, depth, and breadth of life will allow... KNOW THIS! Your labels don’t limit me… they limit your experience of me. Don’t confuse the two. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
871:You probably grew up learning that milk is the best source for calcium and that meat is the best source of protein because of very successful advertising campaigns associated with these foods. These campaigns were so effective that people now confuse food with nutrients. It’s such a pervasive idea that even proponents of plant-based diets sometimes fall into this trap and compare soymilk directly to dairy milk, or beans directly to meat, to prove their nutritional value. ~ Matt Frazier, #NFDB
872:One of the major problems in the spiritual life is our attachment to our own self-image—either positively or negatively created. We have to begin with some kind of identity, but the trouble is that we confuse this idea of ourselves with who we actually are in God. Ideas about things are not the things in themselves. We all have to start by forming a self-image, but the problem is our attachment to it, our need to promote it and protect it and have others like it. What a trap! ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
873:Of course I’m getting ideas. You’re hot and I’m not dead. But I know enough not to confuse lust with anything else.”
She snorted and looked out her window. “Oh yes, Sean Kowalski. Your amazing kisses have made all rational thought fly out of my besotted brain. If only you could fill me with your magic penis, I know we’ll fall madly in love and live happily ever after.”
The truck jerked and she glanced over to find him glaring at her. “Don’t ever say that again. ~ Shannon Stacey,#NFDB
874:Not babies perhaps. But I know about young things. Foals, puppies, calves, piglets. Even hunting cats. I know if you want them to trust you, you touch them when they are small. Gently, but firmly, so they believe in your strength, too. You don't shout at them, or make sudden moves that look threatening. You give them good feed and clean water, and keep them clean and give them shelter from the weather. You don't take out your temper on them, or confuse punishment with discipline. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
875:(from chapter 16, "Catacombs Presbyterian Church"):
"When is this going to happen? How long do we have to wait? When does construction begin? Jesus's response was 'It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.'
In other words, it's none of your business. Your question is irrelevant. That kind of information is of no use to you. It would probably confuse you, might discourage you, and would certainly distract you. ~ Eugene H Peterson,#NFDB
876:It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure - in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals. ~ Trevanian, #NFDB
877:My dear Socrates … you know why they are putting you to death? It is because you make people feel stupid for blindly following habits, instincts, and traditions. You may be occasionally right. But you may confuse them about things they’ve been doing just fine without getting in trouble. You are destroying people’s illusions about themselves. You are taking the joy of ignorance out of the things we don’t understand. And you have no answer; you have no answer to offer them. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
878:We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular ~ Edward R Murrow, #NFDB
879:Adam got out of the car and started up the walk. The grass had a few too many brown spots. Corinne would notice and complain about that. She had trouble simply enjoying and letting be. She liked to correct and make right. Adam considered himself more live-and-let-live, but others might confuse the attitude with laziness. The Bauer family, who lived next door, had a front yard that looked ready to host a PGA event. Corinne couldn’t help but compare. Adam didn’t give a rat’s ass. The ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
880:We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. ~ Edward R Murrow, #NFDB
881:The unthinking glorification of digital activism makes its practitioners confuse priorities with capabilities. Getting people onto the streets, which may indeed become easier with modern communication tools, is usually the last stage of a protest movement, in both democracies and autocracies. One cannot start with protests and think of political demands and further steps later on. There are real dangers to substituting startegic and long-term action with spontaneous street marches. ~ Evgeny Morozov, #NFDB
882:We go through life seeing reality not as it really is, in its unfathomable depths of complexity and contradiction, but as we hope or fear or expect it to be. Too often, we confuse certainty for truth and the strength of our beliefs for the strength of the evidence. When we collide with the unexpected, with the antipode to our hopes, we are plunged into bewildered despair. We rise from the pit only by love. Perhaps Keats had it slightly wrong — perhaps truth is love and love is truth. ~ Maria Popova, #NFDB
883:Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That’s what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first. . . . There are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on the bus, or in the car, or at the computer. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
884:I see the cultural messaging everywhere that says an ordinary life is a meaningless life. . . . I know the yearning to believe that what I'm doing matters and how easy it is to confuse that with the drive to be extraordinary. I know how seductive it is to use the celebrity culture yardstick to measure the smallness of our lives. And I also understand how grandiosity, entitlement, and admiration-seeking feel like just the right balm to soothe the ache of being too ordinary and inadequate. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
885:I shall no doubt be blamed by certain scientists, and, I am afraid, by some philosophers, for having taken serious account of the alleged facts which are investigated by Psychical Researchers. I am wholly impenitent about this. The scientists in question seem to me to confuse the Author of Nature with the Editor of Nature; or at any rate to suppose that there can be no productions of the former which would not be accepted for publication by the latter. And I see no reason to believe this. ~ C D Broad, #NFDB
886:It has now been proved that though repression may be crucial for a child, it should not necessarily be the fate of adults. A small child's dependency on her parents, her trust in them, her longing to love and be loved, are limitless. To exploit this dependency, to deceive a child in her longing, confuse her, and then proceed to sell this as "child rearing" is a criminal act—a criminal act committed hourly and daily out of ignorance, indifference, and the refusal to give up such behavior. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
887:I want to practice faithfulness and kindness; I am learning to fill my ears with the repetitions of wide eyes and open hands and innocent fun, holy laughter. I want to practice with intention, joy. I want to tell the truth, but first, I want to live the Truth.
I won't desecrate beauty with cynicism anymore. I won't confuse critical thinking with a critical spirit, and I will practice, painfully, over and over, patience and peace until my gentle answers turn away even my own wrath. ~ Sarah Bessey,#NFDB
888:Personally—and this is speaking as a subscriber to Scientific American, here—I feel very sorry for the professionals whenever they find another confusing skull, something that belonged to the wrong sort of people, or whenever they find statues or artifacts that confuse them—for they’ll talk about the odd, but they won’t talk about the impossible, which is where I feel sorry for them, for as soon as something becomes impossible it slipslides out of belief entirely, whether it’s true or not. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
889:But it is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicings–all of which the heart can do by itself–with prayer. And we confuse earth and heaven, man and God. Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty. No man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
890:FAT TONY: “My dear Socrates … you know why they are putting you to death? It is because you make people feel stupid for blindly following habits, instincts, and traditions. You may be occasionally right. But you may confuse them about things they’ve been doing just fine without getting in trouble. You are destroying people’s illusions about themselves. You are taking the joy of ignorance out of the things we don’t understand. And you have no answer; you have no answer to offer them. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
891:I had the feeling of something inside me that flipped like a fish in a net. It was hope. As much as I bad-mouth people in general and think the worst of them, I'm secretly waiting for them to surprise me. Try as I might, I haven't been able to give up on them wholly. Even though they are nine and nine-tenths dirt, now and again they are capable of something angelic. I can't say that it restores my faith, because I really had none in the first place, but when it happens it does confuse you. ~ Marcel Theroux, #NFDB
892:Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches! If your love were-" "I don't understand that first one yet," Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. "Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images confuse me so - is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we're on the verge of something just terribly important. ~ William Goldman, #NFDB
893:We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States - that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
894:Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches! If your love were-"
"I don't understand that first one yet," Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. "Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images confuse me so - is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we're on the verge of something just terribly important. ~ William Goldman,#NFDB
895:My worst enemy is behind me because of you.
And there’s still a lot left for me to explain.
Right now, all I can think about is you.
So many things in my life confuse me and…
Hurt me—except you.
Maybe we can be together again someday.
All I really want is you, but I can’t do this now.
Losing you will be the hardest thing I’ve dealt with yet.
Loving you might be a mistake. Drawing you into my world will
Only hurt you. And I refuse to do that.
Will you ever forgive me? ~ Monica Murphy,#NFDB
896:You, Book! You are the only one who won't deceive, won't attack, won't insult, won't abandon! You're quiet - but you laugh, shout, and sing: you're obedient - but you amaze, tease, and entice; you're small, but you contain countless peoples. Nothing but a handful of letters, that's all, but if you feel like it, you can turn heads, confuse, spin, cloud, make tears spring to the eyes, take away the breath, the entire soul will stir in the wind like a canvas, will rise in waves and flap its wings! ~ Tatyana Tolstaya, #NFDB
897:One of the more popular activities was “Talk-O-Matic”. Five people at a time could write messages, and read each other's messages, on the same screen. Today, Internet chat rooms work on the same principle. One of the remarkable new features of this page was that you could log in with an invented name, and pretend you were anyone you wanted - any name, any age, any gender. One favorite trick was to log in using the name of someone else already logged into the page, simply to confuse everyone else. ~ Guy Consolmagno, #NFDB
898:I adopted a posture of arrogant superiority. I behaved as if nothing could touch or shake or confuse me. I got involved in nothing, and I remember a teacher who saw through this and spoke to me about it; I was arrogantly dismissive... I also remember that the smallest gesture of affection would bring a lump to my throat, whether it was directed at me or at someone else. Somehow all it took was a scene in a film. This juxtaposition of callousness and extreme sensitivity seemed suspicious even to me. ~ Bernhard Schlink, #NFDB
899:In so doing, we regain the innocent perspective most of us knew as children. Our hearts open up to others, like flowers blossoming. We become better listeners, more fully aware of everything going on around us, and are able to respond more spontaneously and appropriately to situations that used to trouble or confuse us. Gradually, perhaps on a level so subtle we might not even notice it’s happening, we find ourselves awakening to a free, clear, loving state of mind beyond our wildest dreams. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
900:Early orthodoxy set itself the task to confuse the epistles of Paul. Paul could not be ignored nor entirely destroyed; his sphere of influence had been too wide. The easiest solution was to corrupt his writings, thus destroying his subtler meanings. The result of this questionable strategy is obvious to the impartial reader. Paul is made to contradict himself; statements obviously inconsistent with his vision stand side by side with the most lofty and transcendental thoughts. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
901:God was neither surprised nor afraid. You see, there is no mystery with God. He is never caught off guard. He never wonders how he is going to deal with the unexpected thing. I love the words of Daniel 2:22: “He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him.” God is with you in your moments of darkness because he will never leave you. But your darkness isn’t dark to him. Your mysteries aren’t mysterious to him. Your surprises don’t surprise him. He understands all the things that confuse you ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
902:Likewise, until we drop unwarranted assumptions about people, we can’t expect to bring about lasting improvements in our organizations: we can’t magnify our human resources using manipulative management techniques any more than we can repair Humpty Dumpty with more horses and more men. Nevertheless, in this topsy-turvy world, matters often get turned around. We confuse efficiency with effectiveness, expediency with priority, imitation with innovation, cosmetics with character, or pretense with competence. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
903:Never confuse being righteous vs. being arrogant. An arrogant person will see a person lashing out because they were hurt by them and they will not try to mend the situation or even understand their point of view. They take the superior viewpoint that others are not worthy of their time because they believe they are right and those angry with them are wrong. A righteous person doesn't care who is right or wrong. God asked them to love everyone. They make their life about leaving people in peace, not pain. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
904:Oh, keep your warnings and your fears for those giddy women who call themselves women of feeling, whose heated imaginations persuade them that nature has placed their senses in their heads; who, having never thought about it, invariably confuse love with a lover; who, with their stupid delusions, imagine that the man with whom they have found pleasure is pleasure's only source; and, like all the superstitious, accord that faith and respect to the priest which is due to only the divinity. ~ Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, #NFDB
905:Her total intellectual association was the Bible, except the talk of Samuel and her children, and to them she did not listen. In that one book she had her history and her poetry, her knowledge of peoples and things, her ethics, her morals, and her salvation. She never studied the Bible or inspected it; she just read it. The many places where it seems to refute itself did not confuse her in the least. And finally she came to a point where she knew it so well that she went right on reading it without listening. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
906:Perhaps one of the reasons we don't enjoy all these activities as much as we could is because we think activities need to be exciting for us to enjoy them. Many people confuse joy and happiness with excitement. But excitement is not the same as happiness. With joy and happiness we have a sense of satisfaction. There's a feeling of satisfaction in being in the here and now, when you recognize you have so many conditions for happiness in the present moment, whether you're sitting, walking, standing, or working. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
907:although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself she had a pleasant time. it had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations. what frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control. the drinks, the clothes, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything. she asked herself: if i were in charge, how could i have done it better? ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
908:As far as she could tell, basketball involved a herd of impossibly tall men racing up and down a polished wooden floor, passing a ball back and forth until one of them forged ahead to the basket to try to score. It seemed that whenever the contest became interesting, the referees would blow their whistles and everything would come to a grinding halt. She couldn’t understand why the referees chose to wear zebra-striped shirts, either, since it wasn’t likely anyone would confuse the short, balding men with the players. ~ Debbie Macomber, #NFDB
909:Don’t confuse love with romance, young lady. Romance is beautiful, it’s a gesture, it’s a walk in a park with a pretty girl. Love is ugly sometimes. It’s a crawl into a war zone to save a friend. Romance whispers sweet nothings. Love tells painful truths. Romance gives an engagement ring. Love takes a bullet. I gave up marriage and children and sex and the comforts of family, because I love my Lord, and I would take a bullet for anyone in this church, including you, young lady. Now you tell me I don’t know what love is. ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
910:We must sometimes get away from the Authorized Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear, but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity, the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed, and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame, or struck dumb with terror, or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
911:Nothing is more dangerous than to stop working. It is a habit that can soon be lost, one that is easily neglected and hard to resume. A measure of day-dreaming is a good thing, like a drug prudently used ... But too much submerges and drowns. Woe to the intellectual worker who allows himself to lapse wholly from positive thinking into day-dreaming. He thinks he can easily change back, and tells himself that it is all one. He is wrong! To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse poison with a source of nourishment. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
912:People confuse the word cynicism with the word skepticism. One is “you’re not gonna pay attention to anything, think everything’s screwed up, nothing’s ever gonna work out right”, that’s cynicism. But skepticism is, “you’re presented with evidence and you do your best to draw conclusions based on that”. So, as the saying goes, Bill Nye, do you believe in ghosts? No. However, I would love to see one. Bring it on. I’m open minded to the idea, but the more I look into it in a skeptical frame of thinking, the less likely it seems. ~ Bill Nye, #NFDB
913:Prayer that is regular confounds both self-importance and the wiles of the world. It is so easy for good people to confuse their own work with the work of creation. It is so easy to come to believe that what we do is so much more important than what we are. It is so easy to simply get too busy to grow. It is so easy to commit ourselves to this century’s demand for product and action until the product consumes us and the actions exhaust us and we can no longer even remember why we set out to do them in the first place. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
914:Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is "schooled" to accept service in place of value. ~ Ivan Illich, #NFDB
915:Latin America can no longer tolerate being a haven for United States liberals who cannot make their point at home, an outlet for apostles too "apostolic" to find their vocation as competent professionals within their own community. The hardware salesman threatens to dump second-rate imitations of parishes, schools and catechisms -- out-moded even in the United States -- all around the continent. The traveling escapist threatens further to confuse a foreign world with his superficial protests, which are not viable even at home. ~ Ivan Illich, #NFDB
916:Murrow spoke more in sorrow than in anger. “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
917:What good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world - temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
918:Globalization has considerably accelerated in recent years following the dizzying expansion of communications and transport and the equally stupefying transnational mergers of capital. We must not confuse globalization with "internationalism" though. We know that the human condition is universal, that we share similar passions, fears, needs and dreams, but this has nothing to do with the "rubbing out" of national borders as a result of unrestricted capital movements. One thing is the free movement of peoples, the other of money. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
919:I've seen some springs that ended up being terrible winters. We human beings are gregarious. We can't live alone. For our lives to be possible, we depend on society. It's one thing to overturn a government or block the streets. But it's a different matter altogether to create and build a better society, one that needs organization, discipline and long-term work. Let's not confuse the two of them. I want to make it clear: I feel sympathetic with that youthful energy, but I think it's not going anywhere if it doesn't become more mature. ~ Jose Mujica, #NFDB
920:Books should confuse. Literature abhors the typical. Literature flows to the particular, the mundane, the greasiness of paper, the taste of warm beer, the smell of onion or quince. Auden has a line: "Ports have names they call the sea." Just so will literature describe life familiarly, regionally, in terms life is accustomed to use -- high or low matters not. Literature cannot by this impulse betray the grandeur of its subject -- there is only one subject: What it feels like to be alive. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is typical. ~ Richard Rodriguez, #NFDB
921:Hester shook her head. 'Don't confuse what you do with who you are, dearie. Besides, there's no shame in humble work. Why, Aesop himself, the king of storytellers, was a slave his whole life. Never drew a free breath, yet he shaped the world with just three small words: there once was. And where are his great masters now, hmm? Rotting in tombs, if they're lucky. But Aesop - he still lives to this day, dancin' on the tip of every tongue what's ever told a tale.' She winked at Molly. 'Think on that, next time you're scrubbing floors. ~ Jonathan Auxier, #NFDB
922:Micah, are you comfortable being assigned as Meryn's guard while she is here?" he asked.
"Absolutely. That woman is hilarious. I can't wait to see what she does next." Micah's eyes sparkled with laughter.
Grant shook his head. "Better you than me. Women confuse me, and she is baffling even for a woman."
Micah sighed happily. "Women make this life worth living. They add color to these gray walls and perfume to the air."
Grant scratched his head. "I have paintings in my quarters and air fresheners, I am good. ~ Alanea Alder,#NFDB
923:[Science] works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are
worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true. ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
924:The feeling of emptiness is usually a sign that we have put our trust in something that can’t sustain us. It reminds us that we were created to trust in our heavenly Father and nothing else. We were created to enjoy the many things God gives without making them the center of our lives. When we confuse the two, our lives feel out of kilter. To feel better, we try again and search for love apart from God, but when we finally realize that it is elusive, we forsake the quest and quietly despair. Keep probing. Life is ultimately about God. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
925:In a culture of technique, we often confuse authority with power, but the two are not the same. Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out. . . . I am painfully aware of the times in my own teaching when I lose touch with my inner teacher and therefore with my own authority. In those times I try to gain power by barricading myself behind the podium and my status while wielding the threat of grades. . . . Authority comes as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
926:At one extreme of its meaning, “myth” is fable, falsehood, or superstition. But at another, “myth” is a useful and fruitful image by which we make sense of life in somewhat the same way that we can explain electrical forces by comparing them with the behavior of water or air. Yet “myth,” in this second sense, is not to be taken literally, just as electricity is not to be confused with air or water. Thus in using myth one must take care not to confuse image with fact, which would be like climbing up the signpost instead of following the road. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
927:God’s ways may seem strange to us, but his ways do not have to live up to our standards or our analysis. He is who he is, and we are who we are. He is beyond error, perfect in all his ways. If his ways confuse or disappoint you, guard against the temptation to re-create him into a god you like better. You and I are to humble ourselves before him and seek to conform to his standard, not the other way around. He is sovereign and good, compassionate and merciful. If we do not accept God in his wholeness, we will never experience our own. ~ Jennifer Rothschild, #NFDB
928:Don't tell me there's no place for innocent hearts in this world. Don't tell me I need to accept what I don't believe in. I respect it. Don't confuse my values for my stubbornness, although I am stubborn. Don't confuse my positive attitude for being naive. Allow me to wrap my heart around you for a moment. Listen to this. Innocent hearts may not belong anywhere in this world but they are big enough for any heart in this world. Innocent hearts belong in innocent hearts. Innocent hearts belong in the hearts of those who genuinely want happiness. ~ Najwa Zebian, #NFDB
929:It is important not to confuse “patriotism” with “nationalism.” As I define it, nationalism is a monologue in which you place your country in a position of moral and cultural supremacy over others. Patriotism, while deeply personal, is a dialogue with your fellow citizens, and a larger world, about not only what you love about your country but also how it can be improved. Unchecked nationalism leads to conflict and war. Unbridled patriotism can lead to the betterment of society. Patriotism is rooted in humility. Nationalism is rooted in arrogance. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
930:Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. An infinitely old universe, always evolving, may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end. Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science. ~ Hannes Alfven, #NFDB
931:Emotional hunger is not love, though people often confuse the two. Hunger is a strong need caused by emotional deprivation in childhood. It is a primitive condition of pain and longing which people often act out in a vain and desperate attempt to fill a void or emptiness. This emptiness is related to the pain of aloneness and separateness and can never realistically be satisfied in an adult relationship. Yet many people refuse to bear their pain and are unwilling to accept the futility of attempting to gratify their primitive dependency needs. ~ Robert W Firestone, #NFDB
932:If members of professions think of themselves as groups with common interests, with norms and rules that oblige them at all times, then they can gain confidence and indeed a certain kind of power. Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as “just following orders.” If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
933:Why do people buy an expensive, complicated toaster when a simpler, less-expensive toaster would work just as well? Why all the buttons and controls on steering wheels and rearview mirrors? Because these are the features that people believe they want. They make a difference at the time of sale, which is when such features matter most. Why do we deliberately build things that confuse the people who use them? Answer: because the people want the features. Because the so-called demand for simplicity is a myth whose time has passed, if it ever existed. ~ Donald A Norman, #NFDB
934:When it's time to confess, you don't know what you're saying. Are you telling the truth, or do you confuse your lies with reality? The question is comical. The answer is lost in the maelstroms of consciousness. It's even impossible to pretend, eventually, that the question wasn't asked. You've been kidding yourself about yourself for so long, you're someone else. Your you is just a fragile fabrication. Every morning, you have to wake up, assemble this busy, dissembling monster, and get him or her on his or her feet again for another round of fantasy. ~ David Guterson, #NFDB
935:As we grow older, we should learn that these are two quite different things. Character is something you forge for yourself; temperament is something you are born with and can only slightly modify. Some people have easy temperaments and weak characters; others have difficult temperaments and strong characters. We are all prone to confuse the two in assessing people we associate with. Those with easy temperaments and weak characters are more likable than admirable; those with difficult temperaments and strong characters are more admirable than likable. ~ Sydney J Harris, #NFDB
936:The Devil wants to delude and confuse each of us into thinking that our sins are only our problem; that they can be hidden away in our memory and not come back to inflict our conscience with cutting reminders of guilt. The Devil wants each of us to believe that we can rid ourselves of guilt and shame apart from Jesus. That’s what the Devil is always up to—offering both the sin that rejects Christ, but also rescue plans that bypass Christ. As Christians, we have to reject both of these patterns. We have to focus on Jesus, who can rewire darkened hearts. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
937:Since the dawn of existence, you mortals have feared dying, feared the unknown and the pain of it, and yet, pain is a part of life, not death. And I—I am the first moment after pain ceases,” he pronounced. “It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer. . . . Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other. ~ Vera Nazarian, #NFDB
938:Even the song of birds, which we can bring under no musical rule, seems to have more freedom, and therefore more for taste, than a song of a human being which is produced in accordance with all the rules of music; for we very much sooner weary of the latter, if it is repeated often and at length. Here, however, we probably confuse our participation in the mirth of a little creature that we love, with the beauty of its song; for if this were exactly imitated by man (as sometimes the notes of the nightingale are) it would seem to our ear quite devoid of taste. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
939:Civilization, comprising all the achievements of art and science, technology and industry, is the result of man’s invention and manipulation of symbols—of words, letters, numbers, formulas and concepts, and of such social institutions as universally accepted clocks and rulers, scales and timetables, schedules and laws. By these means, we measure, predict, and control the behavior of the human and natural worlds—and with such startling apparent success that the trick goes to our heads. All too easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
940:The paint and paper looks as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off – the paper – in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of my room low down. I never saw worse paper in my life. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance, they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, #NFDB
941:Neurologically, OBEs are a form of bodily illusion arising from a temporary dissociation of visual and proprioceptive representations—normally these are coordinated, so that one views the world, including one’s body, from the perspective of one’s own eyes, one’s head. OBEs, as Henrik Ehrsson and his fellow researchers in Stockholm have elegantly shown, can be produced experimentally, by using simple equipment—video goggles, mannequins, rubber arms, and so on—to confuse one’s visual input and one’s proprioceptive input and create an uncanny sense of disembodiedness. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
942:A church removed the American flag from its sanctuary. The pastor explained the flag’s removal: “There may have been a time when this national symbol, positioned so close to Christ’s holy table, might have been innocent. But in our day, when it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to keep our symbols straight, and when we are asking too much of this flag, we don’t want to confuse people about the dominant signifiers of Christian reality. As you know, our hope is not in the flag of any nation; our hope is in the cross, the broken bread and shared cup. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
943:There are botany textbooks that contain pages and pages of growth curves, but it is always the lazy-S-shaped ones that confuse my students the most. Why would a plant decrease in mass just when it is nearing its plateau of maximum productivity? I remind them that this shrinking has proved to be a signal of reproduction. As the green plants reach maturity, some of their nutrients are pulled back and repurposed toward flowers and seeds. Production of the new generation comes at a significant cost to the parent, and you can see it in a cornfield, even from a great distance. ~ Hope Jahren, #NFDB
944:be on the lookout for chauffeur knowledge. Do not confuse the company spokesperson, the ringmaster, the newscaster, the schmoozer, the verbiage vendor or the cliché generator with those who possess true knowledge. How do you recognise the difference? There is a clear indicator: true experts recognise the limits of what they know and what they do not know. If they find themselves outside their circle of competence, they keep quiet or simply say, ‘I don’t know.’ This they utter unapologetically, even with a certain pride. From chauffeurs, we hear every line except this. See ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
945:There were times when initial introductions were so vested with something other as to confuse and distract and entrance both parties, Cy would realize later. And only further into their relationships when you knew the person better, and their place in your life became clear, if there was love, if there was hate, if there was deepness of any kind, only then did you understand that the embers of meaning have been present all along and glowing since that first moment you laid eyes on them. As if you already knew them before you came to know them. As if some rift had bent time. ~ Sarah Hall, #NFDB
946:Cliche refers to words, commonplace to ideas. Cliche describes the form or the letter, commonplace the substance or spirit. To confuse them is to confuse the thought with the expression of the thought. The cliche is immediately perceivable; the commonplace very often escapes notice if decked out in original dress. There are few examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in original form. The most critical mind must often be content with one or the other of these pleasures, only too happy when it is not deprived of both at once, which is not too rarely the case. ~ Remy de Gourmont, #NFDB
947:Don’t confuse love with romance, young lady. Romance is beautiful, it’s a gesture, it’s a walk in a park with a pretty girl. Love is ugly sometimes. It’s a crawl into a war zone to save a friend. Romance whispers sweet nothings. Love tells painful truths. Romance gives an engagement ring. Love takes a bullet. I gave up marriage and children and sex and the comforts of family, because I love my Lord, and I would take a bullet for anyone in this church, including you, young lady. Now you tell me I don’t know what love is.” Nora couldn’t tell him that because she couldn’t say a ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
948:Implementing a constant interface causes this implementation detail to leak into the class’s exported API. It is of no consequence to the users of a class that the class implements a constant interface. In fact, it may even confuse them. Worse, it represents a commitment: if in a future release the class is modified so that it no longer needs to use the constants, it still must implement the interface to ensure binary compatibility. If a nonfinal class implements a constant interface, all of its subclasses will have their namespaces polluted by the constants in the interface. ~ Joshua Bloch, #NFDB
949:Infidels claim that the rule in the Library is not "sense;' but "non-sense;'
and that "rationality " (even humble, pure coherence) is an almost miraculous
exception. They speak, I know, of "the feverish Library, whose random
volumes constantly threaten to transmogrify into others, so that they affirm
all things, deny all things, and confound and confuse all things, like some
mad and hallucinating deity." Those words, which not only proclaim disorder
but exemplify it as well, prove, as all can see, the infidels' deplorable taste
and desperate ignorance. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
950:Consider the idea of a God who is essentially sadness and longing, yearning to reveal himself, to know himself through a being who knows him, thereby depending on that being who is still himself - yet who in this sense creates Him. Here we have a vision which has never been professed outside of a few errant knights of mysticism. To profess this essential bipolarity of the divine essence is not to confuse creator and created, creature and creation. It is to experience the irrevocable solidarity between the Fravarti and its Soul, in the battle they undertake for each other`s sake. ~ Henry Corbin, #NFDB
951:The more familiar you become with your biography, the better you will have learned to perceive your internal signals and take them seriously, and the easier you can judge whether your therapists follow along with you and help you or whether they only serve to confuse you more. If you don't want to pay the bill for someone else's confusion, you must have the strength and the wisdom to give up a therapist or a confusing group as you would give up a mechanic who politely but blindly tried to fix your car while ignoring and wanting to ignore what was really wrong in the first place. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
952:If the answer is no, here’s something to try: Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don’t waste time questioning how you know that what you’re doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is. Inopportune questioning can confuse, without enlightening, as well as deflecting you from action. You can know that something is wrong or right without knowing why. Your entire Being can tell you something that you can neither explain nor articulate. Every person is too complex to know themselves completely, and we all contain wisdom that we cannot comprehend. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
953:Somehow it was taken for granted that an American could not have aficion. He might simulate it or confuse it with excitement, but he could not really have it. When they saw that I had aficion, and there was no password, no set questions that could bring it out, rather it was a sort of oral spirital examination with the questions always a little on the defensive and never apparent, there was this same embarassed putting the hand on the shoulder, or a "Buen hombre." But nearly always there was the actual touching. It seemed as though they wanted to touch you to make it certain. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
954:Since the dawn of existence, you mortals have feared dying, feared the unknown and the pain of it, and yet, pain is a part of life, not death. And I—I am the first moment after pain ceases,” he [Death] pronounced. “It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer... Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other. ~ Vera Nazarian, #NFDB
955:If the answer is no, here’s something to try: Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don’t waste time questioning how you know that what you’re doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is. Inopportune questioning can confuse, without enlightening, as well as deflecting you from action. You can know that something is wrong or right without knowing why. Your entire Being can tell you something that you can neither explain nor articulate. Every person is too complex to know themselves completely, and we all contain wisdom that we cannot comprehend. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
956:Yet the human heart is disheartened by the most unreasonable self-judgments, because even when we take on giants, we too often confuse failure with fault, which I know too well. The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triumph over the darkness while never forgetting that the honor and the beauty are more in striving than in winning. When triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, imbue our lives with meaning. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
957:But perhaps these are the very hours during which solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of spring. But that must not confuse you. What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
958:Writing is often a perilous journey. Low self-esteem or confusion about goals may be the Shadows that chill our work, an editor or one’s own judgemental side may be the Threshold Guardians that block our way. Accidents, computer problems, and difficulties with time and discipline may torment us and taunt like Tricksters. Unrealistic dreams of success or distractions may be the Shapeshifters who tempt, confuse, and dazzle us. Deadlines, editorial decisions, or the struggle to sell our work may be the Tests and Ordeals from which we seem to die but are Resurrected to write again. ~ Christopher Vogler, #NFDB
959:The fundamental error of Romanticism is to confuse what we need with what we desire. We all need certain basic things for life’s preservation and continuance; we all desire a more perfect life, complete happiness, the fulfilment of our dreams and ..... It’s human to want what we need, and it’s human to desire what we don’t need but find desirable. Sickness occurs when we desire what we need and what’s desirable with equal intensity, suffering our lack of perfection as if we were suffering for lack of bread. The Romantic malady is to want the moon as if it could actually be obtained. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
960:You know the way some Orientals confuse the sounds of R and L when they speak a Western language? That’s because R and L in many Eastern languages are allophones, that is, considered the same sound, written and even heard the same—just like the th at the beginning of they and at the beginning of theater.” “What’s different about the sound of theater and they?” “Say them again and listen. One’s voiced and the other’s unvoiced, they’re as distinct as V and F; only they’re allophones—at least in British English; so Britishers are used to hearing them as though they were the same phoneme. ~ Samuel R Delany, #NFDB
961:You chastise the dark side as if it is an evil path, laughable for its malevolence. But do not confuse it with evil. And do not confuse the light as being the product of benevolence. The Jedi of old were cheats and liars. Power-hungry maniacs operating under the guise of a holy monastic order. Moral crusaders whose diplomacy was that of the lightsaber. The dark side is honest. The dark side is direct. It is the knife in the front rather than one stuck in your back. The dark side is self-interested, yes, but it is about extending that interest outward. To yourself, but then beyond yourself. ~ Chuck Wendig, #NFDB
962:Aha! Come to think of it, that might explain the insistence of the oppressed that the oppressor must not be allowed to camouflage his appearance or confuse the poor by stealing and masquerading in their clothes. Perhaps it is the demand of that primitive integrity of the earth... Or, who knows, it might also be something less innocent (for the earth does have its streak of peasant cunning) - an insistence that your badge of privilege must never leave your breast, nor your coat of many colours your back... so that... on the wrathful day of reckoning... you will be as conspicuous as a peacock! ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
963:She tried to understand what it meant to carry winter on your back, to hesitate over every step, to confuse words you don’t hear properly, to have the impression that the rest of the world is going about in a great rush; the emptiness, frailty, fatigue, and indifference toward everything not directly related to you, even children and grandchildren, whose absence was not felt as it once had been, and whose names you had to struggle to remember. She felt tender toward their wrinkles, arthritic fingers, and poor sight. She imagined how she herself would be as an elderly and then ancient woman. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
964:... the marines had invaded the country under the pretext of exterminating yellow fever and were going about beheading every inveterate or eventual potter they found in their path, and not only natives, out of precaution, but also the Chinese, for distraction, the Negroes, from habit, and the Hindus, because they were snake charmers, and then they wiped out the flora and the fauna and all the mineral wealth they were able to because their specialists in our affairs had taught them that the people along the Caribbean had the ability to change their nature in order to confuse gringos. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
965:When people run a business and open their door to the public, they must serve the public. That doesn't mean they can't say whatever they want to say. It doesn't mean they can't believe whatever they want to believe. Those are protected also. But businesses must serve the public. And that's a principle that we fought for in this country over many, many decades, when some were invoking religious freedom as an excuse to deny people on the basis of their race, on the basis of their religion, on the basis of sex and on the basis now of sexual orientation. Let's not confuse one thing with the other. ~ Chris Christie, #NFDB
966:You see, there is no mystery with God. He is never caught off guard. He never wonders how he is going to deal with the unexpected thing. I love the words of Daniel 2:22: “He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him.” God is with you in your moments of darkness because he will never leave you. But your darkness isn’t dark to him. Your mysteries aren’t mysterious to him. Your surprises don’t surprise him. He understands all the things that confuse you the most. Not only are your mysteries not mysterious to him, but he is in complete charge of all that is mysterious to you and me. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
967:This does not mean that science is just the art of making measurable predictions. Some philosophers of science overly circumscribe science by limiting it to its numerical predictions. They miss the point, because they confuse the instruments with the objectives. Verifiable quantitative predictions are instruments to validate hypotheses. The objective of scientific research is not just to arrive at predictions: it is to understand how the world functions; to construct and develop an image of the world, a conceptual structure to enable us to think about. Before being technical, science is visionary. ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
968:Yes, I know that Goldilocks got away with eating Papa Bear’s porridge, sitting in his big chair, and napping on his bed. But bears are not bulls. Don’t confuse your animals. Just because they get them mixed up in the stock market doesn’t mean you should get them mixed up in the office. Bears live in the woods, and sometimes go after honey. Bulls live on the farm, and sometimes go after pushy people. Bears can squeeze strangers hard in a spirit of fun, but they mean no harm. They’re playful. Bulls can destroy trespassers and china shops in blind fury, on purpose. They’re dangerous. End of zoology lesson. ~ Linda Goodman, #NFDB
969:Integrate at least three of these items into your daily diet to be sure you are eating plenty of whole food. 1. Beans—all kinds: black beans, pinto beans, garbanzo beans, black-eyed peas, lentils 2. Greens—spinach, kale, chards, beet tops, fennel tops 3. Sweet potatoes—don’t confuse with yams. 4. Nuts—all kinds: almonds, peanuts, walnuts, sunflower seeds, Brazil nuts, cashews 5. Olive oil—green, extra-virgin is usually the best. Note that olive oil decomposes quickly, so buy no more than a month’s supply at a time. 6. Oats—slow-cook or Irish steel-cut are best. 7. Barley—either in soups, as a hot cereal, or ~ Dan Buettner, #NFDB
970:The third is Mark Goat. With my help, he plans on setting up a television network that will air vaguely Christian messages from prosperity gospel preachers, messages from the occasional Fundamentalist nutcases, and even the out there End Times preachers. Our plan is to confuse those uneducated about what the Christian message really is. Heck, Goat and Whittier want to join Christians with Muslims, get the uneducated types thinking that the barbarians in the Middle East actually believe the same thing as real Christians. They call it Chrislam. We sow chaos in the Bible Belt and we can rule America the way we want, ~ Cliff Ball, #NFDB
971:Is this the happiness you seek?” he whispered hoarsely. “Tell me now, and I will give it to you.” He
moved down her body, his mouth on her bosom, his breath hot on her skin, and his hand freeing her
breast. Phoebe ran her fingers through his hair, thrusting her breast forward as he took the peak into his
mouth.
This was insanity!“Only a profligate would confuse happiness with desire—Oh!” The swell of pleasure
his mouth on her breast gave her was startling, and she cried out.
“And only a fool would try and separate the two,” he responded hotly before he closed his mouth
around her other breast ~ Julia London,#NFDB
972:Yet the human heart is disheartened by the most unreasonable self-judgments, because even when we take on giants, we too often confuse failure with fault, which I know too well. The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triumph over the darkness while never forgetting that the honor and the beauty are more in the striving than in the winning. When triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, imbue our lives with meaning. In the learning of that simple ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
973:There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
974:In our opinion, there is no public good other than one that assures the citizens' private good; we judge institutions from the point of view of the concrete opportunities they give to individuals. But neither do we confuse the idea of private interest with happiness[...]. We cannot really know what the word 'happiness' means, and still less what authentic values it covers; there is no way to measure the happiness of others, and it is always easy to call a situation that one would like to impose on others happy: in particular, we declare happy those condemned to stagnation, under the pretext that happiness is immobility. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
975:For the supersophisticated, he would often say there is neither self nor nonself and then further confuse them by saying that if they took that too seriously they would be wrong too. His efforts were always in the service of releasing people from their fixed ideas about who or what they were, about freeing them from attachment to whatever concept they were clinging to, about loosening the hold that the fear-based ego claimed as its birthright. The Buddha understood the traumas of everyday life, but he was determined to challenge both the protective reactions of dissociation and the underlying hopelessness that accompanies them. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
976:There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
977:These terms are borrowed from J.R.R. Tolkien, whose unequaled mastery of the language of myth gave the twentieth century one of its great works of mythic literature. His comments are relevant to any thoughtful study of myth: “...I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”[ ~ John Michael Greer, #NFDB
978:What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money. Money gets rid of the inconveniences of barter. But it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth, because it will do you no good to eat it or wear it for clothing. Money is more or less static, for gold, silver, strong paper, or a bank balance can “stay put” for a long time. But real wealth, such as food, is perishable. Thus a community may possess all the gold in the world, but if it does not farm its crops it will starve. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
979:Music has become more pervasive and portable than ever. But it feels less previous in the bargain. I don't want to confuse artistic and commercial value, but it's just a fact that some kid who rips an album for free isn't going to give it the same attention he would if it cost him ten bucks. At what point does convenience become spiritual indolence? I realize this makes me sound like an old fart, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when the universe of recorded sound wasn't at our fingertips, when we had to hunt and wait and - horror of horrors - do without, when our longing for a particular record or song made it feel sacred. ~ Steve Almond, #NFDB
980:Do not confuse destruction with power. They are opposites. Think of this: How long does it take to crush a butterfly with a stick?” He looked about. When no one spoke he continued. “I can tell you from experience: It takes no time at all. And yet what is required to create a butterfly? Nothing short of a magical transformation—a divine shifting of blood and sinew—a miraculous act that not one of us could ever dream of achieving! When you remember it this way, you can see that the act of swatting down a butterfly is a minor and inferior act—and one of great cowardice!—in comparison to honoring and sustaining it. So it is with all life. ~ Kristen Wolf, #NFDB
981:Juliette"
I inhale too quickly. A stifled cough is balloning in my throat.
His glassy green eyes glint in my direction.
"Are you not hungry?"
"No, thank you."
He licks his bottom lip into a smile.
"Don't confuse stupidity for bravery, love. I know you haven't eaten anything in days."
Something in my patioence snaps. "I'd rather die than eat your food and listen to you call me love," I tell him.
Adam drops his fork. Warner spares him a swift glance and when he looks at my way again his eyes have hardened. He holds my gaze fo a few infinitely long seconds before he pulls a gun out of his jacket pocket. He fires. ~ Tahereh Mafi,#NFDB
982:The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
983:Not babies, perhaps. But I know about young things. Foals, puppies, calves, piglets. Even hunting cats. I know if you want them to trust you, you touch them often when they are small. Gently, but firmly, so they believe in your strength, too.” He warmed to his subject. I’d heard this lecture a hundred times before, usually delivered to impatient stableboys. “You don’t shout at them, or make sudden moves that look threatening. You give them good feed and clean water, and keep them clean and give them shelter from the weather.” His voice dropped accusingly as he added, “You don’t take out your temper on them, or confuse punishment with discipline. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
984:Plus de nom. Aujourd'hui, plus aucun souvenir du nom d'hier ; ni demain, de celui d'aujourd'hui, puisque le nom détermine la chose ; puisque un nom est, en nous, le concept de toute chose placée hors de nous. Sans appellation, toute conception devient impossible, et la chose demeure en nous, comme aveugle, imprécise et confuse ; ce nom que j'ai porté parmi les hommes que chacun le grave, épigraphe funéraire, sur l'image qu'il garde de moi, et qu'il la laisse en paix, à jamais. Un nom n'est qu'une épigraphe funéraire, il convient aux morts. À qui a conclu. Je suis vivant, et je ne conclus pas. La vie ne conclut pas. Et elle ignore les noms. ~ Luigi Pirandello, #NFDB
985:Have - have you got an appointment?' he said.
'I don't know,' said Carrot. 'Have we got an appointment?'
'I've got an iron ball with spikes on,' Nobby volunteered.
'That's a morningstar, Nobby.'
'Is it?'
'Yes,' said Carrot. 'An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two, isn't it, Mr-?' He raised his eyebrows.
'Boffo, sir. But-'
'So if you could perhaps run along and tell Dr Whiteface we're here with an iron ball with spi- What am I saying? I mean, without an appointment to see him? Please? Thank you. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
986:I have learned,” Douglas explained, “first through my wife’s illness and then especially through the accident, not to confuse God with life. I’m no stoic. I am as upset about what happened to me as anyone could be. I feel free to curse the unfairness of life and to vent all my grief and anger. But I believe God feels the same way about the accident as I do—grieved and angry. I don’t blame Him for what happened… . We tend to think, ‘Life should be fair because God is fair.’ But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life—by expecting constant good health, for example—then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment.”3 ~ Pat Williams, #NFDB
987:I've been thinking about this so much. When I say time I mean history, or... I think it's human to confuse history with time.”
“That's for sure.”
“No, listen. Other animals don't have time – they're simply part of the universe. But people– we get time and history. What if the world had continued on? Try to imagine a Nobel Peace Prize winner of the year 3056, or postage stamps with spatulas on them because we ran out of anything else to put on stamps. Imagine the Miss Universe winner in the year 22,788. You can't Your brain can't do it. And now there are'nt any people. Without people, the universe is simply the universe. Time doesn't matter. ~ Douglas Coupland,#NFDB
988:When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called "cathexis". I his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us "confuse cathecting with loving." We all know how often individuals of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting of neglecting them. Since their feiling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love.
When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. ~ bell hooks,#NFDB
989:If you think you're going to have a thoughtful discussion with someone who is toxic, be prepared for epic mindfuckery rather than conversational mindfulness. Malignant narcissists and sociopaths use word salad, circular conversations, ad hominem arguments, projection and gas lighting to disorient you and get you off track should you ever disagree with them or challenge them in any way. They do this in order to discredit, confuse and frustrate you, distract you from the main problem and make you feel guilty for being a human being with actual thoughts and feelings that might differ from their own. In their eyes, you are the problem if you happen to exist. ~ Shahida Arabi, #NFDB
990:Sometimes we struggle to grasp the biblical view of joy because of the way it is defined and described in Western culture today. In particular, we often confuse joy with happiness. In the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–11), according to the traditional translations, Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.… Blessed are those who mourn.… Blessed are the meek …” (vv. 3–5, emphasis added), and so on. Sometimes, however, translators adopt the modern vernacular and tell us Jesus said happy rather than blessed. I always cringe a little when I see that, not because I am opposed to happiness, but because the word happy in our culture has been sentimentalized and trivialized. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
991:Sometimes I think that we have forgotten how to be truly happy, we are so conditioned to look for instant gratification. Thus we confuse happiness with transitory pleasures, with self-indulgence. How, in fact, can we live happily when we are surrounded on all sides by so much pain and misery? War and alarums of war, earthquake, flood, drought. Crime is rising; anger and frustration burst into violence, and violence itself becomes a perverse form of gratification. What is this blessedness, this promised happiness? What, if we follow the directions given us in the Beatitudes, is expected of us?—not a general ‘us,’ but each one of us in all our particularity. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
992:Generation Y are everything you feared. They’re everything your worst nightmares conjured up. They’re lazy, apathetic, unoriginal, scared of innovation, scared of difference, just plain scared. They binge drink. The confuse sex for intimacy. They definitely couldn’t tell you the capital cities of more than five countries. And they really think that Justin Bieber is the Second Coming. Only fifty per cent of Generation Y own more than two books and, yes, they listen to music, but they download it from the internet because content is free, yo. Want, take, have is their battle cry. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my generation and my generation is royally screwed up. ~ Sarra Manning, #NFDB
993:Child hauntings are challenging because they can be a couple of different things. They can either be haunting in the traditional sense or a demon trying to use the sounds of children to confuse us. When you hear about a child haunting, it almost always involves laughter, which evil entities are very good at mocking. I think it’s possible that darker, bullying spirits uses child spirits like bait. But it is also possible that there could be a building with a demon and no child spirits at all. I’ve investigated buildings that echoed of laughter, but had no reported history of kids living or dying in them, which leads me to believe that there aren’t really kids in there. ~ Zak Bagans, #NFDB
994:Would you like to?” he says. His voice is hardly audible above the wind—
so low it’s barely a whisper.
“Would I like to what?” My heart is roaring, rushing in my ears, and though
there are still several inches between his hand and mine, there’s a zipping,
humming energy that connects us, and from the heat flooding my body you
would think we were pressed together, palm to palm, face to face.
“Dance,” he says, at the same time closing those last few inches and finding
my hand and pulling me closer, and at that second the song hits a high note and I
confuse the two impressions, of his hand and the soaring, the lifting of the music.
We dance. ~ Lauren Oliver,#NFDB
995:The clue to everything a man should love and fear in her was there right from the start in the ironic smile that primed and swelled the archery of her full lips. There was pride in that smile and confidence in the set of her fine nose. Without understanding why I knew beyond question that a lot of people would mistake her pride for arrogance and confuse her confidence with impassivity. I didn't make that mistake. My eyes were lost swimming floating free in the shimmering lagoon of her steady even stare. Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be if the sea were perfect. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
996:When we mindfully watch our bodily sensations, we should not confuse them with mental formations, for bodily sensations can arise completely independent of the mind. For instance, we sit comfortably. After a while, there can arise some uncomfortable feeling in our back or our legs. Our mind immediately experiences that discomfort and forms numerous thoughts around the feeling. At that point, without confusing the feeling with the mental formations, we should isolate the feeling as feeling and watch it mindfully. Feeling is one of the seven universal mental factors. The other six are contact, perception, attention, concentration, life force, and volition. Other ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
997:I had already imagined how it would be next year.
I'd be at Columbia, and Marcus would move to Manhattan, or maybe one of the outer boroughs. I would study hard, and he would make money playing gigs at dingy bars. We'd spend countless hours going to clubs to see bands on the verge, touring obscure art exhibits, and sipping pot after pot of black coffee at hole-in-the-wall cafes. Many more hours would be spent lounging under the covers. We would never run out of witty and fascinating things to say to each other. Eventually, he'd apply to Columbia, and we'd be the sort of well-educated, cosmopolitan couple that confuse the suburbumpkins who never leave Pineville. ~ Megan McCafferty,#NFDB
998:Jean grinned down at her, and she handed him something in a small silk bag.
'What's this?'
'Lock of my hair, ' she said. 'Meant to give it to you days ago, but we got busy with all the raiding. You know. Piracy. Hectic life. '
'Thank you, love, ' he said.
'Now, if you find yourself in trouble wherever you go, you can hold up that little bag to whoever's bothering you, and you can say, "You have no idea who you're fucking with. I'm under the protection of the lady who gave me this object of her favour. "'
'And that's supposed to make them stop?'
'Shit no, that's just to confuse them. Then you kill them while they're standing there looking at you funny. ~ Scott Lynch,#NFDB
999:Some churches seem to confuse multiculturalism with the gospel itself. I’ve even heard some talk about “the gospel of racial reconciliation.” While I understand their heart, I think that’s deadly dangerous nomenclature. The gospel is fundamentally about God’s reconciliation of us to himself in Christ (a vertical reconciliation), and the fruit of that reconciliation is reconciliation with everything else (horizontal reconciliations), including racial reconciliation. (As a general rule of thumb, anytime you hear “the gospel of . . .” and what follows is something other than Christ’s finished work on the cross, chances are a fruit of salvation is being substituted for its means!) ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
1000:Villanelle
Apollo left the golden Muse
And shepherded a mortal's sheep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!
To mock the giant swain that woo's
The sea-nymph in the sunny deep,
Apollo left the golden Muse.
Afield he drove his lambs and ewes,
Where Milon and where Battus reap,
Theocritus of Syracuse!
To watch thy tunny-fishers cruise
Below the dim Sicilian steep
Apollo left the golden Muse.
Ye twain did loiter in the dews,
Ye slept the swain's unfever'd sleep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!
That Time might half with HIS confuse
Thy songs,--like his, that laugh and leap, Theocritus of Syracuse,
Apollo left the golden Muse!
~ Andrew Lang,#NFDB
1001:
“Would you like to?” he says. His voice is hardly audible above the wind—so low it’s barely a whisper.
“Would I like to what?” My heart is roaring, rushing in my ears, and though there are still several inches between his hand and mine, there’s a zipping, humming energy that connects us, and from the heat flooding my body you would think we were pressed together, palm to palm, face to face.
“Dance,” he says, at the same time closing those last few inches and finding my hand and pulling me closer, and at that second the song hits a high note and I confuse the two impressions, of his hand and the soaring, the lifting of the music.
We dance. ~ Lauren Oliver,#NFDB
1002:The clue to everything a man should love and fear in her was there, right from the start, in the ironic smile that primed and swelled the archery of her full lips. There was pride in that smile, and confidence in the set of her fine nose. Without understanding why, I knew beyond question that a lot of people would mistake her pride for arrogance, and confuse her confidence with impassivity. I didn’t make that mistake. My eyes were lost, swimming, floating free in the shimmering lagoon of her steady, even stare. Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are, in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
1003:A fool is a fool because he hears his foolishness and thinks it's wisdom. So it's true of you and me and everyone else who has ever lived that sin turns us into fools. We see the world upside down and inside out. We have the sad ability to hear foolishness and think it's wisdom, to mistake falsehood for the truth, and to confuse right and wrong.... Every time you buy into the delusion of independent wisdom, righteousness, and strength, you are telling yourself that you can live quite well without the presence, power, and grace of the One who made you. Every day you live without God in your thoughts and his glory as your motivation, you functionally deny the existence of God. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1004:The doctor had used the Rogers technique of questioning, pursuing a kinder, gentler approach. However, questions such as “Allander, how did that make you feel?,” “What were your emotions at this time?” were too basic to allow insight into a mind like Allander’s. It seemed also that Allander understood the logic behind the doctor’s methods. He’d allow the doctor to think he was making headway, then he’d say something to confuse him. He was using Skinnerian conditioning on a goddamn psychologist, Jade realized. Allander wasn’t giving a great deal away, wasn’t giving much up for interpretation. Instead, he guarded his thoughts like jewels, hiding them in a wash of worthless words. ~ Gregg Hurwitz, #NFDB
1005:[Computer science] is not really about computers -- and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes...and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use. ~ Harold Abelson, Introductory lecture to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, #NFDB
1006:The answer is not to expand Lies My Teacher Told Me to cover every distortion and error in history as traditionally taught, to say nothing of the future lies yet to be developed. That approach would make me the arbitrator - I who surely still unknowingly accept all manner of hoary legends as historical fact. Instead, the answer is for all of us to become, in Postman and Weingartner's vulgar term, 'crap detectors' - independent learners who can sift through arguments and evidence and make reasoned judgements. Then we will have learned how to learn, as Postman and Weingartner put it, and neither a one-sided textbook nor a one-sided critique of textbooks will be able to confuse us. ~ James W Loewen, #NFDB
1007:Don't confuse having no violence in your heart with having no violence in the real world, if required. Your duty may or may not include violence, but let us not forget that there are indeed occasions where violence ends violence or, I should say, reflecting the messiness and microscopically incremental nature of Eros: there are occasions where violence replaces a grosser violence with a subtler violence, a lesser devil on the way to a vaguely greater good. The Zen-inspired code of the Samurai warrior is still as good a guide as any: the best fight is not to fight; the real sword is no sword-but if you think that means a Samurai warrior never used his sword, you are tad naive, I fear. ~ Ken Wilber?, #NFDB
1008:We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1009:We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1010:One important thing was not to forget what he hoped to achieve in life. Another important thing was not to confuse a romantic picture of himself—as a doctor in Africa, for example—with a real possibility. And he tried not to lose sight of the fact that he was an adult in an adult world, with responsibilities. This was not easy: he would find himself sitting in the sun cutting out paper stars for a Christmas tree at the very moment other men were working to support large families or representing their countries in foreign places. When in moments of difficult truth-seeking he saw this incongruity, he felt sick that he should be saddled with himself, as though he were his own unwanted guest. ~ Lydia Davis, #NFDB
1011:Miranda Silver is in Dover, in the ground beneath her mother’s house.
Her throat is blocked with a slice of apple
(to stop her speaking words that may betray her)
her ears are filled with earth
(to keep her from hearing sounds that will confuse her)
her eyes are closed, but
her heart thrums hard like hummingbird wings.
Does she remember me at all I miss her I miss the way her eyes are the same shade of grey no matter the strength or weakness of the light I miss the taste of her I see her in my sleep, a star planted seed-deep, her arms outstretched, her fists clenched, her black dress clinging to her like mud.
She chose this as the only way to fight the soucouyant. ~ Helen Oyeyemi,#NFDB
1012:Not too many years ago, the names of our perfumes bore testimony to such things. There was a popular scent called Tabu, there was Sorcery, My Sin, Vampire, Voodoo, Evening in Paris, Jungle Gardenia, Bandit, Shocking, Intimate, Love Potion, and L'Heure Bleue—The Blue Hour. Nowadays what do we find? Vanderbilt, Miss Dior, Lauren, and Armani, perfumes named after glorified tailors"—there were murmurs and gasps in the audience—"names that evoke not the poetic, the erotic, the magic, but economic status, social snobbery, and the egomania of designers. Perfumes that confuse the essence of creation with the essence of money. How much sustenance can the soul receive from a scent entitled Bill Blass? ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1013:for we have been deprived of all the people of knowledge save for a group, small in number, with many troubles, whose concern in life is to snatch the opportunity, when time is asleep, to devote themselves meanwhile to the investigation and perfection of a science; for the majority of people who imitate philosophers confuse the true with the false, and they do nothing but deceive and pretend knowledge, and they do not use what they know of the sciences except for base and material purposes; and if they see a certain person seeking for the right and preferring the truth, doing his best to refute the false and untrue and leaving aside hypocrisy and deceit, they make a fool of him and mock him. ~ Jim Al Khalili, #NFDB
1014:Here, in the city, associations tend to be strangely uniform: An association by similarity (especially an inner, essential similarity) is rare and almost unachievable. Here the barbershops all trim moustaches the same way, dress shops all button women into much the same styles, bookshop windows display all the same book covers - all billed as THE LATEST THING! From nine to ten every morning four-fifths of the total number of eyes are hidden behind newssheets identical down to the last misprint. No, here in the city, if you make associations by similarity, you're bound to confuse everything (the familiar with the unfamiliar, today with yesterday), to grow melancholy, and to even go mad. ~ Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, #NFDB
1015:The epistemic authority of any cognitive claim is always – in principle – open to challenge, modification, revision, and even abandonment. One of the deepest and most pervasive confusions that gives rise to the Myth of the Given is the confusion of brute constraint and epistemic authority. This is the confusion of Secondness and Thirdness. There is an enormous temptation to confuse the fact that we are constrained (Secondness) with the claim that what constrains us has epistemic authority (Thirdness). This temptation gives rise to one of the most tenacious forms of the Myth of the Given – a Given that is supposed to serve as the epistemically authoritative foundation for empirical knowledge. ~ Richard J Bernstein, #NFDB
1016:In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding – symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation of those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1017:Much of our modern difficulty, in religion and other things, arises merely from this: that we confuse the word "indefinable" with the word "vague." If some one speaks of a spiritual fact as "indefinable" we promptly picture something misty, a cloud with indeterminate edges. But this is an error even in commonplace logic. The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact. It is our arms and legs, our pots and pans, that are indefinable. The indefinable is the indisputable. The man next door is indefinable, because he is too actual to be defined. And there are some to whom spiritual things have the same fierce and practical proximity; some to whom God is too actual to be defined. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1018:Love was something I would not have to worry about - the whole mystery of love, heartbreak songs, and family legends. Women who pined, men who went mad, people who forgot who they were and shamed themselves with need, wanting only to be loved by the one they loved. Love was a mystery. Love was a calamity. Love was a curse that had somehow skipped me, which was no doubt why I was so good at multiple-choice tests and memorizing poetry. Sex was a country I been dragged into as an unwilling girl - sex, and the madness of the body. For all that it could terrify and confuse me, sex was something I had assimilated. Sex was a game or a weapon or an addiction. Sex was familiar. But love - love was another country. ~ Dorothy Allison, #NFDB
1019:[Computer science] is not really about computers -- and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes...and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use." ~ Hal Abelson (1986) Introduction of video of lectures on the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (source)., #NFDB
1020:But in what circumstances does our reason teach us that there is vice or virtue? How does this continual mystery work? Tell me, inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago, Africans, Canadians and you, Plato, Cicero, Epictetus! You all feel equally that it is better to give away the superfluity of your bread, your rice or your manioc to the indigent than to kill him or tear out his eyes. It is evident to all on earth that an act of benevolence is better than an outrage, that gentleness is preferable to wrath. We have merely to use our Reason in order to discern the shades which distinguish right and wrong. Good and evil are often close neighbours and our passions confuse them. Who will enlighten us? We ourselves when we are calm. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1021:Professional swimmers don’t have perfect bodies because they train extensively. Rather, they are good swimmers because of their physiques. How their bodies are designed is a factor for selection and not the result of their activities. Similarly, female models advertise cosmetics and thus, many female consumers believe that these products make you beautiful. But it is not the cosmetics that make these women model-like. Quite simply, the models are born attractive and only for this reason are they candidates for cosmetics advertising. As with the swimmers’ bodies, beauty is a factor for selection and not the result. Whenever we confuse selection factors with results, we fall prey to what Taleb calls the swimmer’s body illusion. ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
1022:This false “faith” which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our “religion” is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas. Hence is it clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe—for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1023:That is this world. Figures of flesh and figures of air. It is unruly how they mingle and in fairness, Adele, in fairness, it is not always so easy to distinguish what is real from what is not. But beyond this world is another.” With this his goggles steamed and his own eyes stormed with salty pebbles that beaded on his lashes. “There is another world of pure logic. There are no particles or grit or dirt or poison. There are perfect triangles, π, the number one, and it's impossible to confuse the real with the imagined. I get there through diligent introspection. I know this world, Adele. I know it through direct experience. I can go there any minute of any day by thinking. My mind touches it, this flawless reality incapable of deception. ~ Janna Levin, #NFDB
1024:God is with you in your moments of darkness because he will never leave you. But your darkness isn’t dark to him. Your mysteries aren’t mysterious to him. Your surprises don’t surprise him. He understands all the things that confuse you the most. Not only are your mysteries not mysterious to him, but he is in complete charge of all that is mysterious to you and me. Remember today that there is One who looks at what you see as dark and sees light. And as you remember that, remember, too, that he is the ultimate definition of everything that is wise, good, true, loving, and faithful. He holds both you and your mysteries in his gracious hands, and because he does, you can find rest even when the darkness of mystery has entered your door. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1025:He felt like hearing Mrs. Grogan’s prayer again, and so he went to the girls’ division a little early for his usual delivery of Jane Eyre. He eavesdropped in the hall on Mrs. Grogan’s prayer; I must ask her if she’d mind saying it to the boys, he thought, then wondered if it would confuse the boys coming so quickly on the heels of, or just before, the Princes of Maine, Kings of New England benediction. I get confused myself sometimes, Dr. Larch knew.
‘Grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest,’ Mrs. Grogan was saying, ‘and peace at the last.’
Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go. ~ John Irving,#NFDB
1026:In addition to the gremlins, another thing that gets in the way of meaningful work is the struggle to define who we are and what we do in an honest way. In a world that values the primacy of work, the most common question that we ask and get asked is, “What do you do?” I used to wince every time someone asked me this question. I felt like my choices were to reduce myself to an easily digestible sound bite or to confuse the hell out of people. Now my answer to “What do you do?” is, “How much time do you have?” Most of us have complicated answers to this question. For example, I’m a mom, partner, researcher, writer, storyteller, sister, friend, daughter, and teacher. All of these things make up who I am, so I never know how to answer that question. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1027:The books diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands. But they share a core so obvious it passes for given. Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end. It’s a child’s creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
1028:Affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients -- care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. [...] When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them; that is, we invest feelings or emotions in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called "cathexis." In his book, [M. Scott] Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us "confuse cathecting with loving." We all know how often individuals feeling connected to someone through the process of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting or neglecting them. Since their feeling of that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1029:Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find all too hard to accept. Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our encounter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow.
Pity those who seek for shepherds, instead of longing for freedom! An encounter with superior energy is open to anyone but remains far from those who shift responsibility onto others. Our time on earth is sacred and we should celebrate every moment. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
1030:Universities are turning out highly skilled barbarians because we don’t provide a framework of values to young people, who more and more are searching for it. – Steven Muller, President, Johns Hopkins University True education is training of both the head and the heart. It is better to be uneducated than ill-educated. An uneducated thief may steal goods from the train but an educated one may steal the entire train. We need to compete for knowledge and wisdom, not for grades. Knowledge is piling up facts, wisdom is simplifying them. One could have good grades and a degree and still not learn much. The most important thing one can learn is to ‘learn to learn’. People confuse education with the ability to memorise facts. Educating the mind without morals creates a menace in society. ~ Shiv Khera, #NFDB
1031:When we were only several hundred-thousand years old, we built stone circles, water clocks. Later, someone forged an iron spring, set clockwork running, imagined grid-lines on a globe. Cathedrals are like machines defining the soul; bells of clock towers stitch the sleeper’s dreams together. You see? So we’ve always been on our way to this new place ― that is no place, really ― but is real. It’s our nature to represent: we’re the animal that represents, the sole and only maker of maps. And if our weakness has been to confuse the bright and bloody colors of our calendars with the true weather of days, and the parchment’s territory of our maps with the lands spread out before us ― never mind. We've always been on our way to this new place ― that is no place, really ― but is real. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
1032:Ah. Well, it stands for Freedom From Morality. We don't think healthy amorality happens naturally."
"But you're not amoral," I pointed out. I would trust you to keep your word any time. You don't steal. I've never known you to harm anyone except enemy soldiers in time of war."
He laughed. "I didn't say 'immoral', I said amoral. You really didn't read your guidebook. A person who has a compulsive need to break moral commandments is as much a prisoner as the person who feels bound to obey them. And the human brain is hardwired to produce moral commandments. That is why we think you have to train young people to keep them from developing morality and blocking their pursuit of pleasure. I teach it because --"
"It gives you an outlet for your sadistic urge to confuse children. ~ John Barnes,#NFDB
1033:As her psychosis took hold she moved deeper and deeper into the house, putting as much distance as possible between herself and the outside world. This became her world. To begin with it was just a few rooms. Then it contracted down to just this one, and then to just this tank. Even that wasn’t enough. She constructed barriers to fool and delay the ghosts. Corridors that don’t lead anywhere, or which spiral back on themselves. Hidden stairways that they won’t see. Mirrors everywhere, to baffle and confuse her tormentors. Doors that open onto walls. Of course, even that isn’t sufficient by itself. The ghosts are clever and resourceful, and they’ll keep trying to find a way in. That’s why the house has to keep changing, so that they never get used to one particular configuration. ~ Alastair Reynolds, #NFDB
1034:So ether or starter fluid wouldn’t confuse her?” Budress smiled at Maggie, and offered his hand. She sniffed, then lay down at Scott’s feet. “Not this nose. If I asked you to point out the orange tents, would the green hedges or blue sky or the tree bark confuse you?” “’Course not.” “She smells like we see. Just laying here, she’s picking up thousands of scents, just like we’re seeing a thousand shades of green and blue and whatever. I say, show me the orange, you instantly spot the orange, and don’t think twice about all those other colors. It’s the same way for her with scents. If she was trained to alert to dynamite, you can wrap dynamite in plastic, bury it under two feet of horseshit, and douse the whole thing with whiskey, and she’ll still smell the dynamite. Ain’t she amazing?” Scott ~ Robert Crais, #NFDB
1035:The difference between having a job and having a vocation is that a job is some unpleasant work you do in order to make money, with the sole purpose of making money. There are plenty of jobs because there is still a certain amount of dirty work that nobody wants to do, and that therefore they will pay someone to do it. There is essentially less and less of that kind of work because of mechanisation. If you do a job with the sole purpose of making money, you are absurd, because if money becomes the goal–and it does if you work that way–you begin increasingly to confuse it with happiness or with pleasure. Yes, one can take a handful of crisp one dollar bills and practically water your mouth over it, but this is a kind of person who is confused like a Pavlov dog, who salivates on the wrong bell. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1036:The difference between having a job and having a vocation is that a job is some unpleasant work you do in order to make money, with the sole purpose of making money. There are plenty of jobs because there is still a certain amount of dirty work that nobody wants to do, and that therefore they will pay someone to do it. There is essentially less and less of that kind of work because of mechanization. If you do a job with the sole purpose of making money, you are absurd, because if money becomes the goal–and it does if you work that way–you begin increasingly to confuse it with happiness or with pleasure. Yes, one can take a handful of crisp one dollar bills and practically water your mouth over it, but this is a kind of person who is confused like a Pavlov dog, who salivates on the wrong bell. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1037:You get the feeling from the Bible that being unsettled is almost a normal part of the process. Not that we should go looking for it-- it will find us soon enough-- but struggling in some way seems like something we should expect on our own spiritual journeys. True struggling in faith is a stretching experience, and without it, you don't mature in your faith. You either remain an infant or get cocky. Feeling dis-ease and challenged in faith may be God pushing us out of our own safety zone, where we rest on our own ideas about God and confuse those ideas with the real thing. God may be pushing us to experience him more fully, with us kicking and screaming all the way if need be. Feeling unsettled may be God telling us lovingly, but still in his typical attention-getting manner, it's time to grow. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1038:No, you love to confuse me and drive me crazy. You don't really love me. You don't know what love is."
"Yeah, I think I do." His brows lowered, and he took a step toward her. "I have loved you my whole life, Delaney. I can't remember a day when I didn't love you. I loved you the day I practically knocked you out with a snowball. I loved you when I flattened the tires on your bike so I could walk you home. I loved you when I saw you hiding behind the sunglasses at the Value Rite, and I loved you when you loved that loser son of a bitch Tommy Markham. I never forgot the smell of your hair or the texture of your skin the night I laid you on the hood of my car at Angel Beach. So don't tell me I don't love you. Don't tell me--" His voice shook and he pointed a finger at her. "Just don't tell me that. ~ Rachel Gibson,#NFDB
1039:And I realized how much I don’t want to be a paralegal—it doesn’t excite me—and I know how much I don’t want to be a lawyer, at least not the corporate kind. I see these young associates, the ones who work really late and do corporate law, and they’re on call like doctors, except their work isn’t in the service of humanity, unless it’s the pro bono stuff they’re allowed to do once in a while. I mean, they’re like the opposite of Doctors Without Borders. Lawyers Without Souls, I think of them. But the firm gives them a great salary, and in the beginning, to excite them and kind of confuse them, they take them out to baseball games and dinner, and they give them tickets to see Cirque du Soleil—which in my opinion is a punishment, not a gift—all those people in tights, with diamond shapes painted on their faces. ~ Meg Wolitzer, #NFDB
1040:I’m always astonished when readers suggest that I must write my novels while high on pot or (God forbid!) LSD. Apparently, there are people who confuse the powers of imagination with the effects of intoxication. Not one word of my oeuvre, not one, has been written while in an artificially altered state. Unlike many authors, I don’t even drink coffee when I write. No coffee, no cola, no cigarettes. There was a time when I smoked big Havana cigars while writing, not for the nicotine (I didn’t inhale) but as an anchor, something to hold on to, I told myself, to keep from falling over the edge of the earth. Eventually, I began to wonder what it would be like to take that fall. So one day I threw out the cigars and just let go. Falling, I must say, has been exhilarating -- though I may change my mind when I hit bottom. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1041:Boys’ aggressiveness is increasingly being treated as a medical problem, particularly in schools, a trend that has led to the diagnosing and medicating of boys whose problem may really be that they have been traumatized and influenced by exposure to violence and abuse at home. Treating these boys as though they have a chemical problem not only overlooks the distress they are in but also reinforces their belief that they are “out of control” or “sick,” rather than helping them to recognize that they are making bad choices based on destructive values. I have sometimes heard adults telling girls that they should be flattered by boys’ invasive or aggressive behavior “because it means they really like you,” an approach that prepares both boys and girls to confuse love with abuse and socializes girls to feel helpless. ~ Lundy Bancroft, #NFDB
1042:In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding—symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power. With this insight into a power process, our Imperial Security Force must be ever alert to the formation of sub-languages. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1043:But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1044:Projection' in this technical sense means that the processes which take place in the retina and the brain are experienced as taking place not where they actually do take place, but yards or miles away. (This becomes at once obvious when one remembers that very low-pitched sounds are experienced-correctly-as reverberations inside the ear, and dazzling flashes, again correctly, as occurring in the retina.) Similarly, when you drive a nail into the wall you are aware, not that the handle has struck your palm, but that its head has struck the nail, as if the hammer had become part of your body. These are not inventions of psychologists to make the simple appear as complicated, but examples of our tendency to confuse what happens in the self with what happens outside it-a kind of 'perceptual symbiosis' between ego and environment. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1045:The Travelling Bear
GRASS-BLADES push up between the cobblestones
And catch the sun on their flat sides
Shooting it back,
Gold and emerald,
Into the eyes of passers-by.
And over the cobblestones,
Square-footed and heavy,
Dances the trained bear.
The cobbles cut his feet,
And he has a ring in his nose
But still he dances,
For the keeper pricks him with a sharp stick,
Under his fur.
Now the crowd gapes and chuckles,
And boys and young women shuffle their feet in time to the dancing bear,
They see him wobbling
Against a dust of emerald and gold,
And they are greatly delighted.
The legs of the bear shake with fatigue
And his back aches,
And the shining grass-blades dazzle and confuse him.
But still he dances,
Because of the little, pointed stick.
~ Amy Lowell,#NFDB
1046:Nothing is more dangerous than to stop working. It is a habit that can soon be lost, one that is easily neglected and hard to resume. A measure of day-dreaming is a good thing, like a drug prudently used; it allays the sometimes virulent fever of the over-active mind, like a cool wind blowing through the brain to smooth the harshness of untrammelled thought; it bridges here and there the gaps, brings things into proportion and blunts the sharper angles. But too much submerges and drowns. Woe to the intellectual worker who allows himself to lapse wholly from positive thinking into day-dreaming. He thinks he can easily change back, and tells himself that it is all one. He is wrong! Thought is the work of the intellect, reverie is its self-indulgence. To substitute day-dreaming for thought is to confuse poison with a source of nourishment. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1047:His failure to defeat something more powerful than himself, and the scar that reminds him of his failure, is no reason for shame; guilt is deserved only when the effort to resist evil is never made. Yet the human heart is disheartened by the most unreasonable self-judgments, because even when we take on giants, we too often confuse failure with fault, which I know too well. The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triumph over the darkness while never forgetting that the honor and the beauty are more in the striving than in the winning. When triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, imbue our lives with meaning.
Odd Thomas
Odd Interlude #3 (An Odd Thomas Story) ~ Dean Koontz,#NFDB
1048:Although we refer to the magical ‘books’ of Ancient Egypt, these were in fact scrolls, more often lengths of papyrus stuck together and rolled up, but occasionally parchments of calf vellum. These books were regarded as extremely esoteric, and certainly not for the eyes of common people. Some were said to have been found in secret places, such as forgotten tombs and hidden caskets, and to record the actual words of Thoth or legendary sages and priests. It is likely that the priests considered their own magic to be most effective and sacred, and they kept their knowledge secret in order to make themselves appear more powerful in the eyes of less priveleged individuals. They often wrote down their spells in a kind of code, referring to their ingredients by alternative names in order to confuse any unintiated person who might try to read them. ~ Storm Constantine, #NFDB
1049:The shirt was a screen print of a famous Surrealist artwork by René Magritte in which he drew a pipe and then beneath it wrote in cursive Ceci n’est pas une pipe. (“This is not a pipe.”)
“I just don’t get that shirt,” Mom said.
“Peter Van Houten will get it, trust me.
There are like seven thousand Magritte references in An Imperial Affliction.”
“But it is a pipe.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s a drawing of a pipe. Get it? All representations of a thing are inherently abstract. It’s very clever.”
“How did you get so grown up that you understand things that confuse your ancient mother?” Mom asked. “It seems like just yes-terday that I was telling seven-year-old Hazel why the sky was blue. You thought I was a genius back then.”
“Why is the sky blue?” I asked.
“Cuz,” she answered. I laughed. ~ John Green,#NFDB
1050:There is an art to asking for help, an art that depends on your ability to understand the person you are dealing with, and to not confuse your needs with theirs. Most people never succeed at this, because they are completely trapped in their own wants and desires. They start from the assumption that the people they are appealing to have a selfless interest in helping them. They talk as if their needs mattered to these people—who probably couldn’t care less. Sometimes they refer to larger issues: a great cause, or grand emotions such as love and gratitude. They go for the big picture when simple, everyday realities would have much more appeal. What they do not realize is that even the most powerful person is locked inside needs of his own, and that if you make no appeal to his self-interest, he merely sees you as desperate or, at best, a waste of time. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
1051:Since the arrows of criticism aimed at these legendary masters, who directed the workshops of their day now frequently strike me in the back, I want you to know that the hackneyed accusations leveled at us are entirely unfounded. These
are the facts:
1. The reason we don’t like anything innovative is that there is truly nothing new worth liking.
2. We treat most men like morons because, indeed, most men are morons, not because we’re poisoned
by anger, unhappiness or some other flaw in character. (Granted, treating these people better would be more refined and sensible.)
3. The reason I forget and confuse so many names and faces—except those of the miniaturists I’ve loved and trained since their apprenticeships—is not senility, but because these names and faces are so
lackluster and colorless as to be hardly worth remembering. ~ Orhan Pamuk,#NFDB
1052:What makes this natural process a fertile source of problems is that we apply these nonrational cues to words that also denote rational concepts, and then confuse the two. Watch the way people talk about a political concept central to their society’s self-image: for example, the concept of democracy. The social self, that unruly horse, insists that democracy – real democracy – ought to live up to standards that no real political system can achieve. What ought to be called real democracy is the cumbersome, corrupt, flawed, but functional system that emerges when real human beings have the right to elect officials and vote on issues. Still, that’s not how the horse sees it; to the horse, democracy is an emotionally charged symbol rich with warm feelings, and real democracy means that symbol in some impossibly perfect manifestation on the plane of everyday life. ~ John Michael Greer, #NFDB
1053:I had occasion to talk to Erica Jong, one of the most famous sex-positive feminists—“one of the most interviewed people in the world,” as she’s put it—on the thirtieth anniversary of her novel Fear of Flying. “I was standing in the shower the other day, picking up my shampoo,” she said. “It’s called ‘Dumb Blonde.’ I thought, thirty years ago you could not have sold this. I think we have lost consciousness of the way our culture demeans women.” She was quick to tell me that she “wouldn’t pass a law against the product or call the PC police.” But, she said, “let’s not kid ourselves that this is liberation. The women who buy the idea that flaunting your breasts in sequins is power—I mean, I’m for all that stuff—but let’s not get so into the tits and ass that we don’t notice how far we haven’t come. Let’s not confuse that with real power. I don’t like to see women fooled. ~ Ariel Levy, #NFDB
1054:For me it is an internal law to do good. In my whole life I have endeavored to realize high moral
values; I have always believed in moral ideas, and as a pedagogue and a father I have always
disseminated them. I could not live otherwise than what I profess. Striving for harmony between
words and actions, needing to put ideas into practice, is an integral part of my moral concept
and practice. Because of this every kind of small-souled reaction, vengeance, or trickery is far
from me - for me openness is an internal command. Although I know that this book will “incite”
many to attack, I know that people will criticize and offend me, and I have exposed myself to
hostile action, but nevertheless I am taking this step - not following the counsel of the wise king
Solomon: “Do not be too virtuous, and do not reason too much: why must you confuse
yourself? ~ L szl Polg r,#NFDB
1055:A Visit To Qiantang Lake In Spring
Gushan temple north Jiating west
Water surface first flat cloud base low
Several places early orioles fight warm tree
Every house new swallows peck spring mud
Disordered flowers gradually almost confuse person eye
Light grass able hide horse hoof
Most love lake east go not enough
Green poplar shade in white sand causeway Gushan Temple is to the north,
Jiating pavilion west,
The water's surface now is calm, the bottom of the clouds low.
In several places, the first orioles are fighting in warm trees,
By every house new swallows peck at spring mud.
Disordered flowers have grown almost enough to confuse the eye,
Bright grass is able now to hide the hooves of horses.
I most love the east of the lake, I cannot come often enough
Within the shade of green poplars on White Sand Embankment.
~ Bai Juyi,#NFDB
1056:MARCELLUS: But look, Agathon, what strange dark light is glowing amongst the clouds. You would think a sea of flame is blazing behind the clouds. A divine fire! And the sky is like a blue bell. It's as if one can hear it tolling in deep, solemn tones. You might even suspect that up there above us, in unattainable heights, something is taking place of which we shall never know. But at times we can sense it, when that vast silence has settled over the earth. And yet! All this is very confusing. The gods have to pose insoluble riddles for us humans. And the earth does not rescue us from the cunning of the gods; for it too is full of things that confound the senses. Both things and humans confuse me. True enough! Things are very taciturn! And the human soul won't yield up its riddles. You ask and it keeps silent.
AGATHON: Let's live and not ask questions. Life is full of beauty. ~ Georg Trakl,#NFDB
1057:Yes," said Pericles. "Today's patriotism may be tomorrow's treason, if it serves any judge or politician. And so it would go with any statute you might define today, no matter how explicit the terms. Let us suppose that a future Roman Head of Stae is a plotting and ambitious his country. So he might say to his pople, 'I love my country and in the name of that love I propose such and such an amendment to the Constitution, of which our fathers would have approved in the light of today's needs and changing circumstances. In truth, the Constitution of our fathers really means so-and-so.' I assure you, gentlemen, that he will already have a band of fellow traitors who will uphold him, and help to confuse the citizens. Then, if any patriot would oppose him the traitor will denounce him for treason! You can be certain, then,, that the unfortunate patriot would suffer the penalty for the alleged crime. ~ Taylor Caldwell, #NFDB
1058:There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian.
We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap our Christianity in our national flag. ~ Francis A Schaeffer,#NFDB
1059:Listen to what I say, then believe what your heart tells you is true. For it is in your heart where your wisdom lies, and in your heart where your truth dwells, and in your own heart where God resides in most intimate communion with you. I ask only one thing. What is that? Please do not confuse what is in your heart with what is in your mind. What is in your mind has been put there by others. What is in your heart is what you carry with you of me. Yet you can close your heart to me, and many have. And many also have closed their minds. And please, do not tell others that unless THEY believe what is in YOUR mind, I am going to condemn them. And finally, whatever you do, do not condemn them yourself, on my behalf. We keep doing that. We don’t seem to know how to stop. And we’re putting ourselves through sheer hell. Yet now here is the Good News: Humanity need not go through hell in order to get to heaven. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1060:The world tried to crush you, and you refused to be shattered. You've recovered from every setback a stronger person, rising form the ashes only to astonish everyone around you. And you will continue to surprise and confuse those who underestimate you. It is an inevitability. A forgone conclusion. But you should know now that being a leader is a thankless occupation. Few will ever be grateful for what you do or for the changes you implement. Their memories will be short, convenient. Your every success will be scruntinized. Your accomplishments will be brushed aside, breeding only greater expectations from those around you. Your power will push you further away from your friends. You will be made to feel lonely. Lost. You will long for validation from those you once admired, agonizing between pleasing old friends and doing what is right. But you must never, ever let the idiots into your head. They will only lead you astray. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
1061:On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial “doubt.” This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious “faith” of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false “faith” which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our “religion” is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1062:It’s not that simple, Win.” “It is that simple, my friend. The fact that you insipidly choose to confuse the issue does not change the fact. I’ll demonstrate, if you’d like.” “I’m listening.” “You love your father, correct?” “You know the answer to that.” “I do,” Win said. “But what makes him your father? The fact that he once grunted on top of Mommy after a few drinks—or the way he has cared for you and loved you for the past thirty-five years?” Myron looked down at the can of Yoo-Hoo. “You owe this boy nothing,” Win continued, “and equally important, he owes you nothing. We will try to save his life, if that is what you wish, but that should be where it ends.” Myron thought about it. The only thing scarier than Win irrational was when Win made sense. “Maybe you’re right.” “But you still don’t think it’s that simple.” “I don’t know.” On the television, Archie approached the pulpit, a yarmulke on his head. “It’s a start,” Win said. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1063:In 1970, I wrote in the New York Times, of all uncongenial places, It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect—good or bad—the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don’t say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know—unlike “speed,” which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which can be addictive and difficult to kick. Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each person has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbors’ pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor’s idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit). ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
1064:What can I do but stand with my mouth open, no sound emerging? My lips move and I wave my arms making gestures from the other side of the glass, which I can’t penetrate.
…people can speak out of anything, though the struggle takes years. The problem is, whatever I say about the present feels false-nothing contains it all, or catches the depth of things, or their terrible one-dimensionality.
What am I living on? Someone said the other day, “that old irrepressible-impossible- hope.” And I thought no, this doesn’t feel like hope. But maybe that’s what hope is, no shining thing but a kind of sustenance, plain as bread, the ordinary thing that feeds us. How could we confuse this optimism, when it has nothing to do with expecting things to get better?
Hope has to do with continuing, that’s all…I can imagine now, where I couldn’t before, this long erosion of faith, this steady drawing from one’s strength, until what’s left is tenuous, transparent. ~ Mark Doty,#NFDB
1065:At the head of peoples, above the elite, one finds the monarchy. I reject the republic.
...Not all of the monarchs were good. Monarchy itself, however, has always been good. One must not confuse the man with the institution and draw false conclusions. There can be bad priests; but can we, because of this, conclude that the Church must be abolished and God stoned to death? There are weak and bad monarchs, certainly, but we cannot renounce monarchy because of this. ...
To each nation God has traced a line of destiny. A monarch is great and good when he stays on that line; he is small or bad, to the extent that he wanders away from this line of destiny or opposes it. This then, is the law of monarchy. There are also other lines that may tempt a monarch: the line of personal interest or that of a class of people or group; the line of alien interests (domestic or foreign). He must avoid all these lines and follow that of his people. ~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu,#NFDB
1066:When your partner behaves unconsciously, relinquish all judgment. Judgment is either to confuse someone’s unconscious behavior with who they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person and mistake that for who they are. To relinquish judgment does not mean that you do not recognize dysfunction and unconsciousness when you see it. It means “being the knowing” rather than “being the reaction” and the judge. You will then either be totally free of reaction or you may react and still be the knowing, the space in which the reaction is watched and allowed to be. Instead of fighting the darkness, you bring in the light. Instead of reacting to delusion, you see the delusion yet at the same time look through it. Being the knowing creates a clear space of loving presence that allows all things and all people to be as they are. No greater catalyst for transformation exists. If you practice this, your partner cannot stay with you and remain unconscious. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1067:Women, he would say, are not Muses. Muses are Muses. To confuse one with the other is to mistake the Devouring Void for the Seminal Light. Earthly Women and the Muses are ancient, sworn enemies. The battlefield is the Creative Male. On the one side is the encampment of Discordia, of Diana, of Venus located in his Heart and in his Groin. On the other is the Bastion of Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania, in his Brain and in his Mind. The Muses are tolerant and understanding of border raids, skirmishes, and harassing maneuvers. Throughout the history of the Male Light, there have been few painters, few writers, who have not had a She Who Must Be Accommodated. For some it was their mothers. For many their wives, their mistresses, their girlfriends. For many it was their daughters, a favourite waitress, a stripper, a whore. To the Muses, they are all one. Mother, whore, wife, daughter, stripper, waitress, mistress, girlfriend. ~ Dave Sim, #NFDB
1068:The Hierarch of Rak Urga drew himself up. “This is not a request, Urgit. I’m not asking you.”
“Good. Because I’m not going.”
“I command you to go.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you realize to whom you’re talking?”
“Perfectly, old boy. You’re the same tiresome old Grolim who’s been boring me to tears ever since I inherited the throne from that fellow who used to chew on the carpets back in Rak Goska. Listen carefully, Agachak. I’ll use short words and simple sentences so I don’t confuse you. I am not going to Mallorea. I’ve never had any intention of going to Mallorea. There’s nothing I want to see in Mallorea. There’s nothing I want to do there. I most definitely do not intend to put myself anywhere near Kal Zakath, and he’s gone back to Mal Zeth. Not only that, they have demons in Mallorea. Have you ever seen a demon, Agachak?”
“Once or twice,” the Hierarch replied sullenly.
“Are you’re still going to Mallorea? Agachak, you’re as crazy as Taur Urgas was. ~ David Eddings,#NFDB
1069:It is not only through their complexity that the immune systems confuse their owners' longing for security; they cause even more perplexity through their immanent paradox, as their successes, if they become too thorough, are perverted to become their own kind of reasons for illness: the growing universe of auto-immune pathologies illustrates the dangerous tendency of the own to win itself to death in the battle against the other.
It is no coincidence that recent interpretations of the immunity phenomenon exhibit a tendency to assign far greater significance to the presence of the foreign amidst the own than was intended in traditional identitary understandings of a monolithically closed organismic self - one could almost speak of a post-structuralist turn in biology. In the light of this, the patrol of antibodies in an organism seems less like a police force applying a rigid immigration policy than a theater troupe parodying its invaders and performing as their transvestites. ~ Peter Sloterdijk,#NFDB
1070:It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (...) and the architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.
They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of the Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not". ~ Douglas Adams,#NFDB
1071:Quando ebbe origine l'Area X, le informazioni erano vaghe e confuse, ed è tuttora vero che al mondo pochi sono al corrente della sua esistenza. Il governo, nella sua versione dei fatti, pose l'accento su una catastrofe ecologica circoscritta derivante dalla sperimentazione in campo militare. Come la proverbiale rana nella pentola, che si accorge che l'acqua sta bollendo quando ormai è troppo tardi, la notizia filtrò nel corso di diversi mesi, entrando nella coscienza delle persone un pò alla volta, come parte della quotidiana overdose di chiasso mediatico sulla crescente devastazione ambientale. Nel giro di un paio d'anni diventò materia per i teorici del complotto e altri personaggi di nicchia. Quando mi arruolai e mi venne rilasciato il nullaosta di sicurezza per apprendere come fossero realmente andate le cose, l'idea di un'<> persisteva nella testa di molte persone come una fiaba oscura, un'idea su cui non volevano riflettere troppo. Ammesso che ci riflettessero. Avevano altri problemi. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
1072:Today I know that we cannot be free if we forget, relativize, or forgive the horrors and brutalities suffered in childhood. Quite the contrary. To forgive crimes has been preventing me from feeling and realizing what was actually done to me since my childhood. I want to fight against forgetting, against the wholesale slaughter of memory in our clinics. I want to release the memories blocked in me. I want to remember what I was forced to forget and know why I had to do so. I want to find out where I came from. I will no longer allow anyone to divert me from that search, to numb and confuse me with medicine or fool me with their theories. My illness helped me to hear the voice of the child I once was, the voice that I had tried to silence for so long. And now I want to follow that voice, because it has taught me more than all the books I have ever read. I want to rediscover my life, the life I lost, and I will find it, if I can say often and clearly enough what they actually did to me and how they did it. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
1073:But I don’t know what my side is, he thought, as he went back to his chair by the window. The Liberation, of course, yes, but what is the Liberation? Not an ideal, the freedom of the enslaved. Not now. Never again. Since the Uprising, the Liberation is an army, a political body, a great number of people and leaders and would-be leaders, ambitions and greed clogging hopes and strength, a clumsy amateur semi-government lurching from violence to compromise, ever more complicated, never again to know the beautiful simplicity of the ideal, the pure idea of liberty. And that's what i wanted, what i worked for, all these years. To muddle the nobly simple structure of the hierarchy of caste by infecting it with the idea of justice. And then to confuse the nobly simple structure of the ideal of human equality by trying to make it real. The monolithic lie frays out into a thousand incompatible truth, and that's what i wanted. But i am caught in the insanity, the stupidity, the meaningless brutality of the event. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1074:You chastise the dark side as if it is an evil path, laughable for its malevolence. But do not confuse it with evil. And do not confuse the light as being the product of benevolence. The Jedi of old were cheats and liars. Power-hungry maniacs operating under the guise of a holy monastic order. Moral crusaders whose diplomacy was that of the lightsaber. The dark side is honest. The dark side is direct. It is the knife in the front rather than one stuck in your back. The dark side is self-interested, yes, but it is about extending that interest outward. To yourself, but then beyond yourself. Palpatine cared about the galaxy. He did not wrest control simply to have power for himself—he already had power, as chancellor. He wanted to take power from those who abused it. He wanted to extend control and safety to the people of all worlds. That came with costs. He knew them and lamented them. But paid them just the same because the dark side understands that everything has a cost, and the cost must always be paid. ~ Chuck Wendig, #NFDB
1075:Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false "faith" which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning… Hence, is it clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe – for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1076:My other client, whom I will call Teresa, thought Lorraine had MPD and hoped I could help her. Almost no one recognized this condition in those days.
Lorraine was forty years old and had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals since she was thirteen. She had had various diagnoses, mainly severe depression, and she had made quite a few serious suicide attempts before I even met her. She had been given many courses of electric shock therapy, which would confuse her so much that she could not get together a coherent suicide plan for quite a while.
Lorraine’s psychiatrist was initially opposed to my seeing her, as her friend Teresa had been stigmatized with the "borderline personality disorder" diagnosis when in hospital, so was seen as a bad influence on her. But after Lorraine spent a couple of months in hospital calling herself Susie and acting consistently like a child, he was humble enough to acknowledge that perhaps he could learn some new things, and someone else’s help might be a good idea. ~ Alison Miller,#NFDB
1077:I must admit, however, that this is mostly a book of guesses—as any book on love must be. My guess is that loving is what we are here for, that love is what every one of us deserves to receive and is here to give, that love alone makes this earth the heaven it was meant to be. The guess turns into a conundrum when we realize that so many of us prefer the signs that point to heaven over heaven itself. We yearn for and talk about the love we want. We lament the love we have been deprived of. Yet we sometimes fail to take the steps that can help it happen for us.
The puzzle becomes even more confounding when we sometimes prefer the hell of no love at all, which we bring on by our own unskillful choices or by our endurance of abuse or betrayal, especially from those who say they love us. This book proposes that love is real when we dare to become as loving as we can be toward ourselves and others and as careful as we can be not to confuse a history with someone or a connection that does not work for us with true love. ~ David Richo,#NFDB
1078:My God,” he whispered. “What I could demand of you now . . . What I could ask you to do to me, and you would allow it.”
“I would. I would do whatever you wished.” Her mouth traveled along his jaw. “But you will not ask me.”
He pulled her off him. Her eyes were half-lidded yet glimmering with awareness. “How do you know I won’t?” he demanded.
“You are the only one who understands me. You are the only one who does not judge me for what I am not, or ask of me what I am not willing to give.”
“A man with a black heart cannot very well judge a girl with a diamond soul.”
“Diamonds are cold and hard. And you are not black-hearted. You are gold.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “You are sun.”
Her diary. His poem. He didn’t know which was which now, where they ended and reality began.
“Don’t confuse what you see with what lies beneath, princess.”
“You cannot lie to me, my lord.” Her fingertips slipped over his lips, caressing so gently, so softly. “I know you.”
-Cam & Jacqueline ~ Katharine Ashe,#NFDB
1079:The doctor looked shifty. “He’s still breathing,” he said. “Look, his pulse is nearly humming and he’s got a temperature you could fry eggs on.” He hesitated, aware that this was probably too straightforward and easily understood; medicine was a new art on the Disc, and wasn’t going to get anywhere if people could understand it. “Pyrocerebrum ouerf culinaire,” he said, after working it out in his head. “Well, what can you do about it?” said Arthur. “Nothing. He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er…bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight, for preference."
"But he’s still breathing!” “These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,” said the doctor airily. Chidder sighed. He suspected that the Guild, who after all had an unrivalled experience of sharp knives and complex organic compounds, was much better at elementary diagnostics than were the doctors. The Guild might kill people, but at least it didn’t expect them to be grateful for it. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
1080:My God,” he whispered. “What I could demand of you now . . . What I could ask you to do to me, and you would allow it.”
“I would. I would do whatever you wished.” Her mouth traveled along his jaw. “But you will not ask me.”
He pulled her off him. Her eyes were half-lidded yet glimmering with awareness. “How do you know I won’t?” he demanded.
“You are the only one who understands me. You are the only one who does not judge me for what I am not, or ask of me what I am not willing to give.”
“A man with a black heart cannot very well judge a girl with a diamond soul.”
“Diamonds are cold and hard. And you are not black-hearted. You are gold.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “You are sun.”
Her diary. His poem. He didn’t know which was which now, where they ended and reality began.
“Don’t confuse what you see with what lies beneath, princess.”
��You cannot lie to me, my lord.” Her fingertips slipped over his lips, caressing so gently, so softly. “I know you.”
-Cam & Jacqueline ~ Katharine Ashe,#NFDB
1081:THINK OF HARDY AS A MAN WHO WAS ALMOST RELIGIOUS, AS A MAN WHO CAME SO CLOSE TO BELIEVING IN GOD THAT WHEN HE REJECTED GOD, HIS REJECTION MADE HIM FEROCIOUSLY BITTER. THE KIND OF FATE HARDY BELIEVES IN IS ALMOST LIKE BELIEVING IN GOD - AT LEAST IN THAT TERRIBLE, JUDGMENTAL GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. HARDY HATES INSTITUTIONS: THE CHURCH - MORE THAN FAITH OR BELIEF - AND CERTAINLY MARRIAGE (THE INSTITUTION OF IT), AND THE INSTITUTION OF EDUCATION. PEOPLE ARE HELPLESS TO FATE, VICTIMS OF TIME - THEIR OWN EMOTIONS UNDO THEM, AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OF ALL KINDS FAIL THEM.
DON'T YOU SEE HOW A BELIEF IN SUCH A BITTER UNIVERSE IS NOT UNLIKE RELIGIOUS FAITH? LIKE FAITH, WHAT HARDY BELIEVED WAS NAKED, PLAIN, VULNERABLE. BELIEF IN GOD, OR A BELIEF THAT - EVENTUALLY - EVERYTHING HAS TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES... EITHER WAY, YOU DON'T LEAVE YOURSELF ANY ROOM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL DETACHMENT. EITHER WAY, YOU'RE NOT BEING VERY CLEVER. NEVER THINK OF HARDY AS CLEVER; NEVER CONFUSE FAITH, OR BELIEF - OF ANY KIND - WITH SOMETHING EVEN REMOTELY INTELLECTUAL. ~ John Irving,#NFDB
1082:It is as if the eyes were trying to look at themselves directly, or as if one were trying to describe the color of a mirror in terms of colors reflected in the mirror. Just as sight is something more than all things seen, the foundation or “ground” of our existence and our awareness cannot be understood in terms of things that are known. We are forced, therefore, to speak of it through myth - that is, through special metaphors, analogies, and images which say what it is like as distinct from what it is. At one extreme of its meaning, “myth” is fable, falsehood, or superstition. But at another, “myth” is a useful and fruitful image by which we make sense of life in somewhat the same way that we can explain electrical forces by comparing them with the behavior of water or air. Yet “myth,” in this second sense, is not to be taken literally, just as electricity is not to be confused with air or water. Thus in using myth one must take care not to confuse image with fact, which would be like climbing up the signpost instead of following the road. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1083:Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life. 20 Do your work with the welfare of others always in mind. It was by such work that Janaka attained perfection; others too have followed this path. 21 What the outstanding person does, others will try to do. The standards such people create will be followed by the whole world. 22 There is nothing in the three worlds for me to gain, Arjuna, nor is there anything I do not have; I continue to act, but I am not driven by any need of my own. 23 If I ever refrained from continuous work, everyone would immediately follow my example. 24 If I stopped working I would be the cause of cosmic chaos, and finally of the destruction of this world and these people. 25 The ignorant work for their own profit, Arjuna; the wise work for the welfare of the world, without thought for themselves. 26 By abstaining from work you will confuse the ignorant, who are engrossed in their actions. Perform all work carefully, guided by compassion. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
1084:There are at least two ways to believe in the idea of quality. You can believe there's something ineffable going on within the human mind, or you can believe we just don't understand what quality in a mind is yet, even though we might someday. Either of those opinions allows one to distinguish quantity and quality. In order to confuse quantity and quality, you have to reject both possibilities. The mere possibility of there being something ineffable about personhood is what drives many technologists to reject the notion of quality. They want to live in an airtight reality that resembles an idealized computer program, in which everything is understood and there are no fundamental mysteries. They recoil from even the hint of a potential zone of mystery or an unresolved seam in one's worldview. This desire for absolute order usually leads to tears in human affairs, so there is a historical reason to distrust it. Materialist extremists have long seemed determined to win a race with religious fanatics: Who can do the most damage to the most people? ~ Jaron Lanier, #NFDB
1085:Everyone freaks out. Sometimes the best we can do with fear is befriend it. Expect it and understand that fear will always reappear. Eventually it subsides. It will return. The real culprits are our knee jerk responses to fear and the way we try to avoid feeling fear, anxiety and shame. Don't get me wrong, wanting to feel better fast is a perfectly natural human impulse. It is healthy to seek relief when you feel hopelessly mired in the emotional soup. Calming down is an essential first step to accurately perceiving a problem and deciding what to do about it but the last thing you need to do is shut yourself off from fear and pain - either your own or the worlds. If there is one over riding reason why our world and relationships are in such a mess, is that we try to get rid of our anxiety, fear and shame as fast as possible, regardless of the long term consequences. In doing so, we blame and shame others and in countless ways, we unwittingly act against ourselves. We confuse our fear driven thoughts with what is right, best, necessary or true. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
1086:The early Church, patterned after pagan Mysteries, sought for a little time to perpetuate the arcana, but such a procedure would doom the Church to a humble and obscure existence, ministering only to a devout and dedicated few. The bishops of the Church were mortal men instinctively desiring power and authority, and they sacrificed the spiritual doctrines of Christianity to temporal ambitions. The majority of mankind neither desires to improve itself nor to support an organization which demands a high degree of integrity. The outer body of the Church increased to the degree that the standards of Christian living were lowered, until at last, promising everything and demanding only temporal support, the Church gained temporal power at the expense of spiritual authority. It is for this reason particularly that the Christian thinker must never confuse the Jesus of Nazareth with the Christ of the modern church. Nor must the Christian thinker permit the clergy to interpret for him spiritual matters of which the clergy itself is ignorant. ~ Manly P Hall, Twelve World Teachers, #NFDB
1087:In sum," Midlife said, giving the room his best you-the-jury baritone, "Our defense will be...?" He looked to Matt for the answer/
"Blame the other guy," Matt said.
"Which other guy?"
"Yes."
"Huh?"
"We blame whoever we can," Matt said. "The CFO, the COO, the C Choose-Your-Favorite-Two-Letter-Combination, the accounting firm, the banks, the board, the lower-level employees. We claim some of them are crooks. We claim some of them made honest mistakes that steamrolled."
"Isn't that contradictory?" Midlife asked, folding his hands and lowering his eyebrows. "Claiming both malice and mistakes?" He stopped, looked up, smiled, nodded. Malice and mistakes. Midlife liked the way that sounded.
"We're looking to confuse," Matt said. "You blame enough people, nothing sticks. The jury end up knowing something went wrong but you don't know where to place the blame. We throw facts and figures at them. We bring up every possible mistake, every uncrossed t and dotted i. We act like discrepancy is a huge deal, even if it's not. We are skeptical of EVERYONE. ~ Harlan Coben,#NFDB
1088:It was very instructive: Manchineel, apparently, had been used by the Aboriginal Peoples of the Caribbean for poison, torture, and several other worthwhile purposes. Even sitting under the tree during a rainstorm could be deadly. In fact, the Carib Indians had actually tied their prisoners to the trunk of the tree when it rained, because the water dripping off the leaves made an acid bath strong enough to eat through human flesh. And arrows dipped in the sap could cause painful death; clearly it was wonderful stuff. But Frank’s main point—avoid the manchineel!—was very plain long before he wound up his lecture with a few halfhearted warnings about poison oak. And then, just when I thought we could make our getaway, one of the boys said, “What about snakes?” Frank smiled happily; on to lethal animals! He took a deep breath, and he was off again. “Oh, it’s not just snakes,” he said. “I mean, we talked about the rattlesnakes—diamondback and pygmy—and coral snakes! They are Absolute Killers! Don’t confuse them with the corn snake— Remember? ‘Red touches yellow’?” He ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
1089:Kevin Josten, is now preaching in his mega-church in Dallas, Texas. His message is about prosperity gospel; you know, if you dream it, God will give it. It’ll be more like, you give Josten lots of money and he’ll be rich beyond all of his wildest dreams. The second, Ryan Whittier, will set himself up to be the Preacher to the Politicians, and he’s in California. Someday, he wants to be seen as the go-to guy for politicians to find out what God says about this or that. The third is Mark Goat. With my help, he plans on setting up a television network that will air vaguely Christian messages from prosperity gospel preachers, messages from the occasional Fundamentalist nutcases, and even the out there End Times preachers. Our plan is to confuse those uneducated about what the Christian message really is. Heck, Goat and Whittier want to join Christians with Muslims, get the uneducated types thinking that the barbarians in the Middle East actually believe the same thing as real Christians. They call it Chrislam. We sow chaos in the Bible Belt and we can rule America the way we want, ~ Cliff Ball, #NFDB
1090:In our profession, we tend to name things exactly as we see them. Big red stars we call red giants. Small white stars we call white dwarfs. When stars are made of neutrons, we call them neutron stars. Stars that pulse, we call them pulsars. In biology they come up with big Latin words for things. MDs write prescriptions in a cuneiform that patients can’t understand, hand them to the pharmacist, who understands the cuneiform. It’s some long fancy chemical thing, which we ingest. In biochemistry, the most popular molecule has ten syllables—deoxyribonucleic acid! Yet the beginning of all space, time, matter, and energy in the cosmos, we can describe in two simple words, Big Bang. We are a monosyllabic science, because the universe is hard enough. There is no point in making big words to confuse you further.
Want more? In the universe, there are places where the gravity is so strong that light doesn’t come out. You fall in, and you don’t come out either: black hole. Once again, with single syllables, we get the whole job done. Sorry, but I had to get all that off my chest. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,#NFDB
1091:These flowers are starwort," she said. "Starwort means 'welcome.' By giving you a bouquet of starwort, I'm welcoming you to my home, to my life." She twirled buttery pasta on her fork and looked into my eyes without a glimmer of humor.
"They look like daisies to me," I said. "And I still think they're poisonous."
"They aren't poisonous, and they aren't daisies. See how they only have five petals but it looks like they have ten? Each pair of petals is connected in the center." Picking up the small bouquet of flowers, I examined the little white bundle. The petals grew together before attaching to the stem, so that each petal was the shape of a heart.
"That's a characteristic of the genus 'Stellaria,'" Elizabeth went on, when she could see that I understood. "Daisy is a common name, and spans many different families, but the flowers we call daisies typically have more petals, and each petal grows separate from the others. It's important to know the difference or you may confuse the meaning. Daisy means 'innocence', which is a very different sentiment than 'welcome. ~ Vanessa Diffenbaugh,#NFDB
1092:The Christian writer will feel that in the greatest depth of vision, moral judgment will be implicit, and that when we are invited to represent the country according to survey, what we are asked to do is to separate mystery from manners and judgment from vision, in order to produce something a little more palatable to the modern temper. We are asked to form our consciences in the light of statistics, which is to establish the relative as absolute. For many this may be a convenience, since we don't live in an age of settled belief; but it cannot be a convenience, it cannot even be possible, for the writer who is a Catholic. He will feel that any long-continued service to it will produce a soggy, formless, and sentimental literature, one that will provide a sense of spiritual purpose for those who connect the spirit with romanticism and a sense of joy for those who confuse that virtue with satisfaction. The storyteller is concerned with what is; but if what is is what can be determined by survey, then the disciples of Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Gallup are sufficient for the day thereof. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1093:/Farsi There is great joy in darkness. Deepen it. Blushing embarrassments in the half-light confuse, but a scorched, blackened, face can laugh like an Ethiopian, or a candled moth, coming closer to God. Brighter than any moon, Bilal, Muhammed's Black Friend, shadowed him on the night journey. Keep your deepest secret hidden in the dark beneath daylight's uncovering and night's spreading veil. Whatever's given you by those two is for your desires. They poison, eventually. Deeper down, where your face gets erased, where life-water runs silently, there's a prison with no food and drink, and no moral instruction, that opens on a garden where there's only God. No self, only the creation-word, BE. You, listening to me, roll up the carpet of time and space. Step beyond, into the one word. In blindness, receive what I say. Take "There is no good..." for your wealth and your strength. Let "There is nothing..." be a love-wisdom in your wine. [1841.jpg] -- from The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks
~ Hakim Sanai, The Good Darkness
,#NFDB
1094:The true splendor of science is not so much that it names and classifies, records and predicts, but that it observes and desires to know the facts, whatever they may turn out to be. However much it may confuse facts with conventions, and reality with arbitrary divisions, in this openness and sincerity of mind it bears some resemblance to religion, understood in its other and deeper sense. The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than to understand and explain it. The more he analyzes the universe into infinitesimals, the more things he finds to classify, and the more he perceives the relativity of all classification. What he does not know seems to increase in geometric progression to what he knows. Steadily he approaches the point where what is unknown is not a mere blank space in a web of words but a window in the mind, a window whose name is not ignorance but wonder. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1095:A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.
~ Yehuda Amichai,#NFDB
1096:WHAT DOES AN OLD MAN GAIN BY EXERCISING
what will he gain by talking on the phone
what will he gain by going after fame, tell me
what does he gain by looking in the mirror
Nothing
each time he just sinks deeper in the mud
It’s already three or four in the morning
why doesn’t he try to go to sleep
but no--he won’t stop doing exercise
won’t stop with his famous long-distance calls
won’t stop with Bach
with Beethoven
with Tchaikovsky
won’t stop with the long looks in the mirror
won’t stop with the ridiculous obsession about continuing to breathe
pitiful--it would be better if he turned out the light
Ridiculous old man his mother says to him
you and your father are exactly alike
he didn’t want to die either
may God grant you the strength to drive a car
may God grant you the strength to talk on the phone
may God grant you the strength to breathe
may God grant you the strength to bury your mother
You fell asleep, you ridiculous old man!
but the poor wretch does not intend to sleep
Let’s not confuse crying with sleeping ~ Nicanor Parra,#NFDB
1097:Then he took the teat closest to Sophia and gave it a twist. A fresh stream of milk shot forth, glancing off the rim of the bucket and splashing her slippers.
“Take care!” With a little shriek of laughter, she pushed away from the goat’s side. Davy tilted his hand and squeezed the teat again, this time splattering Sophia from crown to chest. Sputtering and wiping milk from her face, she scrambled to her feet. “Davy Linnet,” she scolded, towering over both youth and goat. “You’re a rascal.”
“Am I?” He flashed her a lopsided, innocent grin. Shrugging, he dropped his gaze and emptied the last drops of milk into the pail. “Well, you’re blushing.”
Sophia made a show of huffing and crossing her arms, but she could not keep the laughter out of her voice. “Never say you’ve learned nothing from me, Davy. You might have shown me how to milk, but I’ve taught you to flirt.”
“A fair bargain, then.” He stood and took the goat by its collar.
“Perhaps. Mind you don’t confuse the two talents. Keep your goats straight from your girls.”
“That’s easily done.” Mischief twinkled sharp in his eye. “The goat’s don’t blush. ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB
1098:You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather
than
an asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates form
we are justified in supposing
that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the
unit, stiff and sharp,
conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and
liking for everything
self-dependent, anything an
ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to
attempt through sheer
reserve, to confuse presumptions resulting from
observation, is idle. You cannot make us
think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are
brilliant, it
is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing
of pre-eminence. Would you not, minus
thorns, be a what-is-this, a mere
perculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, the
elements, or mildew;
but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance
without co-ordination? Guarding the
infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re-
membered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you. ~ Marianne Moore,#NFDB
1099:Do you ever think when you look at someone, when to you listen to someone, does that person really have a life?" Abdul was asking the boy who was not listening. "Like that woman who just went to hang herself, or her husband, who probably beat her before she did this? I wonder what kind of life is that," Abdul went on. "I go through tensions just to see it. But it is a life. Even the person who lives like a dog still has a kind of life. Once when my mother was beating me, and that thought came to me. I said, 'If what is happening now, you beating me, is to keep happening for the rest of my life, it would be a bad life, but it would be a life, too.' And my mother was so shocked when I said that. She said, "Don't confuse yourself by thinking about such terrible lives.'" Sunil though that he, too, had a life. A bad life, certainly-the kind that could be ended as Kalu's had been and then forgotten, because it made no difference to the people who lived in the overcity. But something he'd come to realize on the roof, leaning out, thinking about what would happen if he leaned to far, was that a boy's life could still matter to himself. ~ Katherine Boo, #NFDB
1100:Indeed, the most urgent, the most essential task is the education of children and youth... It is usually customary to confuse education with upbringing, but it is time to understand that school education, as it is established in most cases, not only does not contribute to the moral upbringing of youth, but acts inversely. In the Anglo-Saxon countries the schools are occupied mainly with the physical development of youth to the detriment of their mental development. But the excessive enthusiasm for sports leads to the coarsening of character, to mental degeneration, and to new diseases. True, not much better is the situation in home education under the conditions of the modern family. Therefore, it is time to pay most serious attention to the grave and derelict situation of children and youth from the moral point of view. Many lofty concepts are completely out of habitual use, having been replaced by everyday formulas for the easy achievement of the most vulgar comforts and status...The program of education is as broad as life itself. The possibilities for improvement are inexhaustible... ~ Helena Roerich Letters of Helena Roerich II, (19 April 1938), #NFDB
1101:All things considered, science is the best means of understanding almost everything around us. It works well on the human scale and stands as a stark counter-point to beliefs that by their very nature refute the notion of evidence. And I would be the last person to attack people encouraging the rest of us to use our ability to be rational, thereby defending the value and the necessity of science. But I will lift a querying hand when the notion of ‘science’ is held to be immutable, because ‘science’ as such does not exist. Science is a process to be sure, a way of thinking, but what science is above all is that which scientists do, and alas, scientists are people, too. As potentially fallible, irrational, biased, greedy, in short, as flawed, as the rest of us. So, by all means defend science as a process. But don’t confuse it with the very human endeavor of science as a profession. Because they’re not the same thing. And this is why when some guy in a white lab-coat says ‘you can trust me, I’m a scientist,’ best take it with a big bucket of salt, and then say ‘Fine, now show me the evidence and more to the point, show me how you got to it. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1102:We often confuse love for a warm glow we sense in our bellies and as something we can offer and withdraw, like a cat who comes and goes at its pleasure. It’s easy for us to extend love toward those who are lovable, but loving people and situations that are not to our liking isn’t so easy. We give our love “unconditionally,” but when we don’t receive what we feel we deserve, we withdraw it. We then reinvest our love in a new person or situation that we think will give us a better return, but we find it difficult to maintain when we don’t feel recognized or acknowledged. If things don’t work out the way we want them to, we too readily exchange our loving feelings for hatred and resentment. Our initial excitement over a new job, for instance, may sour and become disappointment and bitterness. When we’ve been jilted by a lover, the intense, starry-eyed passion of infatuation can turn into loathing so great that it consumes us. To an Earthkeeper, love is not a feeling or something you barter with. Love is the essence of who you are, and it radiates from you as a brilliant aura: You become love, practice fearlessness, and attain enlightenment. ~ Alberto Villoldo, #NFDB
1103:There are three types of teams, each of which requires different types of management and organization. The first type of team is like a pair of doubles tennis partners. It is a small team, in which each person adapts to the abilities of the other. Players have a primary responsibility, but can play many different roles. The second type of team is like a soccer or football team, in which each person has a given position, but the whole team moves together. The third team type is like a baseball team, in which all players have an assigned position and play on the team, rather than as a team. This model is akin to the traditional Detroit automaker, where each person has his or her assigned task. Organizations have to decide which type of team fits best, a decision that affects the entire organizational culture. Mixed teams don’t work; they just confuse everyone involved. Increasingly, organizations are becoming more like soccer or tennis teams, in which each member has to take more personal responsibility in making decisions. In such organizations, managers must inspire, rather command. You must fit the appropriate management style for your team type. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1104:If everything is assumed to be in order with regard to the Holy Scriptures-what then? Has the person who did not believe come a single step closer to faith? No, not a single step. Faith does not result from straightforward scholarly deliberation, nor does it come directly; on the contrary, in this objectivity one loses that infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness, which is the condition of faith, the everywhere and nowhere in which faith can come into existence. Has the person who did believe gained anything with regard to the power and strength of faith? No, not in the least; in this prolix knowledge, in this certainty that lurks at faith’s door and craves for it, he is rather in such a precarious position that much effort, much fear and trembling will be needed lest he fall into temptation and confuse knowledge with faith. Whereas up to now faith has been a beneficial taskmaster in uncertainty, but it would be its worst enemy in this certainty. If passion is taken away, faith no longer exists, and certainty and passion do not hitch up as a team. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846) as translated by Hong, p. 29, #NFDB
1105:Wyoming got an Algonquian name from Pennsylvania meaning “large prairie,” but the adoption came only after a long fight. Decades before the settling of the present state of Wyoming, its name achieved popular acclaim after an 1809 poem, “Gertrude of Wyoming,” by Thomas Campbell. The poem recalled the Iroquois defeat of a group of Tory settlers and the ensuing death of 350 of them during the chaos of the American Revolution. By the time Congress created the territory of Wyoming in 1868, ten communities in Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kansas, and Nebraska had already claimed the name. The name had grown in popularity and was proposed for the new Western territory, even though it had no historical relationship to the area, to the native people who lived there, or to the languages spoken there. One anti-Wyoming group of congressmen favored the name Cheyenne, since that name referred to the native people living there, but Congress rejected Cheyenne for fear that Europeans might confuse it with the French word chienne, meaning “female dog.” No one in the seemly Victorian era wanted a state whose name meant “bitch” (G. R. Stewart 1945). ~ Jack Weatherford, #NFDB
1106:In recent years, there have been some changes of perception and, consequently, of tactics among Muslims. Some of them still see the West in general and its present leader the United States in particular as the ancient and irreconcilable enemy of Islam, the one serious obstacle to the restoration of God’s faith and law at home and their ultimate universal triumph. For these there is no way but war to the death, in fulfillment of what they see as the commandments of their faith. There are others who, while remaining committed Muslims and well aware of the flaws of modern Western society, nevertheless also see its merits—its inquiring spirit, which produced modern science and technology; its concern for freedom, which created modern democratic government. These, while retaining their own beliefs and their own culture, seek to join us in reaching toward a freer and better world. There are some again who, while seeing the West as their ultimate enemy and as the source of all evil, are nevertheless aware of its power, and seek some temporary accommodation in order better to prepare for the final struggle. We would be wise not to confuse the second and the third. ~ Bernard Lewis, #NFDB
1107:The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit. Hebrews 4:12 Some of God’s children lay great emphasis on rightly dividing the word of truth. Indeed, Scripture itself tells us we are to do this (2 Tim. 2:15), but it also tells us His Word is to divide us. Where we may be wrong is in seeking to divide His Word first before we have allowed it to do its work on us! Are we aware of this living, powerful character of God’s Word? Does it deal with us like a sharp, two-edged sword? Or do we handle it as though it were just one more book to be studied and analyzed? The strange thing about Scripture is that it does not aim to make us understand doctrines in a systematic way. Perhaps we think it would have been better if Paul and the others had got together to provide a detailed handbook of Christian doctrines. But God did not permit this. How easily He could have settled some of our theological arguments, but it seems He loves to confuse those who only approach the Bible intellectually! He wants to preserve men from merely getting hold of doctrines. He wants His truth to get hold of them. ~ Watchman Nee, #NFDB
1108:God not only gives you the grace to believe for your salvation, but he also works to enable you to live by faith. If you are living by faith, you know that you have been visited by powerful transforming grace, because that way of living just isn’t normal for you and me. If your way of living is no longer based on what your eyes can see and your mind can understand, but on God’s presence, promises, principles, and provisions, it is because God has crafted faith in you. Could it be that all of those things that come your way that confuse you and that you never would’ve chosen for yourself are God’s tools to build your faith? By progressive transforming grace, he is enabling you to live the brand-new life he calls all of his children to live—the Godward life for which you were created. You don’t have to hide in guilt when weak faith gets you off the path, because your hope in life isn’t your faithfulness, but his. You can run in weakness and once again seek his strength. And you can know that in zealous grace he will not leave his craftwork until faith fully rules your heart unchallenged. He always gives freely what we need in order to do what he has called us to do. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1109:a war has been declared against you by the world of darkness—a world which finds nothing as terrifying as heartfelt prayer and therefore tries by all means possible to confuse you and distract you from your purpose of learning how to pray. However, even the action of the enemy is permitted by God’s will to the extent that it is necessary for us. It seems that your humility needs to be tested and that you are not yet ready to enter the interior of your heart, for you may fall into spiritual greediness. “I will read you a directive from the Philokalia regarding such a situation.” And so the elder found the instruction of the Venerable Nicephorus the Solitary and began: “‘If, in spite of all effort, you cannot enter the interior of the heart in the way which was explained to you, then do what I will tell you and with God’s help you will reach your goal. Man’s vocal cords enable him to speak, to vocalize words. Use this ability then and, while fighting distractions, diligently and continuously say, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!” If you will persevere for some time then, without any doubt, the path to the heart will be opened to you. This has been verified through experience. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1110:Men always complain that the minute they think they’ve got a woman figured out, the woman does something to completely confuse the man again.” Daniel nodded. “I would agree with that.” “Well, that’s because men are simple-minded and uncomplicated.” Why was she having this conversation with him? “All a man needs is food and . . .” she stopped herself. Oh, she really didn’t want to go there! Why did she have to open this can of worms? “Food and what?” Daniel pressed. She took a deep breath. “Give a man food and sex” – there I said it – “and they’re as happy as clams.” Daniel coughed and almost choked on a piece of venison. A split second later, a thoroughly devilish smile spread across his face as he intently peered up at her from across the table. She held her breath. God, why did he have to be so damn good-looking, especially with that heart-stopping smile of his! “Well, your cooking’s been real good so far,” he drawled. His eyes smoldered as he stared at her. She waved her hands in front of her, palms out, and abruptly left the table. “Okay, this conversation has gone far enough. You are a typical man, Daniel, and it brings me to my final point,” “Point?” “Men are pigs. ~ Peggy L Henderson, #NFDB
1111:Among the many forms of alienation, the most frequent one is alienation in language. If I express a feeling with a word, let us say, if I say "I love you," the word is meant to be an indication of the reality which exists within myself, the power of my loving. The word "love" is meant to be a symbol of the fact love, but as soon as it is spoken it tends to assume a life of its own, it becomes a reality. I am under the illusion that the saying of the word is the equivalent of the experience, and soon I say the word and feel nothing, except the thought of love which the word expresses. The alienation of language shows the whole complexity of alienation. Language is one of the most precious human achievements; to avoid alienation by not speaking would be foolish -- yet one must be always aware of the danger of the spoken word, that it threatens to substitute itself for the living experience. The same holds true for all other achievements of man; ideas, art, any kind of man-made objects. They are man's creations; they are valuable aids for life, yet each one of them is also a trap, a temptation to confuse life with things, experience with artifacts, feeling with surrender and submission. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1112:Orion's Tips for Sane Witchcraft (Ponder and Apply to Living) Know your boundaries. Find time for stillness. Look within! Do not confuse spirituality with egotism. Don't abuse power or give it to those who would abuse you with it. Live your life as an expression of conscious creation and divine revelation. Seek counsel daily with your source, your center, and your ancestors. Don't get lazy, crazy, or otherwise in your own way. Remember grace! It brings wisdom and unlocks more vast knowledge. Be sincere in all that you do. Never compromise (especially your integrity) or be compromised. If you lose yourself, you have nothing. Choose what matters and feed it. (Starve the bane, feed the blessing.) Get the lesson and get on with life. Too often life is what happens when you are busy doing something else. Maintain an attitude of thanksgiving. For in doing so, you give gratitude to source and maintain inner fertile space to receive more. Thank the source and its good spirits at the beginning and ending of each day. If you wake up in the morning, your day has already started out good . . . build from that position. Don't wait for a reason to be happy when it is right in front of you. Claim the ~ Orion Foxwood, #NFDB
1113:on the continent
I'm soft. I
dream too.
I let myself dream. I dream of
being famous. I dream of
walking the streets of London and
Paris. I dream of
sitting in cafes
drinking fine wines and
taking a taxi back to a good
hotel.
I dream of
meeting beautiful ladies in the hall
and
turning them away because
I have a sonnet in mind
that I want to write
before sunrise. at sunrise
I will be asleep and there will be a
strange cat curled up on the
windowsill.
I think we all feel like this
now and then.
I'd even like to visit
Andernach, Germany, the place where
I began, then I'd like to
fly on to Moscow to check out
their mass transit system so
I'd have something faintly lewd to
whisper into the ear of the mayor of
Los Angeles upon to my return to this
fucking place.
it could happen.
I'm ready.
I've watched snails crawl over
ten foot walls
and vanish.
you mustn't confuse this with
ambition.
I would be able to laugh at my
good turn of the cards -
and I won't forget you.
I'll send postcards and
snapshots, and the
finished sonnet. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
1114:CLEANTE. That is the usual strain of all your kind; They must have every one as blind as they. They call you atheist if you have good eyes; And if you don't adore their vain grimaces, You've neither faith nor care for sacred things. No, no; such talk can't frighten me; I know What I am saying; heaven sees my heart. We're not the dupes of all your canting mummers; There are false heroes—and false devotees; And as true heroes never are the ones Who make much noise about their deeds of honour, Just so true devotees, whom we should follow, Are not the ones who make so much vain show. What! Will you find no difference between Hypocrisy and genuine devoutness? And will you treat them both alike, and pay The self-same honour both to masks and faces Set artifice beside sincerity, Confuse the semblance with reality, Esteem a phantom like a living person, And counterfeit as good as honest coin? Men, for the most part, are strange creatures, truly! You never find them keep the golden mean; The limits of good sense, too narrow for them, Must always be passed by, in each direction; They often spoil the noblest things, because They go too far, and push them to extremes. I merely say this by the way, good brother. ~ Moli re, #NFDB
1115:People judge the unknown with their knowledge of the known.
.
Fear is the most prized illusion that we create for ourselves.
.
Human beings are designed in a way that they always live with one half of their self in the past and the other half in the present.
.
Love doesn't always happen to strengthen our beliefs. Sometimes it happens to destroy all our previous beliefs and faith and gives us a chance to re-look at our own conclusions.
.
We all are designed to remember things. So, if you try to forget, you will suffer. Accept and you shall shine like never before. The greatest lesson love can give you is how to live a complete life by accepting its incomplete ways. If you can’t hope in love, you can’t live.
.
Accidents happen Mini but that doesn't mean you stop travelling.
.
Sometimes we confuse need and necessity, I guess. Necessity is common to all but need is person-specific.
.
What to do when you are in love with the journey but at the same time scared of the undesirable destination which you know is going to arrive sooner or later?
.
Sometimes we lie not to cover the truth but to cover that side of us which the truth may strip to bareness. ~ Novoneel Chakraborty,#NFDB
1116:This ability of the body is a source of never-ending wonder to me. It fights against lies with a tenacity and a shrewdness that are properly astounding. Moral and religious claims cannot deceive or confuse it. A little child is force-fed morality. He accepts this nourishment willingly because he loves his parents, and suffers countless illnesses in his school years. As an adult he makes use of his superb intellect to fight against conventional morality, possibly becoming a philosopher or a writer in the process. But his true feelings about his family, which were masked by illness during his school days, have a stunting effect on him, as was the case with Nietzsche and Schiller. Finally, he becomes victim of his parents, sacrificing himself to their ideas of morality and religion, even though as an adult he saw so clearly through the lies of "society." Seeing through his own self-deception, realizing that he had let himself be made the sacrifice of morality, was more difficult for him than penning philosophical tracts or writing courageous dramas. But it is only the internal processes taking place in the individual, not the thoughts divorced from our own bodies, that can bring about productive change in our mentality. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
1117:It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.
The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off--the paper--in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.
The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman,#NFDB
1118:So if you hear something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in issues is merely to point out how badly we’re doing, not to suggest a way we might do better.
Don’t confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they ought to be. And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there’s a solution, you’re part of the problem.
My motto: Fuck Hope.
P.S. In case you’re wondering, personally I’m a joyful individual, I had a long happy marriage and a close and loving family, my career has turned out better than I ever dreamed, and it continues to expand. I’m a personal optimist, but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger, is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don’t confuse my point of view with cynicism–the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything’s gonna be all right.
And P.P.S., by the way, if by some chance you folks do manage to straighten things out and make everything better, I still don’t wish to be included. ~ George Carlin,#NFDB
1119:What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? If you’re really smart, you’ll drop the drivenness. It doesn’t matter what’s driving you; when you’re driven, you are like a leaf, driven by the wind. You have no real autonomy. You are bound to be blown off course, even if you reach what you believe is your goal. And don’t confuse being driven with being authentically animated by an inner calling. One state leaves you depleted and unfulfilled; the other fuels your soul and makes your heart sing. What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? “Just say no” (to drugs, gambling, eating, sex, etc.) is the least helpful advice one can say to a human being caught up in any addiction. If they could say no, they would. The whole point of addiction is that people are compelled to it by suffering, trauma, unease, and emotional pain. If you want to help people, ask why they are in so much pain that they are driven (there’s that word again) to escape from it through ultimately self-harming habits or substances. Then support them in healing the trauma at the core of their addiction, a process that always starts with nonjudgmental curiosity and compassion. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1120:Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, please—this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time—and squawk for more!
So learn to say No—and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.
(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you.) ~ Robert A Heinlein,#NFDB
1121:Now Ravana said to himself,
"These are all petty weapons. I should really get down to proper business." And he invoked the one called "Maya"--a weapon which created illusions and confused the enemy. With proper incantations and worship, he sent off this weapon and it created an illusion of reviving all the armies and its leaders--Kumbakarna and Indrajit and the others--and bringing them back to the battlefield.
Presently Rama found all those who, he thought, were no more, coming on with battle cries and surrounding him. Every man in the enemy's army was again up in arms.They seemed to fall on Rama with victorious cries. This was very confusing and Rama asked Matali, whom he had by now revived,
"What is happening now? How are all these coming back? They were dead." Matali explained,
"In your original identity you are the creator of illusions in this universe. Please know that Ravana has created phantoms to confuse you. If you make up your mind, you can dispel them immediately."
Matali's explanation was a great help. Rama at once invoked a weapon called
"Gnana"--which means "wisdom" or "perception." This was a very rare weapon, and he sent it forth. And all the terrifying armies who seemed to have come on in such a great mass suddenly evaporated into thin air. ~ Valmiki,#NFDB
1122:Oromis - What is the most important mental tool a person can possess?
Eragon - Detrrmination.
Oromis - [...] no. I meant the tool most necessary to choose the best course of action in any given situation. Determination is as common among men who are dull and foolish as it is among those who are brilliant intellects [...]
Eragon - Wisdom, wisdom is the most important for a person to possess.
Oromis- A fair guess, but, again, no. the answer is logic. Or, to put it another way, the ability to reason analytically.Applied properly it can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience.
Eragon - yes but isn't having a good heart more important than logic. pure logic can lead you to conclusions that are ethically wrong, whereas if you are moral and righteous, that will ensure you don't act shamefully.
Oromis - you confuse the issue. All I wanted to know isq what is the most useful 'tool'ma person can have [...] I agree that it is important to be of a virtous nature, but I would also conted that if you had to choose between giving a man a noble disposition or teaching him to think clearly, you'd do better to teach him to think clearly. Too many problems in this world are caused by men with noble dispositions and clouded minds. ~ Christopher Paolini,#NFDB
1123:Van Eck keeps the seal in a safe?” said Jesper with a laugh. “It’s almost like hewants us to take it. Kaz is better at making friends with combination locks than with people.”
“You’ve never seen a safe like this,” Wylan said. “He had it installed after the DeKappel was stolen. It has a seven-digit combination that he resets every day, and the locks are built with false tumblers to confuse safecrackers.”
Kaz shrugged. “Then we go around it. I’ll take expediency over finesse.”
Wylan shook his head. “The safe walls are made of a unique alloy reinforced with Grisha steel.”
“An explosion?” suggested Jesper.
Kaz raised a brow. “I suspect Van Eck will notice that.”
“A very small explosion?”
Nina snorted. “You just want to blow something up.”
“Actually…” said Wylan. He cocked his head to one side, as if he were listening to a distant song. “Come morning, there would be no hiding we’d been there, but if we can get the refugees out of the harbor before my father discovers the theft … I’m not exactly sure where I can get the materials, but it just might work.…”
“Inej,” Jesper whispered.
She leaned forward, peering at Wylan. “Is that scheming face?”
“Possibly.”
Wylan seemed to snap back to reality. “It is not. But … but I do think I have an idea. ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
1124:When he interviewed Stockdale, Collins asked him, “Who didn’t make it out?” Stockdale replied, “Oh, that’s easy. The optimists.” Stockdale explained that the optimists would believe they’d be out by Christmas, and Christmas would come and go. Then they would believe they’d be out by Easter, and that date would come and go. And the years would tick by like that. He explained to Collins, “They died of a broken heart.” Stockdale told Collins, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” We named this third key learning gritty faith and gritty facts, and today we all work to take responsibility for both dreaming and reality-checking those dreams with facts. When stress is high, we can still find ourselves slipping into some of these patterns, especially failing to communicate all of these pieces and to maintain connective tissue. What’s powerful about doing this work is that we now recognize it very quickly and we can name it. Once that happens, we know what rumble needs to happen and why. At the end of the meeting, I apologized for offloading my emotions on them. And, of equal importance, I made a commitment to make good on that apology by ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1125:DOES HARVARD MAKE YOU SMARTER? Swimmer’s Body Illusion As essayist and trader Nassim Taleb resolved to do something about the stubborn extra pounds he’d be carrying, he contemplated taking up various sports. However, joggers seemed scrawny and unhappy, and bodybuilders looked broad and stupid, and tennis players? Oh, so upper-middle class! Swimmers, though, appealed to him with their well-built, streamlined bodies. He decided to sign up at his local swimming pool and to train hard twice a week. A short while later, he realised that he had succumbed to an illusion. Professional swimmers don’t have perfect bodies because they train extensively. Rather, they are good swimmers because of their physiques. How their bodies are designed is a factor for selection and not the result of their activities. Similarly, female models advertise cosmetics and thus, many female consumers believe that these products make you beautiful. But it is not the cosmetics that make these women model-like. Quite simply, the models are born attractive and only for this reason are they candidates for cosmetics advertising. As with the swimmers’ bodies, beauty is a factor for selection and not the result. Whenever we confuse selection factors with results, we fall prey to what Taleb calls the swimmer’s body illusion. Without this illusion, half of advertising campaigns would not work ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1126:Lots of talk lately about the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL that seems to be exclusively masculine. And how many of the characters in the GENIUS BOOKS are likable? Is Holden Caulfield likable? Is Meursault in The Stranger? Is Henry Miller? Is any character in any of these system novels particularly likable? Aren’t they usually loathsome but human, etc., loathsome and neurotic and obsessed? In my memory, all the characters in Jonathan Franzen are total douchebags (I know, I know, I’m not supposed to use that, feminine imagery, whatever, but it is SO satisfying to say and think). How about female characters in the genius books? Was Madame Bovary likable? Was Anna Karenina? Is Daisy Buchanan likable? Is Daisy Miller? Is it the specific way in which supposed readers HATE unlikable female characters (who are too depressed, too crazy, too vain, too self-involved, too bored, too boring), that mirrors the specific way in which people HATE unlikable girls and women for the same qualities? We do not allow, really, the notion of the antiheroine, as penned by women, because we confuse the autobiographical, and we pass judgment on the female author for her terrible self-involved and indulgent life. We do not hate Scott Fitzgerald in “The Crack-Up” or Georges Bataille in Guilty for being drunken and totally wading in their own pathos, but Jean Rhys is too much of a victim. ~ Kate Zambreno, #NFDB
1127:This quote from T.E. Lawrence means a lot to me:
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 dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
Our job is to be the dangerous type. The one who dreams by day and acts to make those dreams come alive and actually happen.
So take some time to get this right. Go for a long walk. Think big. Think about what really makes you smile.
Ask yourself what you would do if you didn’t need the money. Ask yourself what really excites you. Ask what would inspire you to keep going long after most people would quit.
Find those answers and therein lies your dream. We all have our own personal Everest, and if we follow its calling, that is when life truly becomes an adventure.
Now, obviously your dream needs to be realistic and achievable, so use your common sense and exercise good judgement - but don’t confuse realism with pessimism! Think big, make sure it is physically possible, and as long as the key ingredients to achieving it are vision and hard work, then go for it.
Write it down. Pin it on your wall - somewhere you will see it every day.
Words and pictures have power.
Got it?
OK, we have begun… ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB
1128:Stephen nodded. 'Tell me,' he said, in a low voice, some moments later. 'Were I under naval discipline, could that fellow have me whipped?'He nodded towards Mr Marshall.
'The master?' cried Jack, with inexpressible amazement.
'Yes,' said Stephen looking attentively at him, with his head slightly inclined to the left.
'But he is the master...' said Jack. If Stephen had called the sophies stem her stern, or her truck her keel, he would have understood the situation directly; but that Stephen should confuse the chain of command, the relative status of a captain and a master, of a commissioned officer and a warrant officer, so subverted the natural order, so undermined the sempiternal universe, that for a moment his mind could hardly encompass it. Yet Jack, though no great scholar, no judge of a hexameter, was tolerably quick, and after gasping no more than twice he said, 'My dear sir, I beleive you have been lead astray by the words master and master and commander- illogical terms, I must confess. The first is subordinate to the second. You must allow me to explain our naval ranks some time. But in any case you will never be flogged- no, no; you shall not be flogged,' he added, gazing with pure affection, and with something like awe, at so magnificent a prodigy, at an ignorance so very far beyond anything that even his wide-ranging mind had yet conceived. ~ Patrick O Brian,#NFDB
1129:Carbohydrates are not required in a healthy human diet. Another way to say this (as proponents of carbohydrate restriction have) is that there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Nutritionists will say that 120 to 130 grams of carbohydrates are required in a healthy diet, but this is because they confuse what the brain and central nervous system will burn for fuel when diets are carbohydrate rich—120 to 130 grams daily—with what we actually have to eat. If there are no carbohydrates in the diet, the brain and central nervous system will run on molecules called “ketones.” These are synthesized in the liver from the fat we eat and from fatty acids, mobilized from the fat tissue because we’re not eating carbohydrates and insulin levels are low, and even from some amino acids. With no carbohydrates in the diet, ketones will provide roughly three-quarters of the energy that our brains use. And this is why severely carbohydrate-restricted diets are known as “ketogenic” diets. The rest of the energy required will come from glycerol, which is also being released from the fat tissue when the triglycerides are broken down into their component parts, and from glucose synthesized in the liver from the amino acids in protein. Because a diet that doesn’t include fattening carbohydrates will still include plenty of fat and protein, there will be no shortage of fuel for the brain. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1130:I want to see the Parthenon by moonlight.'
I had my way. They floodlight it now, to great advantage I am told, but it was not so then, and since it was late in the year there were few tourists. My companions were all intelligent men, including my own husband, and they had the sense to stay mute. I suppose, being a woman, I confuse beauty with sentiment, but, as I looked on the Parthenon for the first time in my life, I found myself crying. It had never happened to me before. Your sunset weepers I despise. It was not full moon, or anywhere near it. The half circle put me in mind of the labrys, the Cretan double axe, and the pillars were the most ghostly in consequence. What a shock for the modern aesthete, I thought when my crying was done, if he could see the ruddy glow of colour, the painted eyes, the garish lips, the orange-reds and blues that were there once, and Athene herself a giantess on her pedestal touched by the rising sun. Even in those distant times the exigencies of a state religion had brought their own traffic, the buying and selling of doves, of trinkets: to find himself, a man had to go to the woods, to the hills.
"Come on," said Stephen. "It's beautiful and stark, if you like, but so is St. Pancras station at 4 A.M. It depends on your association of ideas."
We crammed into Burns's small car, and went back to our hotel. ("The Chamois") ~ Daphne du Maurier,#NFDB
1131:The Transition to Fewer Animal Products Many people claim to need animal products to feel good and perform well. In my experience, this assertion generally comes from individuals who felt worse during the first couple of weeks after a change to a lower-animal-source diet. Instead of being patient, they simply returned to their old way of eating—genuinely feeling better for it—and now insist that they need meat to thrive. A diet heavily burdened with animal products places a huge stress on the detoxification systems of the body. As with stopping caffeine and cigarettes, many people observe withdrawal symptoms for a short period, usually including fatigue, weakness, headaches, or loose stools. In 95 percent of such cases, these symptoms resolve within two weeks. It is more common that the temporary adjustment period, during which you might feel mild symptoms as your body withdraws from your prior toxic habits, lasts less than a week. Unfortunately, many people mistakenly assume these symptoms to be due to some lack in the new diet and go back to eating a poor diet again. Sometimes they have been convinced that they feel bad because they aren’t eating enough protein, especially since when they return to their old diet they feel better again. People often confuse feeling well with getting well, not realizing that sometimes you have to temporarily feel a little worse to really get well. ~ Joel Fuhrman, #NFDB
1132:The spiritual life (adhyatma-jivana), the religious life (dharma-jivana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together.
The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance.
The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine, but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue.
The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters. ~ Sri Aurobindo,#NFDB
1133:When you are depressed, you may have a tendency to confuse feeling with facts. Your feelings of hopelessness and total despair are just symptoms of depressive illness, not facts. If you think you are hopeless, you will naturally feel this way. Your feelings only trace the illogical pattern of your thinking. Only an expert, who has treated hundreds of depressed individuals, would be in a position to give a meaningful prognosis for recovery. Your suicidal urge merely indicates the need for treatment. Thus, your conviction that you are "hopeless" nearly always proves you are not. Therapy, not suicide, is indicated. Although generalizations can be misleading, I let the following rule of thumb guide me: Patients who feel hopeless never actually are hopeless. The conviction of hopelessness is one of the most curious aspects of depressive illness. In fact, the degree of hopelessness experienced by seriously depressed patients who have an excellent prognosis is usually greater than in terminal malignancy patients with a poor prognosis. It is of great importance to expose the illogic that lurks behind your hopelessness as soon as possible in order to prevent an actual suicide attempt. You may feel convinced that you have an insoluble problem in your life. You may feel that you are caught in a trap from which there is no exit. This may lead to extreme frustration and even to the urge to kill yourself as the only escape. ~ David D Burns, #NFDB
1134:There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.
We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"
In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story. ~ Alfred Hitchcock,#NFDB
1135:In the slum countries of the world today, what are they saying? The rich Americans, they pay attention only to violence- and to money. You don’t care what they say, American? Good for you. Still, they may insist; things are no longer under the old control; you’re not getting it straight, American: your country- it would seem- may well become the target of a world hatred the like of which the easy-going Americans have never dreamed. Neutralists and Pacifists and Unilateralists and that confusing variety of Leftists around the world- all those tens of millions of people, of course they are misguided, absolutely controlled by small conspiratorial groups of trouble-makers, under direct orders from Moscow and Peking. Diabolically omnipotent, it is /they/ who create all this messy unrest. It is /they/ who what given the tens of millions the absurd idea that they shouldn’t want to remain, or to become, the seat of American nuclear bases- those gay little outposts of American civilization. So now they don’t want U-2’s on their territory; so now they want to contract out of the American military machine; they want to be neutral among the crazy big antagonists. And they don’t want their own societies to be militarized.
But take heart, American: you won’t have time to get really bored with your friends abroad: they won’t be your friends much longer. You don’t need /them/; it will all go away; don’t let them confuse you. ~ C Wright Mills,#NFDB
1136:I feel very sorry for the professionals whenever they find another confusing skull, something that belonged to the wrong sort of people, or whenever they find statues or artifacts that confuse them—for they’ll talk about the odd, but they won’t talk about the impossible, which is where I feel sorry for them, for as soon as something becomes impossible it slipslides out of belief entirely, whether it’s true or not. I mean, here’s a skull that shows the Ainu, the Japanese aboriginal race, were in America nine thousand years ago. Here’s another that shows there were Polynesians in California nearly two thousand years later. And all the scientists mutter and puzzle over who’s descended from whom, missing the point entirely. Heaven knows what’ll happen if they ever actually find the Hopi emergence tunnels. That’ll shake a few things up, you just wait. “Did the Irish come to America in the dark ages, you ask me? Of course they did, and the Welsh, and the Vikings, while the Africans from the west coast—what in later days they called the slave coast or the ivory coast—they were trading with South America, and the Chinese visited Oregon a couple of times: they called it Fu Sang. The Basque established their secret sacred fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland twelve hundred years back. Now, I suppose you’re going to say, but, Mister Ibis, these people were primitives, they didn’t have radio controls and vitamin pills and jet airplanes. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1137:At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine. What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees? Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word. Still less is gender an imaginative extension of sex. Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things that have feminine gender; there are many others, and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless. Masculine is not attenuated male, nor feminine attenuated female. On the contrary the male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine. Their reproductive functions, their differences in strength and size, partly exhibit, but partly also confuse and misrepresent, the real polarity. All this Ransom saw, as it were, with his own eyes. The two white creatures were sexless. But he of Malacandra was masculine (not male); she of Perelandra was feminine (not female). ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1138:... one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do no have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous achievement of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is - a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed) - a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1139:At the same time states across the country were rushing to adopt the Common Core, they were also adopting a new tool for evaluating teachers: the Danielson Framework. Like the Common Core, the framework is so laden with technocratic language that one might imagine its sole purpose is to confuse its readers. And as with the Common Core, if a teacher does not meet its demands, she may be out of a job. Taking its name from the education consultant Charlotte Danielson, the framework divides the teaching process into four “domains”: “planning and preparation,” “classroom environment,” “instruction,” and “professional responsibilities.” Each of these domains is then broken into four or five subcategories ranging from “using questioning and discussion techniques” to “showing professionalism.” Subcategories are then separated into a series of components. For example, the components of the subcategory “participating in the professional community” are: “relationships with colleagues,” “involvement in a culture of professional inquiry,” “service to the school,” and “participation in school and district projects.” Danielson describes “proficient” (tolerable) instruction in the “communicating with families” subcategory of the “professional responsibilities” domain as follows: “The teacher provides frequent and appropriate information to families about the instructional program and conveys information about individual student progress in a culturally sensitive manner. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1140:Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is—a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)—a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1141:We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world--temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind--what used in the university to be called a 'dry-ball'--but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dry-balls cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities. And we have known biologists who did proliferate in all directions: one or two have had a little trouble about it. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1142:Incidentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the very first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is-a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)-a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1143:Vladimir Nabokov
“... one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do no have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous achievement of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is - a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed) - a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature ~ Vladimir Nabokov,#NFDB
1144:It is vitally important not to confuse the is of what is in Christ with as if. That we have been raised with Christ presents us with an eschatological indicative: something that states what is already but not yet fully the case. Disciples really do enjoy union with Christ already, thanks to the indwelling Holy Spirit, even though they have not yet attained to the full measure of Christlikeness. Doctrine that sets forth what is in Christ requires a robust eschatological imagining, a faith-based seeing that perceives what is not yet complete—our salvation—as already finished, because of our union with Christ. It is a matter of seeing what is present-partial as future-perfect. Theologians minister this eschatological reality, the truth of being-in-Christ. Everything depends on getting this point right. We can attain wisdom only if we live along the created and re-created grain of reality. Theologians set forth in speech what is in Christ and therefore say how things are. The eschatological is raises the question of the nature of reality. Indicative statements in the past and present refer to what was and is. That works well for most kinds of ordinary things and events (I’m not sure about quantum physics). However, the gospel concerns not ousia (being in general) but parousia (the new reality that is coming into being in the person of Christ). The ministry of the reality of what is in Christ requires the further ministry of helping people grasp that reality. It is to that aspect of ministering the gospel that we now turn. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
1145:All these adoptions of European styles make it obvious that the Greenlanders paid very close attention to European fashions and followed them in detail. The adoptions carry the unconscious message, “We are Europeans, we are Christians, God forbid that anyone could confuse us with the Inuit.” Just as Australia, when I began visiting it in the 1960s, was more British than Britain itself, Europe’s most remote outpost of Greenland remained emotionally tied to Europe. That would have been innocent if the ties had expressed themselves only in two-sided combs and in the position in which the arms were folded over a corpse. But the insistence on “We are Europeans” becomes more serious when it leads to stubbornly maintaining cows in Greenland’s climate, diverting manpower from the summer hay harvest to the Nordrseta hunt, refusing to adopt useful features of Inuit technology, and starving to death as a result. To us in our secular modern society, the predicament in which the Greenlanders found themselves is difficult to fathom. To them, however, concerned with their social survival as much as with their biological survival, it was out of the question to invest less in churches, to imitate or intermarry with the Inuit, and thereby to face an eternity in Hell just in order to survive another winter on Earth. The Greenlanders’ clinging to their European Christian image may have been a factor in their conservatism that I mentioned above: more European than Europeans themselves, and thereby culturally hampered in making the drastic lifestyle changes that could have helped them survive. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
1146:TIA OR TARA has stopped applying makeup to my wife’s face and is looking at Scottie with disapproval. The light is hitting this woman’s face, giving me an opportunity to see that she should perhaps be working on her own makeup. Her coloring is similar to a manila envelope. There are specks of white in her eyebrows, and her concealer is not concealing. I can tell my daughter doesn’t know what to do with this woman’s critical look.
“What?” Scottie asks. “I don’t want any makeup.” She looks at me for protection, and it’s heartbreaking. All the women who model with Joanie have this inane urge to make over my daughter with the notion that they’re helping her somehow. She’s not as pretty as her older sister or her mother, and these other models think that slapping on some rouge will somehow make her feel better about her facial fate. They’re like missionaries. Mascara thumpers.
“I was just going to say that I think your mother was enjoying the view,” Tia or Tara says. “It’s so pretty outside. You should let the light in.”
My daughter looks at the curtain. Her little mouth is open. Her hand reaches for a tumbleweed of hair.
“Listen here, T. Her mother was not enjoying the view. Her mother is in a coma. And she’s not supposed to be in bright light.”
“My name is not T,” she says. “My name is Allison.”
“Okay, then, Ali. Don’t confuse my daughter, please.”
“I’m turning into a remarkable young lady,” Scottie says.
“Damn straight.” My heart feels like one of Scottie’s clogs clomping down the hall. I don’t know why I became so angry. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings,#NFDB
1147:The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God—"sacrifice" in the original sense of "making sacred"—whereby God becomes the world which, in the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called lila, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play. Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of lila has a strong magical flavour. Brahman is the great magician who transforms himself into the world and then performs this feat with his "magic creative power", which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda. The word maya—one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy—has changed its meaning over the centuries. From the might, or power, of the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic play. As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya. (...) In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya, conjured up by the great magician of the divine play. The world of maya changes continuously, because the divine lila is a rhythmic, dynamic play. The dynamic force of the play is karma, important concept of Indian thought. Karma means "action". It is the active principle of the play, the total universe in action, where everything is dynamically connected with everything else. In the words of the Gita Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life. ~ Fritjof Capra, #NFDB
1148:To be exploited fundamentally means to be confused. When you're not confused you can't be exploited because you have clarity about the situation. To confuse people you must provide contradictory information. People who really want to do you harm will provide you confusing measures of good and bad feedback because that keeps you disorientated. Evil always want to camouflage itself as virtue witch means all the bad things that evil does is called justice against immorality. So they camouflage their brutality as a mask of virtue. Camouflage is so fundamentally an aspect of the predator-prey relationships.
The mugger does not camouflage himself but, that's because he can leave. He is gonna run off and you'll never find him or catch him or at least that's the goal or plan right? The relationships were you're supposed to stay and continue to provide resources are the ones were camouflage is the most essential because you're constantly looking at somebody who is a predator and that have to continually camouflage themselves as somebody who is not a predator. The most fundamental thing is the camouflage of non-empathy with empathy. This is why people who lack empathy always use the language of empathy and that's whats so confusing.
There are a lot of great antidotes to this. I mean, you just ask that person questions about yourself that they dont have any self interest in knowing and find out whether they know the answers. All the things personal to you that dont have any direct impact on the other person. It's a great way to find out whether they have empathy or curiosity about you or not. ~ Stefan Molyneux,#NFDB
1149:In order to override Type i processing, Type 2 processing must display at least two related capabilities. One is the capability of interrupting Type 1 processing and suppressing its response tendencies. Type 2 processing thus involves inhibitory mechanisms of the type that have been the focus of recent work on executive functioning=
But the ability to suppress Type 1 processing gets the job only half done. Suppressing one response is not helpful unless there is a better response available to substitute for it. Where do these better responses come from? One answer is that they come from processes of hypothetical reasoning and cognitive simulation that are a unique aspect of Type 2processing.6 When we reason hypothetically, we create temporary models of the world and test out actions (or alternative causes) in that simulated world.
In order to reason hypothetically we must, however, have one critical cognitive capability-we must be able to prevent our representations of the real world from becoming confused with representations of imaginary situations.
For example, when considering an alternative goal state different from the one we currently have, we must be able to represent our current goal and the alternative goal and to keep straight which is which. Likewise, we need to be able to differentiate the representation of an action about to be taken from representations of potential alternative actions we are trying out in cognitive simulations. But the latter must not infect the former while the mental simulation is being carried out. Otherwise, we would confuse the action about to be taken with alternatives that we were just simulating. ~ Keith E Stanovich,#NFDB
1150:that if we are to interpret the accounts of marvellous events and miracles in the Bible correctly, one must first acquire the right kind of philological and historical expertise, ‘one must know the beliefs of those who originally related, and left us written records of them’ and learn to distinguish between what the people believed and what actually impressed itself on their perceptions. For if we do not, then we shall ourselves inevitably confuse the beliefs of the time with the people’s understanding of what impressed itself on their senses and be unable to distinguish between what really happened and what were ‘imaginary things and nothing but prophetic representations’.29 For many things are related in the Bible as real, and were believed to be real, but which were nevertheless merely imaginary, or understood through poetic imagery such as that God, the ‘Supreme Being, came down from Heaven and that Mount Sinai smoked because God descended upon it surrounded by fire’. Precisely because the wondrous events related in Scripture were believed to be real, and were couched in terms adjusted to the ignorant and superstitious minds of the multitude ‘proiende non debent ut reales a philosophis accipi’ (they should not therefore be accepted as real by philosophers). Spinoza rounds off the chapter with a further point concerning the metaphors and figures of speech habitual in Biblical Hebrew. ‘He who does not pay sufficient attention to this’, he warns, ‘will ascribe to Scripture many miracles which the Biblical writers never intended as such, thus completely failing to grasp not only happenings and miracles as they really occurred but also the meaning of the writers of the Sacred Books.’30 ~ Jonathan I Israel, #NFDB
1151:Curious Story
I heard such a curious story
Of Santa Claus. Once, so they say,
He set out to find what people were kind,
Before he took presents their way.
'This year I will give but to givers,
To those who make presents themselves.'
With a nod of his head, old Santa Claus said
To his band of bright officer elves:
'Go into the homes of the happy
Where Pleasure stands page at the door,
Watch well how they live, and report what they give
To the hordes of God's suffering poor.
Keep track of each cent and each moment,
Yea, tell me each word, too, they use,
To silver line clouds for earth's suffering crowds,
And tell me, too, when they refuse.'
So, into our homes flew the fairies,
Though never a soul of us knew,
And with pencil and book, they sat by us, and took
Each action, if false or if true.
White marks for the deeds done for others,
Black marks for the deeds done for self,
And nobody hid what he said or he did,
For no one, of course, sees an elf.
Well, Christmas came all in its season
And Santa Claus, so I am told,
With a very light pack of small gifts on his back
And his reindeers all left in the fold,
Set out on a leisurely journey,
And finished ere midnight, they say,
And there never had been such surprise and chagrin,
Before on the breaking of day
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As there was on that bright Christmas morning
When stockings and cupboards and shelves
Were ransacked and sought in for gifts that were not inBut wasn't it fun for the elves?
And what did I get? You confuse meI got not one thing, and that's true,
But had I suspected my actions detected
I would have had gifts-wouldn't you?
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
1152:She went downstairs to the library and wrote two letters. One was to her father, the other to Jess and Ronan. She folded them, stamped the wax seals with her seal ring, and put the writing materials away. She was holding the letters in one hand, the wax firm yet still warm against the skin, when she heard footsteps beating down the marble hall, coming closer.
Arin stepped inside the library and shut the door. “You won’t do it,” he said. “You won’t duel him.”
The sight of Arin shook her. She wouldn’t be able to think straight if he continued to speak like that, to look at her like that. “You do not give me orders,” Kestrel said. She moved to leave.
He blocked her path. “I know about the delivery. He sent you a death-price.”
“First my dress, and now this? Arin, one would think you are monitoring everything I send and receive. It is none of your business.”
He seized her by the shoulders. “You are so small.”
Kestrel knew what he was doing, and hated it, hated him for reminding her of her physical weakness, of the same failure that her father witnessed whenever he watched her fight with Rax. “Let go.”
“Make me let you go.”
She looked at Arin. Whatever he saw in her eyes loosened his hands. “Kestrel,” he said more quietly, “I have been whipped before. Lashes and death are different things.”
“I won’t die.”
“Let Irex set my punishment.”
“You’re not listening to me.” She would have said more, but realized that his hands still rested on her shoulders. A thumb was pressing gently against her collarbone.
Kestrel caught her breath. Arin startled, as if out of sleep, and pulled away.
He had no right, Kestrel thought. He had no right to confuse her. Not now, when she needed a clear mind. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
1153:So, to summarise: Science is the search for explanation. Religion is the search for meaning. Meaning is not accidental to the human condition because we are the meaning-seeking animal. To believe on the basis of science that the universe has no meaning is to confuse two disciplines of thought: explanation and interpretation. The search for meaning, though it begins with science, must go beyond it. Science does not yield meanings, nor does it prove the absence of meanings. The meaning of a system lies outside the system. Therefore the meaning of the universe lies outside the universe. The belief in a God who transcends the universe was the discovery of Abrahamic monotheism, which transformed the human condition, endowing it with meaning and thereby rescuing it from tragedy in the name of hope. For if God created the physical universe, then God is free, and if God made us in his image, we are free. If we are free, then history is not a matter of eternal recurrences. Because we can change ourselves, we can change the world. That is the religious basis of hope. There are cultures that do not share these beliefs. They are, ultimately, tragic cultures, for whatever shape they give the powers they name, those powers are fundamentally indifferent to human fate. They may be natural forces. They may be human institutions: the empire, the state, the political system, or the economy. They may be human collectivities: the tribe, the nation, the race. But all end in tragedy because none attaches ultimate significance to the individual as individual. All end by sacrificing the individual, which is why, in the end, such cultures die. There is only one thing capable of defeating tragedy, which is the belief in God who in love sets his image on the human person, thus endowing each of us with non-negotiable, unconditional dignity. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
1154:Let go.”
“Make me let you go.”
She looked at Arin. Whatever he saw in her eyes loosened his hands. “Kestrel,” he said more quietly, “I have been whipped before. Lashes and death are different things.”
“I won’t die.”
“Let Irex set my punishment.”
“You’re not listening to me.” She would have said more, but realized that his hands still rested on her shoulders. A thumb was pressing gently against her collarbone.
Kestrel caught her breath. Arin startled, as if out of sleep, and pulled away.
He had no right, Kestrel thought. He had no right to confuse her. Not now, when she needed a clear mind.
Everything had seemed so simple last night in the close dark of the carriage.
“You are not allowed,” Kestrel said, “to touch me.”
Arin’s smile was bitter. “I suppose that means we are no longer friends.”
She said nothing.
“Good,” he said, “then you can have no reason for fighting Irex.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand your godforsaken Valorian honor? I don’t understand that your father would probably rather see you gutted than live with a daughter who turned away from a duel?”
“You have very little faith in me, to think that Irex would win.”
He raked a hand through his short hair. “Where is my honor in all this, Kestrel?”
They locked eyes, and she recognized his expression. It was the same one she had seen across the Bite and Sting table. The same one she had seen in the pit, when the auctioneer had told Arin to sing.
Refusal. A determination so cold it could blister the skin like metal in winter.
She knew that he would stop her. Perhaps he would be cunning about it. Maybe he would go to the steward behind her back, tell him of the theft and challenge, and ask to be brought before the judge and Irex. If that plan didn’t suit Arin, he would find another.
He was going to be a problem. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
1155:Do you love me, Westley? Is that it?’
He couldn’t believe it. ‘Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches. If your love were—‘
‘I don’t understand the first one yet,’ Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. ‘Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is the size of a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images just confuse me so—is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we’re on the verge of something just terribly important.’
‘I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids….Is any of this getting through to you, Buttercup, or do you want me to go on for a while?’
‘Never stop.’
‘There has not been—‘
‘If you’re teasing me, Westley, I’m just going to kill you.’
‘How can you even dream I might be teasing?’
‘Well, you haven’t once said you loved me.’
‘That’s all you need? Easy. I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I.’
‘You are teasing now; aren’t you?’
‘A little maybe; I’ve been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn’t listen. Every time you said ‘Farm boy do this’ you thought I was answering ‘As you wish’ but that’s only because you were hearing wrong. ‘I love you’ was what it was, but you never heard, and you never heard. ~ William Goldman,#NFDB
1156:[comrades] are ashes, entrails, dung, stove smoke, clay, and they’ll all return to clay. They’re full of dirt, candle oil, droppings, dust.
You, O Book, my pure, shining precious, my golden singing promise, my dream, a distant call—
O tender specter, happy chance,
Again I heed the ancient lore,
Again with beauty rare in stance,
You beckon from the distant shore!”
You, Book! You are the only one who won't deceive, won't attack, won't insult, won't abandon! You're quiet--but you laugh, shout, and sing; you're obedient--but you amaze, tease and entice; you're small but you contain countless peoples. Nothing but a handful of letters, that's all, but if you feel like it, you can turn heads, confuse, spin, cloud, make tears spring to the eye, take away the breath, the entire soul will stir in the wind like a canvas, will rise in the waves and flap its wings! Sometimes a kind of wordless feeling tosses and turns in the chest, pounds its fists on the door, the walls: I'm suffocating! Let me out! How can you let that feeling out, all fuzzy and naked? What words ca you dress it in? We don't have any words, we don't know! Just like wild animals, or a blindlie bird, or a mermaid--no words, just a bellowing. But you open a book--and there they are, fabulous, flying words:
O city! O wind! O snowstorms and blizzards!
O azure abyss all raveled and tattered!
Here am I! I'm blameless! I'm with you forever...
...Or there's bile and sadness and bitterness. The emptiness dries your eyes out and you search for the words, and here they are:
But is the world not all alike?
From the Cabbala of Chaldaic signs
Throughout the ages, now and ever more,
To the sky where the even star shines.
The same old wisdom--born of ashes,
And in that wisdom, like our twin,
The face of longing, frailty, fear, and sin,
Stares straight across the ages at us. ~ Tatyana Tolstaya,#NFDB
1157:Hillcrest
(To Mrs. Edward MacDowell)
No sound of any storm that shakes
Old island walls with older seas
Comes here where now September makes
An island in a sea of trees.
Between the sunlight and the shade
A man may learn till he forgets
The roaring of a world remade,
And all his ruins and regrets;
And if he still remembers here
Poor fights he may have won or lost,—
If he be ridden with the fear
Of what some other fight may cost,—
If, eager to confuse too soon,
What he has known with what may be,
He reads a planet out of tune
For cause of his jarred harmony,—
If here he venture to unroll
His index of adagios,
And he be given to console
Humanity with what he knows,—
He may by contemplation learn
A little more than what he knew,
And even see great oaks return
To acorns out of which they grew.
He may, if he but listen well,
Through twilight and the silence here,
Be told what there are none may tell
To vanity’s impatient ear;
And he may never dare again
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Say what awaits him, or be sure
What sunlit labyrinth of pain
He may not enter and endure.
Who knows to-day from yesterday
May learn to count no thing too strange:
Love builds of what Time takes away,
Till Death itself is less than Change.
Who sees enough in his duress
May go as far as dreams have gone;
Who sees a little may do less
Than many who are blind have done;
Who sees unchastened here the soul
Triumphant has no other sight
Than has a child who sees the whole
World radiant with his own delight.
Far journeys and hard wandering
Await him in whose crude surmise
Peace, like a mask, hides everything
That is and has been from his eyes;
And all his wisdom is unfound,
Or like a web that error weaves
On airy looms that have a sound
No louder now than falling leaves.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
1158:BERENGER: And you consider all this natural?
DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros?
BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question.
DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ...
BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question!
DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that.
BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ...
DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism.
BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo.
DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that.
BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy!
DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ...
BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory? ~ Eug ne Ionesco,#NFDB
1159:BERENGER: And you consider all this natural?
DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros?
BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question.
DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ...
BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question!
DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that.
BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ...
DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism.
BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo.
DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that.
BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy!
DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ...
BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory? ~ Eug ne Ionesco,#NFDB
1160:We do eventually get dressed and look for food, although we only make it to the dining room in time for lunch. Egeria accepts her ousting as Alpha Sinta without a hint of anger or regret. Clearly, it’s what she was expecting all along. Piers is away on a recruitment trip, but the rest of the family is here and overjoyed by our wedding announcement. Jocasta decrees that we have to go shopping, now, and Kaia bounces in her seat, beyond excited about any outing that will actually get her on the other side of the castle gate.
Shopping requires money, so I dig around in Griffin’s pocket under the table, letting my fingers wander enough for him to nearly choke on his stew. I find four gold coins and hold on to them. “You never pay me.”
He looks aghast. “I can’t pay you anymore.”
“We’re about to get married. No one’s going to confuse me with a prostitute.”
Kaia spits out a grape. It bounces across the table and then lands in her mother’s lap. Kaia slaps her hand over her mouth, her blue-gray eyes huge, and Nerissa gives her a quelling look. The look finishes on me, and I might have felt a little quelled myself if Carver hadn’t suddenly made a noise like a donkey, finally belting out the laugh he’d been holding back.
Anatole bangs his hand down on the table and bursts out laughing. He sounds like a donkey, too. It’s contagious, and the whole table erupts, snorting and braying until most of us are wiping tears from our eyes. I shake my head, grinning. I haven’t laughed like this in…well, ever.
Nerissa eventually gets up, comes over to me, and then kisses my cheek, something that would usually make me squirm. Today, it somehow feels normal. “I always wanted to have four daughters.” She squeezes my shoulder. “Now I do.”
I keep smiling like a loon even though my throat suddenly feels thick, and heat stings the backs of my eyes. I have a family that loves me. I would protect them with my life.
Well, maybe not Piers, but I have a feeling he would return the sentiment ~ Amanda Bouchet,#NFDB
1161:It is important here not to confuse publicity with the pleasure or benefits to be enjoyed from the things it advertises. Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing substitute for a pleasure in that pleasure's own terms.
The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him. This is why publicity can never really afford to be about the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is not yet enjoying it. Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable?
The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness : happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.
Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable.
.......
The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way : the publicity images steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product. ~ John Berger,#NFDB
1162:The History Of The Veil
…sexuality is originally, historically bourgeois…
Michel Foucault
Once upon a time: Bedouin shepherd marries into earlyMedieval mercantile city-dwellers of Arabia. Freed
from the bondage of work, he lazes in caves, imagines
god. His urbane wife, connoisseur of comfortable life
hates deserts, caravans and camels; the first convert
to his way of imagining god. But how to exalt, distinguish
the new path from the old idols’? The middle class lady
knows best: something some pagan Persian princesses do
to mark affluence, exceptionality; shrouding their ‘beauty’
(face and hair) from the gaze of commoners and slaves. So
the Prophet’s wife, the first Muslim woman, fashions
the hejab. Yet the effect of the loose covering surpasses
class, overlaps ‘gender’. Why? The Crusaders, centuries later
camped in the Middle East to battle ‘the heresy of Islam’;
Norman brigands, Goth marauders and Nordic rapists
see Woman as the raison d’être of Man’s Fall from Heaven
hear erotic Sufi poetry, return to their castles to inaugurate
Chivalric Romance, etc: the interminable Western obsession
with what (Muslim) Woman wears/shouldn’t wear. ‘Woman’
herself reinvented, characterised by the appearance of body
being covered or not, modified or not, desirable or not. But
don’t confuse sexuality with ars erotica. Gallant knights riding
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forth to fight for a Faire Lady didn’t pine for the pleasures
of sex. Phallic lances clashing over the chatelaine’s kerchief
a class struggle: between the up-and-coming page boy/squire
and the aging chevalier – burgeoning Gentry vs. expiring
Nobility. We call this Modernity: the ascendancy of the West.
Yes, Islam was finally subjugated by the steam-engined navies
of Enlightened bourgeois Christians; Egypt, Palestine,
Mesopotamia carved up by the Anglo-French armies. Now
the Islamic veil, the sign of a beaten civilisation, and then
a fixed attribute of an inferior species of colonised beasts.
~ Ali Alizadeh,#NFDB
1163:The essayist and investor Paul Graham, a peer and rival of Peter Thiel’s, has charted the trajectory of a start-up, with all its ups and downs. After the initial bump of media attention, the rush of excitement from the unexpected success, Graham says that the founders enter a phase where the novelty begins to wear off, and they quickly descend from their early euphoria into what he calls the “trough of sorrow.” A start-up launches with its investments, gets a few press hits, and then smacks right into reality. Many companies never make it out of this ditch. “The problem with the Silicon Valley,” as Jim Barksdale, the former CEO and president of Netscape, once put it, “is that we tend to confuse a clear view with a short distance.” Here, too, like the founders of a start-up, the conspirators have smacked into reality. The reality of the legal system. The defensive bulwark of the First Amendment. The reality of the odds. They have discovered the difference between a good plan and how far they’ll need to travel to fulfill it. They have trouble even serving Denton with papers. Harder has to request a 120-day extension just to wrap his head around Gawker’s financial and corporate structure. This is going to be harder than they thought. It always is. To say that in 2013 all the rush and excitement present on those courthouse steps several months earlier had dissipated would be a preposterous understatement. If a conspiracy, by its inherent desperation and disadvantaged position, is that long struggle in a dark hallway, here is the point where one considers simply sitting down and sobbing in despair, not even sure what direction to go. Is this even possible? Are we wrong? Machiavelli wrote that fortune—misfortune in fact—aims herself where “dikes and dams have not been made to contain her.” Clausewitz said that battle plans were great but ultimately subject to “friction”—delays, confusion, mistakes, and complications. What is friction? Friction is when you’re Pericles and you lay out a brilliant plan to defend Athens against Sparta and then your city is hit by the plague. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1164:Why are you mad at me?”
He didn’t look at her. “I’m not mad.”
“You’re not happy.”
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “That was no practice kiss.”
“I know it wasn’t. I was trying to give us a reason not to talk about it.”
“Oh. So you don’t think we should talk about it?”
“I thought guys hated talking things out.”
He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I just don’t want you getting any ideas, that’s all.”
Getting any ideas? Emma was speechless for a moment, unable to believe he’d actually said that. “Since I was walking away from you when you spun me around and kissed me, I’d say you’re the one getting ideas.”
“Of course I’m getting ideas. You’re hot and I’m not dead. But I know enough not to confuse lust with anything else.”
She snorted and looked out her window. “Oh, yes, Sean Kowalski. Your amazing kisses have made all rational thought fly out of my besotted brain. If only you could fill me with your magic penis, I know we’d fall madly in love and live happily ever after.”
The truck jerked and she glanced over to find him glaring at her. “Don’t ever say that again.”
“What? The ‘madly in love’ or the ‘happily ever after’?”
“My penis isn’t magic.” His tone was grumpy, but then he smiled at the windshield. “It does tricks, though.”
“The only trick your penis needs to know for the next three and a half weeks is down boy.” How the hell had she gotten herself into this conversation? “To get back to the point, if you think I have any interest in a real relationship with a guy who thinks he’s a better driver than me just because I have breasts, you’re insane.”
“It’s not because you have breasts. Women don’t drive as well because they lack a magic penis.”
She turned toward the passenger door, letting him know with her body language she had no interest in talking to him anymore. “Why didn’t I tell Gram I was dating Bob from the post office?”
He laughed at her. “You’ve met the Kowalskis. You were doomed the minute you said the name out loud.”
Doomed, she thought, glaring at the passing scenery. That was a good word for it. ~ Shannon Stacey,#NFDB
1165:A number of factors contribute to the development of an individual’s “practiced self-deception.” First, people who live primarily in fantasy confuse fantasy images with real, goal-directed action. They believe that they are actively pursuing their goals, when in fact they are not taking the steps necessary for success. For example, an executive in the business world may only perform the functions that enhance an image of himself as the “boss,” and leave essential management tasks unattended. The distinction between the image of success and its actual achievement is blurred. Retreat from action-oriented behavior is masked by the person’s focus on superficial signs and activities that preserve vanity and the fantasy image. Secondly, involvement in fantasy distorts one’s perception of reality, making self-deception more possible. Kierkegaard (1849/1954) alluded to this power of fantasy to attract and deceive when he observed: Sometimes the inventiveness of the human imagination suffices to procure possibility. Instead of summoning back possibility into necessity, the man pursues the possibility—and at last cannot find his way back to himself. (p. 77, 79) Thirdly, through its assigned roles and its rules for role-designated behavior, including age-appropriate activities, our culture actively supports people’s tendencies to give themselves up to more and more passivity and fantasy as they move through the life process. In addition, the discrepancy between society’s professed values on the one hand, and how society actually operates, on the other, tends to distort a person’s perceptions of reality, further confusing the difference between idealistic fantasies and actual accomplishments. The general level of pretense, duplicity, and deception existing in our society contributes to everyone’s disillusionment, cynicism, resignation, and passivity. The pooling of the individual defenses and fantasies of all society’s members makes it possible for each person to practice self-delusion under the guise of normalcy. Thus chronic self-denial becomes a socially acceptable defense against death anxiety. ~ Robert W Firestone, #NFDB
1166:Remember, every relationship is an opportunity to either discover more of your individuality and expand as a human being or do the pretzel dance and twist yourself into a smaller version of you based on who you think your partner wants you to be. Despite what your mind tells you, your partner is attracted to the real you—the authentic you that he first met—not the twisted version you think he wants.
When you commit to being yourself from the start and to communicating your truth no matter what, you’ll avoid virtually all the drama, angst, and anxiety of not knowing where things stand that many other women experience on a daily basis. Most women are afraid to be real because they mistakenly believe that they’re not enough as they are. This “I’m not enough” mind-set not only is inaccurate but also destroys your well-being and ability to have a loving and satisfying relationship.
Being yourself and speaking your truth from the moment you meet is the secret to having relationships unfold naturally and authentically. It is also the key to maintaining your irresistibility.
Be yourself. Communicate what works you and what doesn’t. Do it from day one and never stop. This is the most powerful step you can take at the beginning of any relationship to set it up for long-term success.
Speaking of relationship success, don’t confuse relationship longevity with relationship success. Just because a relationship lasts for many years does not mean it’s a success. Many couples cling to a lifeless and miserable existence they call a relationship because they are too afraid to be alone or to face the uncertainty of the unknown. Living a life of quiet desperation devoid of true love, passion, and spiritual partnership is not my idea of success.
Relationships, again, are life’s grandest opportunity for spiritual growth and evolution. They exist so that we may discover ourselves, awaken our hearts, and heal our barriers to love. Every relationship you’ve ever had, or you ever will have, is designed to bring you closer to your divinity and ability to experience and express the very best of who you are. ~ Marie Forleo,#NFDB
1167:Orion's Tips for Sane Witchcraft (Ponder and Apply to Living) Know your boundaries. Find time for stillness. Look within! Do not confuse spirituality with egotism. Don't abuse power or give it to those who would abuse you with it. Live your life as an expression of conscious creation and divine revelation. Seek counsel daily with your source, your center, and your ancestors. Don't get lazy, crazy, or otherwise in your own way. Remember grace! It brings wisdom and unlocks more vast knowledge. Be sincere in all that you do. Never compromise (especially your integrity) or be compromised. If you lose yourself, you have nothing. Choose what matters and feed it. (Starve the bane, feed the blessing.) Get the lesson and get on with life. Too often life is what happens when you are busy doing something else. Maintain an attitude of thanksgiving. For in doing so, you give gratitude to source and maintain inner fertile space to receive more. Thank the source and its good spirits at the beginning and ending of each day. If you wake up in the morning, your day has already started out good . . . build from that position. Don't wait for a reason to be happy when it is right in front of you. Claim the direction of your spirit! Fall in love with being you. The seed of divinity is within you; live your truth. Give no enduring interest to what is not spirit while seeking spiritual truth in everything. Do not stray away from your faith in yourself and the source (for in truth they are one). You are guided by the source. Do not be bandied about by the waves of life or you will crash onto the rocks of doubt. Daily, reaffirm your connection with spirit. Renew yourself on the new moment and release the fetters of yesterday to their rightful home . . . yesterday. Weave your web to attract that which you desire . . . then seize it. A witch need not hunt when he or she can attract. If you fall down . . . move what tripped you, get up, dust yourself off, and above all, don't give up walking. In chaotic times, seek the eye of the storm, poise yourself there, and find the wisdom in the stillness. Give thanks for all opportunities to grow. ~ Orion Foxwood, #NFDB
1168:fuck VULGAR SLANG v. [trans.] 1 have sexual intercourse with (someone). [intrans.] (of two people) have sexual intercourse. 2 ruin or damage (something). n. an act of sexual intercourse. [with adj.] a sexual partner. exclam. used alone or as a noun (the fuck) or a verb in various phrases to express anger, annoyance, contempt, impatience, or surprise, or simply for emphasis. go fuck yourself an exclamation expressing anger or contempt for, or rejection of, someone. not give a fuck (about) used to emphasize indifference or contempt. fuck around spend time doing unimportant or trivial things. have sexual intercourse with a variety of partners. (fuck around with) meddle with. fuck off [usu. in imperative] (of a person) go away. fuck someone over treat someone in an unfair or humiliating way. fuck someone up damage or confuse someone emotionally. fuck something up (or fuck up) do something badly or ineptly. fuck·a·ble adj. early 16th cent.: of Germanic origin (compare Swedish dialect focka and Dutch dialect fokkelen); possibly from an Indo-European root meaning 'strike', shared by Latin pugnus 'fist'. Despite the wideness and proliferation of its use in many sections of society, the word fuck remains (and has been for centuries) one of the most taboo words in English. Until relatively recently, it rarely appeared in print; even today, there are a number of euphemistic ways of referring to it in speech and writing, e.g., the F-word, f***, or fk. fuck·er n. VULGAR SLANG a contemptible or stupid person (often used as a general term of abuse). fuck·head n. VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse). fuck·ing adj. [attrib.] & adv. [as submodifier] VULGAR SLANG used for emphasis or to express anger, annoyance, contempt, or surprise. fuck-me adj. VULGAR SLANG (of clothing, esp. shoes) inviting or perceived as inviting sexual interest. fuck-up n. VULGAR SLANG a mess or muddle. a person who has a tendency to make a mess of things. fuck·wit n. CHIEFLY BRIT., VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse). fu·coid ~ Oxford University Press, #NFDB
1169:We spread the Gospel by the proclamation of the Word of God (see Rom. 10:17). But God has told us that we should restrain evil by the power of the sword and by the power of civil government (as in the teaching of Romans 13:1–6, quoted above, p. 37). If the power of government (such as a policeman) is not present in an emergency, when great harm is being done to another person, then my love for the victim should lead me to use physical force to prevent any further harm from occurring. If I found a criminal attacking my wife or children, I would use all my physical strength and all the physical force at my disposal against him, not to persuade him to trust in Christ as his Savior, but to immediately stop him from harming my wife and children! I would follow the command of Nehemiah, who told the men of Israel, “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes” (Neh. 4:14; see also Genesis 14:14–16, where Abraham rescued his kinsman Lot who had been taken captive by a raiding army). Boyd has wrongly taken one of the ways that God restrains evil in this world (changing hearts through the Gospel of Christ) and decided that it is the only way that God restrains evil (thus neglecting the valuable role of civil government). Both means are from God, both are good, and both should be used by Christians. This is why Boyd misunderstands Jesus’ statement, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:39). When this verse is rightly understood (see below, p. 82), we see that Jesus is telling individuals not to take revenge for a personal insult or a humiliating slap on the cheek.51 But this command for individual kindness is not the same as the instructions that the Bible gives to governments, who are to “bear the sword” and be a “terror” to bad conduct and are to carry out “God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:3–4). The verses must be understood rightly in their own contexts. One is talking about individual conduct and personal revenge. The other is talking about the responsibilities of government. We should not confuse the two passages. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1170:Grandpa,” he said, and Podo fixed him with a blazing eye. Janner resisted the urge to cower and apologize. He had to say something. He stood up straight and clenched his fists. “Grandpa, the dragon spoke to me.” Podo’s face was hard. “Aye?” he rumbled after a moment. “And what did the dragon say, boy?” “It said that Gnag the Nameless was near. It said he had sailed across the sea and they could smell him. It said, ‘Beware.’” “Gnag the Nameless.” Podo snorted. “A sea dragon said Gnag himself was close by. Is that what you’re tellin’ me?” The old pirate crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. Janner pointed at Tink and Leeli. “Ask them! They heard it too! Or—they didn’t exactly hear it, but—but they saw things and felt things. Didn’t you?” “Yes sir,” Tink said. “I saw them. Up close.” “And I felt them, Grandpa,” Leeli said. Podo and Nia exchanged a glance, and Podo waved a hand in the air. “Well, did the sea dragon also tell ye that his whole race is a bunch of scaly liars? Did he tell ye that they manipulate and confuse for the thrill of it? Sea dragons watch the doings of men with a wicked eye and would just as soon see you run off the cliff as run from Gnag the Nameless.” What? Janner thought about the rush of emotions he always felt on Dragon Day. The sea dragons were frightening, fascinating, even haunting—but not evil. It was Leeli’s song that had beckoned them, and Leeli certainly wasn’t evil. And then there was Nugget’s body. The dragons had carried him away with such care—there was nothing evil about that. But how could Janner argue with a pirate? Podo knew more about everything than Janner, especially the sea. “That’s what it said. I just—I just thought you should know,” Janner said quietly, unable to meet Podo’s eyes. If he had looked up, he would’ve seen that Podo wasn’t able to meet his eyes either. “Boys, see to setting up the tent like your grandfather told you,” Nia said after a moment. “We can talk about the sea dragons in a little while. Gnag the Nameless or not, we all need a meal and a rest. Maker only knows when we’ll have another.” “Food?” Tink asked. Nia nodded. “We’ll eat the dried diggle that Artham made us.” “Food,” Tink repeated. 17 ~ Andrew Peterson, #NFDB
1171:One of the reasons for its success is that science has built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition. Every time a scientific paper presents a bit of data, it's accompanied by an error bar - a quiet but insistent reminder that no knowledge is complete or perfect. It's a calibration of how much we trust what we think we know. If the error bars are small, the accuracy of our empirical knowledge is high; if the error bars are large, then so is the uncertainty in our knowledge. Except in pure mathematics nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false). Moreover, scientists are usually careful to characterize the veridical status of.their attempts to understand the world - ranging from conjectures and hypotheses, which are highly tentative, all the way up to laws of Nature which are repeatedly and systematically confirmed through many interrogations of how the world works. But even laws of Nature are not absolutely certain. There may be new circumstances never before examined - inside black holes, say, or within the electron, or close to the speed of light -where even our vaunted laws of Nature break down and, however valid they may be in ordinary circumstances, need correction. Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us. We will always be mired in error. The most each generation can hope for is to reduce the error bars a little, and to add to the body of data to which error bars apply. The error bar is a pervasive, visible self-assessment of the reliability of our knowledge. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1172:Another common error is to confuse freedom with planlessness. Some writers these days argue that if the system of economic laissez-faire—“letting everyone do as he wishes”—were altered as history marches on, our freedom would vanish with it. The argument of these authors often goes something like this: “Freedom is like a living thing. It is indivisible. And if the individual’s right to own the means of production is taken away, he no longer has the freedom to earn his living in his own way. Then he can have no freedom at all.” Well, if these writers were right it would indeed be unfortunate—for who then could be free? Not you nor I nor anyone else except a very small group of persons—for in this day of giant industries, only the minutest fraction of citizens can own the means of production anyway. Laissez-faire was a great idea, as we have seen, in earlier centuries: but times change, and almost everyone nowadays earns his living by virtue of belonging to a large group, be it an industry, or a university, or a labor union. It is a vastly more interdependent world, this “one world” of our twentieth century, than the world of the entrepreneurs of earlier centuries or of our own pioneer days; and freedom must be found in the context of economic community and the social value of work, not in everyone’s setting up his own factory or university. Fortunately, this economic interdependence need not destroy freedom if we keep our perspective. The pony express was a great idea, also, back in the days when sending a letter from coast to coast was an adventure. But certainly we are thankful—complain as we may about mail service these days—that now when we write a letter to a friend on the coast, we don’t have to give more than a passing thought to its method of travel; we drop it in the box with an air-mail stamp and forget about it. We are free, that is, to devote more time and concern to our message to our friend, our intellectual and spiritual interchange in the letter, because in a world made smaller by specialized communication we don’t have to be so concerned about how the letter gets there. We are more free intellectually and spiritually precisely because we accept our position in economic interdependence with our fellow men. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1173:George A. Knight
Attorney Knight, it happens so sometimes
That lawyers, justifying cut-throats' crimes
For hire-calumniating, too, for gold,
The dead, dumb victims cruelly unsouled
Speak, through the press, to a tribunal far
More honorable than their Honors are,
A court that sits not with assenting smile
While living rogues dead gentleman revile,
A court where scoundrel ethics of your trade
Confuse no judgment and no cheating aid,
The Court of Honest Souls, where you in vain
May plead your right to falsify for gain,
Sternly reminded if a man engage
To serve assassins for the liar's wage,
His mouth with vilifying falsehoods crammed,
He's twice detestable and doubly damned!
Attorney Knight, defending Powell, you,
To earn your fee, so energetic grew
(So like a hound, the pride of all the pack,
Clapping your nose upon the dead man's track
To run his faults to earth-at least proclaim
At vacant holes the overtaken game)
That men who marked you nourishing the tongue,
And saw your arms so vigorously swung,
All marveled how so light a breeze could stir
So great a windmill to so great a whirr!
Little they knew, or surely they had grinned,
The mill was laboring to raise the wind.
Ralph Smith a 'shoulder-striker'! God, O hear
This hardy man's description of thy dear
Dead child, the gentlest soul, save only One,
E'er born in any land beneath the sun.
All silent benefactions still he wrought:
High deed and gracious speech and noble thought,
Kept all thy law, and, seeking still the right,
Upon his blameless breast received the light.
290
'Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints,' he cried
Whose wrath was deep as his comparison wide
Milton, thy servant. Nay, thy will be done:
To smite or spare-to me it all is one.
Can vengeance bring my sorrow to an end,
Or justice give me back my buried friend?
But if some Milton vainly now implore,
And Powell prosper as he did before,
Yet 'twere too much that, making no ado,
Thy saints be slaughtered and be slandered too.
So, Lord, make Knight his weapon keep in sheath,
Or do Thou wrest it from between his teeth!
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
1174:Kahnawake
August 1704
Temperature 75 degrees
“What do you mean--your family?” he said. “Joseph, you do not have a family in this terrible place. You have a master. Do not confuse savages who happen to give you food with family.”
Joseph’s face hardened. “They are my family. My father is Great Sky. My mother--”
The minister lost his temper. “Your father is Martin Kellogg,” he shouted, “with whom I just dined in Montreal. You refer to some savage as your father? I am ashamed of you.”
Under his tan, Joseph paled and his Indian calm left him. He was trembling. “My--my father? Alive? You saw him?”
“Your father is a field hand for a French family in Montreal. He works hard, Joseph. He has no choice. But you have choices. Have you chosen to abandon your father?”
Joseph swallowed and wet his lips. “No.” He could barely get the syllable out.
Don’t cry, prayed Mercy. Be an eagle. She fixed her eyes upon him, giving him all her strength, but Mr. Williams continued to destroy whatever strength the thirteen-year-old possessed.
“Your father prays for the day you and he will be ransomed, Joseph. All he thinks of is the moment he can gather his beloved family back under his own roof. Is that not also your prayer, Joseph?”
Joseph stared down the wide St. Lawrence in the direction of Montreal. He was fighting for composure and losing. Each breath shuddered visibly through his ribs.
The Indian men who never seemed to do anything but smoke and lounge around joined them silently. How runty the French looked next to the six-foot Indians; how gaudy and ridiculous their ruffled and buckled clothing.
The Indians were not painted and they wore almost nothing. Neither were they armed. And yet they came as warriors. Two of their children were threatened. It could not be tolerated.
Tannhahorens put one hand on Joseph’s shoulder and the other on Mercy’s. He was not ordering them around, and yet he did not seem to be protecting them.
He was, it dawned on Mercy, comforting them.
In Tannhahorens’s eyes, we are Indian children, thought Mercy. Her hair prickled and her skin turned to gooseflesh. She had spent the summer forgetting to be English--and Tannhahorens had spent the summer forgetting the same thing. ~ Caroline B Cooney,#NFDB
1175:Multiple-model agnosticism, then, is a way out of postmodernism which doesn't lead into the belief that, out of all the billions of people in the world, you are the only one who really gets it and everyone else are idiots. The problem is, however, that our models are too damned convincing, and it is a struggle to remember that they are models and not reality. Hence much of the work of the Discordians - bar the stuff included purely for shits and giggles - is aimed at shocking people into realising the extent to which they confuse their models with the actuality. The 23 Enigma is a good case in point. Wilson was basically training his readers to notice 23s everywhere and, as any Discordian will tell you, he did this very well indeed. The point is, however, that there is nothing special about the number in itself. It is the fact that it has been singled out and had meaning applied to it, and that Discordians have been trained to recognise it, which is significant. Had it been the number 47, or 18, or 65, the effect would have been the same. Indeed, in his later years Wilson admitted that it would have been much better if he had trained his readers to spot quarters on the ground instead of number 23s. Of course, Multiple-model agnosticism also allows you to consider the model which states that the above paragraph is mistaken, and that the number 23 is significant. Many Discordians have explored this model at length. As I understand it, that model doesn't lead to anywhere pleasant, but the curious are encouraged to explore it for themselves to see if that's true. The reason that the 23 Enigma is useful is because it demonstrates the amount of information that our models filter out. In actuality, the coincidental and synchronistic appearances of the number 23 are matched by coincidental and synchronistic appearances of every other number, even though our models fail to react to these. They are just models, after all, and models are significantly less detailed than what they represent. Reality itself is ablaze with infinite connections: every particle in the cosmos affects every other particle. It's Too Much, it really is, and seeing reality in all its innate finery would be so overpowering that you'd be in no state to nip down the shops when you need a pint of milk. ~ J M R Higgs, #NFDB
1176:Gossip is perhaps the most familiar and elementary form of disguised popular aggression. Though its use is hardly confined to attacks by subordinates on their superiors, it represents a relatively safe social sanction. Gossip, almost by definition has no identifiable author, but scores of eager retailers who can claim they are just passing on the news. Should the gossip—and here I have in mind malicious gossip—be challenged, everyone can disavow responsibility for having originated it. The Malay term for gossip and rumor, khabar angin (news on the wind), captures the diffuse quality of responsibility that makes such aggression possible.
The character of gossip that distinguishes it from rumor is that gossip consists typically of stories that are designated to ruin the reputation of some identifiable person or persons. If the perpetrators remain anonymous, the victim is clearly specified. There is, arguably, something of a disguised democratic voice about gossip in the sense that it is propagated only to the extent that others find it in their interest to retell the story.13 If they don’t, it disappears. Above all, most gossip is a discourse about social rules that have been violated. A person’s reputation can be damaged by stories about his tightfistedness, his insulting words, his cheating, or his clothing only if the public among whom such tales circulate have shared standards of generosity, polite speech, honesty, and appropriate dress. Without an accepted normative standard from which degrees of deviation may be estimated, the notion of gossip would make no sense whatever. Gossip, in turn, reinforces these normative standards by invoking them and by teaching anyone who gossips precisely what kinds of conduct are likely to be mocked or despised.
13. The power to gossip is more democratically distributed than power, property, and income, and, certainly, than the freedom to speak openly. I do not mean to imply that gossip cannot and is not used by superiors to control subordinates, only that resources on this particular field of struggle are relatively more favorable to subordinates. Some people’s gossip is weightier than that of others, and, providing we do not confuse status with mere public deference, one would expect that those with high personal status would be the most effective gossipers. ~ James C Scott,#NFDB
1177:Addressing this doubt, in order to explain the mind, it is taught: || citir eva cetana-padād avarūḍhā cetya-saṅkocinī cittam || 5 || Awareness (citi) itself, descending from its state of pure consciousness (cetana), becomes contracted by the object perceived: this is [called] the mind (citta). Far from teaching an absolute distinction of divine spirit and mundane matter, Tantra teaches that they are in fact different phases of one thing, i.e., Awareness. Take the example of h2o: in one phase, we call it steam, in another, water, in another, ice. These three states are very different from one another, and we necessarily interact with each of them in very different ways. This is a perfect analogy for what Kṣemarāja intends here: there are three different states or phases of one ‘thing’—in one state, we call it God, in another, pure consciousness, in another, the mind. The implications of this are of course huge. First, though, let’s explore the specific three terms that Kṣemarāja is using here for these three states of the One. First we have citi, introduced in the first sūtra, which we translate (imperfectly) as Awareness. Citi (pronounced CHIT-ee) is the state in which Awareness is fully expanded, that is to say, untouched by any trace of contraction, including that of subjectivity or selfhood. In other words, there is no concealment whatsoever operative on the citi level (not that it’s really a level, of course). When citi manifests as an individuated subject, then that is the phase called cetana, here translated as ‘pure consciousness’. We have to define this second phase, cetana, more carefully so that we don’t confuse it with the third phase (the mind). Cetana (CHAY-tuh-nuh) is the state of being the conscious knower or agent of consciousness. We experience cetana in the space between trains of thought, a space of awareness momentarily devoid of thought-forms (vikalpas). That’s why I translate it as ‘pure consciousness’. We experience it dozens of times a day, but usually only for a second, and usually without the reflective self-awareness (vimarśa) by which we can know that we are experiencing cetana. (This ‘knowing’, when it does occur, does not take the form of a thought, or else it is no longer the cetana state.) The cetana state is open and expansive awareness; in fact, it is as expanded as awareness can be while still having a subtle ‘sense of self’. ~ Christopher D Wallis, #NFDB
1178:Dane and Marco and the boys all fled the stage but I was still playing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’. I tried different interesting arrangments. Mozart’s twelve variations and Elton John style. Even Billy Joel/‘Piano Man’-ish. Then I had a brainstorm and thumped it out like Jerry Lee Lewis, with my feet on the keys and everything, and that seemed to confuse the guy waving the gun. Anyway he didn’t shot me.
By now I was really getting into ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’, actually getting the old flash while I played it over and over, I don’t know how many times, and I sort of hypnotised myself. I was in a trance.
People had thrown every available bottle and can and busted seat at me. Now they started on the fire extinguishers, and they were frothing and spurting and rolling around on the stage. Even the over-roided security joined in, and the bouncers were throwing stuff at me, too. I didn’t care. I was in a daze. I felt bulletproof and above it all, and when I eventually finished I stood in front of the redwood crucifix with my arms out, covered in fire-extinguisher foam like a snowman, and bowed to the audience.
And then for some insane reason I pushed over the crucifix, which was difficult because it was heavy and splintery, and it cut my hands so I was bleeding everywhere, and I deliberately rubbed the blood all over my face. Then I put my foot on the crucifix, like a big-game hunter with his kill, like Ernest Hemingway with a dead lion, and raised my bloody fist in victory.
And there was a sort of roar then, a deep roar lie a squadron of B-47s. And I passed out on the stage.
I came to with someone furiously screaming. An amazing octave range, about five – from an F1 to B flat 6. It was your mother standing over me like a tigress, waving a broken seat, and preventing the Texans from rushing the stage and stomping me to death, they were wary of this wild, high-pitched little chick and backed off.
As I stumbled back to the dressing-room, Tania was yelling that she wished the oil-rig guy had shot me, and this was the end, she’d really had it. And the record-company people were just staring at me open-mouthed like I was a lunatic. And outside, our tour bus had been set on fire, and there were no extinguishers left, and the police and fire brigade got involved, on the side of the Texans, and there was suddenly a visa problem.
So that was it for Spider Flower in America. And for your mother and me, as it turned out. Pg 188-9 ~ Robert Drewe,#NFDB
1179:The Delusion of Lasting Success promises that building an enduring company is not only achievable but a worthwhile objective. Yet companies that have outperformed the market for long periods of time are not just rare, they are statistical artifacts that are observable only in retrospect. Companies that achieved lasting success may be best understood as having strung together many short-term successes. Pursuing a dream of enduring greatness may divert attention from the pressing need to win immediate battles.
The Delusion of Absolute Performance diverts our attention from the fact that success and failure always take place in a competitive environment. It may be comforting to believe that our success is entirely up to us, but as the example of Kmart demonstrated, a company can improve in absolute terms and still fall further behind in relative terms. Success in business means doing things better than rivals, not just doing things well. Believing that performance is absolute can cause us to take our eye off rivals and to avoid decisions that, while risky, may be essential for survival given the particular context of our industry and its competitive dynamics.
The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick lets us confuse causes and effects, actions and outcomes. We may look at a handful of extraordinarily successful companies and imagine that doing what they did can lead to success — when it might in fact lead mainly to higher volatility and a lower overall chance of success. Unless we start with the full population of companies and examine what they all did — and how they all fared — we have an incomplete and indeed biased set of information.
The Delusion of Organizational Physics implies that the business world offers predictable results, that it conforms to precise laws. It fuels a belief that a given set of actions can work in all settings and ignores the need to adapt to different conditions: intensity of competition, rate of growth, size of competitors, market concentration, regulation, global dispersion of activities, and much more. Claiming that one approach can work everywhere, at all times, for all companies, has a simplistic appeal but doesn’t do justice to the complexities of business.
These points, taken together, expose the principal fiction at the heart of so many business books — that a company can choose to be great, that following a few key steps will predictably lead to greatness, that its success is entirely of its own making and not dependent on factors outside its control. ~ Philip M Rosenzweig,#NFDB
1180:Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the bronze visage that loomed orange and scowling over his father, watched him lean back into absolute shadow.
“You came to the world,” unseen lips said, “and you saw that Men were like children.”
Lines of radiance danced across the intervening waters.
“It is their nature to believe as their fathers believed,” the darkness continued. “To desire as they desired … Men are like wax poured into moulds: their souls are cast by their circumstances. Why are no Fanim children born to Inrithi parents? Why are no Inrithi children born to Fanim parents? Because these truths are made, cast by the particularities of circumstance. Rear an infant among Fanim and he will become Fanim. Rear him among Inrithi and he will become Inrithi …
“Split him in two, and he would murder himself.”
Without warning, the face re-emerged, water-garbled, white save the black sockets beneath his brow. The action seemed random, as though his father merely changed posture to relieve some vagrant ache, but it was not. Everything, Kellhus knew, had been premeditated. For all the changes wrought by thirty years in the Wilderness, his father remained Dûnyain …
Which meant that Kellhus stood on conditioned ground.
“But as obvious as this is,” the blurred face continued, “it escapes them. Because they cannot see what comes before them, they assume nothing comes before them. Nothing. They are numb to the hammers of circumstance, blind to their conditioning. What is branded into them, they think freely chosen.
So they thoughtlessly cleave to their intuitions, and curse those who dare question. They make ignorance their foundation. They confuse their narrow conditioning for absolute truth.”
He raised a cloth, pressed it into the pits of his eyes. When he withdrew it, two rose-coloured stains marked the pale fabric. The face slipped back into the impenetrable black.
“And yet part of them fears. For even unbelievers share the depth of their conviction. Everywhere, all about them, they see examples of their own self-deception … ‘Me!’ everyone cries. ‘I am chosen!’ How could they not fear when they so resemble children stamping their feet in the dust? So they encircle themselves with yea-sayers, and look to the horizon for confirmation, for some higher sign that they are as central to the world as they are to themselves.”
He waved his hand out, brought his palm to his bare breast. “And they pay with the coin of their devotion. ~ R Scott Bakker,#NFDB
1181:Why are you doing this? Ever find yourself working on something without knowing exactly why? Someone just told you to do it. It’s pretty common, actually. That’s why it’s important to ask why you’re working on . What is this for? Who benefits? What’s the motivation behind it? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you better understand the work itself. What problem are you solving? What’s the problem? Are customers confused? Are you confused? Is something not clear enough? Was something not possible before that should be possible now? Sometimes when you ask these questions, you’ll find you’re solving an imaginary problem. That’s when it’s time to stop and reevaluate what the hell you’re doing. Is this actually useful? Are you making something useful or just making something? It’s easy to confuse enthusiasm with usefulness. Sometimes it’s fine to play a bit and build something cool. But eventually you’ve got to stop and ask yourself if it’s useful, too. Cool wears off. Useful never does. Are you adding value? Adding something is easy; adding value is hard. Is this thing you’re working on actually making your product more valuable for customers? Can they get more out of it than they did before? Sometimes things you think are adding value actually subtract from it. Too much ketchup can ruin the fries. Value is about balance. Will this change behavior? Is what you’re working on really going to change anything? Don’t add something unless it has a real impact on how people use your product. Is there an easier way? Whenever you’re working on something, ask, “Is there an easier way?” You’ll often find this easy way is more than good enough for now. Problems are usually pretty simple. We just imagine that they require hard solutions. What could you be doing instead? What can’t you do because you’re doing this? This is especially important for small teams with constrained resources. That’s when prioritization is even more important. If you work on A, can you still do B and C before April? If not, would you rather have B and C instead of A? If you’re stuck on something for a long period of time, that means there are other things you’re not getting done. Is it really worth it? Is what you’re doing really worth it? Is this meeting worth pulling six people off their work for an hour? Is it worth pulling an all-nighter tonight, or could you just finish it up tomorrow? Is it worth getting all stressed out over a press release from a competitor? Is it worth spending your money on advertising? Determine the real value of what you’re about to do before taking the plunge. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1182:To our amazement Jimmy received a letter, dated August 20, 1963, from Bertrand Russell, the world-famous philosopher and peace activist, saying “I have recently finished your remarkable book The American Resolution” and “have been greatly impressed with its power and insight.” The letter goes on to ask for Jimmy’s views on whether American whites “will understand the negro [sic] revolt because “the survival of mankind may well follow or fail to follow from political and social behavior of Americans in the next decades.” On September 5 Jimmy wrote back a lengthy reply saying among other things that “so far, with the exception of the students, there has been no social force in the white population which the Negroes can respect and a handful of liberals joining in a demonstration doesn’t change this one bit.” Russell replied on September 18 with more questions that Jimmy answered in an even longer letter dated December 22. Meanwhile, Russell had sent a telegram to the November 21 Town Hall meeting in New York City at which Jimmy was scheduled to speak, warning Negroes not to resort to violence. In response Jimmy said at the meeting that “I too would like to hope that the issues of our revolt might be resolved by peaceful means,” but “the issues and grievances were too deeply imbedded in the American system and the American peoples so that the very things Russell warned against might just have to take place if the Negroes in the U.S.A. are ever to walk the streets as free men.” In his December 22 letter Jimmy repeats what he said at the meeting and then patiently explains to Russell that what has historically been considered democracy in the United States has actually been fascism for millions of Negroes. The letter concludes: I believe that it is your responsibility as I believe that it is my responsibility to recognize and record this, so that in the future words do not confuse the struggle but help to clarify it. This is what I think philosophers should make clear. Because even though Negroes in the United States still think they are struggling for democracy, in fact democracy is what they are struggling against. This exchange between Jimmy and Russell has to be seen to be believed. In a way it epitomizes the 1960s—Jimmy Boggs, the Alabama-born autoworker, explaining the responsibility of philosophers to The Earl Russell, O.M., F.R.S., in his time probably the West’s best-known philosopher. Within the next few years The American Revolution was translated and published in French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese. To this day it remains a page-turner for grassroots activists because it is so personal and yet political, so down to earth and yet visionary. ~ Grace Lee Boggs, #NFDB
1183:Their [girls] sexual energy, their evaluation of adolescent boys and other girls goes thwarted, deflected back upon the girls, unspoken, and their searching hungry gazed returned to their own bodies. The questions, Whom do I desire? Why? What will I do about it? are turned around: Would I desire myself? Why?...Why not? What can I do about it?
The books and films they see survey from the young boy's point of view his first touch of a girl's thighs, his first glimpse of her breasts. The girls sit listening, absorbing, their familiar breasts estranged as if they were not part of their bodies, their thighs crossed self-consciously, learning how to leave their bodies and watch them from the outside. Since their bodies are seen from the point of view of strangeness and desire, it is no wonder that what should be familiar, felt to be whole, become estranged and divided into parts. What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys; that takes up the space that should be devoted to finding out about what they are wanting, and reading and writing about it, seeking it and getting it. Sex is held hostage by beauty and its ransom terms are engraved in girls' minds early and deeply with instruments more beautiful that those which advertisers or pornographers know how to use: literature, poetry, painting, and film.
This outside-in perspective on their own sexuality leads to the confusion that is at the heart of the myth. Women come to confuse sexual looking with being looked at sexually ("Clairol...it's the look you want"); many confuse sexually feeling with being sexually felt ("Gillete razors...the way a woman wants to feel"); many confuse desiring with being desirable. "My first sexual memory," a woman tells me, "was when I first shaved my legs, and when I ran my hand down the smooth skin I felt how it would feel to someone else's hand." Women say that when they lost weight they "feel sexier" but the nerve endings in the clitoris and nipples don't multiply with weight loss. Women tell me they're jealous of the men who get so much pleasure out of the female body that they imagine being inside the male body that is inside their own so that they can vicariously experience desire.
Could it be then that women's famous slowness of arousal to men's, complex fantasy life, the lack of pleasure many experience in intercourse, is related to this cultural negation of sexual imagery that affirms the female point of view, the culture prohibition against seeing men's bodies as instruments of pleasure? Could it be related to the taboo against representing intercourse as an opportunity for a straight woman actively to pursue, grasp, savor, and consume the male body for her satisfaction, as much as she is pursued, grasped, savored, and consumed for his? ~ Naomi Wolf,#NFDB
1184:I’m in agreement with you now about the not-watching part,” she said.
Jane and Mr. Nobley walked back to the house in silence, the air around them thick, dragging with awkwardness. Witnessing confessions of love and first kisses can be enchanting when you’re with someone comfortable, someone you’ve already had that kiss with, and can laugh about it and feel cozy and remember your own first moment. Seeing it with Mr. Nobley was like having a naked-in-public dream.
“It’s only natural to confuse truth and fantasy as they play parts in a theatrical,” said Jane. “They start to feel as their characters would.”
“True. Which is one reason why I was hesitant to engage in this frivolity. I do not think pretending something can make it real.”
“I find it a little alarming that we agree on something. But do you think, in their case anyway, do you think those feelings could run deeper?”
Mr. Nobley stopped. He looked at her. “I wondered the same.”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“It’s more than possible. They reside in compatible stations in life, they have like minds, their sentiments seem suited to each other.”
“You sound like a textbook on matrimony. I’m talking about love, Mr. Nobley. Despite falling in love over a script, do you think they have a chance?”
Mr. Nobley frowned and rubbed his sideburns briskly with the back of his fingers. “I…I knew Captain East in the past when he loved another woman. Her changes, her cruelty broke him. He was a shell for some time. If you had asked me last month if another woman’s attentions could make him a whole man again, I would have said that no man can recover from such a wound, that he will never be able to trust a woman again, that romantic love is not air or water and one can live without it. But now…” He breathed out. He had not looked away from her. “Now I do not know. Now I almost begin to think, yes. Yes.”
“Yes,” she repeated. The moon hung in the sky just over his shoulder, peering as though listening in, breathless for what was next.
“Miss Erstwhile.”
“Yes?”
He looked at the sky, he took several breaths as if trying to locate the right words, he briefly shut his eyes. “Miss Erstwhile, do you--”
Captain East and Miss Heartwright passed by, walking close without touching. Mr. Nobley watched them, his frown deepening, then he looked back over his shoulder at nothing.
What? What?! Jane wanted to yell.
“Shall we go inside?”
He offered his arm. She felt dumped-on-her-rear disappointment, but she took his arm and pretended she was just fine. Soon the warm safety of roof and walls cut off the luscious strangeness of night in the garden. Servants scurried, candles blazed, the preparations for the play were lively and unconcerned with a moment in the park.
Without another word, Mr. Nobley left her alone, his jacket still around her shoulders. It smelled like gardens. ~ Shannon Hale,#NFDB
1185:LEGALISM Legalism is the opposite heresy of antinomianism. Whereas antinomianism denies the significance of law, legalism exalts law above grace. The legalists of Jesus’ day were the Pharisees, and Jesus reserved His strongest criticism for them. The fundamental distortion of legalism is the belief that one can earn one’s way into the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees believed that due to their status as children of Abraham, and to their scrupulous adherence to the law, they were the children of God. At the core, this was a denial of the gospel. A corollary article of legalism is the adherence to the letter of the law to the exclusion of the spirit of the law. In order for the Pharisees to believe that they could keep the law, they first had to reduce it to its most narrow and wooden interpretation. The story of the rich young ruler illustrates this point. The rich young ruler asked Jesus how he could inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to “keep the commandments.” The young man believed that he had kept them all. But Jesus decisively revealed the one “god” that he served before the true God—riches. “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Matthew 19:21). The rich young ruler went on his way saddened. The Pharisees were guilty of another form of legalism. They added their own laws to the law of God. Their “traditions” were raised to a status equal to the law of God. They robbed people of their liberty and put chains on them where God had left them free. That kind of legalism did not end with the Pharisees. It has also plagued the church in every generation. Legalism often arises as an overreaction against antinomianism. To make sure we do not allow ourselves or others to slip into the moral laxity of antinomianism, we tend to make rules more strict than God Himself does. When this occurs, legalism introduces a tyranny over the people of God. Likewise, forms of antinomianism often arise as an overreaction to legalism. Its rallying cry is usually one of freedom from all oppression. It is the quest for moral liberty run amok. Christians, in guarding their liberty, must be careful not to confuse liberty with libertinism. Another form of legalism is majoring on the minors. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for omitting the weightier matters of the law while they were scrupulous in obeying minor points (Matthew 23:23-24). This tendency remains a constant threat to the church. We have a tendency to exalt to the supreme level of godliness whatever virtues we possess and downplay our vices as insignificant points. For example, I may view refraining from dancing as a great spiritual strength while considering my covetousness a minor matter. The only antidote to either legalism or antinomianism is a serious study of the Word of God. Only then will we be properly instructed in what is pleasing and displeasing to God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1186:Adelia began to get cross. Why was it women who were to blame for everything—everything, from the Fall of Man to these blasted hedges?
“We are not in a labyrinth, my lord,” she said clearly.
“Where are we, then?”
“It’s a maze.”
“Same difference.” Puffing at the horse: “Get back, you great cow.”
“No, it isn’t. A labyrinth has only one path and you merely have to follow it. It’s a symbol of life or, rather, of life and death. Labyrinths twist and turn, but they have a beginning and an end, through darkness into light.”
Softening, and hoping that he would, too, she added, “Like Ariadne’s. Rather beautiful, really.”
“I don’t want mythology, mistress, beautiful or not, I want to get to that sodding tower. What’s a maze when it’s at home?”
“It’s a trick. A trick to confuse. To amaze.”
“And I suppose Mistress Clever-boots knows how to get us out?”
“I do, actually.” God’s rib, he was sneering at her, sneering. She’d a mind to stay where she was and let him sweat.
“Then in the name of Christ, do it.”
“Stop bellowing at me,” she yelled at him. “You’re bellowing.”
She saw his teeth grit in the pretense of a placatory smile; he always had good teeth. Still did. Between them, he said, “The Bishop of Saint Albans presents his compliments to Mistress Adelia and please to escort him out of this hag’s hole, for the love of God. How will you do it?”
“My business.” Be damned if she’d tell him. Women were defenseless enough without revealing their secrets. “I’ll have to take the lead.”
She stumped along in front, holding Walt’s mount’s reins in her right hand. In the other was her riding crop, which she trailed with apparent casualness so that it brushed against the hedge on her left.
As she went, she chuntered to herself. Lord, how disregarded I am in this damned country. How disregarded all women are.
...
Ironically, the lower down the social scale women were, the greater freedom they had; the wives of laborers and craftsmen could work alongside their men—even, sometimes, when they were widowed, take over their husband’s trade.
Adelia trudged on. Hag’s hole. Grendel’s mother’s entrails. Why was this dreadful place feminine to the men lost in it? Because it was tunneled? Womb-like? Is this woman’s magic? The great womb?
Is that why the Church hates me, hates all women? Because we are the source of all true power? Of life?
She supposed that by leading them out of it, she was only confirming that a woman knew its secrets and they did not.
Great God, she thought, it isn't a question of hatred. It’s fear. They are frightened of us.
And Adelia laughed quietly, sending a suggestion of sound reverberating backward along the tunnel, as if a small pebble was skipping on water, making each man start when it passed him.
“What in hell was that?”
Walt called back stolidly, “Reckon someone’s laughing at us, master.”
“Dear God. ~ Ariana Franklin,#NFDB
1187:The woman glares at him and, after taking a breath, forges on. "One other issue I'd like to raise is how you have authors here separated by sex."
"Yes, that's right. The person who was in charge before us cataloged these and for whatever reason divided them into male and female. We were thinking of recataloging all of them, but haven't been able to as of yet."
"We're not criticizing you for this," she says.
Oshima tilts his head slightly.
"The problem, though, is that in all categories male authors are listed before female authors," she says. "To our way of thinking this violates the principle of sexual equality and is totally unfair."
Oshima picks up her business card again, runs his eyes over it, then lays it back down on the counter. "Ms. Soga," he begins, "when they called the role in school your name would have come before Ms. Tanaka, and after Ms. Sekine. Did you file a complaint about that? Did you object, asking them to reverse the order? Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution just because it follows 67?"
"That's not the point," she says angrily. "You're intentionally trying to confuse the issue."
Hearing this, the shorter woman, who'd been standing in front of a stack taking notes, races over.
"Intentionally trying to confuse the issue," Oshima repeats, like he's underlining the woman's words.
"Are you denying it?"
"That's a red herring," Oshima replies.
The woman named Soga stands there, mouth slightly ajar, not saying a word.
"In English there's this expression red herring. Something that's very interesting but leads you astray from the main topic. I'm afraid I haven't looked into why they use that kind of expression, though."
"Herrings or mackerel or whatever, you're dodging the issue."
"Actually what I'm doing is shifting the analogy," Oshima says. "One of the most effective methods of argument, according to Aristotle. The citizens of ancient Athens enjoyed using this kind of intellectual trick very much. It's a shame, though, that at the time women weren't included in the definition of 'citizen.'"
"Are you making fun of us?"
Oshima shakes his head. "Look, what I'm trying to get across is this: I'm sure there are many more effective ways of making sure that Japanese women's rights are guaranteed than sniffing around a small library in a little town and complaining about the restrooms and the card catalog. We're doing our level best to see that this modest library of ours helps the community. We've assembled an outstanding collection for people who love books. And we do our utmost to put a human face on all our dealings with the public. You might not be aware of it, but this library's collection of poetry-related material from the 1910s to the mid-Showa period is nationally recognized. Of course there are things we could do better, and limits to what we can accomplish. But rest assured we're doing our very best. I think it'd be a whole lot better if you focus on what we do well than what we're unable to do. Isn't that what you call fair? ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
1188:The Seventh Inning
1. Baseball, I warrant, is not the whole
occupation of the aging boy.
Far from it: There are cats and roses;
there is her water body. She fills
the skin of her legs up, like water;
under her blouse, water assembles,
swelling lukewarm; her mouth is water,
her cheekbones cool water; water flows
in her rapid hair. I drink water
2. from her body as she walks past me
to open a screen door, as she bends
to weed among herbs, or as she lies
beside me at five in the morning
in submarine light. Curt Davis threw
a submarine ball, terrifying
to right-handed batters. Another
pleasure, thoroughly underrated,
is micturition, which is even
3. commoner than baseball. It begins
by announcing itself more slowly
and less urgently than sexual
desire, but (confusingly) in the
identical place. Ignorant men
therefore on occasion confuse beerdrinking with love; but I have discussed
adultery elsewhere. We allow
this sweet release to commence itself,
4. addressing a urinal perhaps,
perhaps poised over a white toilet
with feet spread wide and head tilted back:
oh, what'delicious permission! what
luxury of letting go! what luxe
yellow curve of mildest ecstasy!
Granted we may not compare it to
poignant and crimson bliss, it is as
voluptuous as rain all night long
26
5. after baseball in August's parch. The
jade plant's trunk, as thick as a man's wrist,
urges upward thrusting from packed dirt,
with Chinese vigor spreading limbs out
that bear heavy leaves—palpable, dark,
juicy, green, profound: They suck, the way
bleacher fans claim inhabitants of
box seats do. The Fourth of July we
exhaust stars from sparklers in the late
6. twilight. We swoop ovals of white-gold
flame, making quick signatures against
an imploding dark. The five-year-old
girl kisses the young dog goodbye and
chases the quick erratic kitten.
When she returns in a few years as
a tall shy girl, she will come back to
a dignified spreading cat and a
dog ash-gray on the muzzle. Sparklers
7. expel quickly this night of farewell:
If they didn't burn out, they wouldn't
be beautiful. Kurt, may I hazard
an opinion on expansion? Last
winter meetings, the major leagues (already meager in ability,
scanty in starting pitchers) voted
to add two teams. Therefore minor league
players will advance all too quickly,
8. with boys in the bigs who wouldn't have
made double-A forty years ago.
Directors of player personnel
will search like poets scrambling in old
notebooks for unused leftover lines,
but when was the last time anyone
cut back when he or she could expand?
Kurt, I get the notion that you were
another who never discarded
9.
anything, a keeper from way back.
27
You smoked cigarettes, in inflationtimes rolled from chopped-up banknotes, billions
inhaled and exhaled as cancerous
smoke. When commerce woke, Men was awake.
If you smoked a cigar, the cigar
band discovered itself glued into
collage. Ongoing life became the
material of Kurtschwittersball.
~ Donald Hall,#NFDB
1189:We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.
I don't think meaning is something that can be explained. You have to understand it on your own. It's like when you're starting to read. First, you learn the letters. Then, once you know what sounds the letters make, you use them to sound out words. You know that c-a-t leads to cat and d-o-g leads to dog. But then you have to make that extra leap, to understand that the word, the sound, the "cat" is connected to an actual cat , and that "dog" is connected to an actual dog. It's that leap, that understanding, that leads to meaning. And a lot of the time in life, we're still just sounding things out. We know the sentences and how to say them. We know the ideas and how to present them. We know the prayers and which words to say in what order. But that's only spelling"
It's much harder to lie to someone's face. But. It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone's face.
The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star. (Logan Pearsall Smith)
Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around. (J.R. Moehringer)
You could be standing a few feet away...I could have sat next to you on the subway, or brushed beside you as we went through the turnstiles. But whether or not you are here, you are here- because these words are for you, and they wouldn't exist is you weren't here in some way.
At last I had it--the Christmas present I'd wanted all along, but hadn't realized. His words.
The dream was obviously a sign: he was too enticing to resist.
Wow. You must have a lot of faith in me. Which I appreciate. Even if I'm not sure I share it.
I could do this on my own, and not freak out that I had no idea what waited for me on the other side of this night.
Hope and belief. I'd always wanted hope, but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it happened.
Because I'm So uncool and so afraid.
If there was a clue, that meant the mystery was still intact
I fear you may have outmatched me, because not I find these words have nowhere to go. It's hard to answer a question you haven't been asked. It's hard to show that you tried unless you end up succeeding.
This was not a haystack. We were people, and people had ways of finding eachother.
It was one of those moments when you feel the future so much that is humbles the present.
Don't worry. It's your embarrassment at not having the thought that counts.
You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here's ahint- ask yourself who wrote them. I assure you, it wasn't just the women. It's the great male fantasy- all it takes is one dance to know that she's the one. All it takes is the sound of her song from the tower, or a look at her sleeping face. And right away you know--this is the girl in your head, sleeping or dancing or singing in front of you. Yes, girls want their princes, but boys want their princesses just as much. And they don't want a very long courtship. They want to know immediately.
Be careful what you;re doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head
You should never wish for wishful thinking ~ Rachel Cohn,#NFDB
1190:Some people believe labor-saving technological change is bad for the workers because it throws them out of work. This is the Luddite fallacy, one of the silliest ideas to ever come along in the long tradition of silly ideas in economics. Seeing why it's silly is a good way to illustrate further Solow's logic.
The original Luddites were hosiery and lace workers in Nottingham, England, in 1811. They smashed knitting machines that embodied new labor-saving technology as a protest against unemployment (theirs), publicizing their actions in circulars mysteriously signed "King Ludd." Smashing machines was understandable protection of self-interest for the hosiery workers. They had skills specific to the old technology and knew their skills would not be worth much with the new technology. English government officials, after careful study, addressed the Luddites' concern by hanging fourteen of them in January 1813.
The intellectual silliness came later, when some thinkers generalized the Luddites' plight into the Luddite fallacy: that an economy-wide technical breakthrough enabling production of the same amount of goods with fewer workers will result in an economy with - fewer workers. Somehow it never occurs to believers in Luddism that there's another alternative: produce more goods with the same number of workers. Labor-saving technology is another term for output-per-worker-increasing technology. All of the incentives of a market economy point toward increasing investment and output rather than decreasing employment; otherwise some extremely dumb factory owners are foregoing profit opportunities. With more output for the same number of workers, there is more income for each worker.
Of course, there could very well be some unemployment of workers who know only the old technology - like the original Luddites - and this unemployment will be excruciating to its victims. But workers as a whole are better off with more powerful output-producing technology available to them. Luddites confuse the shift of employment from old to new technologies with an overall decline in employment. The former happens; the latter doesn't. Economies experiencing technical progress, like Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, do not show any long-run trend toward increasing unemployment; they do show a long-run trend toward increasing income per worker.
Solow's logic had made clear that labor-saving technical advance was the only way that output per worker could keep increasing in the long run. The neo-Luddites, with unintentional irony, denigrate the only way that workers' incomes can keep increasing in the long-run: labor-saving technological progress.
The Luddite fallacy is very much alive today. Just check out such a respectable document as the annual Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program. The 1996 Human Development Report frets about "jobless growth" in many countries. The authors say "jobless growth" happens whenever the rate of employment growth is not as high as the rate of output growth, which leads to "very low incomes" for millions of workers. The 1993 Human Development Report expressed the same concern about this "problem" of jobless growth, which was especially severe in developing countries between 1960 and 1973: "GDP growth rates were fairly high, but employment growth rates were less than half this." Similarly, a study of Vietnam in 2000 lamented the slow growth of manufacturing employment relative to manufacturing output. The authors of all these reports forget that having GDP rise faster than employment is called growth of income per worker, which happens to be the only way that workers "very low incomes" can increase. ~ William Easterly,#NFDB
1191:Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters.
No, no, wait.
Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods.
Once upon a time there were three soldiers, tramping together down the road after the war.
Once upon a time there were three little pigs.
Once upon a time there were three brothers.
No, this is it. This is the variation I want.
Once upon a time there were three Beautiful children, two boys and a girl. When each baby was born, the parents rejoiced, the heavens rejoiced, even the fairies rejoiced. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts.
Bounce, effort, and snark.
Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.
Sugar, curiosity, and rain.
And yet, there was a witch.
There's always a witch.
This which was the same age as the beautiful children, and as she and they grew, she was jealous of the girl, and jealous of the boys, too. They were blessed with all these fairy gifts, gifts the witch had been denied at her own christening.
The eldest boy was strong and fast, capable and handsome. Though it's true, he was exceptionally short.
The next boy was studious and open hearted. Though it's true, he was an outsider.
And the girl was witty, Generous, and ethical. Though it's true, she felt powerless.
The witch, she was none of these things, for her parents had angered the fairies. No gifts were ever bestowed upon her. She was lonely. Her only strength was her dark and ugly magic.
She confuse being spartan with being charitable, and gave away her possessions without truly doing good with them.
She confuse being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it.
She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts are making them think.
Hey magic was all she had, and she used it to destroy what she most admired. She visited each young person in turn in their tenth birthday, but did not harm them out right. The protection of some kind fairy - the lilac fairy, perhaps - prevented her from doing so.
What she did instead was cursed them.
"When you are sixteen," proclaimed the witch in a rage of jealousy, "you shall prick your finger on a spindle - no, you shall strike a match - yes, you will strike a match and did in its flame."
The parents of the beautiful children were frightened of the curse, and tried, as people will do, to avoid it. They moved themselves and the children far away, to a castle on a windswept Island. A castle where there were no matches.
There, surely, they would be safe.
There, Surely, the witch would never find them.
But find them she did. And when they were fifteen, these beautiful children, just before their sixteenth birthdays and when they're nervous parents not yet expecting it, the jealous which toxic, hateful self into their lives in the shape of a blonde meeting.
The maiden befriended the beautiful children. She kissed him and took them on the boat rides and brought them fudge and told them stories.
Then she gave them a box of matches.
The children were entranced, for nearly sixteen they have never seen fire.
Go on, strike, said the witch, smiling. Fire is beautiful. Nothing bad will happen.
Go on, she said, the flames will cleanse your souls.
Go on, she said, for you are independent thinkers.
Go on, she said. What is this life we lead, if you did not take action?
And they listened.
They took the matches from her and they struck them. The witch watched their beauty burn,
Their bounce,
Their intelligence,
Their wit,
Their open hearts,
Their charm,
Their dreams for the future.
She watched it all disappear in smoke. ~ E Lockhart,#NFDB
1192:Kahnawake
August 1704
Temperature 75 degrees
“It’s me! Mercy Carter! Oh, Mr. Williams! Do you have news?” She flung herself on top of him. Oh, his beautiful beard! The beard of a real father, not a pretend Indian father or a French church father. “My brothers,” she begged. “John and Sam and Benny. Have you seen them? Have you heard anything about them? Do you know what happened to the little ones? Daniel? Have you found Daniel?”
Mercy had forgotten that she had taken off her tunic to go swimming. That Joseph did not even have on his breechclout. That Mercy wore earrings and Joseph had been tattooed on his upper arms. That they stank of bear.
Mr. Williams did not recognize Joseph, and Mercy he knew only by the color of her hair. He was stupefied by the two naked slimy children trying to hug him. In ore horror than even Ruth would have mustered, he whispered, “Your parents would be weeping. What have the savages done to you? You are animals.” Despair and shock mottled Mr. Williams’s face.
Mercy stumbled back from him. Her bear grease stained his clothing.
“Mercy,” he said, turning away from her, “go cover yourself.”
Shame covered her first. Red patches flamed on her cheeks. She ran back to the swimmers, fighting sobs. She was aware of her bare feet, hard as leather from no shoes. Savage feet.
Dear Lord in Heaven, thought Mercy, Ruth is right. I have committed terrible sins. My parents would be weeping.
She did not look at Snow Walker but yanked on the deerskin tunic. She had tanned the hide herself, and she and Nistenha had painted the rows of turtles around the neckline and Nistenha had tied tiny tinkling French bells into the fringe. But it was still just animal skin. To be wearing hides in front of Mr. Williams was not much better than being naked.
Snow Walker burst out of the water. “The white man? Was he cruel? I will call Tannhahorens.”
No! Tannhahorens would not let her speak to Mr. Williams. She would never find out about her brothers; never redeem herself in the minister’s eyes. Mercy calmed down with the discipline of living among Indians. Running had shown weakness. “Thank you, Snow Walker,” she said, striving to be gracious, “but he merely wanted me to be clothed like an English girl. There is no need to call Tannhahorens.” She walked back.
On the jetty, Joseph stood with his eyes fixed on the river instead of on his minister. He had not fled like Mercy to cover himself. He was standing his ground. “They aren’t savages, Mr. Williams. And they aren’t just Indians. Those children over there are Abenaki, the boy fishing by the rocks is Pennacook, and my own family is Kahnawake Mohawk.”
Tears sprang into Mr. Williams’s eyes. “What do you mean--your family?” he said. “Joseph, you do not have a family in this terrible place. You have a master. Do not confuse savages who happen to give you food with family.”
Joseph’s face hardened. “They are my family. My father is Great Sky. My mother--”
The minister lost his temper. “Your father is Martin Kellogg,” he shouted, “with whom I just dined in Montreal. You refer to some savage as your father? I am ashamed of you.”
Under his tan, Joseph paled and his Indian calm left him. He was trembling. “My--my father? Alive? You saw him?”
“Your father is a field hand for a French family in Montreal. He works hard, Joseph. He has no choice. But you have choices. Have you chosen to abandon your father?”
Joseph swallowed and wet his lips. “No.” He could barely get the syllable out.
Don’t cry, prayed Mercy. Be an eagle. She fixed her eyes upon him, giving him all her strength, but Mr. Williams continued to destroy whatever strength the thirteen-year-old possessed.
“Your father prays for the day you and he will be ransomed, Joseph. All he thinks of is the moment he can gather his beloved family back under his own roof. Is that not also your prayer, Joseph? ~ Caroline B Cooney,#NFDB
1193:La Chevelure (Her Hair)
Ô toison, moutonnant jusque sur l'encolure!
Ô boucles! Ô parfum chargé de nonchaloir!
Extase! Pour peupler ce soir l'alcôve obscure
Des souvenirs dormant dans cette chevelure,
Je la veux agiter dans l'air comme un mouchoir!
La langoureuse Asie et la brûlante Afrique,
Tout un monde lointain, absent, presque défunt,
Vit dans tes profondeurs, forêt aromatique!
Comme d'autres esprits voguent sur la musique,
Le mien, ô mon amour! nage sur ton parfum.
J'irai là-bas où l'arbre et l'homme, pleins de sève,
Se pâment longuement sous l'ardeur des climats;
Fortes tresses, soyez la houle qui m'enlève!
Tu contiens, mer d'ébène, un éblouissant rêve
De voiles, de rameurs, de flammes et de mâts:
Un port retentissant où mon âme peut boire
À grands flots le parfum, le son et la couleur
Où les vaisseaux, glissant dans l'or et dans la moire
Ouvrent leurs vastes bras pour embrasser la gloire
D'un ciel pur où frémit l'éternelle chaleur.
Je plongerai ma tête amoureuse d'ivresse
Dans ce noir océan où l'autre est enfermé;
Et mon esprit subtil que le roulis caresse
Saura vous retrouver, ô féconde paresse,
Infinis bercements du loisir embaumé!
Cheveux bleus, pavillon de ténèbres tendues
Vous me rendez l'azur du ciel immense et rond;
Sur les bords duvetés de vos mèches tordues
Je m'enivre ardemment des senteurs confondues
De l'huile de coco, du musc et du goudron.
Longtemps! toujours! ma main dans ta crinière lourde
Sèmera le rubis, la perle et le saphir,
Afin qu'à mon désir tu ne sois jamais sourde!
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N'es-tu pas l'oasis où je rêve, et la gourde
Où je hume à longs traits le vin du souvenir?
Head of Hair
O fleecy hair, falling in curls to the shoulders!
O black locks! O perfume laden with nonchalance!
Ecstasy! To people the dark alcove tonight
With memories sleeping in that thick head of hair.
I would like to shake it in the air like a scarf!
Sweltering Africa and languorous Asia,
A whole far-away world, absent, almost defunct,
Dwells in your depths, aromatic forest!
While other spirits glide on the wings of music,
Mine, O my love! floats upon your perfume.
I shall go there, where trees and men, full of vigor,
Are plunged in a deep swoon by the heat of the land;
Heady tresses be the billows that carry me away!
Ebony sea, you hold a dazzling dream
Of rigging, of rowers, of pennons and of masts:
A clamorous harbor where my spirit can drink
In great draughts the perfume, the sound and the color;
Where the vessels gliding through the gold and the moire
Open wide their vast arms to embrace the glory
Of a clear sky shimmering with everlasting heat.
I shall bury my head enamored with rapture
In this black sea where the other is imprisoned;
And my subtle spirit caressed by the rolling
Will find you once again, O fruitful indolence,
Endless lulling of sweet-scented leisure!
Blue-black hair, pavilion hung with shadows,
You give back to me the blue of the vast round sky;
In the downy edges of your curling tresses
I ardently get drunk with the mingled odors
Of oil of coconut, of musk and tar.
A long time! Forever! my hand in your thick mane
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Will scatter sapphires, rubies and pearls,
So that you will never be deaf to my desire!
Aren't you the oasis of which I dream, the gourd
From which I drink deeply, the wine of memory?
— Translated by William Aggeler
Her Hair
O fleece that down her nape rolls, plume on plume!
O curls! O scent of nonchalance and ease!
What ecstasy! To populate this room
With memories it harbours in its gloom,
I'd shake it like a banner on the breeze.
Hot Africa and languid Asia play
(An absent world, defunct, and far away)
Within that scented forest, dark and dim.
As other souls on waves of music swim,
Mine on its perfume sails, as on the spray.
I'll journey there, where man and sap-filled tree
Swoon in hot light for hours. Be you my sea,
Strong tresses! Be the breakers and gales
That waft me. Your black river holds, for me,
A dream of masts and rowers, flames and sails.
A port, resounding there, my soul delivers
With long deep draughts of perfumes, scent, and clamour,
Where ships, that glide through gold and purple rivers,
Fling wide their vast arms to embrace the glamour
Of skies wherein the heat forever quivers.
I'll plunge my head in it, half drunk with pleasure —
In this black ocean that engulfs her form.
My soul, caressed with wavelets there may measure
Infinite rocking& in embalmed leisure,
Creative idleness that fears no storm!
Blue tresses, like a shadow-stretching tent,
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You shed the blue of heavens round and far.
Along its downy fringes as I went
I reeled half-drunken to confuse the scent
Of oil of coconuts, with musk and tar.
My hand forever in your mane so dense,
Rubies and pearls and sapphires there will sow,
That you to my desire be never slow —
Oasis of my dreams, and gourd from whence
Deep-draughted wines of memory will flow.
— Translated by Roy Campbell
The Fleece
O shadowy fleece that falls and curls upon those bare
Lithe shoulders! O rich perfume of forgetfulness!
O ecstasy! To loose upon the midnight air
The memories asleep in this tumultuous hair,
I long to rake it in my fingers, tress by tress!
Asia the languorous, the burning solitude
Of Africa — a whole world, distant, all but dead —
Survives in thy profundities, O odorous wood!
My soul, as other souls put forth on the deep flood
Of music, sails away upon thy scent instead.
There where the sap of life mounts hot in man and tree,
And lush desire untamed swoons in the torrid zone,
Undulant tresses, wild strong waves, oh, carry me!
Dream, like a dazzling sun, from out this ebony sea
Rises; and sails and banks of rowers propel me on.
All the confusion, all the mingled colors, cries,
Smells of a busy port, upon my senses beat;
Where smoothly on the golden streakèd ripples flies
The barque, its arms outspread to gather in the skies,
Against whose glory trembles the unabating heat.
In this black ocean where the primal ocean roars,
Drunken, in love with drunkenness, I plunge and drown;
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Over my dubious spirit the rolling tide outpours
Its peace — oh, fruitful indolence, upon thy shores,
Cradled in languor, let me drift and lay me down!
Blue hair, darkness made palpable, like the big tent
Of desert sky all glittering with many a star
Thou coverest me — oh, I am drugged as with the blent
Effluvia of a sleeping caravan, the scent
Of coco oil impregnated with musk and tar.
Fear not! Upon this savage mane for ever thy lord
Will sow pearls, sapphires, rubies, every stone that gleams,
To keep thee faithful! Art not thou the sycamored
Oasis whither my thoughts journey, and the dark gourd
Whereof I drink in long slow draughts the wine of dreams?
— Translated by George Dillon
Of Her Hair
O fleece, billowing on her neck! O ecstasy!
O curls, O perfume rich with nonchalance, O rare!.
Tonight to fill the alcove's warm obscurity,
To make that hair evoke each dormant memory,
I long to wave it like a kerchief in the air.
Africa smoldering and Asia languorous,
A whole far distant world, absent and almost spent,
Dwells in your forest depths, mystic and odorous!
As others lose themselves in the harmonious,
So, love, my heart floats lost upon your haunting scent.
I shall go where both man and tree, albeit strong,
Swoon deep beneath the rays of sunlight's blazing fires.
Thick tresses, be the waves to bear my dreams along!
Ebony sea, your dazzling dream contains a throng
Of sails, of wafts, of oarsmen, and of masts like spires.
A noisy harbor where my thirsty soul may drain
Hues, sounds and fragrances, in draughts heavy and sweet,
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Where vessels gliding down a moiré-and-gold sea lane
Open their vast arms wide to clutch at the domain
Of a pure sky ashimmer with eternal beat.
Deep shall I plunge my head, avid of drunkenness,
In this black sea wherein the other sea lies captured,
And my soul buoyant at its undulant caress
Shall find you once again, O fruitful idleness,
O long lullings of ease, soft, honeyed and enraptured.
O blue-black hair, pennon with sheen and shadow fraught,
You give me back the vast blue skies of dawn and dusk,
As on the downy edges of your tresses, caught
In your soft curls, I grow drunken and hot, distraught
By mingled scents of cocoanut and tar and musk.
Sapphires, rubies, pearls — my hand shall never tire
Of strewing these through your thick mane — how lavishly! —
Lest Life should ever turn you deaf to my desire!
You are the last oasis where I dream, afire,
The gourd whence deep I quaff the wine of memory.
— Translated by Jacques LeClercq
The Head of Hair
O Fleece, foaming to the neck!
O curls! O scent of laziness!
Ecstasy! This evening, to people the dark comers
Of memories that are sleeping in these locks,
I would wave them in the air like a handkerchief!
Languorous Asia and burning Africa,
A whole world, distant, absent, almost extinct,
Lives in the depths of your perfumed jungle;
As other souls sail along on music,
So mine, O my love, swims on your scent.
I shall go over there where trees and men, full of sap,
Faint away slowly in the passionate climate;
O strong locks, be the sea-swell that transports me!
219
You keep, O sea of ebony, a dazzling dream
Of sails and sailormen, flames and masts:
A resounding haven where in great waves
My soul can drink the scent, the sound and color;
Where ships, sliding in gold and watered silk,
Part their vast arms to embrace the glory
Of the pure sky shuddering with eternal heat
I shall plunge my head, adoring drunkenness,
Into this black ocean where the other is imprisoned;
And my subtle spirit caressed by the sway
Will know how to find you, O pregnant idleness!
In an infinite cradle of scented leisure!
Blue hair, house of taut darkness,
You make the blue of the sky seem huge and round for me;
On the downy edges of your twisted locks
I hungrily get drunk on the muddled fragrances
Of coconut oil, of musk and tar
For a long time! For ever! Amongst your heavy mane
My hand will strew the ruby, pearl and sapphire
To make you never deaf to my desire!
For are you not the oasis where I dream, the gourd
Where in great draughts I gulp the wine of memory?
— Translated by Geoffrey Wagner
O fleece, that down the neck waves to the nape!
O curls! O perfume nonchalant and rare!
O ecstasy! To fill this alcove shape
With memories that in these tresses sleep,
I would shake them like penions in the air!
Languorous Asia, burning Africa,
And a far world, defunct almost, absent,
Within your aromatic forest stay!
As other souls on music drift away,
Mine, O my love! still floats upon your scent.
220
I shall go there where, full of sap, both tree
And man swoon in the heat of the southern climates;
Strong tresses be the swell that carries me!
I dream upon your sea of amber
Of dazzling sails, of oarsmen, masts, and flames:
A sun-drenched and reverberating port,
Where I imbibe colour and sound and scent;
Where vessels, gliding through the gold and moiré,
Open their vast arms as they leave the shore
To clasp the pure and shimmering firmament.
I'll plunge my head, enamored of its pleasure,
In this black ocean where the other hides;
My subtle spirit then will know a measure
Of fertile idleness and fragrant leisure,
Lulled by the infinite rhythm of its tides!
Pavilion, of autumn-shadowed tresses spun,
You give me back the azure from afar;
And where the twisted locks are fringed with down
Lurk mingled odors I grow drunk upon
Of oil of coconut, of musk, and tar.
A long time! always! my hand in your hair
Will sow the stars of sapphire, pearl, ruby,
That you be never deaf to my desire,
My oasis and my gourd whence I aspire
To drink deep of the wine of memory.
Translated by Anonymous
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1194:Amours De Voyage, Canto Ii
Is it illusion? or does there a spirit from perfecter ages,
Here, even yet, amid loss, change, and corruption abide?
Does there a spirit we know not, though seek, though we find, comprehend not,
Here to entice and confuse, tempt and evade us, abide?
Lives in the exquisite grace of the column disjointed and single,
Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gaily with vine,
E'en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin,
E'en in the people itself? is it illusion or not?
Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim transalpine,
Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare?
Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger,
Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate?
I. Claude to Eustace.
What do the people say, and what does the government do?--you
Ask, and I know not at all. Yet fortune will favour your hopes; and
I, who avoided it all, am fated, it seems, to describe it.
I, who nor meddle nor make in politics,--I who sincerely
Put not my trust in leagues nor any suffrage by ballot,
Never predicted Parisian millenniums, never beheld a
New Jerusalem coming down dressed like a bride out of heaven
Right on the Place de la Concorde,--I, nevertheless, let me say it,
Could in my soul of souls, this day, with the Gaul at the gates shed
One true tear for thee, thou poor little Roman Republic;
What, with the German restored, with Sicily safe to the Bourbon,
Not leave one poor corner for native Italian exertion?
France, it is foully done! and you, poor foolish England,-You, who a twelvemonth ago said nations must choose for themselves, you
Could not, of course, interfere,--you, now, when a nation has chosen---Pardon this folly! The Times will, of course, have announced the occasion,
Told you the news of to-day; and although it was slightly in error
When it proclaimed as a fact the Apollo was sold to a Yankee,
You may believe when it tells you the French are at Civita Vecchia.
16
II. Claude to Eustace.
Dulce it is, and decorum, no doubt, for the country to fall,--to
Offer one's blood an oblation to Freedom, and die for the Cause; yet
Still, individual culture is also something, and no man
Finds quite distinct the assurance that he of all others is called on,
Or would be justified even, in taking away from the world that
Precious creature, himself. Nature sent him here to abide here;
Else why send him at all? Nature wants him still, it is likely;
On the whole, we are meant to look after ourselves; it is certain
Each has to eat for himself, digest for himself, and in general
Care for his own dear life, and see to his own preservation;
Nature's intentions, in most things uncertain, in this are decisive;
Which, on the whole, I conjecture the Romans will follow, and I shall.
So we cling to our rocks like limpets; Ocean may bluster,
Over and under and round us; we open our shells to imbibe our
Nourishment, close them again, and are safe, fulfilling the purpose
Nature intended,--a wise one, of course, and a noble, we doubt not.
Sweet it may be and decorous, perhaps, for the country to die; but,
On the whole, we conclude the Romans won't do it, and I sha'n't.
III. Claude to Eustace.
Will they fight? They say so. And will the French? I can hardly,
Hardly think so; and yet----He is come, they say, to Palo,
He is passed from Monterone, at Santa Severa
He hath laid up his guns. But the Virgin, the Daughter of Roma,
She hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn,--The Daughter of Tiber,
She hath shaken her head and built barricades against thee!
Will they fight? I believe it. Alas! 'tis ephemeral folly,
Vain and ephemeral folly, of course, compared with pictures,
Statues, and antique gems!--Indeed: and yet indeed too,
Yet, methought, in broad day did I dream,--tell it not in St. James's,
Whisper it not in thy courts, O Christ Church!--yet did I, waking,
Dream of a cadence that sings, Si tombent nos jeunes héros, la
Terre en produit de nouveaux contre vous tous prêts à se battre;
Dreamt of great indignations and angers transcendental,
Dreamt of a sword at my side and a battle-horse underneath me.
17
IV. Claude to Eustace.
Now supposing the French or the Neapolitan soldier
Should by some evil chance come exploring the Maison Serny
(Where the family English are all to assemble for safety),
Am I prepared to lay down my life for the British female?
Really, who knows? One has bowed and talked, till, little by little,
All the natural heat has escaped of the chivalrous spirit.
Oh, one conformed, of course; but one doesn't die for good manners,
Stab or shoot, or be shot, by way of graceful attention.
No, if it should be at all, it should be on the barricades there;
Should I incarnadine ever this inky pacifical finger,
Sooner far should it be for this vapour of Italy's freedom,
Sooner far by the side of the d----d and dirty plebeians.
Ah, for a child in the street I could strike; for the full-blown lady---Somehow, Eustace, alas! I have not felt the vocation.
Yet these people of course will expect, as of course, my protection,
Vernon in radiant arms stand forth for the lovely Georgina,
And to appear, I suppose, were but common civility. Yes, and
Truly I do not desire they should either be killed or offended.
Oh, and of course, you will say, 'When the time comes, you will be ready.'
Ah, but before it comes, am I to presume it will be so?
What I cannot feel now, am I to suppose that I shall feel?
Am I not free to attend for the ripe and indubious instinct?
Am I forbidden to wait for the clear and lawful perception?
Is it the calling of man to surrender his knowledge and insight,
For the mere venture of what may, perhaps, be the virtuous action?
Must we, walking our earth, discerning a little, and hoping
Some plain visible task shall yet for our hands be assigned us,-Must we abandon the future for fear of omitting the present,
Quit our own fireside hopes at the alien call of a neighbour,
To the mere possible shadow of Deity offer the victim?
And is all this, my friend, but a weak and ignoble refining,
Wholly unworthy the head or the heart of Your Own Correspondent?
V. Claude to Eustace.
Yes, we are fighting at last, it appears. This morning as usual,
Murray, as usual, in hand, I enter the Caffè Nuovo;
18
Seating myself with a sense as it were of a change in the weather,
Not understanding, however, but thinking mostly of Murray,
And, for to-day is their day, of the Campidoglio Marbles;
Caffè-latte! I call to the waiter,--and Non c'è latte,
This is the answer he makes me, and this is the sign of a battle.
So I sit: and truly they seem to think any one else more
Worthy than me of attention. I wait for my milkless nero,
Free to observe undistracted all sorts and sizes of persons,
Blending civilian and soldier in strangest costume, coming in, and
Gulping in hottest haste, still standing, their coffee,--withdrawing
Eagerly, jangling a sword on the steps, or jogging a musket
Slung to the shoulder behind. They are fewer, moreover, than usual,
Much and silenter far; and so I begin to imagine
Something is really afloat. Ere I leave, the Caffe is empty,
Empty too the streets, in all its length the Corso
Empty, and empty I see to my right and left the Condotti.
Twelve o'clock, on the Pincian Hill, with lots of English,
Germans, Americans, French,--the Frenchmen, too, are protected,-So we stand in the sun, but afraid of a probable shower;
So we stand and stare, and see, to the left of St. Peter's,
Smoke, from the cannon, white,--but that is at intervals only,-Black, from a burning house, we suppose, by the Cavalleggieri;
And we believe we discern some lines of men descending
Down through the vineyard-slopes, and catch a bayonet gleaming.
Every ten minutes, however,--in this there is no misconception,-Comes a great white puff from behind Michel Angelo's dome, and
After a space the report of a real big gun,--not the Frenchman's!-That must be doing some work. And so we watch and conjecture.
Shortly, an Englishman comes, who says he has been to St. Peter's,
Seen the Piazza and troops, but that is all he can tell us;
So we watch and sit, and, indeed, it begins to be tiresome.-All this smoke is outside; when it has come to the inside,
It will be time, perhaps, to descend and retreat to our houses.
Half-past one, or two. The report of small arms frequent,
Sharp and savage indeed; that cannot all be for nothing:
So we watch and wonder; but guessing is tiresome, very.
Weary of wondering, watching, and guessing, and gossiping idly,
Down I go, and pass through the quiet streets with the knots of
National Guards patrolling, and flags hanging out at the windows,
English, American, Danish,--and, after offering to help an
Irish family moving en masse to the Maison Serny,
After endeavouring idly to minister balm to the trembling
19
Quinquagenarian fears of two lone British spinsters,
Go to make sure of my dinner before the enemy enter.
But by this there are signs of stragglers returning; and voices
Talk, though you don't believe it, of guns and prisoners taken;
And on the walls you read the first bulletin of the morning.-This is all that I saw, and all that I know of the battle.
VI. Claude to Eustace.
Victory! Victory!--Yes! ah, yes, thou republican Zion,
Truly the kings of the earth are gathered and gone by together;
Doubtless they marvelled to witness such things, were astonished, and so forth.
Victory! Victory! Victory!--Ah, but it is, believe me,
Easier, easier far, to intone the chant of the martyr
Than to indite any paean of any victory. Death may
Sometimes be noble; but life, at the best, will appear an illusion.
While the great pain is upon us, it is great; when it is over,
Why, it is over. The smoke of the sacrifice rises to heaven,
Of a sweet savour, no doubt, to Somebody; but on the altar,
Lo, there is nothing remaining but ashes and dirt and ill odour.
So it stands, you perceive; the labial muscles that swelled with
Vehement evolution of yesterday Marseillaises,
Articulations sublime of defiance and scorning, to-day colLapse and languidly mumble, while men and women and papers
Scream and re-scream to each other the chorus of Victory. Well, but
I am thankful they fought, and glad that the Frenchmen were beaten.
VII. Claude to Eustace.
So, I have seen a man killed! An experience that, among others!
Yes, I suppose I have; although I can hardly be certain,
And in a court of justice could never declare I had seen it.
But a man was killed, I am told, in a place where I saw
Something; a man was killed, I am told, and I saw something.
I was returning home from St. Peter's; Murray, as usual,
Under my arm, I remember; had crossed the St. Angelo bridge; and
Moving towards the Condotti, had got to the first barricade, when
Gradually, thinking still of St. Peter's, I became conscious
20
Of a sensation of movement opposing me,--tendency this way
(Such as one fancies may be in a stream when the wave of the tide is
Coming and not yet come,--a sort of noise and retention);
So I turned, and, before I turned, caught sight of stragglers
Heading a crowd, it is plain, that is coming behind that corner.
Looking up, I see windows filled with heads; the Piazza,
Into which you remember the Ponte St. Angelo enters,
Since I passed, has thickened with curious groups; and now the
Crowd is coming, has turned, has crossed that last barricade, is
Here at my side. In the middle they drag at something. What is it?
Ha! bare swords in the air, held up? There seem to be voices
Pleading and hands putting back; official, perhaps; but the swords are
Many, and bare in the air. In the air? they descend; they are smiting,
Hewing, chopping--At what? In the air once more upstretched? And-Is it blood that's on them? Yes, certainly blood! Of whom, then?
Over whom is the cry of this furor of exultation?
While they are skipping and screaming, and dancing their caps on the points of
Swords and bayonets, I to the outskirts back, and ask a
Mercantile-seeming bystander, 'What is it?' and he, looking always
That way, makes me answer, 'A Priest, who was trying to fly to
The Neapolitan army,'--and thus explains the proceeding.
You didn't see the dead man? No;--I began to be doubtful;
I was in black myself, and didn't know what mightn't happen,-But a National Guard close by me, outside of the hubbub,
Broke his sword with slashing a broad hat covered with dust,--and
Passing away from the place with Murray under my arm, and
Stooping, I saw through the legs of the people the legs of a body.
You are the first, do you know, to whom I have mentioned the matter.
Whom should I tell it to else?--these girls?--the Heavens forbid it!-Quidnuncs at Monaldini's--Idlers upon the Pincian?
If I rightly remember, it happened on that afternoon when
Word of the nearer approach of a new Neapolitan army
First was spread. I began to bethink me of Paris Septembers,
Thought I could fancy the look of that old 'Ninety-two. On that evening
Three or four, or, it may be, five, of these people were slaughtered
Some declared they had, one of them, fired on a sentinel; others
Say they were only escaping; a Priest, it is currently stated,
Stabbed a National Guard on the very Piazza Colonna:
History, Rumour of Rumours, I leave to thee to determine!
But I am thankful to say the government seems to have strength to
Put it down; it has vanished, at least; the place is most peaceful.
Through the Trastevere walking last night, at nine of the clock, I
21
Found no sort of disorder; I crossed by the Island-bridges,
So by the narrow streets to the Ponte Rotto, and onwards
Thence by the Temple of Vesta, away to the great Coliseum,
Which at the full of the moon is an object worthy a visit.
VIII. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ----.
Only think, dearest Louisa, what fearful scenes we have witnessed!-****************
George has just seen Garibaldi, dressed up in a long white cloak, on
Horseback, riding by, with his mounted negro behind him:
This is a man, you know, who came from America with him,
Out of the woods, I suppose, and uses a lasso in fighting,
Which is, I don't quite know, but a sort of noose, I imagine;
This he throws on the heads of the enemy's men in a battle,
Pulls them into his reach, and then most cruelly kills them:
Mary does not believe, but we heard it from an Italian.
Mary allows she was wrong about Mr. Claude being selfish;
He was most useful and kind on the terrible thirtieth of April.
Do not write here any more; we are starting directly for Florence:
We should be off to-morrow, if only Papa could get horses;
All have been seized everywhere for the use of this dreadful Mazzini
P.S.
Mary has seen thus far.--I am really so angry, Louisa,-Quite out of patience, my dearest! What can the man be intending?
I am quite tired; and Mary, who might bring him to in a moment,
Lets him go on as he likes, and neither will help nor dismiss him.
IX. Claude to Eustace.
It is most curious to see what a power a few calm words (in
Merely a brief proclamation) appear to possess on the people.
Order is perfect, and peace; the city is utterly tranquil;
And one cannot conceive that this easy and nonchalant crowd, that
Flows like a quiet stream through street and market-place, entering
Shady recesses and bays of church, osteria, and caffè,
Could in a moment be changed to a flood as of molten lava,
22
Boil into deadly wrath and wild homicidal delusion.
Ah, 'tis an excellent race,--and even in old degradation,
Under a rule that enforces to flattery, lying, and cheating,
E'en under Pope and Priest, a nice and natural people.
Oh, could they but be allowed this chance of redemption!--but clearly
That is not likely to be. Meantime, notwithstanding all journals,
Honour for once to the tongue and the pen of the eloquent writer!
Honour to speech! and all honour to thee, thou noble Mazzini!
X. Claude to Eustace.
I am in love, meantime, you think; no doubt you would think so.
I am in love, you say; with those letters, of course, you would say so.
I am in love, you declare. I think not so; yet I grant you
It is a pleasure indeed to converse with this girl. Oh, rare gift,
Rare felicity, this! she can talk in a rational way, can
Speak upon subjects that really are matters of mind and of thinking,
Yet in perfection retain her simplicity; never, one moment,
Never, however you urge it, however you tempt her, consents to
Step from ideas and fancies and loving sensations to those vain
Conscious understandings that vex the minds of mankind.
No, though she talk, it is music; her fingers desert not the keys; 'tis
Song, though you hear in the song the articulate vocables sounded,
Syllabled singly and sweetly the words of melodious meaning.
I am in love, you say; I do not think so, exactly.
XI. Claude to Eustace.
There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction:
One which simply disturbs, unsettles, and makes you uneasy,
And another that poises, retains, and fixes and holds you.
I have no doubt, for myself, in giving my voice for the latter.
I do not wish to be moved, but growing where I was growing,
There more truly to grow, to live where as yet I had languished.
I do not like being moved: for the will is excited; and action
Is a most dangerous thing; I tremble for something factitious,
Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process;
We are so prone to these things, with our terrible notions of duty.
23
XII. Claude to Eustace.
Ah, let me look, let me watch, let me wait, unhurried, unprompted!
Bid me not venture on aught that could alter or end what is present!
Say not, Time flies, and Occasion, that never returns, is departing!
Drive me not out yet, ye ill angels with fiery swords, from my Eden,
Waiting, and watching, and looking! Let love be its own inspiration!
Shall not a voice, if a voice there must be, from the airs that environ,
Yea, from the conscious heavens, without our knowledge or effort,
Break into audible words? And love be its own inspiration?
XIII. Claude to Eustace.
Wherefore and how I am certain, I hardly can tell; but it is so.
She doesn't like me, Eustace; I think she never will like me.
Is it my fault, as it is my misfortune, my ways are not her ways?
Is it my fault, that my habits and modes are dissimilar wholly?
'Tis not her fault; 'tis her nature, her virtue, to misapprehend them:
'Tis not her fault; 'tis her beautiful nature, not ever to know me.
Hopeless it seems,--yet I cannot, though hopeless, determine to leave it:
She goes--therefore I go; she moves,--I move, not to lose her.
XIV. Claude to Eustace.
Oh, 'tisn't manly, of course, 'tisn't manly, this method of wooing;
'Tisn't the way very likely to win. For the woman, they tell you,
Ever prefers the audacious, the wilful, the vehement hero;
She has no heart for the timid, the sensitive soul; and for knowledge,-Knowledge, O ye Gods!--when did they appreciate knowledge?
Wherefore should they, either? I am sure I do not desire it.
Ah, and I feel too, Eustace, she cares not a tittle about me!
(Care about me, indeed! and do I really expect it?)
But my manner offends; my ways are wholly repugnant;
Every word that I utter estranges, hurts, and repels her;
Every moment of bliss that I gain, in her exquisite presence,
24
Slowly, surely, withdraws her, removes her, and severs her from me.
Not that I care very much!--any way I escape from the boy's own
Folly, to which I am prone, of loving where it is easy.
Not that I mind very much! Why should I? I am not in love, and
Am prepared, I think, if not by previous habit,
Yet in the spirit beforehand for this and all that is like it;
It is an easier matter for us contemplative creatures,
Us upon whom the pressure of action is laid so lightly;
We, discontented indeed with things in particular, idle,
Sickly, complaining, by faith, in the vision of things in general,
Manage to hold on our way without, like others around us,
Seizing the nearest arm to comfort, help, and support us.
Yet, after all, my Eustace, I know but little about it.
All I can say for myself, for present alike and for past, is,
Mary Trevellyn, Eustace, is certainly worth your acquaintance.
You couldn't come, I suppose, as far as Florence to see her?
XV. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ----.
. . . . . . To-morrow we're starting for Florence,
Truly rejoiced, you may guess, to escape from republican terrors;
Mr. C. and Papa to escort us; we by vettura
Through Siena, and Georgy to follow and join us by Leghorn.
Then---- Ah, what shall I say, my dearest? I tremble in thinking!
You will imagine my feelings,--the blending of hope and of sorrow.
How can I bear to abandon Papa and Mamma and my Sisters?
Dearest Louise, indeed it is very alarming; but, trust me
Ever, whatever may change, to remain your loving Georgina.
P.S. by Mary Trevellyn.
. . . . . . . 'Do I like Mr. Claude any better?'
I am to tell you,--and, 'Pray, is it Susan or I that attract him?'
This he never has told, but Georgina could certainly ask him.
All I can say for myself is, alas! that he rather repels me.
There! I think him agreeable, but also a little repulsive.
So be content, dear Louisa; for one satisfactory marriage
Surely will do in one year for the family you would establish
Neither Susan nor I shall afford you the joy of a second.
25
P.S. by Georgina Trevellyn.
Mr. Claude, you must know, is behaving a little bit better;
He and Papa are great friends; but he really is too shilly-shally,-So unlike George! Yet I hope that the matte is going on fairly.
I shall, however, get George, before he goes, to say something.
Dearest Louise, how delightful to bring young people together!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is it Florence we follow, or are we to tarry yet longer,
E'en amid clamour of arms, here in the city of old,
Seeking from clamour of arms in the Past and the Arts to be hidden,
Vainly 'mid Arts and the Past seeking one life to forget?
Ah, fair shadow, scarce seen, go forth! for anon he shall follow,-He that beheld thee, anon, whither thou leadest must go!
Go, and the wise, loving Muse, she also will follow and find thee!
She, should she linger in Rome, were not dissevered from thee!
~ Arthur Hugh Clough,#NFDB
1195:Scene. Constantinople; the house of a Greek Conjurer. 1521.
Paracelsus.
Paracelsus.
Over the waters in the vaporous West
The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold
Behind the arm of the city, which between,
With all that length of domes and minarets,
Athwart the splendour, black and crooked runs
Like a Turk verse along a scimitar.
There lie, sullen memorial, and no more
Possess my aching sight! 'T is done at last.
Strangeand the juggles of a sallow cheat
Have won me to this act! 'T is as yon cloud
Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a mountain-top
And break upon a molehill. I have dared
Come to a pause with knowledge; scan for once
The heights already reached, without regard
To the extent above; fairly compute
All I have clearly gained; for once excluding
A brilliant future to supply and perfect
All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes:
And all because a fortune-teller wills
His credulous seekers should inscribe thus much
Their previous life's attainment, in his roll,
Before his promised secret, as he vaunts,
Make up the sum: and here amid the scrawled
Uncouth recordings of the dupes of this
Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results!
A few blurred characters suffice to note
A stranger wandered long through many lands
And reaped the fruit he coveted in a few
Discoveries, as appended here and there,
The fragmentary produce of much toil,
In a dim heap, fact and surmise together
Confusedly massed as when acquired; he was
Intent on gain to come too much to stay
And scrutinize the little gained: the whole
Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's gibber
And a mad lover's dittythere it lies.
And yet those blottings chronicle a life
A whole life, and my life! Nothing to do,
No problem for the fancy, but a life
Spent and decided, wasted past retrieve
Or worthy beyond peer. Stay, what does this
Remembrancer set down concerning "life"?
"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,'
"It is the echo of time; and he whose heart
"Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech
"Was copied from a human tongue, can never
"Recall when he was living yet knew not this.
"Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him
"Till some one hour's experience shows what nothing,
"It seemed, could clearer show; and ever after,
"An altered brow and eye and gait and speech
"Attest that now he knows the adage true
"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.'"
Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same hour
As well as any: now, let my time be!
Now! I can go no farther; well or ill,
'T is done. I must desist and take my chance.
I cannot keep on the stretch: 't is no back-shrinking
For let but some assurance beam, some close
To my toil grow visible, and I proceed
At any price, though closing it, I die.
Else, here I pause. The old Greek's prophecy
Is like to turn out true: "I shall not quit
"His chamber till I know what I desire!"
Was it the light wind sang it o'er the sea?
An end, a rest! strange how the notion, once
Encountered, gathers strength by moments! Rest!
Where has it kept so long? this throbbing brow
To cease, this beating heart to cease, all cruel
And gnawing thoughts to cease! To dare let down
My strung, so high-strung brain, to dare unnerve
My harassed o'ertasked frame, to know my place,
My portion, my reward, even my failure,
Assigned, made sure for ever! To lose myself
Among the common creatures of the world,
To draw some gain from having been a man,
Neither to hope nor fear, to live at length!
Even in failure, rest! But rest in truth
And power and recompense . . . I hoped that once!
What, sunk insensibly so deep? Has all
Been undergone for this? This the request
My labour qualified me to present
With no fear of refusal? Had I gone
Slightingly through my task, and so judged fit
To moderate my hopes; nay, were it now
My sole concern to exculpate myself,
End things or mend them,why, I could not choose
A humbler mood to wait for the event!
No, no, there needs not this; no, after all,
At worst I have performed my share of the task
The rest is God's concern; mine, merely this,
To know that I have obstinately held
By my own work. The mortal whose brave foot
Has trod, unscathed, the temple-court so far
That he descries at length the shrine of shrines,
Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes,
Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten now
Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no
He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last,
Having a charm to baffle them; behold,
He bares his front: a mortal ventures thus
Serene amid the echoes, beams and glooms!
If he be priest henceforth, if he wake up
The god of the place to ban and blast him there,
Both well! What's failure or success to me?
I have subdued my life to the one purpose
Whereto I ordained it; there alone I spy,
No doubt, that way I may be satisfied.
Yes, well have I subdued my life! beyond
The obligation of my strictest vow,
The contemplation of my wildest bond,
Which gave my nature freely up, in truth,
But in its actual state, consenting fully
All passionate impulses its soil was formed
To rear, should wither; but foreseeing not
The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness,
Would seem one day, remembered as it was,
Beside the parched sand-waste which now it is,
Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then.
I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frail
I felt them not; yet now, 't is very plain
Some soft spots had their birth in me at first,
If not love, say, like love: there was a time
When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge
Set not remorselessly love's claims aside.
This heart was human once, or why recall
Einsiedeln, now, and Wrzburg which the Mayne
Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm?
And Festusmy poor Festus, with his praise
And counsel and grave fearswhere is he now
With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride?
I surely loved themthat last night, at least,
When we . . . gone! gone! the better. I am saved
The sad review of an ambitious youth
Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth,
But let grow up and wind around a will
Till action was destroyed. No, I have gone
Purging my path successively of aught
Wearing the distant likeness of such lusts.
I have made life consist of one idea:
Ere that was master, up till that was born,
I bear a memory of a pleasant life
Whose small events I treasure; till one morn
I ran o'er the seven little grassy fields,
Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell
Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy,
To leave all trouble for my future plans,
Since I had just determined to become
The greatest and most glorious man on earth.
And since that morn all life has been forgotten;
All is one day, one only step between
The outset and the end: one tyrant all-
Absorbing aim fills up the interspace,
One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up
Through a career apparently adverse
To its existence: life, death, light and shadow,
The shows of the world, were bare receptacles
Or indices of truth to be wrung thence,
Not ministers of sorrow or delight:
A wondrous natural robe in which she went.
For some one truth would dimly beacon me
From mountains rough with pines, and flit and wink
O'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble
Into assured light in some branching mine
Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold
And all the beauty, all the wonder fell
On either side the truth, as its mere robe;
I see the robe nowthen I saw the form.
So far, then, I have voyaged with success,
So much is good, then, in this working sea
Which parts me from that happy strip of land:
But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too!
And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rough,
And still more faint as the sea widens; last
I sicken on a dead gulf streaked with light
From its own putrefying depths alone.
Then, God was pledged to take me by the hand;
Now, any miserable juggle can bid
My pride depart. All is alike at length:
God may take pleasure in confounding pride
By hiding secrets with the scorned and base
I am here, in short: so little have I paused
Throughout! I never glanced behind to know
If I had kept my primal light from wane,
And thus insensibly amwhat I am!
Oh, bitter; very bitter!
And more bitter,
To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin,
Plague beneath plague, the last turning the first
To light beside its darkness. Let me weep
My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone,
In tears which burn! Would I were sure to win
Some startling secret in their stead, a tincture
Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed
Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change
To opal shafts!only that, hurling it
Indignant back, I might convince myself
My aims remained supreme and pure as ever!
Even now, why not desire, for mankind's sake,
That if I fail, some fault may be the cause,
That, though I sink, another may succeed?
O God, the despicable heart of us!
Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart!
'T was politic in you, Aureole, to reject
Single rewards, and ask them in the lump;
At all events, once launched, to hold straight on:
For now' t is all or nothing. Mighty profit
Your gains will bring if they stop short of such
Full consummation! As a man, you had
A certain share of strength; and that is gone
Already in the getting these you boast.
Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say
"Great master, we are here indeed, dragged forth
"To light; this hast thou done: be glad! Now, seek
"The strength to use which thou hast spent in getting!"
And yet't is much, surely't is very much,
Thus to have emptied youth of all its gifts,
To feed a fire meant to hold out till morn
Arrived with inexhaustible light; and lo,
I have heaped up my last, and day dawns not!
And I am left with grey hair, faded hands,
And furrowed brow. Ha, have I, after all,
Mistaken the wild nursling of my breast?
Knowledge it seemed, and power, and recompense!
Was she who glided through my room of nights,
Who laid my head on her soft knees and smoothed
The damp locks,whose sly soothings just began
When my sick spirit craved repose awhile
God! was I fighting sleep off for death's sake?
God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind
Mind should be precious. Spare my mind alone!
All else I will endure; if, as I stand
Here, with my gains, thy thunder smite me down,
I bow me; 't is thy will, thy righteous will;
I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die;
And if no trace of my career remain
Save a thin corpse at pleasure of the wind
In these bright chambers level with the air,
See thou to it! But if my spirit fail,
My once proud spirit forsake me at the last,
Hast thou done well by me? So do not thou!
Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be crushed!
Hold me before the frequence of thy seraphs
And say"I crushed him, lest he should disturb
"My law. Men must not know their strength: behold
"Weak and alone, how he had raised himself!"
But if delusions trouble me, and thou,
Not seldom felt with rapture in thy help
Throughout my toils and wanderings, dost intend
To work man's welfare through my weak endeavour,
To crown my mortal forehead with a beam
From thine own blinding crown, to smile, and guide
This puny hand and let the work so wrought
Be styled my work,hear me! I covet not
An influx of new power, an angel's soul:
It were no marvel thenbut I have reached
Thus far, a man; let me conclude, a man!
Give but one hour of my first energy,
Of that invincible faith, but only one!
That I may cover with an eagle-glance
The truths I have, and spy some certain way
To mould them, and completing them, possess!
Yet God is good: I started sure of that,
And why dispute it now? I'll not believe
But some undoubted warning long ere this
Had reached me: a fire-labarum was not deemed
Too much for the old founder of these walls.
Then, if my life has not been natural,
It has been monstrous: yet, till late, my course
So ardently engrossed me, that delight,
A pausing and reflecting joy,'t is plain,
Could find no place in it. True, I am worn;
But who clothes summer, who is life itself?
God, that created all things, can renew!
And then, though after-life to please me now
Must have no likeness to the past, what hinders
Reward from springing out of toil, as changed
As bursts the flower from earth and root and stalk?
What use were punishment, unless some sin
Be first detected? let me know that first!
No man could ever offend as I have done . . .
[A voice from within.]
I hear a voice, perchance I heard
Long ago, but all too low,
So that scarce a care it stirred
If the voice were real or no:
I heard it in my youth when first
The waters of my life outburst:
But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear
That voice, still low, but fatal-clear
As if all poets, God ever meant
Should save the world, and therefore lent
Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused
To do his work, or lightly used
Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,
So, mourn cast off by him for ever,
As if these leaned in airy ring
To take me; this the song they sing.
"Lost, lost! yet come,
With our wan troop make thy home.
Come, come! for we
Will not breathe, so much as breathe
Reproach to thee,
Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.
So sank we in those old years,
We who bid thee, come! thou last
Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.
And altogether we, thy peers,
Will pardon crave for thee, the last
Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast
With those who watch but work no more,
Who gaze on life but live no more.
Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak
The message which our lips, too weak,
Refused to utter,shouldst redeem
Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!
Yet we chose thee a birthplace
Where the richness ran to flowers:
Couldst not sing one song for grace?
Not make one blossom man's and ours?
Must one more recreant to his race
Die with unexerted powers,
And join us, leaving as he found
The world, he was to loosen, bound?
Anguish! ever and for ever;
Still beginning, ending never.
Yet, lost and last one, come!
How couldst understand, alas,
What our pale ghosts strove to say,
As their shades did glance and pass
Before thee night and day?
Thou wast blind as we were dumb:
Once more, therefore, come, O come!
How should we clothe, how arm the spirit
Shall next thy post of life inherit
How guard him from thy speedy ruin?
Tell us of thy sad undoing
Here, where we sit, ever pursuing
Our weary task, ever renewing
Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave
Our powers, and man they could not save!"
Aprile enters.
Aprile.
Ha, ha! our king that wouldst be, here at last?
Art thou the poet who shall save the world?
Thy hand to mine! Stay, fix thine eyes on mine!
Thou wouldst be king? Still fix thine eyes on mine!
Paracelsus.
Ha, ha! why crouchest not? Am I not king?
So torture is not wholly unavailing!
Have my fierce spasms compelled thee from thy lair?
Art thou the sage I only seemed to be,
Myself of after-time, my very self
With sight a little clearer, strength more firm,
Who robes him in my robe and grasps my crown
For just a fault, a weakness, a neglect?
I scarcely trusted God with the surmise
That such might come, and thou didst hear the while!
Aprile.
Thine eyes are lustreless to mine; my hair
Is soft, nay silken soft: to talk with thee
Flushes my cheek, and thou art ashy-pale.
Truly, thou hast laboured, hast withstood her lips,
The siren's! Yes, 't is like thou hast attained!
Tell me, dear master, wherefore now thou comest?
I thought thy solemn songs would have their meed
In after-time; that I should hear the earth
Exult in thee and echo with thy praise,
While I was laid forgotten in my grave.
Paracelsus.
Ah fiend, I know thee, I am not thy dupe!
Thou art ordained to follow in my track,
Reaping my sowing, as I scorned to reap
The harvest sown by sages passed away.
Thou art the sober searcher, cautious striver,
As if, except through me, thou hast searched or striven!
Ay, tell the world! Degrade me after all,
To an aspirant after fame, not truth
To all but envy of thy fate, be sure!
Aprile.
Nay, sing them to me; I shall envy not:
Thou shalt be king! Sing thou, and I will sit
Beside, and call deep silence for thy songs,
And worship thee, as I had ne'er been meant
To fill thy throne: but none shall ever know!
Sing to me; for already thy wild eyes
Unlock my heart-strings, as some crystal-shaft
Reveals by some chance blaze its parent fount
After long time: so thou reveal'st my soul.
All will flash forth at last, with thee to hear!
Paracelsus.
(His secret! I shall get his secretfool!)
I am he that aspired to know: and thou?
Aprile.
I would love infinitely, and be loved!
Paracelsus.
Poor slave! I am thy king indeed.
Aprile.
Thou deem'st
Thatborn a spirit, dowered even as thou,
Born for thy fatebecause I could not curb
My yearnings to possess at once the full
Enjoyment, but neglected all the means
Of realizing even the frailest joy,
Gathering no fragments to appease my want,
Yet nursing up that want till thus I die
Thou deem'st I cannot trace thy safe sure march
O'er perils that o'erwhelm me, triumphing,
Neglecting nought below for aught above,
Despising nothing and ensuring all
Nor that I could (my time to come again)
Lead thus my spirit securely as thine own.
Listen, and thou shalt see I know thee well.
I would love infinitely . . . Ah, lost! lost!
Oh ye who armed me at such cost,
How shall I look on all of ye
With your gifts even yet on me?
Paracelsus.
(Ah, 't is some moonstruck creature after all!
Such fond fools as are like to haunt this den:
They spread contagion, doubtless: yet he seemed
To echo one foreboding of my heart
So truly, that . . . no matter! How he stands
With eve's last sunbeam staying on his hair
Which turns to it as if they were akin:
And those clear smiling eyes of saddest blue
Nearly set free, so far they rise above
The painful fruitless striving of the brow
And enforced knowledge of the lips, firm-set
In slow despondency's eternal sigh!
Has he, too, missed life's end, and learned the cause?)
I charge thee, by thy fealty, be calm!
Tell me what thou wouldst be, and what I am.
Aprile.
I would love infinitely, and be loved.
First: I would carve in stone, or cast in brass,
The forms of earth. No ancient hunter lifted
Up to the gods by his renown, no nymph
Supposed the sweet soul of a woodland tree
Or sapphirine spirit of a twilight star,
Should be too hard for me; no shepherd-king
Regal for his white locks; no youth who stands
Silent and very calm amid the throng,
His right hand ever hid beneath his robe
Until the tyrant pass; no lawgiver,
No swan-soft woman rubbed with lucid oils
Given by a god for love of hertoo hard!
Every passion sprung from man, conceived by man,
Would I express and clothe it in its right form,
Or blend with others struggling in one form,
Or show repressed by an ungainly form.
Oh, if you marvelled at some mighty spirit
With a fit frame to execute its will
Even unconsciously to work its will
You should be moved no less beside some strong
Rare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body,
Endeavouring to subdue it and inform it
With its own splendour! All this I would do:
And I would say, this done, "His sprites created,
"God grants to each a sphere to be its world,
"Appointed with the various objects needed
"To satisfy its own peculiar want;
"So, I create a world for these my shapes
"Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength!"
And, at the word, I would contrive and paint
Woods, valleys, rocks and plains, dells, sands and wastes,
Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quivering bed,
Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun,
And ocean isles so small, the dog-fish tracking
A dead whale, who should find them, would swim thrice
Around them, and fare onwardall to hold
The offspring of my brain. Nor these alone:
Bronze labyrinth, palace, pyramid and crypt,
Baths, galleries, courts, temples and terraces,
Marts, theatres and wharfsall filled with men,
Men everywhere! And this performed in turn,
When those who looked on, pined to hear the hopes
And fears and hates and loves which moved the crowd,
I would throw down the pencil as the chisel,
And I would speak; no thought which ever stirred
A human breast should be untold; all passions,
All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir
Within a heart fed with desires like mine,
To the last comfort shutting the tired lids
Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away
Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well:
And this in language as the need should be,
Now poured at once forth in a burning flow,
Now piled up in a grand array of words.
This done, to perfect and consummate all,
Even as a luminous haze links star to star,
I would supply all chasms with music, breathing
Mysterious motions of the soul, no way
To be defined save in strange melodies.
Last, having thus revealed all I could love,
Having received all love bestowed on it,
I would die: preserving so throughout my course
God full on me, as I was full on men:
He would approve my prayer, "I have gone through
"The loveliness of life; create for me
"If not for men, or take me to thyself,
"Eternal, infinite love!"
If thou hast ne'er
Conceived this mighty aim, this full desire,
Thou hast not passed my trial, and thou art
No king of mine.
Paracelsus.
Ah me!
Aprile.
But thou art here!
Thou didst not gaze like me upon that end
Till thine own powers for compassing the bliss
Were blind with glory; nor grow mad to grasp
At once the prize long patient toil should claim,
Nor spurn all granted short of that. And I
Would do as thou, a second time: nay, listen!
Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great,
Our time so brief, 't is clear if we refuse
The means so limited, the tools so rude
To execute our purpose, life will fleet,
And we shall fade, and leave our task undone.
We will be wise in time: what though our work
Be fashioned in despite of their ill-service,
Be crippled every way? 'T were little praise
Did full resources wait on our goodwill
At every turn. Let all be as it is.
Some say the earth is even so contrived
That tree and flower, a vesture gay, conceal
A bare and skeleton framework. Had we means
Answering to our mind! But now I seem
Wrecked on a savage isle: how rear thereon
My palace? Branching palms the props shall be,
Fruit glossy mingling; gems are for the East;
Who heeds them? I can pass them. Serpents' scales,
And painted birds' down, furs and fishes' skins
Must help me; and a little here and there
Is all I can aspire to: still my art
Shall show its birth was in a gentler clime.
"Had I green jars of malachite, this way
"I'd range them: where those sea-shells glisten above,
"Cressets should hang, by right: this way we set
"The purple carpets, as these mats are laid,
"Woven of fern and rush and blossoming flag."
Or if, by fortune, some completer grace
Be spared to me, some fragment, some slight sample
Of the prouder workmanship my own home boasts,
Some trifle little heeded there, but here
The place's one perfectionwith what joy
Would I enshrine the relic, cheerfully
Foregoing all the marvels out of reach!
Could I retain one strain of all the psalm
Of the angels, one word of the fiat of God,
To let my followers know what such things are!
I would adventure nobly for their sakes:
When nights were still, and still the moaning sea
And far away I could descry the land
Whence I departed, whither I return,
I would dispart the waves, and stand once more
At home, and load my bark, and hasten back,
And fling my gains to them, worthless or true.
"Friends," I would say, "I went far, far for them,
"Past the high rocks the haunt of doves, the mounds
"Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out,
"Past tracts of milk-white minute blinding sand,
"Till, by a mighty moon, I tremblingly
"Gathered these magic herbs, berry and bud,
"In haste, not pausing to reject the weeds,
"But happy plucking them at any price.
"To me, who have seen them bloom in their own soil,
"They are scarce lovely: plait and wear them, you!
"And guess, from what they are, the springs that fed them,
"The stars that sparkled o'er them, night by night,
"The snakes that travelled far to sip their dew!"
Thus for my higher loves; and thus even weakness
Would win me honour. But not these alone
Should claim my care; for common life, its wants
And ways, would I set forth in beauteous hues:
The lowest hind should not possess a hope,
A fear, but I'd be by him, saying better
Than he his own heart's language. I would live
For ever in the thoughts I thus explored,
As a discoverer's memory is attached
To all he finds; they should be mine henceforth,
Imbued with me, though free to all before:
For clay, once cast into my soul's rich mine,
Should come up crusted o'er with gems. Nor this
Would need a meaner spirit, than the first;
Nay, 't would be but the selfsame spirit, clothed
In humbler guise, but still the selfsame spirit:
As one spring wind unbinds the mountain snow
And comforts violets in their hermitage.
But, master, poet, who hast done all this,
How didst thou'scape the ruin whelming me?
Didst thou, when nerving thee to this attempt,
Ne'er range thy mind's extent, as some wide hall,
Dazzled by shapes that filled its length with light,
Shapes clustered there to rule thee, not obey,
That will not wait thy summons, will not rise
Singly, nor when thy practised eye and hand
Can well transfer their loveliness, but crowd
By thee for ever, bright to thy despair?
Didst thou ne'er gaze on each by turns, and ne'er
Resolve to single out one, though the rest
Should vanish, and to give that one, entire
In beauty, to the world; forgetting, so,
Its peers, whose number baffles mortal power?
And, this determined, wast thou ne'er seduced
By memories and regrets and passionate love,
To glance once more farewell? and did their eyes
Fasten thee, brighter and more bright, until
Thou couldst but stagger back unto their feet,
And laugh that man's applause or welfare ever
Could tempt thee to forsake them? Or when years
Had passed and still their love possessed thee wholly,
When from without some murmur startled thee
Of darkling mortals famished for one ray
Of thy so-hoarded luxury of light,
Didst thou ne'er strive even yet to break those spells
And prove thou couldst recover and fulfil
Thy early mission, long ago renounced,
And to that end, select some shape once more?
And did not mist-like influences, thick films,
Faint memories of the rest that charmed so long
Thine eyes, float fast, confuse thee, bear thee off,
As whirling snow-drifts blind a man who treads
A mountain ridge, with guiding spear, through storm?
Say, though I fell, I had excuse to fall;
Say, I was tempted sorely: say but this,
Dear lord, Aprile's lord!
Paracelsus.
Clasp me not thus,
Aprile! That the truth should reach me thus!
We are weak dust. Nay, clasp not or I faint!
Aprile.
My king! and envious thoughts could outrage thee?
Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice
In thy success, as thou! Let our God's praise
Go bravely through the world at last! What care
Through me or thee? I feel thy breath. Why, tears?
Tears in the darkness, and from thee to me?
Paracelsus.
Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn
To love; and, merciful God, forgive us both!
We wake at length from weary dreams; but both
Have slept in fairy-land: though dark and drear
Appears the world before us, we no less
Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still.
I too have sought to know as thou to love
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.
Still thou hast beauty and I, power. We wake:
What penance canst devise for both of us?
Aprile.
I hear thee faintly. The thick darkness! Even
Thine eyes are hid. 'T is as I knew: I speak,
And now I die. But I have seen thy face!
O poet, think of me, and sing of me!
But to have seen thee and to die so soon!
Paracelsus.
Die not, Aprile! We must never part.
Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? never!
Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Loveuntil both are saved. Aprile, hear!
We will accept our gains, and use themnow!
God, he will die upon my breast! Aprile!
Aprile.
To speak but once, and die! yet by his side.
Hush! hush!
Ha! go you ever girt about
With phantoms, powers? I have created such,
But these seem real as I.
Paracelsus.
Whom can you see
Through the accursed darkness?
Aprile.
Stay; I know,
I know them: who should know them well as I?
White brows, lit up with glory; poets all!
Paracelsus.
Let him but live, and I have my reward!
Aprile.
Yes; I see now. God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
Had you but told me this at first! Hush! hush!
Paracelsus.
Live! for my sake, because of my great sin,
To help my brain, oppressed by these wild words
And their deep import. Live! 't is not too late.
I have a quiet home for us, and friends.
Michal shall smile on you. Hear you? Lean thus,
And breathe my breath. I shall not lose one word
Of all your speech, one little word, Aprile!
Aprile.
No, no. Crown me? I am not one of you!
'T is he, the king, you seek. I am not one.
Paracelsus.
Thy spirit, at least, Aprile! Let me love!
I have attained, and now I may depart.
~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus - Part II - Paracelsus Attains
,#NFDB
1196:No more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.
A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith!
We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.
It's different, preaching in basilicas,
And doing duty in some masterpiece
Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart!
I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes,
Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;
It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh?
These hot long ceremonies of our church
Cost us a littleoh, they pay the price,
You take meamply pay it! Now, we'll talk.
So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.
No deprecation,nay, I beg you, sir!
Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know,
I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out,
We'd see truth dawn together?truth that peeps
Over the glasses' edge when dinners done.
And body gets its sop and holds its noise
And leaves soul free a little. Now's the time:
'T is break of day! You do despise me then.
And if I say, "despise me,"never fear!
I know you do not in a certain sense
Not in my arm-chair, for example: here,
I well imagine you respect my place
( Status, entourage , worldly circumstance)
Quite to its valuevery much indeed:
Are up to the protesting eyes of you
In pride at being seated here for once
You'll turn it to such capital account!
When somebody, through years and years to come,
Hints of the bishop,names methat's enough:
"Blougram? I knew him"(into it you slide)
"Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day,
"All alone, we two; he's a clever man:
"And after dinner,why, the wine you know,
"Oh, there was wine, and good!what with the wine . .
"'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!
"He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen
"Something of mine he relished, some review:
"He's quite above their humbug in his heart,
"Half-said as much, indeedthe thing's his trade.
"I warrant, Blougram's sceptical at times:
"How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!"
Che che , my dear sir, as we say at Rome,
Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take;
You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths:
The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.
Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays
You do despise me; your ideal of life
Is not the bishop's: you would not be I.
You would like better to be Goethe, now,
Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still,
Count D'Orsay,so you did what you preferred,
Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help,
Believed or disbelieved, no matter what,
So long as on that point, whate'er it was,
You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.
That, my ideal never can include,
Upon that element of truth and worth
Never be based! for say they make me Pope
(They can'tsuppose it for our argument!)
Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached
My height, and not a height which pleases you:
An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say.
It's like those eerie stories nurses tell,
Of how some actor on a stage played Death,
With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart,
And called himself the monarch of the world;
Then, going in the tire-room afterward,
Because the play was done, to shift himself,
Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly,
The moment he had shut the closet door,
By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope
At unawares, ask what his baubles mean,
And whose part he presumed to play just now?
Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!
So, drawing comfortable breath again,
You weigh and find, whatever more or less
I boast of my ideal realized,
Is nothing in the balance when opposed
To your ideal, your grand simple life,
Of which you will not realize one jot.
I am much, you are nothing; you would be all,
I would be merely much: you beat me there.
No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!
The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,
Isnot to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be,but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means: a very different thing!
No abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,
But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,
May lead within a world which (by your leave)
Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise.
Embellish Rome, idealize away,
Make paradise of London if you can,
You're welcome, nay, you're wise.
A simile!
We mortals cross the ocean of this world
Each in his average cabin of a life;
The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.
Now for our six months' voyagehow prepare?
You come on shipboard with a landsman's list
Of things he calls convenient: so they are!
An India screen is pretty furniture,
A piano-forte is a fine resource,
All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf,
The new edition fifty volumes long;
And little Greek books, with the funny type
They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:
Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!
And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add!
'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow
Hang full in face of one where'er one roams,
Since he more than the others brings with him
Italy's self,the marvellous Modenese!
Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.
Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is't the name?
The captain, or whoever's master here
You see him screw his face up; what's his cry
Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!"
If you won't understand what six feet mean,
Compute and purchase stores accordingly
And if, in pique because he overhauls
Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board
Barewhy, you cut a figure at the first
While sympathetic landsmen see you off;
Not afterward, when long ere half seas over,
You peep up from your utterly naked boards
Into some snug and well-appointed berth,
Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug
Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!)
And mortified you mutter "Well and good;
"He sits enjoying his sea-furniture;
"'T is stout and proper, and there's store of it:
"Though I've the better notion, all agree,
"Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter,
"Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances
"I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!"
And meantime you bring nothing: never mind
You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't
You might bring, so despise me, as I say.
Now come, let's backward to the starting-place.
See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.
Prepare together for our voyage, then;
Each note and check the other in his work,
Here's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!
What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?
Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't,
(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly
And absolutely and exclusively)
In any revelation called divine.
No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains
But say so, like the honest man you are?
First, therefore, overhaul theology!
Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,
Must find believing every whit as hard:
And if I do not frankly say as much,
The ugly consequence is clear enough.
Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe
If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,
Absolute and exclusive, as you say.
You're wrongI mean to prove it in due time.
Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie
I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,
So give up hope accordingly to solve
(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then
With both of us, though in unlike degree,
Missing full credenceoverboard with them!
I mean to meet you on your own premise:
Good, there go mine in company with yours!
And now what are we? unbelievers both,
Calm and complete, determinately fixed
To-day, to-morrow and for ever, pray?
You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!
In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief,
As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,
Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's
The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,
Make it bear fruit to us?the problem here.
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,
The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are
This good God,what he could do, if he would,
Would, if he couldthen must have done long since:
If so, when, where and how? some way must be,
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit
Some sense, in which it might be, after all.
Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
That way
Over the mountain, which who stands upon
Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;
While, if he views it from the waste itself,
Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,
Not vague, mistakeable! what's a break or two
Seen from the unbroken desert either side?
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)
What if the breaks themselves should prove at last
The most consummate of contrivances
To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?
And so we stumble at truth's very test!
All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white,we call it black.
"Well," you rejoin, "the end's no worse, at least;
"We've reason for both colours on the board:
"Why not confess then, where I drop the faith
"And you the doubt, that I'm as right as you?"
Because, friend, in the next place, this being so,
And both things even,faith and unbelief
Left to a man's choice,we'll proceed a step,
Returning to our image, which I like.
A man's choice, yesbut a cabin-passenger's
The man made for the special life o' the world
Do you forget him? I remember though!
Consult our ship's conditions and you find
One and but one choice suitable to all;
The choice, that you unluckily prefer,
Turning things topsy-turvythey or it
Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief
Bears upon life, determines its whole course,
Begins at its beginning. See the world
Such as it is,you made it not, nor I;
I mean to take it as it is,and you,
Not so you'll take it,though you get nought else.
I know the special kind of life I like,
What suits the most my idiosyncrasy,
Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit
In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days.
I find that positive belief does this
For me, and unbelief, no whit of this.
For you, it does, however?that, we'll try!
'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least,
Induce the world to let me peaceably,
Without declaring at the outset, "Friends,
"I absolutely and peremptorily
"Believe!"I say, faith is my waking life:
One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,
We know, but waking's the main point with us
And my provision's for life's waking part.
Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand
All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends;
And when night overtakes me, down I lie,
Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,
The sooner the better, to begin afresh.
What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?
You, the philosopher, that disbelieve,
That recognize the night, give dreams their weight
To be consistent you should keep your bed,
Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,
For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!
And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,
Live through the day and bustle as you please.
And so you live to sleep as I to wake,
To unbelieve as I to still believe?
Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you
Bed-ridden,and its good things come to me.
Its estimation, which is half the fight,
That's the first-cabin comfort I secure:
The next . . . but you perceive with half an eye!
Come, come, it's best believing, if we may;
You can't but own that!
Next, concede again,
If once we choose belief, on all accounts
We can't be too decisive in our faith,
Conclusive and exclusive in its terms,
To suit the world which gives us the good things.
In every man's career are certain points
Whereon he dares not be indifferent;
The world detects him clearly, if he dare,
As baffled at the game, and losing life.
He may care little or he may care much
For riches, honour, pleasure, work, repose,
Since various theories of life and life's
Success are extant which might easily
Comport with either estimate of these;
And whoso chooses wealth or poverty,
Labour or quiet, is not judged a fool
Because his fellow would choose otherwise:
We let him choose upon his own account
So long as he's consistent with his choice.
But certain points, left wholly to himself,
When once a man has arbitrated on,
We say he must succeed there or go hang.
Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most
Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need
For he can't wed twice. Then, he must avouch,
Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,
The form of faith his conscience holds the best,
Whate'er the process of conviction was:
For nothing can compensate his mistake
On such a point, the man himself being judge:
He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.
Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith
I happened to be born inwhich to teach
Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,
As best and readiest means of living by;
The same on examination being proved
The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
And absolute form of faith in the whole world
Accordingly, most potent of all forms
For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
Such as you know me, I am free to say,
In these hard latter days which hamper one,
Myselfby no immoderate exercise
Of intellect and learning, but the tact
To let external forces work for me,
Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;
Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,
Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world
And make my life an ease and joy and pride;
It does so,which for me's a great point gained,
Who have a soul and body that exact
A comfortable care in many ways.
There's power in me and will to dominate
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:
In many ways I need mankind's respect,
Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:
While at the same time, there's a taste I have,
A toy of soul, a titillating thing,
Refuses to digest these dainties crude.
The naked life is gross till clothed upon:
I must take what men offer, with a grace
As though I would not, could I help it, take!
An uniform I wear though over-rich
Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake
And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
And kiss my handof course the Church's hand.
Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
And thus that it should be I have procured;
And thus it could not be another way,
I venture to imagine.
You'll reply,
So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;
But were I made of better elements,
With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,
I hardly would account the thing success
Though it did all for me I say.
But, friend,
We speak of what is; not of what might be,
And how't were better if't were otherwise.
I am the man you see here plain enough:
Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!
Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;
The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed
I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes
To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.
My business is not to remake myself,
But make the absolute best of what God made.
Orour first similethough you prove me doomed
To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole,
The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive
To make what use of each were possible;
And as this cabin gets upholstery,
That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.
But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast
I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes
Enumerated so complacently,
On the mere ground that you forsooth can find
In this particular life I choose to lead
No fit provision for them. Can you not?
Say you, my fault is I address myself
To grosser estimators than should judge?
And that's no way of holding up the soul,
Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'
Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.
I pine among my million imbeciles
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense
Eye me and know me, whether I believe
In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her
And am a knave,approve in neither case,
Withhold their voices though I look their way:
Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end
(The thing they gave at Florence,what's its name?)
While the mad houseful's plaudits near out-bang
His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,
He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths
Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here
That even your prime men who appraise their kind
Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,
Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street
Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?
You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;
Him you must watchhe's sure to fall, yet stands!
Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demirep
That loves and saves her soul in new French books
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
Before your sages,just the men to shrink
From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,
Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
At thus being held unable to explain
How a superior man who disbelieves
May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!
It's through my coming in the tail of time,
Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
Had I been born three hundred years ago
They'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes;"
And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."
But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet
"How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.
Whereas, step off the line on either side
You, for example, clever to a fault,
The rough and ready man who write apace,
Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less
You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?
Lord So-and-sohis coat bedropped with wax,
All Peter's chains about his waist, his back
Brave with the needlework of Noodledom
Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?
But I, the man of sense and learning too,
The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
I, to believe at this late time of day!
Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
Except it's yours! Admire me as these may,
You don't. But whom at least do you admire?
Present your own perfection, your ideal,
Your pattern man for a minuteoh, make haste
Is it Napoleon you would have us grow?
Concede the means; allow his head and hand,
(A large concession, clever as you are)
Good! In our common primal element
Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know
We're still at that admission, recollect!)
Where do you findapart from, towering o'er
The secondary temporary aims
Which satisfy the gross taste you despise
Where do you find his star?his crazy trust
God knows through what or in what? it's alive
And shines and leads him, and that's all we want.
Have we aught in our sober night shall point
Such ends as his were, and direct the means
Of working out our purpose straight as his,
Nor bring a moment's trouble on success
With after-care to justify the same?
Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve
Why, the man's mad, friend, take his light away!
What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare
With comfort to yourself blow millions up?
We neither of us see it! we do see
The blown-up millionsspatter of their brains
And writhing of their bowels and so forth,
In that bewildering entanglement
Of horrible eventualities
Past calculation to the end of time!
Can I mistake for some clear word of God
(Which were my ample warrant for it all)
His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk,
"The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns,
And (when one beats the man to his last hold)
A vague idea of setting things to rights,
Policing people efficaciously,
More to their profit, most of all to his own;
The whole to end that dismallest of ends
By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church,
And resurrection of the old rgime ?
Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,
Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?
No: for, concede me but the merest chance
Doubt may be wrongthere's judgment, life to come!
With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?
This present life is all?you offer me
Its dozen noisy years, without a chance
That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace,
And getting called by divers new-coined names,
Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,
Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!
Therefore I will not.
Take another case;
Fit up the cabin yet another way.
What say you to the poets? shall we write
Hamlet, Othellomake the world our own,
Without a risk to run of either sort?
I can'tto put the strongest reason first.
"But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice;
"The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life:
"Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!"
Spare my self-knowledgethere's no fooling me!
If I prefer remaining my poor self,
I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.
If I'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone;
Why should I try to be what now I am?
If I'm no Shakespeare, as too probable,
His power and consciousness and self-delight
And all we want in common, shall I find
Trying for ever? while on points of taste
Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I
Are dowered alikeI'll ask you, I or he,
Which in our two lives realizes most?
Much, he imaginedsomewhat, I possess.
He had the imagination; stick to that!
Let him say, "In the face of my soul's works
"Your world is worthless and I touch it not
"Lest I should wrong them"I'll withdraw my plea.
But does he say so? look upon his life!
Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.
He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces
To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;
Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,
Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute;
Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,
And none more, had he seen its entry once,
Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal."
Why then should I who play that personage,
The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made,
Be told that had the poet chanced to start
From where I stand now (some degree like mine
Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)
He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,
And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?
Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best!
Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home
And get himself in dreams the Vatican,
Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,
And English books, none equal to his own,
Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).
Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top
Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these;
But, as I pour this claret, there they are:
I've gained themcrossed St. Gothard last July
With ten mules to the carriage and a bed
Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?
We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself,
And what I want, I have: he, gifted more,
Could fancy he too had them when he liked,
But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed,
He would not have them also in my sense.
We play one game; I send the ball aloft
No less adroitly that of fifty strokes
Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high
Which sends them back to me: I wish and get
He struck balls higher and with better skill,
But at a poor fence level with his head,
And hithis Stratford house, a coat of arms,
Successful dealings in his grain and wool,
While I receive heaven's incense in my nose
And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.
Ask him, if this life's all, who wins the game?
Believeand our whole argument breaks up.
Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat;
Only, we can't command it; fire and life
Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree:
And be it a mad dream or God's very breath,
The fact's the same,belief's fire, once in us,
Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself:
We penetrate our life with such a glow
As fire lends wood and ironthis turns steel,
That burns to ashall's one, fire proves its power
For good or ill, since men call flare success.
But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn.
Light one in me, I'll find it food enough!
Why, to be Lutherthat's a life to lead,
Incomparably better than my own.
He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he says,
Sets up God's rule again by simple means,
Re-opens a shut book, and all is done.
He flared out in the flaring of mankind;
Such Luther's luck was: how shall such be mine?
If he succeeded, nothing's left to do:
And if he did not altogetherwell,
Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss should be
I might be also. But to what result?
He looks upon no future: Luther did.
What can I gain on the denying side?
Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts,
Read the text right, emancipate the world
The emancipated world enjoys itself
With scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it first
It could not owe a farthing,not to him
More than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think?
Then add there's still that plaguy hundredth chance
Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run
For what gain? not for Luther's, who secured
A real heaven in his heart throughout his life,
Supposing death a little altered things.
"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,
"You run the same risk really on all sides,
"In cool indifference as bold unbelief.
"As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.
"It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,
"No more available to do faith's work
"Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"
Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point
Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.
We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?
By life and man's free will, God gave for that!
To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:
That's our one act, the previous work's his own.
You criticize the soul? it reared this tree
This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!
What matter though I doubt at every pore,
Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends,
Doubts in the trivial work of every day,
Doubts at the very bases of my soul
In the grand moments when she probes herself
If finally I have a life to show,
The thing I did, brought out in evidence
Against the thing done to me underground
By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?
I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?
All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?
It is the idea, the feeling and the love,
God means mankind should strive for and show forth
Whatever be the process to that end,
And not historic knowledge, logic sound,
And metaphysical acumen, sure!
"What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,
Like you this Christianity or not?
It may be false, but will you wish it true?
Has it your vote to be so if it can?
Trust you an instinct silenced long ago
That will break silence and enjoin you love
What mortified philosophy is hoarse,
And all in vain, with bidding you despise?
If you desire faiththen you've faith enough:
What else seeks Godnay, what else seek ourselves?
You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,
On hearsay; it's a favourable one:
"But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,
"Because of contradiction in the facts.
"One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,
"This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him
"I see he figures as an Englishman."
Well, the two things are reconcileable.
But would I rather you discovered that,
Subjoining"Still, what matter though they be?
"Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."
Pure faith indeedyou know not what you ask!
Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,
Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much
The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.
It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare
Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:
I say it's meant to hide him all it can,
And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
Its use in Time is to environ us,
Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough
Against that sight till we can bear its stress.
Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain
And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart
Less certainly would wither up at once
Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.
But time and earth case-harden us to live;
The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child
Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
Or, if that's too ambitious,here's my box
I need the excitation of a pinch
Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose
Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes.
"Leave it in peace" advise the simple folk:
Make it aware of peace by itching-fits,
Say Ilet doubt occasion still more faith!
You'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child,
In that dear middle-age these noodles praise.
How you'd exult if I could put you back
Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony,
Geology, ethnology, what not
(Greek endings, each the little passing-bell
That signifies some faith's about to die),
And set you square with Genesis again,
When such a traveller told you his last news,
He saw the ark a-top of Ararat
But did not climb there since 't was getting dusk
And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot!
How should you feel, I ask, in such an age,
How act? As other people felt and did;
With soul more blank than this decanter's knob,
Believeand yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate
Full in belief's face, like the beast you'd be!
No, when the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,
Satan looks up between his feetboth tug
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!
Never leave growing till the life to come!
Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks
That used to puzzle people wholesomely:
Men have outgrown the shame of being fools.
What are the laws of nature, not to bend
If the Church bid them?brother Newman asks.
Up with the Immaculate Conception, then
On to the rack with faith!is my advice.
Will not that hurry us upon our knees,
Knocking our breasts, "It can't beyet it shall!
"Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope?
"Low things confound the high things!" and so forth.
That's better than acquitting God with grace
As some folk do. He's triedno case is proved,
Philosophy is lenienthe may go!
You'll say, the old system's not so obsolete
But men believe still: ay, but who and where?
King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet
The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes;
But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint
Believes God watches him continually,
As he believes in fire that it will burn,
Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law,
Sin against rain, although the penalty
Be just a singe or soaking? "No," he smiles;
"Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves."
The sum of all isyes, my doubt is great,
My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.
I have read much, thought much, experienced much,
Yet would die rather than avow my fear
The Naples' liquefaction may be false,
When set to happen by the palace-clock
According to the clouds or dinner-time.
I hear you recommend, I might at least
Eliminate, decrassify my faith
Since I adopt it; keeping what I must
And leaving what I cansuch points as this.
I won'tthat is, I can't throw one away.
Supposing there's no truth in what I hold
About the need of trial to man's faith,
Still, when you bid me purify the same,
To such a process I discern no end.
Clearing off one excrescence to see two,
There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,
That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!
First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last
But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?
Experimentalize on sacred things!
I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain
To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.
The first step, I am master not to take.
You'd find the cutting-process to your taste
As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,
Nor see more danger in it,you retort.
Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise
When we consider that the steadfast hold
On the extreme end of the chain of faith
Gives all the advantage, makes the difference
With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:
We are their lords, or they are free of us,
Just as we tighten or relax our hold.
So, others matters equal, we'll revert
To the first problemwhich, if solved my way
And thrown into the balance, turns the scale
How we may lead a comfortable life,
How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
Of course you are remarking all this time
How narrowly and grossly I view life,
Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
The masses, and regard complacently
"The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.
I act for, talk for, live for this world now,
As this world prizes action, life and talk:
No prejudice to what next world may prove,
Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge
To observe then, is that I observe these now,
Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.
Let us concede (gratuitously though)
Next life relieves the soul of body, yields
Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,
Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use
May be to make the next life more intense?
Do you know, I have often had a dream
(Work it up in your next month's article)
Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still
Losing true life for ever and a day
Through ever trying to be and ever being
In the evolution of successive spheres
Before its actual sphere and place of life,
Halfway into the next, which having reached,
It shoots with corresponding foolery
Halfway into the next still, on and off!
As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?
I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
I take and like its way of life; I think
My brothers, who administer the means,
Live better for my comfortthat's good too;
And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
Approves my service, which is better still.
If he keep silence,why, for you or me
Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"
What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?
You meet me at this issue: you declare,
All special-pleading done withtruth is truth,
And justifies itself by undreamed ways.
You don't fear but it's better, if we doubt,
To say so, act up to our truth perceived
However feebly. Do then,act away!
'T is there I'm on the watch for you. How one acts
Is, both of us agree, our chief concern:
And how you'll act is what I fain would see
If, like the candid person you appear,
You dare to make the most of your life's scheme
As I of mine, live up to its full law
Since there's no higher law that counterchecks.
Put natural religion to the test
You've just demolished the revealed withquick,
Down to the root of all that checks your will,
All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve,
Or even to be an atheistic priest!
Suppose a pricking to incontinence
Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
Threw club down and forewent his brains beside,
So, stood a ready victim in the reach
Of any brother savage, club in hand;
Hence saw the use of going out of sight
In wood or cave to prosecute his loves:
I read this in a French book t' other day.
Does law so analysed coerce you much?
Oh, men spin clouds of fuzz where matters end,
But you who reach where the first thread begins,
You'll soon cut that!which means you can, but won't,
Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned-out,
You dare not set aside, you can't tell why,
But there they are, and so you let them rule.
Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I,
A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite,
Without the good the slave expects to get,
In case he has a master after all!
You own your instincts? why, what else do I,
Who want, am made for, and must have a God
Ere I can be aught, do aught?no mere name
Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth,
To wit, a relation from that thing to me,
Touching from head to footwhich touch I feel,
And with it take the rest, this life of ours!
I live my life here; yours you dare not live.
Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin)
Disfigure such a life and call it names,
While, to your mind, remains another way
For simple men: knowledge and power have rights,
But ignorance and weakness have rights too.
There needs no crucial effort to find truth
If here or there or anywhere about:
We ought to turn each side, try hard and see,
And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least
The right, by one laborious proof the more,
To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage.
Men are not angels, neither are they brutes:
Something we may see, all we cannot see.
What need of lying? I say, I see all,
And swear to each detail the most minute
In what I think a Pan's faceyou, mere cloud:
I swear I hear him speak and see him wink,
For fear, if once I drop the emphasis,
Mankind may doubt there's any cloud at all.
You take the simple lifeready to see,
Willing to see (for no cloud's worth a face)
And leaving quiet what no strength can move,
And which, who bids you move? who has the right?
I bid you; but you are God's sheep, not mine:
" Pastor est tui Dominus ." You find
In this the pleasant pasture of our life
Much you may eat without the least offence,
Much you don't eat because your maw objects,
Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock
Open great eyes at you and even butt,
And thereupon you like your mates so well
You cannot please yourself, offending them;
Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep,
You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats
And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears
Restrain you, real checks since you find them so;
Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks:
And thus you graze through life with not one lie,
And like it best.
But do you, in truth's name?
If so, you beatwhich means you are not I
Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill
Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with,
But motioned to the velvet of the sward
By those obsequious wethers' very selves.
Look at me, sir; my age is double yours:
At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed,
What now I should beas, permit the word,
I pretty well imagine your whole range
And stretch of tether twenty years to come.
We both have minds and bodies much alike:
In truth's name, don't you want my bishopric,
My daily bread, my influence and my state?
You're young. I'm old; you must be old one day;
Will you find then, as I do hour by hour,
Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls
From your fat lap-dog's ear to grace a brooch
Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring
With much beside you know or may conceive?
Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I,
Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me,
While writing all the same my articles
On music, poetry, the fictile vase
Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek.
But youthe highest honour in your life,
The thing you'll crown yourself with, all your days,
Isdining here and drinking this last glass
I pour you out in sign of amity
Before we part for ever. Of your power
And social influence, worldly worth in short,
Judge what's my estimation by the fact,
I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech,
Hint secrecy on one of all these words!
You're shrewd and know that should you publish one
The world would brand the liemy enemies first,
Who'd sneer"the bishop's an arch-hypocrite
"And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool."
Whereas I should not dare for both my ears
Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile,
Before the chaplain who reflects myself
My shade's so much more potent than your flesh.
What's your reward, self-abnegating friend?
Stood you confessed of those exceptional
And privileged great natures that dwarf mine
A zealot with a mad ideal in reach,
A poet just about to print his ode,
A statesman with a scheme to stop this war,
An artist whose religion is his art
~ Robert Browning, Bishop Blougram's Apology
,#NFDB
1197:Obiit Mdcccxxxiii (Entire)
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
414
Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
What seem’d my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
I.
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
‘Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.’
II.
415
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.
O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom:
And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.
III.
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
‘The stars,’ she whispers, ‘blindly run;
A web is wov’n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
‘And all the phantom, Nature, stands–
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,–
A hollow form with empty hands.’
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
416
IV.
To Sleep I give my powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:
O heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou should’st fail from thy desire,
Who scarcely darest to inquire,
‘What is it makes me beat so low?’
Something it is which thou hast lost,
Some pleasure from thine early years.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost!
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
All night below the darken’d eyes;
With morning wakes the will, and cries,
‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’
V.
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
417
VI.
One writes, that ‘Other friends remain,’
That ‘Loss is common to the race’–
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
O father, wheresoe’er thou be,
Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath still’d the life that beat from thee.
O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor,–while thy head is bow’d,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought;
Expecting still his advent home;
And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, ‘here to-day,’
Or ‘here to-morrow will he come.’
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father’s chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking ‘this will please him best,’
She takes a riband or a rose;
418
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turn’d, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown’d in passing thro’ the ford,
Or kill’d in falling from his horse.
O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.
VII.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp’d no more–
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
VIII.
A happy lover who has come
To look on her that loves him well,
Who ’lights and rings the gateway bell,
And learns her gone and far from home;
419
He saddens, all the magic light
Dies off at once from bower and hall,
And all the place is dark, and all
The chambers emptied of delight:
So find I every pleasant spot
In which we two were wont to meet,
The field, the chamber and the street,
For all is dark where thou art not.
Yet as that other, wandering there
In those deserted walks, may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;
So seems it in my deep regret,
O my forsaken heart, with thee
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.
But since it pleased a vanish’d eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die.
IX.
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur’s loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er.
So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead
Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.
All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
As our pure love, thro’ early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
420
Sphere all your lights around, above;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
My friend, the brother of my love;
My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.
X.
I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night:
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
Thou bring’st the sailor to his wife,
And travell’d men from foreign lands;
And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish’d life.
So bring him: we have idle dreams:
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God;
Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
And hands so often clasp’d in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells.
XI.
421
Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro’ the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:
Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:
Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
XII.
Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro’ Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;
Like her I go; I cannot stay;
I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind,
And leave the cliffs, and haste away
O’er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
And reach the glow of southern skies,
And see the sails at distance rise,
And linger weeping on the marge,
422
And saying; ‘Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?’
And circle moaning in the air:
‘Is this the end? Is this the end?’
And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.
XIII.
Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;
Which weep a loss for ever new,
A void where heart on heart reposed;
And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
Silence, till I be silent too.
Which weeps the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
My fancies time to rise on wing,
And glance about the approaching sails,
As tho’ they brought but merchants’ bales,
And not the burthen that they bring.
XIV.
423
If one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touch’d the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;
And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the plank,
And beckoning unto those they know;
And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;
And
And
And
And
I should tell him all my pain,
how my life had droop’d of late,
he should sorrow o’er my state
marvel what possess’d my brain;
And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.
XV.
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl’d away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash’d on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
424
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
XVI.
What words are these have fall’n from me?
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
Or doth she only seem to take
The touch of change in calm or storm;
But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake
That holds the shadow of a lark
Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark
That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
And staggers blindly ere she sink?
And stunn’d me from my power to think
And all my knowledge of myself;
And made me that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan?
XVII.
425
Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
Compell’d thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.
For I in spirit saw thee move
Thro’ circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
Henceforth, wherever thou may’st roam,
My blessing, like a line of light,
Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.
So may whatever tempest mars
Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the bosom of the stars.
So kind an office hath been done,
Such precious relics brought by thee;
The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run.
XVIII.
’Tis well; ’tis something; we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
’Tis little; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest
And in the places of his youth.
Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.
426
Ah yet, ev’n yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart,
Would breathing thro’ his lips impart
The life that almost dies in me;
That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the the firmer mind,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.
XIX.
The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken’d heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills;
That salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush’d nor moved along,
And hush’d my deepest grief of all,
When fill’d with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
XX.
The lesser griefs that may be said,
That breathe a thousand tender vows,
Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead;
427
Who speak their feeling as it is,
And weep the fulness from the mind:
‘It will be hard,’ they say, ‘to find
Another service such as this.’
My lighter moods are like to these,
That out of words a comfort win;
But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;
For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:
But open converse is there none,
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think,
‘How good! how kind! and he is gone.’
XXI.
I sing to him that rests below,
And, since the grasses round me wave,
I take the grasses of the grave,
And make them pipes whereon to blow.
The traveller hears me now and then,
And sometimes harshly will he speak:
‘This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men.’
Another answers, ‘Let him be,
He loves to make parade of pain,
That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.’
A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour
For private sorrow’s barren song,
When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?
428
‘A time to sicken and to swoon,
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?’
Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust:
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:
And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol’n away.
XXII.
The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
And we with singing cheer’d the way,
And, crown’d with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
But where the path we walk’d began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear’d of man;
Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dull’d the murmur on thy lip,
And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, tho’ I walk in haste,
And think, that somewhere in the waste
429
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
XXIII.
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits,
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot,
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often falling lame,
And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;
And crying, How changed from where it ran
Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb;
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan:
When each by turns was guide to each,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;
And all we met was fair and good,
And all was good that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood;
And many an old philosophy
On Argive heights divinely sang,
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.
XXIV.
And was the day of my delight
As pure and perfect as I say?
The very source and fount of Day
430
Is dash’d with wandering isles of night.
If all was good and fair we met,
This earth had been the Paradise
It never look’d to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.
And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?
Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?
XXV.
I know that this was Life,–the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.
But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:
Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
When mighty Love would cleave in twain
The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him.
XXVI.
Still onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.
431
And if that eye which watches guilt
And goodness, and hath power to see
Within the green the moulder’d tree,
And towers fall’n as soon as built–
Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,
Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
XXVII.
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
XXVIII.
432
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish’d no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:
But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll’d me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
XXIX.
With such compelling cause to grieve
As daily vexes household peace,
And chains regret to his decease,
How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;
Which brings no more a welcome guest
To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower’d largess of delight
In dance and song and game and jest?
Yet go, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont,
That guard the portals of the house;
433
Old sisters of a day gone by,
Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
Why should they miss their yearly due
Before their time? They too will die.
XXX.
With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess’d the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
At our old pastimes in the hall
We gambol’d, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.
We paused: the winds were in the beech:
We heard them sweep the winter land;
And in a circle hand-in-hand
Sat silent, looking each at each.
Then echo-like our voices rang;
We sung, tho’ every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him
Last year: impetuously we sang:
We ceased: a gentler feeling crept
Upon us: surely rest is meet:
‘They rest,’ we said, ‘their sleep is sweet,’
And silence follow’d, and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range;
Once more we sang: ‘They do not die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change;
‘Rapt from the fickle and the frail
With gather’d power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil.’
434
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
XXXI.
When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
And home to Mary’s house return’d,
Was this demanded–if he yearn’d
To hear her weeping by his grave?
‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’
There lives no record of reply,
Which telling what it is to die
Had surely added praise to praise.
From every house the neighbours met,
The streets were fill’d with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness even crown’d
The purple brows of Olivet.
Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal’d;
He told it not; or something seal’d
The lips of that Evangelist.
XXXII.
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.
Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother’s face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.
435
All subtle thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete,
She bows, she bathes the Saviour’s feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.
Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
Whose loves in higher love endure;
What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs?
XXXIII.
O thou that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach’d a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow’d hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro’ form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev’n for want of such a type.
XXXIV.
My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;
This round of green, this orb of flame,
436
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.
What then were God to such as I?
’Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A little patience ere I die;
’Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.
XXXV.
Yet if some voice that man could trust
Should murmur from the narrow house,
‘The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:’
Might I not say? ‘Yet even here,
But for one hour, O Love, I strive
To keep so sweet a thing alive:’
But I should turn mine ears and hear
The moanings of the homeless sea,
The sound of streams that swift or slow
Draw down Æonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be;
And Love would answer with a sigh,
‘The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die.’
O me, what profits it to put
And idle case? If Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut,
437
Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
Had bruised the herb and crush’d the grape,
And bask’d and batten’d in the woods.
XXXVI.
Tho’ truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
XXXVII.
Urania speaks with darken’d brow:
‘Thou pratest here where thou art least;
This faith has many a purer priest,
And many an abler voice than thou.
‘Go down beside thy native rill,
On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
About the ledges of the hill.’
And my Melpomene replies,
438
A touch of shame upon her cheek:
‘I am not worthy ev’n to speak
Of thy prevailing mysteries;
‘For I am but an earthly Muse,
And owning but a little art
To lull with song an aching heart,
And render human love his dues;
‘But brooding on the dear one dead,
And all he said of things divine,
(And dear to me as sacred wine
To dying lips is all he said),
‘I murmur’d, as I came along,
Of comfort clasp’d in truth reveal’d;
And loiter’d in the master’s field,
And darken’d sanctities with song.’
XXXVIII.
With weary steps I loiter on,
Tho’ always under alter’d skies
The purple from the distance dies,
My prospect and horizon gone.
No joy the blowing season gives,
The herald melodies of spring,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives.
If any care for what is here
Survive in spirits render’d free,
Then are these songs I sing of thee
Not all ungrateful to thine ear.
XXXIX.
Old warder of these buried bones,
439
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But Sorrow–fixt upon the dead,
And darkening the dark graves of men,–
What whisper’d from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,
And passes into gloom again.
XL.
Could we forget the widow’d hour
And look on Spirits breathed away,
As on a maiden in the day
When first she wears her orange-flower!
When crown’d with blessing she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,
And hopes and light regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes;
And doubtful joys the father move,
And tears are on the mother’s face,
As parting with a long embrace
She enters other realms of love;
Her office there to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit
A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In those great offices that suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.
Ay me, the difference I discern!
440
How often shall her old fireside
Be cheer’d with tidings of the bride,
How often she herself return,
And tell them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss’d her most
Shall count new things as dear as old:
But thou and I have shaken hands,
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover’d lands.
XLI.
The spirit ere our fatal loss
Did ever rise from high to higher;
As mounts the heavenward altar-fire,
As flies the lighter thro’ the gross.
But thou art turn’d to something strange,
And I have lost the links that bound
Thy changes; here upon the ground,
No more partaker of thy change.
Deep folly! yet that this could be–
That I could wing my will with might
To leap the grades of life and light,
And flash at once, my friend, to thee.
For tho’ my nature rarely yields
To that vague fear implied in death;
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,
The howlings from forgotten fields;
Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor
An inner trouble I behold,
A spectral doubt which makes me cold,
That I shall be thy mate no more,
441
Tho’ following with an upward mind
The wonders that have come to thee,
Thro’ all the secular to-be,
But evermore a life behind.
XLII.
I vex my heart with fancies dim:
He still outstript me in the race;
It was but unity of place
That made me dream I rank’d with him.
And so may Place retain us still,
And he the much-beloved again,
A lord of large experience, train
To riper growth the mind and will:
And what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit’s inner deeps,
When one that loves but knows not, reaps
A truth from one that loves and knows?
XLIII.
If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit’s folded bloom
Thro’ all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber on;
Unconscious of the sliding hour,
Bare of the body, might it last,
And silent traces of the past
Be all the colour of the flower:
So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began;
And love will last as pure and whole
442
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul.
XLIV.
How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish’d, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
May some dim touch of earthly things
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.
If such a dreamy touch should fall,
O turn thee round, resolve the doubt;
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place, and tell thee all.
XLV.
The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ‘this is I:’
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of ‘I,’ and ‘me,’
And finds ‘I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.’
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
443
As thro’ the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
This use may lie in blood and breath,
Which else were fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death.
XLVI.
We ranging down this lower track,
The path we came by, thorn and flower,
Is shadow’d by the growing hour,
Lest life should fail in looking back.
So be it: there no shade can last
In that deep dawn behind the tomb,
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom
The eternal landscape of the past;
A lifelong tract of time reveal’d;
The fruitful hours of still increase;
Days order’d in a wealthy peace,
And those five years its richest field.
O Love, thy province were not large,
A bounded field, nor stretching far;
Look also, Love, a brooding star,
A rosy warmth from marge to marge.
XLVII.
That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside;
444
And I shall know him when we meet:
And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other’s good:
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth? He seeks at least
Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,
Some landing-place, to clasp and say,
‘Farewell! We lose ourselves in light.’
XLVIII.
If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,
Were taken to be such as closed
Grave doubts and answers here proposed,
Then these were such as men might scorn:
Her care is not to part and prove;
She takes, when harsher moods remit,
What slender shade of doubt may flit,
And makes it vassal unto love:
And hence, indeed, she sports with words,
But better serves a wholesome law,
And holds it sin and shame to draw
The deepest measure from the chords:
Nor dare she trust a larger lay,
But rather loosens from the lip
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.
XLIX.
From art, from nature, from the schools,
Let random influences glance,
Like light in many a shiver’d lance
445
That breaks about the dappled pools:
The lightest wave of thought shall lisp,
The fancy’s tenderest eddy wreathe,
The slightest air of song shall breathe
To make the sullen surface crisp.
And look thy look, and go thy way,
But blame not thou the winds that make
The seeming-wanton ripple break,
The tender-pencil’d shadow play.
Beneath all fancied hopes and fears
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down,
Whose muffled motions blindly drown
The bases of my life in tears.
L.
Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.
LI.
446
Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen’d in his love?
I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
The dead shall look me thro’ and thro’.
Be near us when we climb or fall:
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all.
LII.
I cannot love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.
‘Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,’
The Spirit of true love replied;
‘Thou canst not move me from thy side,
Nor human frailty do me wrong.
‘What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears?
What record? not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue:
‘So fret not, like an idle girl,
That life is dash’d with flecks of sin.
Abide: thy wealth is gather’d in,
When Time hath sunder’d shell from pearl.’
447
LIII.
How many a father have I seen,
A sober man, among his boys,
Whose youth was full of foolish noise,
Who wears his manhood hale and green:
And dare we to this fancy give,
That had the wild oat not been sown,
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown
The grain by which a man may live?
Or, if we held the doctrine sound
For life outliving heats of youth,
Yet who would preach it as a truth
To those that eddy round and round?
Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.
LIV.
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
448
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last–far off–at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
LV.
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
LVI.
449
‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.’ And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law–
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
LVII.
Peace; come away: the song of woe
Is after all an earthly song:
Peace; come away: we do him wrong
To sing so wildly: let us go.
450
Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
But half my life I leave behind:
Methinks my friend is richly shrined;
But I shall pass; my work will fail.
Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,
One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look’d with human eyes.
I hear it now, and o’er and o’er,
Eternal greetings to the dead;
And ‘Ave, Ave, Ave,’ said,
‘Adieu, adieu’ for evermore.
LVIII.
In those sad words I took farewell:
Like echoes in sepulchral halls,
As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;
And, falling, idly broke the peace
Of hearts that beat from day to day,
Half-conscious of their dying clay,
And those cold crypts where they shall cease.
The high Muse answer’d: ‘Wherefore grieve
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?
Abide a little longer here,
And thou shalt take a nobler leave.’
LIX.
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me
No casual mistress, but a wife,
My bosom-friend and half of life;
As I confess it needs must be;
O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,
451
Be sometimes lovely like a bride,
And put thy harsher moods aside,
If thou wilt have me wise and good.
My centred passion cannot move,
Nor will it lessen from to-day;
But I’ll have leave at times to play
As with the creature of my love;
And set thee forth, for thou art mine,
With so much hope for years to come,
That, howsoe’er I know thee, some
Could hardly tell what name were thine.
LX.
He past; a soul of nobler tone:
My spirit loved and loves him yet,
Like some poor girl whose heart is set
On one whose rank exceeds her own.
He mixing with his proper sphere,
She finds the baseness of her lot,
Half jealous of she knows not what,
And envying all that meet him there.
The little village looks forlorn;
She sighs amid her narrow days,
Moving about the household ways,
In that dark house where she was born.
The foolish neighbours come and go,
And tease her till the day draws by:
At night she weeps, ‘How vain am I!
How should he love a thing so low?’
LXI.
If, in thy second state sublime,
452
Thy ransom’d reason change replies
With all the circle of the wise,
The perfect flower of human time;
And if thou cast thine eyes below,
How dimly character’d and slight,
How dwarf’d a growth of cold and night,
How blanch'd with darkness must I grow!
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,
Where thy first form was made a man:
I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
The soul of Shakespeare love thee more.
LXII.
Tho’ if an eye that’s downward cast
Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,
Then be my love an idle tale,
And fading legend of the past;
And thou, as one that once declined,
When he was little more than boy,
On some unworthy heart with joy,
But lives to wed an equal mind;
And breathes a novel world, the while
His other passion wholly dies,
Or in the light of deeper eyes
Is matter for a flying smile.
LXIII.
Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven,
And love in which my hound has part,
Can hang no weight upon my heart
In its assumptions up to heaven;
And I am so much more than these,
As thou, perchance, art more than I,
And yet I spare them sympathy,
453
And I would set their pains at ease.
So mayst thou watch me where I weep,
As, unto vaster motions bound,
The circuits of thine orbit round
A higher height, a deeper deep.
LXIV.
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;
Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state’s decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope
The pillar of a people’s hope,
The centre of a world’s desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He play’d at counsellors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labour of his hands,
454
Or in the furrow musing stands;
‘Does my old friend remember me?’
LXV.
Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt;
I lull a fancy trouble-tost
With ‘Love’s too precious to be lost,
A little grain shall not be spilt.’
And in that solace can I sing,
Till out of painful phases wrought
There flutters up a happy thought,
Self-balanced on a lightsome wing:
Since we deserved the name of friends,
And thine effect so lives in me,
A part of mine may live in thee
And move thee on to noble ends.
LXVI.
You thought my heart too far diseased;
You wonder when my fancies play
To find me gay among the gay,
Like one with any trifle pleased.
The shade by which my life was crost,
Which makes a desert in the mind,
Has made me kindly with my kind,
And like to him whose sight is lost;
Whose feet are guided thro’ the land,
Whose jest among his friends is free,
Who takes the children on his knee,
And winds their curls about his hand:
He plays with threads, he beats his chair
For pastime, dreaming of the sky;
His inner day can never die,
455
His night of loss is always there.
LXVII.
When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west,
There comes a glory on the walls:
Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o’er the number of thy years.
The mystic glory swims away;
From off my bed the moonlight dies;
And closing eaves of wearied eyes
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray:
And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast,
And in the dark church like a ghost
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.
LXVIII.
When in the down I sink my head,
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, times my breath;
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, knows not Death,
Nor can I dream of thee as dead:
I walk as ere I walk’d forlorn,
When all our path was fresh with dew,
And all the bugle breezes blew
Reveillée to the breaking morn.
But what is this? I turn about,
I find a trouble in thine eye,
Which makes me sad I know not why,
Nor can my dream resolve the doubt:
456
But ere the lark hath left the lea
I wake, and I discern the truth;
It is the trouble of my youth
That foolish sleep transfers to thee.
LXIX.
I dream’d there would be Spring no more,
That Nature’s ancient power was lost:
The streets were black with smoke and frost,
They chatter’d trifles at the door:
I wander’d from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs:
I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown:
I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
They call’d me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns:
They call’d me fool, they call’d me child:
I found an angel of the night;
The voice was low, the look was bright;
He look’d upon my crown and smiled:
He reach’d the glory of a hand,
That seem’d to touch it into leaf:
The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand.
LXX.
I cannot see the features right,
When on the gloom I strive to paint
The face I know; the hues are faint
And mix with hollow masks of night;
457
Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought,
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes,
A hand that points, and palled shapes
In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;
And crowds that stream from yawning doors,
And shoals of pucker’d faces drive;
Dark bulks that tumble half alive,
And lazy lengths on boundless shores;
Till all at once beyond the will
I hear a wizard music roll,
And thro’ a lattice on the soul
Looks thy fair face and makes it still.
LXXI.
Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance
And madness, thou hast forged at last
A night-long Present of the Past
In which we went thro’ summer France.
Hadst thou such credit with the soul?
Then bring an opiate trebly strong,
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
That so my pleasure may be whole;
While now we talk as once we talk’d
Of men and minds, the dust of change,
The days that grow to something strange,
In walking as of old we walk’d
Beside the river’s wooded reach,
The fortress, and the mountain ridge,
The cataract flashing from the bridge,
The breaker breaking on the beach.
LXXII.
458
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar white,
And lash with storm the streaming pane?
Day, when my crown’d estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken’d every living bloom,
And blurr’d the splendour of the sun;
Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her crimson fringes to the shower;
Who might’st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play’d
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along the hills, yet look’d the same.
As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark’d as with some hideous crime,
When the dark hand struck down thro’ time,
And cancell’d nature’s best: but thou,
Lift as thou may’st thy burthen’d brows
Thro’ clouds that drench the morning star,
And whirl the ungarner’d sheaf afar,
And sow the sky with flying boughs,
And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
And hide thy shame beneath the ground.
LXXIII.
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be,
How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
459
The fame is quench’d that I foresaw,
The head hath miss’d an earthly wreath:
I curse not nature, no, nor death;
For nothing is that errs from law.
We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.
O hollow wraith of dying fame,
Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.
LXXIV.
As sometimes in a dead man’s face,
To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness, hardly seen before,
Comes out–to some one of his race:
So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.
But there is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee.
LXXV.
I leave thy praises unexpress’d
In verse that brings myself relief,
And by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess’d;
What practice howsoe’er expert
460
In fitting aptest words to things,
Or voice the richest-toned that sings,
Hath power to give thee as thou wert?
I care not in these fading days
To raise a cry that lasts not long,
And round thee with the breeze of song
To stir a little dust of praise.
Thy leaf has perish’d in the green,
And, while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world which credits what is done
Is cold to all that might have been.
So here shall silence guard thy fame;
But somewhere, out of human view,
Whate’er thy hands are set to do
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.
LXXVI.
Take wings of fancy, and ascend,
And in a moment set thy face
Where all the starry heavens of space
Are sharpen’d to a needle’s end;
Take wings of foresight; lighten thro’
The secular abyss to come,
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
Before the mouldering of a yew;
And if the matin songs, that woke
The darkness of our planet, last,
Thine own shall wither in the vast,
Ere half the lifetime of an oak.
Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers
With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;
And what are they when these remain
The ruin’d shells of hollow towers?
461
LXXVII.
What hope is here for modern rhyme
To him, who turns a musing eye
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie
Foreshorten’d in the tract of time?
These mortal lullabies of pain
May bind a book, may line a box,
May serve to curl a maiden’s locks;
Or when a thousand moons shall wane
A man upon a stall may find,
And, passing, turn the page that tells
A grief, then changed to something else,
Sung by a long-forgotten mind.
But what of that? My darken’d ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise.
LXXVIII.
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess’d the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture’s breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show’d a token of distress?
462
No single tear, no mark of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, regret can die!
No–mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.
LXXIX.
‘More than my brothers are to me,’–
Let this not vex thee, noble heart!
I know thee of what force thou art
To hold the costliest love in fee.
But thou and I are one in kind,
As moulded like in Nature’s mint;
And hill and wood and field did print
The same sweet forms in either mind.
For us the same cold streamlet curl’d
Thro’ all his eddying coves; the same
All winds that roam the twilight came
In whispers of the beauteous world.
At one dear knee we proffer’d vows,
One lesson from one book we learn’d,
Ere childhood’s flaxen ringlet turn’d
To black and brown on kindred brows.
And so my wealth resembles thine,
But he was rich where I was poor,
And he supplied my want the more
As his unlikeness fitted mine.
LXXX.
If any vague desire should rise,
463
That holy Death ere Arthur died
Had moved me kindly from his side,
And dropt the dust on tearless eyes;
Then fancy shapes, as fancy can,
The grief my loss in him had wrought,
A grief as deep as life or thought,
But stay’d in peace with God and man.
I make a picture in the brain;
I hear the sentence that he speaks;
He bears the burthen of the weeks
But turns his burthen into gain.
His credit thus shall set me free;
And, influence-rich to soothe and save,
Unused example from the grave
Reach out dead hands to comfort me.
LXXXI.
Could I have said while he was here,
‘My love shall now no further range;
There cannot come a mellower change,
For now is love mature in ear.’
Love, then, had hope of richer store:
What end is here to my complaint?
This haunting whisper makes me faint,
‘More years had made me love thee more.’
But Death returns an answer sweet:
‘My sudden frost was sudden gain,
And gave all ripeness to the grain,
It might have drawn from after-heat.’
LXXXII.
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
464
No lower life that earth’s embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter’d stalks,
Or ruin’d chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
LXXXIII.
Dip down upon the northern shore,
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
Delaying long, delay no more.
What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place?
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell’s darling blue,
Deep tulips dash’d with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
O thou, new-year, delaying long,
Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
That longs to burst a frozen bud
And flood a fresher throat with song.
465
LXXXIV.
When I contemplate all alone
The life that had been thine below,
And fix my thoughts on all the glow
To which thy crescent would have grown;
I see thee sitting crown’d with good,
A central warmth diffusing bliss
In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss,
On all the branches of thy blood;
Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine;
For now the day was drawing on,
When thou should’st link thy life with one
Of mine own house, and boys of thine
Had babbled ‘Uncle’ on my knee;
But that remorseless iron hour
Made cypress of her orange flower,
Despair of Hope, and earth of thee.
I seem to meet their least desire,
To clap their cheeks, to call them mine.
I see their unborn faces shine
Beside the never-lighted fire.
I see myself an honour’d guest,
Thy partner in the flowery walk
Of letters, genial table-talk,
Or deep dispute, and graceful jest;
While now thy prosperous labour fills
The lips of men with honest praise,
And sun by sun the happy days
Descend below the golden hills
With promise of a morn as fair;
And all the train of bounteous hours
Conduct by paths of growing powers,
To reverence and the silver hair;
Till slowly worn her earthly robe,
466
Her lavish mission richly wrought,
Leaving great legacies of thought,
Thy spirit should fail from off the globe;
What time mine own might also flee,
As link’d with thine in love and fate,
And, hovering o’er the dolorous strait
To the other shore, involved in thee,
Arrive at last the blessed goal,
And He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand,
And take us as a single soul.
What reed was that on which I leant?
Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake
The old bitterness again, and break
The low beginnings of content.
LXXXV.
This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrow’d most,
’Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all–
O true in word, and tried in deed,
Demanding, so to bring relief
To this which is our common grief,
What kind of life is that I lead;
And whether trust in things above
Be dimm’d of sorrow, or sustain’d;
And whether love for him have drain’d
My capabilities of love;
Your words have virtue such as draws
A faithful answer from the breast,
Thro’ light reproaches, half exprest,
And loyal unto kindly laws.
467
My blood an even tenor kept,
Till on mine ear this message falls,
That in Vienna’s fatal walls
God’s finger touch’d him, and he slept.
The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state,
In circle round the blessed gate,
Received and gave him welcome there;
And led him thro’ the blissful climes,
And show'd him in the fountain fresh
All knowledge that the sons of flesh
Shall gather in the cycled times.
But I remained, whose hopes were dim,
Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,
To wander on a darkened earth,
Where all things round me breathed of him.
friendship, equal poised control,
heart, with kindliest motion warm,
sacred essence, other form,
solemn ghost, O crowned soul!
Yet none could better know than I,
How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands
By which we dare to live or die.
Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho’ left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine;
A life that all the Muses decked
With gifts of grace, that might express
All comprehensive tenderness,
All-subtilising intellect:
And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
468
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved.
Likewise the imaginative woe,
That loved to handle spiritual strife,
Diffused the shock thro’ all my life,
But in the present broke the blow.
My pulses therefore beat again
For other friends that once I met;
Nor can it suit me to forget
The mighty hopes that make us men.
I woo your love: I count it crime
To mourn for any overmuch;
I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had master’d Time;
Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears:
The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this:
But Summer on the steaming floods,
And Spring that swells the narrow brooks,
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,
That gather in the waning woods,
And every pulse of wind and wave
Recalls, in change of light or gloom,
My old affection of the tomb,
And my prime passion in the grave:
My old affection of the tomb,
A part of stillness, yearns to speak:
‘Arise, and get thee forth and seek
A friendship for the years to come.
‘I watch thee from the quiet shore;
Thy spirit up to mine can reach;
But in dear words of human speech
We two communicate no more.’
469
And I, ‘Can clouds of nature stain
The starry clearness of the free?
How is it? Canst thou feel for me
Some painless sympathy with pain?’
And lightly does the whisper fall;
‘’Tis hard for thee to fathom this;
I triumph in conclusive bliss,
And that serene result of all.’
So hold I commerce with the dead;
Or so methinks the dead would say;
Or so shall grief with symbols play
And pining life be fancy-fed.
Now looking to some settled end,
That these things pass, and I shall prove
A meeting somewhere, love with love,
I crave your pardon, O my friend;
If not so fresh, with love as true,
I, clasping brother-hands aver
I could not, if I would, transfer
The whole I felt for him to you.
For which be they that hold apart
The promise of the golden hours?
First love, first friendship, equal powers,
That marry with the virgin heart.
Still mine, that cannot but deplore,
That beats within a lonely place,
That yet remembers his embrace,
But at his footstep leaps no more,
My heart, tho’ widow’d, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,
But seeks to beat in time with one
That warms another living breast.
Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring,
470
Knowing the primrose yet is dear,
The primrose of the later year,
As not unlike to that of Spring.
LXXXVI.
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro’ all the dewy-tassell’d wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odour streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper ‘Peace.’
LXXXVII.
I past beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown;
I roved at random thro’ the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;
And heard one more in college fanes
The storm their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophet blazon’d on the panes;
And caught one more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
471
Among the willows; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about
The same gray flats again, and felt
The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.
Another name was on the door:
I linger’d; all within was noise
Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys
That crash’d the glass and beat the floor;
Where once we held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art,
And labour, and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land;
When one would aim an arrow fair,
But send it slackly from the string;
And one would pierce an outer ring,
And one an inner, here and there;
And last the master-bowman, he,
Would cleave the mark. A willing ear
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face,
And seem to lift the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo.
LXXXVIII.
472
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro’ the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet,
Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy:
And I–my harp would prelude woe–
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.
LXXXIX.
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;
And thou, with all thy breadth and height
Of foliage, towering sycamore;
How often, hither wandering down,
My Arthur found your shadows fair,
And shook to all the liberal air
The dust and din and steam of town:
He brought an eye for all he saw;
He mixt in all our simple sports;
They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts
And dusty purlieus of the law.
O joy to him in this retreat,
Immantled in ambrosial dark,
To drink the cooler air, and mark
The landscape winking thro’ the heat:
O sound to rout the brood of cares,
The sweep of scythe in morning dew,
The gust that round the garden flew,
And tumbled half the mellowing pears!
473
O bliss, when all in circle drawn
About him, heart and ear were fed
To hear him, as he lay and read
The Tuscan poets on the lawn:
Or in the all-golden afternoon
A guest, or happy sister, sung,
Or here she brought the harp and flung
A ballad to the brightening moon:
Nor less it pleased in livelier moods,
Beyond the bounding hill to stray,
And break the livelong summer day
With banquet in the distant woods;
Whereat we glanced from theme to theme,
Discuss’d the books to love or hate,
Or touch’d the changes of the state,
Or threaded some Socratic dream;
But if I praised the busy town,
He loved to rail against it still,
For ‘ground in yonder social mill
We rub each other’s angles down,
‘And merge’ he said ‘in form and gloss
The picturesque of man and man.’
We talk’d: the stream beneath us ran,
The wine-flask lying couch’d in moss,
Or cool’d within the glooming wave;
And last, returning from afar,
Before the crimson-circled star
Had fall’n into her father’s grave,
And brushing ankle-deep in flowers,
We heard behind the woodbine veil
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And buzzings of the honied hours.
474
XC.
He tasted love with half his mind,
Nor ever drank the inviolate spring
Where nighest heaven, who first could fling
This bitter seed among mankind;
That could the dead, whose dying eyes
Were closed with wail, resume their life,
They would but find in child and wife
An iron welcome when they rise:
’Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine,
To pledge them with a kindly tear,
To talk them o’er, to wish them here,
To count their memories half divine;
But if they came who past away,
Behold their brides in other hands;
The hard heir strides about their lands,
And will not yield them for a day.
Yea, tho’ their sons were none of these,
Not less the yet-loved sire would make
Confusion worse than death, and shake
The pillars of domestic peace.
Ah dear, but come thou back to me:
Whatever change the years have wrought,
I find not yet one lonely thought
That cries against my wish for thee.
XCI.
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,
And rarely pipes the mounted thrush;
Or underneath the barren bush
Flits by the sea-blue bird of March;
Come, wear the form by which I know
Thy spirit in time among thy peers;
The hope of unaccomplish’d years
475
Be large and lucid round thy brow.
When summer’s hourly-mellowing change
May breathe, with many roses sweet,
Upon the thousand waves of wheat,
That ripple round the lonely grange;
Come: not in watches of the night,
But where the sunbeam broodeth warm,
Come, beauteous in thine after form,
And like a finer light in light.
XCII.
If any vision should reveal
Thy likeness, I might count it vain
As but the canker of the brain;
Yea, tho’ it spake and made appeal
To chances where our lots were cast
Together in the days behind,
I might but say, I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring the past.
Yea, tho’ it spake and bared to view
A fact within the coming year;
And tho’ the months, revolving near,
Should prove the phantom-warning true,
They might not seem thy prophecies,
But spiritual presentiments,
And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.
XCIII.
I shall not see thee. Dare I say
No spirit ever brake the band
That stays him from the native land
476
Where first he walk’d when claspt in clay?
No visual shade of some one lost,
But he, the Spirit himself, may come
Where all the nerve of sense is numb;
Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.
O, therefore from thy sightless range
With gods in unconjectured bliss,
O, from the distance of the abyss
Of tenfold-complicated change,
Descend, and touch, and enter; hear
The wish too strong for words to name;
That in this blindness of the frame
My Ghost may feel that thine is near.
XCIV.
How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour’s communion with the dead.
In vain shalt thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.
They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest:
But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits,
They can but listen at the gates,
And hear the household jar within.
XCV.
477
By night we linger’d on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o’er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirr’d:
The brook alone far-off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn:
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel’d or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes;
While now we sang old songs that peal’d
From knoll to knoll, where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field.
But when those others, one by one,
Withdrew themselves from me and night,
And in the house light after light
Went out, and I was all alone,
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fall’n leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead:
And strangely on the silence broke
The silent-speaking words, and strange
Was love’s dumb cry defying change
To test his worth; and strangely spoke
The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell
On doubts that drive the coward back,
And keen thro’ wordy snares to track
Suggestion to her inmost cell.
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch’d me from the past,
478
And all at once it seem’d at last
The living soul was flash’d on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirl’d
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
Æonian music measuring out
The steps of Time–the shocks of Chance–
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev’n for intellect to reach
Thro’ memory that which I became:
Till now the doubtful dusk reveal’d
The knolls once more where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field:
And suck’d from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o’er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock’d the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said
‘The dawn, the dawn,’ and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.
XCVI.
479
You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch’d a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather’d strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinaï’s peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.
XCVII.
My love has talk’d with rocks and trees;
He finds on misty mountain-ground
His own vast shadow glory-crown’d;
He sees himself in all he sees.
Two partners of a married life–
I look’d on these and thought of thee
In vastness and in mystery,
And of my spirit as of a wife.
480
These two–they dwelt with eye on eye,
Their hearts of old have beat in tune,
Their meetings made December June,
Their every parting was to die.
Their love has never past away;
The days she never can forget
Are earnest that he loves her yet,
Whate’er the faithless people say.
Her life is lone, he sits apart,
He loves her yet, she will not weep,
Tho’ rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.
He
He
He
He
thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
reads the secret of the star,
seems so near and yet so far,
looks so cold: she thinks him kind.
She keeps the gift of years before,
A wither’d violet is her bliss:
She knows not what his greatness is,
For that, for all, she loves him more.
For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things.
Her faith is fixt and cannot move,
She darkly feels him great and wise,
She dwells on him with faithful eyes,
‘I cannot understand: I love.’
XCVIII.
You leave us: you will see the Rhine,
And those fair hills I sail’d below,
When I was there with him; and go
481
By summer belts of wheat and vine
To where he breathed his latest breath,
That City. All her splendour seems
No livelier than the wisp that gleams
On Lethe in the eyes of Death.
Let her great Danube rolling fair
Enwind her isles, unmark’d of me:
I have not seen, I will not see
Vienna; rather dream that there,
A treble darkness, Evil haunts
The birth, the bridal; friend from friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend
Above more graves, a thousand wants
Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey
By each cold hearth, and sadness flings
Her shadow on the blaze of kings:
And yet myself have heard him say,
That not in any mother town
With statelier progress to and fro
The double tides of chariots flow
By park and suburb under brown
Of lustier leaves; nor more content,
He told me, lives in any crowd,
When all is gay with lamps, and loud
With sport and song, in booth and tent,
Imperial halls, or open plain;
And wheels the circled dance, and breaks
The rocket molten into flakes
Of crimson or in emerald rain.
XCIX.
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
So loud with voices of the birds,
482
So thick with lowings of the herds,
Day, when I lost the flower of men;
Who tremblest thro’ thy darkling red
On yon swoll’n brook that bubbles fast
By meadows breathing of the past,
And woodlands holy to the dead;
Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves
A song that slights the coming care,
And Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves;
Who wakenest with thy balmy breath
To myriads on the genial earth,
Memories of bridal, or of birth,
And unto myriads more, of death.
O wheresoever those may be,
Betwixt the slumber of the poles,
To-day they count as kindred souls;
They know me not, but mourn with me.
C.
I climb the hill: from end to end
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend;
No gray old grange, or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead,
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;
Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw
That hears the latest linnet trill,
Nor quarry trench’d along the hill
And haunted by the wrangling daw;
Nor runlet tinkling from the rock;
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves
483
To left and right thro’ meadowy curves,
That feed the mothers of the flock;
But each has pleased a kindred eye,
And each reflects a kindlier day;
And, leaving these, to pass away,
I think once more he seems to die.
CI.
Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away;
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;
Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
The brook shall babble down the plain,
At noon or when the lesser wain
Is twisting round the polar star;
Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove;
Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger’s child;
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.
484
CII.
We leave the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky;
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,
Will shelter one of stranger race.
We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move,
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.
One whispers, ‘Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low love-language of the bird
In native hazels tassel-hung.’
The other answers, ‘Yea, but here
Thy feet have stray’d in after hours
With thy lost friend among the bowers,
And this hath made them trebly dear.’
These two have striven half the day,
And each prefers his separate claim,
Poor rivals in a losing game,
That will not yield each other way.
I turn to go: my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and farms;
They mix in one another’s arms
To one pure image of regret.
CIII.
On that last night before we went
From out the doors where I was bred,
I dream’d a vision of the dead,
Which left my after-morn content.
Methought I dwelt within a hall,
And maidens with me: distant hills
485
From hidden summits fed with rills
A river sliding by the wall.
The hall with harp and carol rang.
They sang of what is wise and good
And graceful. In the centre stood
A statue veil’d, to which they sang;
And which, tho’ veil’d, was known to me,
The shape of him I loved, and love
For ever: then flew in a dove
And brought a summons from the sea:
And when they learnt that I must go
They wept and wail’d, but led the way
To where a little shallop lay
At anchor in the flood below;
And on by many a level mead,
And shadowing bluff that made the banks,
We glided winding under ranks
Of iris, and the golden reed;
And still as vaster grew the shore
And roll’d the floods in grander space,
The maidens gather’d strength and grace
And presence, lordlier than before;
And I myself, who sat apart
And watch’d them, wax’d in every limb;
I felt the thews of Anakim,
The pulses of a Titan’s heart;
As one would sing the death of war,
And one would chant the history
Of that great race, which is to be,
And one the shaping of a star;
Until the forward-creeping tides
Began to foam, and we to draw
From deep to deep, to where we saw
A great ship lift her shining sides.
486
The man we loved was there on deck,
But thrice as large as man he bent
To greet us. Up the side I went,
And fell in silence on his neck:
Whereat those maidens with one mind
Bewail’d their lot; I did them wrong:
‘We served thee here’ they said, ‘so long,
And wilt thou leave us now behind?’
So rapt I was, they could not win
An answer from my lips, but he
Replying, ‘Enter likewise ye
And go with us:’ they enter’d in.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer’d her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.
CIV.
The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist.
A single peal of bells below,
That wakens at this hour of rest
A single murmur in the breast,
That these are not the bells I know.
Like strangers’ voices here they sound,
In lands where not a memory strays,
Nor landmark breathes of other days,
But all is new unhallow’d ground.
CV.
487
To-night ungather’d let us leave
This laurel, let this holly stand:
We live within the stranger’s land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.
Our father’s dust is left alone
And silent under other snows:
There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.
No more shall wayward grief abuse
The genial hour with mask and mime;
For change of place, like growth of time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.
Let cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.
But let no footstep beat the floor,
Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
For who would keep an ancient form
Thro’ which the spirit breathes no more?
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown;
No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
Run out your measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good.
CVI.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
488
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring
Ring
Ring
Ring
out old shapes of foul disease;
out the narrowing lust of gold;
out the thousand wars of old,
in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
CVII.
It is the day when he was born,
A bitter day that early sank
489
Behind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.
The time admits not flowers or leaves
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen’d eaves,
And bristles all the brakes and thorns
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs
Above the wood which grides and clangs
Its leafless ribs and iron horns
Together, in the drifts that pass
To darken on the rolling brine
That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine,
Arrange the board and brim the glass;
Bring in great logs and let them lie,
To make a solid core of heat;
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
Of all things ev’n as he were by;
We keep the day. With festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate’er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.
CVIII.
I will not shut me from my kind,
And, lest I stiffen into stone,
I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:
What profit lies in barren faith,
And vacant yearning, tho’ with might
To scale the heaven’s highest height,
Or dive below the wells of Death?
What find I in the highest place,
But mine own phantom chanting hymns?
490
And on the depths of death there swims
The reflex of a human face.
I'll rather take what fruit may be
Of sorrow under human skies:
’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise,
Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.
CIX.
Heart-affluence in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry;
The critic clearness of an eye,
That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk;
Seraphic intellect and force
To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassion’d logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course;
High nature amorous of the good,
But touch’d with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Thro’ all the years of April blood;
A love of freedom rarely felt,
Of freedom in her regal seat
Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt;
And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask’d, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;
All these have been, and thee mine eyes
Have look’d on: if they look’d in vain,
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
491
CX.
Thy converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years:
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight.
On thee the loyal-hearted hung,
The proud was half disarm’d of pride,
Nor cared the serpent at thy side
To flicker with his double tongue.
The stern were mild when thou wert by,
The flippant put himself to school
And heard thee, and the brazen fool
Was soften’d, and he knew not why;
While I, thy nearest, sat apart,
And felt thy triumph was as mine;
And loved them more, that they were thine,
The graceful tact, the Christian art;
Nor mine the sweetness or the skill,
But mine the love that will not tire,
And, born of love, the vague desire
That spurs an imitative will.
CXI.
The churl in spirit, up or down
Along the scale of ranks, thro’ all,
To him who grasps a golden ball,
By blood a king, at heart a clown;
The churl in spirit, howe’er he veil
His want in forms for fashion’s sake,
Will let his coltish nature break
At seasons thro’ the gilded pale:
For who can always act? but he,
To whom a thousand memories call,
492
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seem’d to be,
Best seem’d the thing he was, and join’d
Each office of the social hour
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind;
Nor ever narrowness or spite,
Or villain fancy fleeting by,
Drew in the expression of an eye,
Where God and Nature met in light;
And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil’d with all ignoble use.
CXII.
High wisdom holds my wisdom less,
That I, who gaze with temperate eyes
On glorious insufficiencies,
Set light by narrower perfectness.
But thou, that fillest all the room
Of all my love, art reason why
I seem to cast a careless eye
On souls, the lesser lords of doom.
For what wert thou? some novel power
Sprang up for ever at a touch,
And hope could never hope too much,
In watching thee from hour to hour,
Large elements in order brought,
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world-wide fluctuation sway’d
In vassal tides that follow’d thought.
493
CXIII.
’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee
Which not alone had guided me,
But served the seasons that may rise;
For can I doubt, who knew thee keen
In intellect, with force and skill
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil–
I doubt not what thou wouldst have been:
life in civic action warm,
soul on highest mission sent,
potent voice of Parliament,
pillar steadfast in the storm,
Should licensed boldness gather force,
Becoming, when the time has birth,
A lever to uplift the earth
And roll it in another course,
With thousand shocks that come and go,
With agonies, with energies,
With overthrowings, and with cries,
And undulations to and fro.
CXIV.
Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
But on her forehead sits a fire:
She sets her forward countenance
And leaps into the future chance,
Submitting all things to desire.
Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain–
She cannot fight the fear of death.
494
What is she, cut from love and faith,
But some wild Pallas from the brain
Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst
All barriers in her onward race
For power. Let her know her place;
She is the second, not the first.
A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger child:
For she is earthly of the mind,
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.
O, friend, who camest to thy goal
So early, leaving me behind,
I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity.
CXV.
Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown’d in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;
Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
495
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives
From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.
CXVI.
Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime?
Not all: the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,
Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.
Not all regret: the face will shine
Upon me, while I muse alone;
And that dear voice, I once have known,
Still speak to me of me and mine:
Yet less of sorrow lives in me
For days of happy commune dead;
Less yearning for the friendship fled,
Than some strong bond which is to be.
CXVII.
O days and hours, your work is this
To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from his embrace
For fuller gain of after bliss:
That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet;
496
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue,
For every grain of sand that runs,
And every span of shade that steals,
And every kiss of toothed wheels,
And all the courses of the suns.
CXVIII.
Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature’s earth and lime;
But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
Who throve and branch’d from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crown’d with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly
497
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
CXIX.
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, not as one that weeps
I come once more; the city sleeps;
I smell the meadow in the street;
I hear a chirp of birds; I see
Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,
And think of early days and thee,
And bless thee, for thy lips are bland,
And bright the friendship of thine eye;
And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh
I take the pressure of thine hand.
CXX.
I trust I have not wasted breath:
I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;
Not only cunning casts in clay:
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me? I would not stay.
Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.
498
CXXI.
Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen’d from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken’d in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world’s great work is heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light:
The market boat is on the stream,
And voices hail it from the brink;
Thou hear’st the village hammer clink,
And see’st the moving of the team.
Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name
For what is one, the first, the last,
Thou, like my present and my past,
Thy place is changed; thou art the same.
CXXII.
Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then,
While I rose up against my doom,
And yearn’d to burst the folded gloom,
To bare the eternal Heavens again,
To feel once more, in placid awe,
The strong imagination roll
A sphere of stars about my soul,
In all her motion one with law;
If thou wert with me, and the grave
Divide us not, be with me now,
And enter in at breast and brow,
499
Till all my blood, a fuller wave,
Be quicken’d with a livelier breath,
And like an inconsiderate boy,
As in the former flash of joy,
I slip the thoughts of life and death;
And all the breeze of Fancy blows,
And every dew-drop paints a bow,
The wizard lightnings deeply glow,
And every thought breaks out a rose.
CXXIII.
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho’ my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
CXXIV.
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
Nor thro’ the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
500
If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,
I heard a voice ‘believe no more’
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer’d ‘I have felt.’
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.
CXXV.
Whatever I have said or sung,
Some bitter notes my harp would give,
Yea, tho’ there often seem’d to live
A contradiction on the tongue,
Yet Hope had never lost her youth;
She did but look through dimmer eyes;
Or Love but play’d with gracious lies,
Because he felt so fix’d in truth:
And if the song were full of care,
He breathed the spirit of the song;
And if the words were sweet and strong
He set his royal signet there;
Abiding with me till I sail
To seek thee on the mystic deeps,
And this electric force, that keeps
501
A thousand pulses dancing, fail.
CXXVI.
Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.
Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, tho’ as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep
Encompass’d by his faithful guard,
And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well.
CXXVII.
And all is well, tho’ faith and form
Be sunder’d in the night of fear;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm,
Proclaiming social truth shall spread,
And justice, ev’n tho’ thrice again
The red fool-fury of the Seine
Should pile her barricades with dead.
But ill for him that wears a crown,
And him, the lazar, in his rags:
They tremble, the sustaining crags;
The spires of ice are toppled down,
And molten up, and roar in flood;
The fortress crashes from on high,
The brute earth lightens to the sky,
And the great Æon sinks in blood,
502
And compass’d by the fires of Hell;
While thou, dear spirit, happy star,
O’erlook’st the tumult from afar,
And smilest, knowing all is well.
CXXVIII.
The love that rose on stronger wings,
Unpalsied when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith
That sees the course of human things.
No doubt vast eddies in the flood
Of onward time shall yet be made,
And throned races may degrade;
Yet O ye mysteries of good,
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,
If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new;
If this were all your mission here,
To
To
To
To
draw, to sheathe a useless sword,
fool the crowd with glorious lies,
cleave a creed in sects and cries,
change the bearing of a word,
To shift an arbitrary power,
To cramp the student at his desk,
To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower;
Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours. I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil coöperant to an end.
CXXIX.
503
Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;
Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;
Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.
CXXX.
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho’ I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho’ mix’d with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.
CXXXI.
504
O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure,
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer’d years
To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.
_________
O true and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than any song.
Nor have I felt so much of bliss
Since first he told me that he loved
A daughter of our house; nor proved
Since that dark day a day like this;
Tho’ I since then have number’d o’er
Some thrice three years: they went and came,
Remade the blood and changed the frame,
And yet is love not less, but more;
No longer caring to embalm
In dying songs a dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,
And moulded in colossal calm.
Regret is dead, but love is more
Than in the summers that are flown,
For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before;
Which makes appear the songs I made
505
As echoes out of weaker times,
As half but idle brawling rhymes,
The sport of random sun and shade.
But where is she, the bridal flower,
That must he made a wife ere noon?
She enters, glowing like the moon
Of Eden on its bridal bower:
On me she bends her blissful eyes
And then on thee; they meet thy look
And brighten like the star that shook
Betwixt the palms of paradise.
O when her life was yet in bud,
He too foretold the perfect rose.
For thee she grew, for thee she grows
For ever, and as fair as good.
And thou art worthy; full of power;
As gentle; liberal-minded, great,
Consistent; wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
But now set out: the noon is near,
And I must give away the bride;
She fears not, or with thee beside
And me behind her, will not fear.
For I that danced her on my knee,
That watch’d her on her nurse’s arm,
That shielded all her life from harm
At last must part with her to thee;
Now waiting to be made a wife,
Her feet, my darling, on the dead;
Their pensive tablets round her head,
And the most living words of life
Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,
The ‘wilt thou’ answer’d, and again
The ‘wilt thou’ ask’d, till out of twain
506
Her sweet ‘I will’ has made you one.
Now sign your names, which shall be read,
Mute symbols of a joyful morn,
By village eyes as yet unborn;
The names are sign’d, and overhead
Begins the clash and clang that tells
The joy to every wandering breeze;
The blind wall rocks, and on the trees
The dead leaf trembles to the bells.
O happy hour, and happier hours
Await them. Many a merry face
Salutes them–maidens of the place,
That pelt us in the porch with flowers.
O happy hour, behold the bride
With him to whom her hand I gave.
They leave the porch, they pass the grave
That has to-day its sunny side.
To-day the grave is bright for me,
For them the light of life increased,
Who stay to share the morning feast,
Who rest to-night beside the sea.
Let all my genial spirits advance
To meet and greet a whiter sun;
My drooping memory will not shun
The foaming grape of eastern France.
It circles round, and fancy plays,
And hearts are warm’d and faces bloom,
As drinking health to bride and groom
We wish them store of happy days.
Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance, perchance, among the rest,
And, tho’ in silence, wishing joy.
507
But they must go, the time draws on,
And those white-favour’d horses wait;
They rise, but linger; it is late;
Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.
A shade falls on us like the dark
From little cloudlets on the grass,
But sweeps away as out we pass
To range the woods, to roam the park,
Discussing how their courtship grew,
And talk of others that are wed,
And how she look’d, and what he said,
And back we come at fall of dew.
Again the feast, the speech, the glee,
The shade of passing thought, the wealth
Of words and wit, the double health,
The crowning cup, the three-times-three,
And last the dance;–till I retire:
Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,
And high in heaven the streaming cloud,
And on the downs a rising fire:
And rise, O moon, from yonder down,
Till over down and over dale
All night the shining vapour sail
And pass the silent-lighted town,
The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,
And catch at every mountain head,
And o’er the friths that branch and spread
Their sleeping silver thro’ the hills;
And touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the wall;
And breaking let the splendour fall
To spangle all the happy shores
By which they rest, and ocean sounds,
And, star and system rolling past,
508
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
And, moved thro’ life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;
No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer’d, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;
Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
261 Integral Yoga
44 Christianity
36 Poetry
35 Philosophy
33 Occultism
20 Fiction
18 Psychology
8 Yoga
7 Science
7 Integral Theory
5 Theosophy
3 Mysticism
3 Hinduism
3 Education
2 Sufism
1 Zen
1 Thelema
1 Buddhism
1 Baha i Faith
1 Alchemy
258 Sri Aurobindo
75 The Mother
40 Nolini Kanta Gupta
38 Satprem
19 Plotinus
18 Aleister Crowley
17 H P Lovecraft
16 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
14 Carl Jung
8 Jorge Luis Borges
7 Saint Augustine of Hippo
7 Plato
6 Rudolf Steiner
6 A B Purani
5 Robert Browning
5 Jordan Peterson
4 Thubten Chodron
4 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Swami Krishnananda
3 Sri Ramakrishna
3 Percy Bysshe Shelley
3 Ken Wilber
3 James George Frazer
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
3 Aldous Huxley
2 Vyasa
2 Swami Vivekananda
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Saint John of Climacus
2 Li Bai
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 Edgar Allan Poe
2 Aristotle
2 Alice Bailey
88 Record of Yoga
46 The Synthesis Of Yoga
17 Lovecraft - Poems
16 Letters On Yoga IV
15 The Life Divine
11 Essays On The Gita
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
10 The Human Cycle
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
9 Letters On Yoga II
8 Questions And Answers 1956
8 Magick Without Tears
8 Liber ABA
8 Labyrinths
7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
7 Letters On Yoga I
7 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Phenomenon of Man
6 Savitri
6 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
5 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
5 Talks
5 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
5 Mysterium Coniunctionis
5 Maps of Meaning
5 Essays Divine And Human
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
5 Browning - Poems
5 Agenda Vol 08
5 Agenda Vol 05
5 Agenda Vol 01
4 Vedic and Philological Studies
4 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
4 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
4 Questions And Answers 1953
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
4 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
4 Let Me Explain
4 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
4 City of God
4 Agenda Vol 13
4 Agenda Vol 02
3 Words Of Long Ago
3 The Study and Practice of Yoga
3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
3 The Perennial Philosophy
3 Theosophy
3 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
3 The Golden Bough
3 The Future of Man
3 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
3 Shelley - Poems
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Questions And Answers 1954
3 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
3 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
3 Prayers And Meditations
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
3 On Education
3 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
3 Isha Upanishad
3 Hymn of the Universe
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
3 Agenda Vol 10
2 Words Of The Mother II
2 Vishnu Purana
2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2 The Secret Of The Veda
2 The Red Book Liber Novus
2 The Lotus Sutra
2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
2 The Integral Yoga
2 The Divine Comedy
2 The Bible
2 Poetics
2 Li Bai - Poems
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Faust
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Collected Poems
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
2 Agenda Vol 07
2 Agenda Vol 04
2 Agenda Vol 03
2 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
But the Qabalah is more. It also lays the foundation on which rests another archaic science- Magic. Not to be Confused with the conjurer's sleight-of-hand, Magic has been defined by Aleister Crowley as "the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will." Dion Fortune qualifies this nicely with an added clause, "changes in consciousness."
The Qabalah reveals the nature of certain physical and psychological phenomena. Once these are apprehended, understood and correlated, the student can use the principles of Magic to exercise control over life's conditions and circumstances not otherwise possible. In short. Magic provides the practical application of the theories supplied by the Qabalah.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Christian missionaries gave the finishing touch to the process of transformation. They ridiculed as relics of a barbarous age the images and rituals of the Hindu religion. They tried to persuade India that the teachings of her saints and seers were the cause of her downfall, that her Vedas, Puranas, and other scriptures were filled with superstition. Christianity, they maintained, had given the white races position and power in this world and assurance of happiness in the next; therefore Christianity was the best of all religions. Many intelligent young Hindus became converted. The man in the street was Confused. The majority of the educated grew materialistic in their mental outlook. Everyone living near Calcutta or the other strong-holds of Western culture, even those who attempted to cling to the orthodox traditions of Hindu society, became infected by the new uncertainties and the new beliefs.
But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited retort of the young Gadadhar: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
--
During his second visit, about a month later, suddenly, at the touch of the Master, Narendra felt overwhelmed and saw the walls of the room and everything around him whirling and vanishing. "What are you doing to me?" he cried in terror. "I have my father and mother at home." He saw his own ego and the whole universe almost swallowed in a nameless void. With a laugh the Master easily restored him. Narendra thought he might have been hypnotized, but he could not understand how a monomaniac could cast a spell over the mind of a strong person like himself. He returned home more Confused than ever, resolved to be henceforth on his guard before this strange man.
But during his third visit Narendra fared no better. This time, at the Master's touch, he lost consciousness entirely. While he was still in that state, Sri Ramakrishna questioned him concerning his spiritual antecedents and whereabouts, his mission in this world, and the duration of his mortal life. The answers confirmed what the Master himself had known and inferred. Among other things, he came to know that Narendra was a sage who had already attained perfection, and that the day he learnt his real nature he would give up his body in yoga, by an act of will.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
of all sensible cults; it is not to be Confused with other
objects of the mystic aviary, such as the swan, phoenix,
0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
Furthermore, today's hyperspecialization in socioeconomic functioning has come to preclude important popular philosophic considerations of the synergetic significance of, for instance, such historically important events as the discovery within the general region of experimental inquiry known as virology that the as-yet popularly assumed validity of the concepts of animate and inanimate phenomena have been experimentally invalidated. Atoms and crystal complexes of atoms were held to be obviously inanimate; the protoplasmic cells of biological phenomena were held to be obviously animate. It was deemed to be common sense that warm- blooded, moist, and soft-skinned humans were clearly not to be Confused with hard, cold granite or steel objects. A clear-cut threshold between animate and inanimate was therefore assumed to exist as a fundamental dichotomy of all physical phenomena. This seemingly placed life exclusively within the bounds of the physical.
The supposed location of the threshold between animate and inanimate was methodically narrowed down by experimental science until it was confined specifically within the domain of virology. Virologists have been too busy, for instance, with their DNA-RNA genetic code isolatings, to find time to see the synergetic significance to society of the fact that they have found that no physical threshold does in fact exist between animate and inanimate. The possibility of its existence vanished because the supposedly unique physical qualities of both animate and inanimate have persisted right across yesterday's supposed threshold in both directions to permeate one another's-previously perceived to be exclusive- domains. Subsequently, what was animate has become foggier and foggier, and what is inanimate clearer and clearer. All organisms consist physically and in entirety of inherently inanimate atoms. The inanimate alone is not only omnipresent but is alone experimentally demonstrable. Belated news of the elimination of this threshold must be interpreted to mean that whatever life may be, it has not been isolated and thereby identified as residual in the biological cell, as had been supposed by the false assumption that there was a separate physical phenomenoncalled animate within which life existed. No life per se has been isolated. The threshold between animate and inanimate has vanished. Those chemists who are preoccupied in synthesizing the particular atomically structured molecules identified as the prime constituents of humanly employed organisms will, even if they are chemically successful, be as remote from creating life as are automobile manufacturers from creating the human drivers of their automobiles. Only the physical connections and development complexes of distinctly "nonlife" atoms into molecules, into cells, into animals, has been and will be discovered. The genetic coding of the design controls of organic systems offers no more explanation of life than did the specifications of the designs of the telephone system's apparatus and operation explain the nature of the life that communicates weightlessly to life over the only physically ponderable telephone system. Whatever else life may be, we know it is weightless. At the moment of death, no weight is lost. All the chemicals, including the chemist's life ingredients, are present, but life has vanished. The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks Confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some element or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefa thers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The spiritual life (adhyatma jvana), the religious life (dharma jvana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not Confuse the three together. The ordinary life is that of the average human consciousness separated from its own true self and from the Divine and led by the common habits of the mind, life and body which are the laws of the Ignorance.
The religious life is a movement of the same ignorant human consciousness, turning or trying to turn away from the earth towards the Divine but as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of some sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bonds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be the first approach to the spiritual, but very often it is only a turning about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue. The spiritual life, on the contrary, proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one's true being and comes first into direct and living contact and then into union with the Divine. For the spiritual seeker this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I said that the supreme artist is superconscious: his consciousness withdraws from the normal mental consciousness and becomes awake and alive in another order of consciousness. To that superior consciousness the artist's mentalityhis ideas and dispositions, his judgments and valuations and acquisitions, in other words, his normal psychological make-upserves as a channel, an instrument, a medium for transcription. Now, there are two stages, or rather two lines of activity in the processus, for they may be overlapping and practically simultaneous. First, there is the withdrawal and the in-gathering of consciousness and then its reappearance into expression. The consciousness retires into a secret or subtle worldWords-worth's "recollected in tranquillity"and comes back with the riches gathered or transmuted there. But the purity of the gold thus garnered and stalled in the artistry of words and sounds or lines and colours depends altogether upon the purity of the channel through which it has to pass. The mental vehicle receives and records and it can do so to perfection if it is perfectly in tune with what it has to receive and record; otherwise the transcription becomes mixed and blurred, a faint or Confused echo, a poor show. The supreme creators are precisely those in whom the receptacle, the instrumental faculties offer the least resistance and record with absolute fidelity the experiences of the over or inner consciousness. In Shakespeare, in Homer, in Valmiki the inflatus of the secret consciousness, the inspiration, as it is usually termed, bears down, sweeps away all obscurity or contrariety in the recording mentality, suffuses it with its own glow and puissance, indeed resolves it into its own substance, as it were. And the difference between the two, the secret norm and the recording form, determines the scale of the artist's creative value. It happens often that the obstruction of a too critically observant and self-conscious brain-mind successfully blocks up the flow of something supremely beautiful that wanted to come down and waited for an opportunity.
Artists themselves, almost invariably, speak of their inspiration: they look upon themselves more or less as mere instruments of something or some Power that is beyond them, beyond their normal consciousness attached to the brain-mind, that controls them and which they cannot control. This perception has been given shape in myths and legends. Goddess Saraswati or the Muses are, however, for them not a mere metaphor but concrete realities. To what extent a poet may feel himself to be a mere passive, almost inanimate, instrumentnothing more than a mirror or a sensitive photographic plateis illustrated in the famous case of Coleridge. His Kubla Khan, as is well known, he heard in sleep and it was a long poem very distinctly recited to him, but when he woke up and wanted to write it down he could remember only the opening lines, the rest having gone completely out of his memory; in other words, the poem was ready-composed somewhere else, but the transmitting or recording instrument was faulty and failed him. Indeed, it is a common experience to hear in sleep verses or musical tunes and what seem then to be very beautiful things, but which leave no trace on the brain and are not recalled in memory.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A message misunderstood, a thought Confused
Missing its aim is all that it can speak
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And took the Confused refrain of human hopes
And made of them a sweet and happy call;
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In a general way, a dream leaves a Confused and fleeting impression, whereas an experience awakens a deep and lasting
feeling.
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We fear Mr. Huxley has completely missed the point of the cryptic sentence. He seems to take it as meaning that human kindness and morality are a means to the recovery of the Lost Way-although codes of ethics and deliberate choices are not sufficient in themselves, they are only a second best, yet they mark the rise of self-consciousness and have to be utilised to pass on into the unitive knowledge that is Tao. This explanation or amplification seems to us somewhat Confused and irrelevant to the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in man with his human mental knowledge: it is man's humanity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the human values, all the moralities, sarva dharmn, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the dualities, good and evil, the Great Way is beyond them and cannot be limited or measured by the relative standards. Especially in the modern age we see the decline and almost the disappearance of the Greater Light and instead a thousand smaller lights are lighted which vainly strive to dispel the gathering darkness. These do not help, they are false lights and men are apt to cling to them, shutting their eyes to the true one which is not that that one worships here and now, nedam yadidam upsate.
There is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written Scriptures:
0 1958-01-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It is an error to Confuse Joy and Felicity. They are two very different things. Not only are their vibrations different, but their colors are different. The color of Felicity is blue, a clear silvery blue (the blue of the Ashram flag), very luminous and transparent. And it has a passive and fresh quality that refreshes and rejuvenates.
Whereas Joy is a golden rose color, a pale gold with a tinge of red, a very pale red. It is active, warm, fortifying, intensifying. The first is sweetness, the second is tenderness.
0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its not a question of being conscious. There is no doubt that man is more evolved than the tiger, but the tiger is more divine than man. One shouldnt Confuse things. These are two entirely different things.
The Divine is everywhere, in everything. We should never forget itnot for a second should we forget it. He is everywhere, in everything; and in an unconscious but spontaneous, therefore sincere, way, all that exists below the mental manifestation is divine, without mixture; in other words, it exists spontaneously and in harmony with its nature. It is man with his mind who has introduced the idea of guilt. Naturally, he is much more conscious! Theres no question about it, its a fact, although what we call consciousness (what we call it, that is, what man calls consciousness) is the power to objectify and mentalize things. It is not the true consciousness, but its what men call consciousness. So according to the human mode, it is obvious that man is much more conscious than the animal, but the human brings in sin and perversion which do not exist outside of this state we call consciouswhich in fact is not conscious but merely consists in mentalizing things and in having the ability to objectify them.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But all this is still in suspense, on the way to realization, moving forward progressively; therefore, unless we are able to see the outcome, we cant understand a thing. We get Confused. Only when we see the outcome, the final realization, only when we have TOUCHED there, will everything be understood then it will be as clear and as simple as can be. But meanwhile, my relationships with different people are very funny, utterly amusing!
Those who have what I would call the more outer relationship compared to the other (although it is not really so)the relationship of yoga, of sadhanaconsider the others superstitious; and the others, who have faith OI perception, or the Grace to have understood what Sri Aurobindo meant (perhaps even before knowing what he said, but in any event, after he said it), discard the others as ignorant unbelievers! And there are all the gradations in between, so it really becomes quite funny!
0 1959-06-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have received your card of the 13th. I dare not write, for everything is too Confused as concerns the immediate realities.
The only thing that affirms itself with a certitude and a greater and greater force is my soul. I cling to It with all my strength. It is my only refuge. If I did not have that, I would throw my life overboard, for the outer circumstances and the immediate future seem to me impossible, unlivable.
0 1960-10-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Each thing carries within itself its own truthits absolute truth, so luminous and so clear. And if you are in contact with THAT, then everything falls into place so wonderfully; but men are NOT in contact with that, they are always in contact through their thought: what they think of something, what they feel about something, the meaning they attach to it (or sometimes its worse)but the highest they go is always the thought they have of it. Thats what creates all this mixture and all this disorderthings in themselves are very good, and then they get Confused.
Z's work involved seeing Mother everyday to watch over her health and her food.
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is the origin of such legends as Shangri-la. But 'psychics' most often Confuse two planes of reality, attri buting to their SUBTLE vision a physical reality which it does not have or no longer has: they have merely entered into contact with the memory of a place for places, like beings, have a memory.
At first, Mother had said, 'But it's impossible.' Then, laughing, she had the word deleted.
0 1961-03-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He doesnt speak about these things with N. Perhaps N. has Confused two different times or. Because Xs way of expressing himself can seem very vague when you dont know him well, especially when it concerns time and place. This attack may not have occurred during the meditation with you, but beforeh and or elsewhere.
I dont know, because N. said quite categorically: X told me that on arriving for this mornings meditation he had some difficulties and it took him five minutes to get over it; an adverse force was present. N. was quite positive and I even made him repeat it. Are you sure, I asked him, that it didnt happen when X came to you? No, N. replied, X met that force THERE. He said THERE! Yet that it could have been there, with all the force, light and peace that descended is incomprehensible to me. Because the first thing I do when I sit down is to make a thorough cleaning.
0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you know, what seems to have gone is all this illusory enthusiasm we Confuse with. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it very often, and each time I read that sentence of his its like an icy shower (Mother laughs). I no longer know the exact wording, but he uses two words: illusory hopes all the human illusory hopes. It goes plunk! Well, all that has entirely gone. When I saw it I deliberately rejected it. Yes, I said to myself, we are always trying to cheer ourselves up with hopes.
(Mother turns towards the tape recorder) Dont keep all that. Its not worth it, dont keep it. Its quite useless. Take it out.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, just to give you an example: when I first began to work (not with Theon personally but with an acquaintance of his in France, a boy4 who was a friend of my brother), well, I had a series of visions (I knew nothing about India, mind you, nothing, just as most Europeans know nothing about it: a country full of people with certain customs and religions, a Confused and hazy history, where a lot of extraordinary things are said to have happened. I knew nothing.) Well, in several of these visions I saw Sri Aurobindo just as he looked physically, but glorified; that is, the same man I would see on my first visit, almost thin, with that golden-bronze hue and rather sharp profile, an unruly beard and long hair, dressed in a dhoti with one end of it thrown over his shoulder, arms and chest bare, and bare feet. At the time I thought it was vision attire! I mean I really knew nothing about India; I had never seen Indians dressed in the Indian way.
Well, I saw him. I experienced what were at once symbolic visions and spiritual FACTS: absolutely decisive spiritual experiences and facts of meeting and having a united perception of the Work to be accomplished. And in these visions I did something I had never done physically: I prostrated before him in the Hindu manner. All this without any comprehension in the little brain (I mean I really didnt know what I was doing or how I was doing itnothing at all). I did it, and at the same time the outer being was asking, What is all this?!
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Welleverything is a bit Confused. I feel that everything is being cut away from me, on all sides; the feeling of being pushed onto a path where Ill end up regarding the world as an illusion.
Thats your thorny garment again!
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Has Mother Confused Clouet with Corneille de Lyon? Because it seems there is no Clouet at Blois, but there is a portrait of Madeleine of Scotland, daughter of Franois I, painted by Corneille de Lyon. Unless Mother Confused Blois with another town and another chteau?
Here we have a choice between several chilling faces. Of the five portraits of doges by Titian, that of the doge Antonio Crimani, painted between 1555 and 1576, is one of the few that have remained in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Might this be the one?
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, the remarkable thing is that the Vibration (what we could call the quality of the vibration that comes from the Lord) is constructive: it constructs, it is peaceful and luminous; while that other vibration, of desire and such like, complicates, destroys and Confuses, it twists things Confuses and distorts them, twists them. And it takes away the light: it makes for a dullness, which can be intensified with violent movements to the point of very dark shadows. But even where there is no passion, where passion doesnt interfere, thats how it is. You see, the physical reality has become nothing but a field of vibrations mingling together and, unfortunately, clashing together too, in conflict with one another. And the clash, the conflict, is the climax of that kind of turmoil, of disorder and confusion created by certain vibrations, which are ultimately vibrations of ignorance (they come because people dont know, they are vibrations of ignorance), and are too small, too narrow, too limitedtoo short. The problem isnt seen from a psychological standpoint at all: its nothing but vibrations.
If we look at it from a psychological standpoint On the mental plane, its very easy; on the vital plane, its not too difficult; on the physical plane, its a little heavier, because desires are passed off as needs. But there too, there has been a field of experience these last few days: the study of medical and scientific conceptions on the bodys makeup, its needs, and whats good or bad for it. And all this, in its essence, again boils down to the same question of vibrations. It was quite interesting: there was an appearance (because all things as the ordinary consciousness sees them are nothing but appearances), there was an appearance of food poisoning (mushrooms that are thought to have been bad). It was the object of a particular study to find out whether there was something absolute about the poisoning, or whether it was relative, that is, based on ignorance, a wrong reaction and the absence of the true Vibration. And the conclusion was as follows: its a question of proportion between the amount, the sum of the vibrations that belong to the Supreme, and the sum of the vibrations that still belong to darkness. Depending on the proportion, the poisoning appears as something concrete, real, or else as something that can be eliminated, in other words, that doesnt resist the influence of the Vibration of Truth. And it was very interesting, because, immediately, as soon as the consciousness became aware of the cause of the trouble in the bodys functioning (the consciousness perceived where it came from and what it was), immediately the observation began, with the idea: Lets see what happens. First set the body perfectly at rest with the certainty (which is always there) that nothing happens except by the Lords Will and that the effect too is the Lords Will, all the consequences are the Lords Will, and consequently one should be very still. So the body is very still: untroubled, not agitated, it doesnt vibrate, nothingvery still. Once this is achieved, to what extent are the effects unavoidable? Because a certain quantity of matter that contained an element unfavorable to the bodys elements and life was absorbed, what is the proportion between the favorable and the unfavorable elements, or between the favorable and the unfavorable vibrations? And I saw very clearly: the proportion varies according to the amount of cells in the body that are under the direct Influence, that respond to the supreme Vibration alone, and the amount of other cells that still belong to the ordinary way of vibrating. It was very clear, because I could see all the possibilities, from the ordinary mass [of cells], which is completely upset by that intrusion and where you have to fight with all the ordinary methods to get rid of the undesirable element, to the totality of the cellular response to the supreme Force, which renders the intrusion perfectly innocuous. But this is still a dream for tomorrowwere on the way. But the proportion has become rather favorable (I cant say all-powerful, far from it, but rather favorable), so that the consequences of the ill-being didnt last very long and the damage was, so to say, minimal.
0 1963-11-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But beware of willing the wrong way because thats no longer a will, its a whimdont Confuse the two. Will with the supreme Will.
We shouldnt hunch our shouldersit makes us grumble terribly within ourselves and its useless.
0 1964-01-29, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Laughing) Things have never been so bad! And strangelystrangely enough there is behind all that a kind of SOLIDITY that has never been there before. I have noticed this since yesterday. Outwardly, things have never been so Confused, so complicated, so unpleasant, so difficult, yet there is somewhere (as if underneath or within, I dont know how to explain) a solidity, something that has a solid evenness like a base that NOTHING can shake. This I have never felt previously. I have felt it for the last two days.
As though something were established that is UNSHAKABLE. And outwardly, things have never been so catastrophic. I find this interesting.
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The photos attempt to be very artistic. They are taken from quite unusual angles and some are very fine. On the whole, a little vulgar: too many people kissing, socks hanging in the sunthey Confuse the artistic with the uncommon, the unconventional. To be unconventional is very good, but still it could be directed towards the Beautiful rather than Anyway. I was looking at the book, turning the pages, and while looking I thought, Well, really, someone who doesnt know Paris at all would get a queer idea of it! There isnt one single picture that makes you say, Oh, thats beautiful, except a view of the Seine and also a few trees, which could as well be in the countryside. And I kept turning and turning the pages. Suddenly I saw (I had my magnifying glass to see better) a view of the banks of the Seine with the boxes of those what are they called?
The bouquinistes.1
--
That photograph was clearer than the others, less Confusedit was clearer. And I looked at all the details, thinking, A pity the boxes werent open, the books could have been seen, it would have looked better. In other words, I looked at the photo attentively and saw all the details, the different intensities of shade and light: it wasnt just a passing glance. Then I went on looking up to the end of the book and gave it to someone to look at. Naturally, the first thing that someone said to me was, You dont quite get an impression of Paris. I said, True, but there was one photo that gave a very good impression of Paris: that of the bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine. He looked surprised; so I said, Of course! I took the book and started turning the pages. I turned all the pagesmy photo wasnt there! So I thought, Ive missed it (I was looking without my magnifying glass), I must have missed it. I took my magnifying glass, turned all the pages starting from the other end, very carefullynothing! No bouquinistes. I turned the pages a third time (Mother laughs), still no bouquinistes! I said to myself, Theres an aberration somewhere something that makes me turn two pages at a time or that veils my sight. So I said, All right, Ill look tomorrow morning, and I put the book aside.
The next morning I was alone, concentrating I concentrated a lot, saying to myself, I do not want to be under an illusion, I do not want to be fooled by something. I had seen the photo as clearly as I saw it, I looked at it for several MINUTES. Which is to say that I am absolutely sure of what I saw.
--
It gave me an extraordinary intensity of aspiration in the body. I spent a part of the night in that tension: may all those illusions disappear, may there be only something wholly true, true, true ESSENTIALLY true, not what people are in the habit of calling trueone shouldnt Confuse the real with the true (in this regard the body has made great progress!). But the photo isnt there.
I thought it was perhaps the beginning of a new series of experiences.
0 1964-03-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I did see something, but I dont think its very interesting, or collective either. I seemed to kind myself in an enormous plane, a very powerful one, which managed to take off (a takeoff which, besides, gave me a very pleasant sensation). It took off, but it was hedgehopping, that was dangerous. At first, the space before us was clear anyway, but we were flying very low and skimming the trees. Then, suddenly there were all kinds of buildings that stood in the way, in particular a huge tower, like a church steeple, of a very black color. I dont know how it happened, but the plane (or the force) entered itoddly enough and inside it was completely dark; there was only a sort of opening in a watt, and beyond it, a patch of blue sky. It sounds impossible, but the plane tried to go through that hose, and when we tried to, that sort of opening turned out to be covered with very thick glass that stopped us from going through. So I remember that with a pointed instrument I broke the entire window to enable us to go through. We did, but it was too small, the opening was too narrow for such an enormous plane. Afterwards, its very Confused; I only remember that in a hidden place, there was a sort of huge gold ciborium, very beautifulit was hidden. But all the rest is quite Confused.
Oh, but its interesting.
--
When I saw that gold ciborium, it was very Confused, but some one was there with me (I dont know who, I didnt see him), and I said to him, Have you seen this beautiful ciborium! He replied, No, but I KNEW he had seen it. Then I understood that if he said he had seen it, something bad would occur,5 people would come or whatever, anyway it was important that people shouldnt know he had also seen it.
It was important that people shouldnt know it was there.
0 1964-09-16, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, the solution is to act from the divine impulse alone, to speak from the divine impulse alone, to eat from the divine impulse alone. Thats what is difficult, because, naturally, you immediately Confuse the divine impulse with your personal impulses!
That was the idea, I think, of all the apostles of renunciation: eliminate all that comes from outside or from below, so that if something from above manifests, you will be in a fit state to receive it. But from the collective point of view, its a process that may take thousands of years! From the individual point of view, its possible; but then the aspiration to receive the true impulse should be kept intactnot the aspiration to total liberation, but the aspiration to the ACTIVE identification with the Supreme, in other words, to want only what He wants, to do only what He wants, to exist only through Him, in Him.
0 1964-10-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And Manifestation automatically implies unfolding. And this conception (because ail this is the way in which the human consciousness is able to approach things), this conception of an eternal simultaneousnessan eternal, coexistent simultaneousnessis a very clumsy and human translation of the state of nonmanifestation. Because Manifestation automatically implies unfolding: without unfolding there is no Manifestation. But human thought, even speculative thought, is so clumsy and childish; it always Confuses the two notions: the notion of unfolding and the notion of the unforeseen or unexpected; the notion of unfolding and the notion of the new creation, of something that is created and was notall this is so (Mother knocks her papers across the table). You see (laughing), my things are protesting!
Its in this problem that I have been living these past few days. And mark you, it isnt at all the speculation of a higher being or a being who belongs to other worlds: its the substance of physical life that wants to know its own inner, deeper law.
0 1966-03-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Whats lamentable above all is the way men Confuse power with violence. That sort of ignorant feeling that thinks power must manifest as violence.3 Violence is an asuric deformation. True power acts in peacea peace like this (gesture of massive descent), which nothing can disturb.
See Agenda V, August 14, 1964.
0 1966-07-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The resistance of inertia in consciousnesses and in Matter are the reason why that Action, instead of being direct and perfectly harmonious, becomes Confused, full of contradictions, shocks and conflicts. Instead of everything working out normally, I might say, smoothly (as it should), all that resisting, opposing inertia causes things to start clashing together in a tangled movement, with disorder and destruction, which are made necessary only by the resistance but were NOT indispensable: they might not have beenthey should not have been, to tell the truth. Because that Will, that Power, is a Power of perfect harmony in which each thing is in its place, and It organizes everything wonderfully: It comes as an absolutely luminous and perfect organization, which you can see when you have the vision. But when It descends and presses down on Matter, everything starts seething and resisting. So to want to ascribe to the divine Action and the divine Power the disorder and confusion and destruction is yet more human nonsense. Its inertia (not to speak of ill will), its inertia that CAUSES the catastrophe. It isnt that the catastrophe is willed, or even that its foreseen: it is CAUSED by the resistance.
Then, added to this is the vision of the action of the Grace that comes and mitigates the results wherever possible, that is to say, wherever its accepted. And thats what explains that the aspiration, the faith, the complete trust of the human, terrestrial element, have a power of harmonization, because they allow the Grace to come and mend the consequences of blind resistance.
0 1967-03-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, they all make the same mistake: they Confuse truth with the old idea of virtue. They all make the same mistake as the moral error.
And above all, they want a truth expressed in a few very clear and well-defined words, so they can say, This is true. The old calamity of religions: This is trueconsequently the rest is falsehood.
0 1967-07-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I dont know if its not a fabrication, because it was all going on in a rather dark and Confused atmosphere. I remember that Sri Aurobindo was lying down and had to undergo a serious operation: an operation on his two feet, and on all his toes. Then he left for the operation (in fact, he left on his own for the operation, unaided). After a few moments I saw him come back (yet it was a long operation), I saw him come back with his two feet heavily bandaged: there were big bandages on his two feet. Then I was quite astonished, because I saw him walk very soon afterwards: he no longer had any bandages and was wearing new shoes.
Oh!
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We always Confuse two notions.
It is from the universal and spiritual point of view that, not exactly good as people understand it, but the True, the Truth, will have the final word, that is well known. In other words, the Divine will eventually be victorious. That is what has been said, what all those who have lived a spiritual life have said and it is an absolute fact. When people transpose it, they say, I am a good boy, I live according to what I think to be true, consequently life should be a bed of roses for me! (Mother laughs) To begin with, self-appreciation is always dubious, and then, in the world as it now is, everything is mixed and what openly manifests to the half-blind human consciousnesses is not the Law of pure Truththey wouldnt even understand it. To put it more precisely, what is constantly realized is the supreme vision, but its realization in this mixed material world isnt seen by the ignorant human vision as the triumph of good (of what men call good and true). Butto put it humorouslyits not the Lords fault, its mens fault! That is, the Lord knows what he is doing, but men dont understand it.
0 1967-09-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Only an observation, which is really very interesting: its that everyone has said the same thing, all those who have had the Experience have said the same thing but each one in his own way, so it looks like something different. Yesterday it was so clear, and again the whole morning, from early morning: this way, that way, this one here, that one there (Mother shows different facets), the philosophers, founders of religions, sages of all countries they have always said the same thing. For instance, the Buddhas teaching and, say, the Christian teaching, seem to be so different, but its always the same thing. That is to say, there is ONE state (if you catch hold of it), ONE state in which you are conscious of the divine Consciousness (not conscious of: conscious through or conscious with, I dont know how to explain its the divine Consciousness which is conscious, that is, the Consciousness in its essence), and there are no more problems there, no more complications, no more explanations, nothing anymoreeverything is as clear as can be. So then, each one has tried to explain that, and naturally it has become Confused, incomplete, incorrect, with one explanation clashing with anotherwhile everyone is talking about the same thing!
It came yesterday in relation to a boy who sent me the letter from one of his friends, in which he said the usual nonsense: I dont believe in God because I cant see him. The usual little stupidity. And in that connection, I saw (I looked, like that, looked for a long time), I saw that the one who rejects, the one who asserts, the one all that, all of it is (how could I put it?) variations on the same theme, even when it appears to be saying the contrary.
0 1967-11-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats not a psychic memory. They always Confuse things so dreadfully!
Its not psychic, its when the vital, through some special circumstance, goes from one body to another, then it still remembers. Thats generally when it comes back in the same family, or in neighbours.
0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not a feeling, its an experience! You know, I wouldnt like anything better than In fact, this is my constant impression! Do as best you can, and the best thing needed will happen, thats all. But there is such an awareness of the uncertainty of the effect of things, and of this complexity It all becomes so mixed and so Confused that
All of life is like that. CIRCUMSTANCES are like that, I am beginning to see that, its beginning to emerge like that, to show itself: honest people look like scoundrels, and scoundrels look like I dont know what.
0 1969-05-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its because it was the process of the creation that men have Confused it with
Separation.
0 1969-07-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a long time Mother at times Confused "superhuman" with "supramental," but she clearly means the latter and not the former.
***
0 1970-04-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But (smiling) it doesnt Confuse the two. It doesnt Confuse the two, it KNOWS this is not what people call death.
(silence)
0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, you have completely Confused the psychic and the spiritual. The psychic, the soul, the Fire within, Agni, does not belong to the mental bubble or to any bubble: it is the Divine in matter. It is that little Fire which opens the door to the great solar Fire of the New Consciousness. It is the instrument of the yoga of the superman (when I speak of turning on the psychic switch, I am there taking the word in the vulgar and ridiculous sense of people seeking visionary and occult experiencesnot in the true sense). Others in every age have had the experience of the psychic, of the inner Fire, but aside from the Rishis, no one used it to transform matter; the religions have made a purely devotional and mystical thing out of it. As for the spiritual, that includes all the planes of consciousness above the ordinary mind. It is the path of ascent. And that is where I repeatedly and emphatically, and from experience, say that those great Experiences, which have to be turned into spiritual summits, are part of the mental bubble (including the overmind): they are the rarefied summits on which the being thins out into a marvelous whiteness, immense, royal, without a ripple of trouble, in an eternal peacewhich can last for millenniums without its changing the world one iota, by definition. But the spiritual is not the supramental, and when one touches the supramental, it seems to be almost a whole other Spirit, it is so compact, warm, powerful, present, embodied and radiantly solid in broad daylight. That is the Radiance which Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to bring down on earththey said over and over that their yoga was new, new, newand it is through the simple little fire inside us that we can enter into direct contact with That, without sitting in the lotus position or leaving life. When one touches That, the spiritual heights seem pale. That is all I have to say. So we do not at all need to be superyogis to have this contact, and those who have found Nirvana, or what have you, have not advanced one inch toward That, because the clue to That is not up there at all or outside, but in your own small capacity of flame.
So if instead of splitting hairs, you set out boldly on the road, afire, you would perhaps discover that we are indeed at the Hour of God and that a single spark of sincere effort, at ones own level, opens doors which have been closed for millenniums.
0 1972-03-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For many, many years, I had merely to exert a little pressure to get money and I got it. But that was for the Ashram. Now the Ashram doesnt have enough, and nothing comes no matter how much pressure I exertpeople no longer know where to give: theres this thing and that thing, and this and that they are Confused!
Give me a plan and Ill work on it.
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think I am correctly interpreting the feeling of my young Indian friends when I say that they see the heroes of your novels as raw mystics, to use Claudels description of Rimbaud. This may seem a surprising attribute, considering your heroes atheism, but that is because we have too often Confused mysticism or spirituality with religion, as Sri Aurobindo stresses. One need not believe in a personal, extracosmic God to be a mystic. (That is certainly why religion has from time to time taken upon itself to bum alive all the non-regular mystics.) Here we touch upon a huge confusion rooted in religions. Through their monks, sannyasins and ascetics, religions have shown us a purely contemplative, austere and lifeless side of mysticismindeed those mystics, like the religions they practice, live in a negation of life; they go through this vale of tears with their eyes exclusively fixed on the Beyond. But true mysticism is not so limited as that, it seeks to transform life, to reveal the Absolute hidden in it; it seeks to establish the kingdom of God in man, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, and not the kingdom of a Pope, clergy or sacerdotal class. If the modem world lives in conflict and anguish, if it is torn between being and doing, it is because religion has driven away God from this world, severed him from his creation and flung him back to some distant heaven or empty nirvana, thus denying any possibility of human perfection on this earth and digging an unbridgeable gulf between being and doing, between mystics sunk in their dreams and this world abandoned to the forces of evil, to Satan and all those who consent to get their hands dirty.
That contradiction is powerfully expressed in your books, it is striking to my Indian students. And they are surprised, for the urge to do something at all coststo do anything at all, as long as we do something, as one often hears in Europewithout this action being based on a being which it expresses and of which it is but the material translation, appears to them a strange attitude. Neither the despair, the silence or the revolt, nor the absurd pointlessness that sometimes surrounds the death of many of your heroes escape them. They feel that your heroes flee from themselves rather than express themselves. This torment between being and doing can be found in each one of them. They have apparently renounced to be something in order to do something, as one character stresses in Hope, but are they not desperately seeking to be through their actions, a being that they will capture only as time is abolished, in death? The same obsession seems to run through each of them: from Perken, who wants to leave his scar on the map, to outlive himself through twenty tribes, who fights against time as one fights against cancer, to Tchen, who shuts himself in the world of terrorism: an eternal world where time does not exist, and to Katow, who whispers to himself, O prisons, where time stops. In that respect, these characters clearly symbolize the impotence of a religion that has not been able to give the earth its meaning and plenitude.
0 1972-07-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One must not Confuse a religious teaching and a spiritual teaching. Religious teaching belongs to the past and stops all progress, spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future. It enlightens the consciousness and prepares it for the future realization.
A spiritual teaching is above religions and strives towards a total truth. It teaches us to come into direct contact with the Divine.
0 1972-07-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Exactly, Mother, these people are very skilled at confusing everything. Thats their main power: they Confuse the issue.
But I dont believe M. in the least! I dont believe a word he says to me! I told him. So they distort what I say? No, I am really baffled. Not only did I send word to M. but also to whats his name?
02.04 - The Kingdoms of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Out of a slow Confused embroiled self-search
Mind grew to a clarity cut out, precise,
02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This broad, Confused, yet rigid scheme becomes
A magnificent imbroglio of the Gods,
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Life stared at him with vague Confused outlines
Offering a picture the eyes could not keep,
02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have brooded over it and I am utterly Confused;
She in whose name one defies dark time,
03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only the other day I found a critic in The Manchester Guardian referring to The Gita as something frigid (and Confused)!
Humani Nihil a me alienum puto.Terence.
03.03 - The Inner Being and the Outer Being, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge. We are composed of many parts each of which contri butes something to the total movement of our consciousness, our thought, will, sensation, feeling, action, but we do not see the origination or the course of these impulsions; we are aware only of their Confused pell-mell results on the surface upon which we can at best impose nothing better than a precarious shifting order.
There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real and eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language of this Yoga the psychic being which supports our successive births and at each birth assumes a new mind, life and body. It opens above to the Self or spirit which is unborn and by conscious recovery of it we transcend the changing personality and achieve freedom and full mastery over our nature.
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo's view is different. It is something like this I am putting the thing as simply as possible, without entering into details or mysteries that merely Confuse the brain. The Absolute Reality contains all, nothing can be outside it, pain and sin and all; true. But these do not exist as such in the supreme status, they are resolved each into its ultimate and fundamental force of consciousness. When we say I all things, whatever they are, exist in the Divine Consciousness, the Absolute, we have an idea that they exist there as they do here as objects or entities; it goes without saying, they do not. Naturally we have to make a distinction between things of Knowledge and things of Ignorance. Although there is a gradation between the twoKnowledge rolls or wraps itself gradually into Ignorance and Ignorance unrolls or unfolds itself slowly into Knowledgestill in the Divine Consciousness things of Knowledge alone exist, things of Ignorance cannot be said to exist there on the same title, because, as I have said, the original truths of things alone are therenot their derivations and deformations. One can say, indeed, that in the supreme Light darkness exists as a possibility; but this is only a figure of speech. Possibility does not mean that it is there like a seedor even a chromosome rodto sprout and grow. Possibility really means just a chance of the consciousness acting in a certain way, developing in a particular direction under certain conditions.
Matter exists in the absolute Consciousness, not as Matter but as its fundamental substratum, as that radical mode of being or consciousness which by the devolution of consciousness and the interaction of Knowledge and Ignorance in the end works itself out as Matter. So also with regard to Life and with regard to Mind. If things are to exist in the highest status of consciousness, the Divine Consciousness, exactly as they exist now, there would be no point or meaning in creation or manifestation. Manifestation or creation does not mean merely unveiling or unrolling in the sense of unpacking. It means a gradual shift in the stress of consciousness, giving it a particular mode of action.
03.06 - Divine Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only the other day I found a critic in the Manchester Guardian referring to the Gita as something frigid and Confused !!
***
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This episode links up with the inner story of mankind, its spiritual history. The growing or evolving consciousness of man was not only an outgoing and widening movement: it was also a heightening, an ascent into ranges that are not normally perceived, towards summits of our true reality. We have spoken of the Grco-Roman culture as the source and foundation of European civilisation; but apart from that there was a secret vein of life that truly vivified it, led it by an occult but constant influence along channels and achievements that are meant to serve the final goal and purpose. The Mysteries prevalent and practised in Greece itself and Crete and the occult rites of Egyptian priests, the tradition of a secret knowledge and discipline found in the Kabbalah, the legendary worship of gods and goddesses sometimes Confused, sometimes identified with Nature forcesall point to the existence of a line of culture which is known in India as Yoga. If all other culture means knowledge, Yoga is the knowledge of knowledge. As the Upanishad says, there are two categories of knowledge, the superior and-the inferior. The development of the mind and life and body belongs to the domain of Inferior Knowledge: the development of the soul, the discovery of the Spirit means the Superior Knowledge.
This knowledge remained at the outset scattered, hidden, confined to a few, a company of adepts: it had almost no direct contact with the main current of life. Its religious aspect too was so altered and popularised as to represent and serve the secular life. The systematisation and propagation of that knowledgeat least the aspiration for that knowledgewas attempted on an effective scale in the Hebrew Old Testament. But then a good amount of externalities, of the Inferior Knowledge was mixed up with the inner urge and the soul perception. The Christ with his New Testament came precisely with the mission of cleaning the Augean stables, in place of the dross and coverings, the false and deformed godheads, to instal something of the purest ray of the inner consciousness, the unalloyed urge of the soul, the demand of our spiritual personality. The Church sought to build up society on that basis, attempting a fusion of the spiritual and the temporal power, so that instead of a profane secular world, a mundane or worldly world, there maybe established God's own world, the City of God.
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Energy, however, is not merely either muscular (physical) or cerebral. There are energies subtler than thought and yet more dynamic than the muscle (or the electric pile). One such, for example, is vital energy, although orthodox bio-chemists do not believe in any kind of vitalism that is something more than mere physico-chemical reaction. Indeed, this is the energy that counts in life; for it is this that brings about what we call success in the world. A man with push and go, as it is termed, is nothing but a person with abundant vital energy. But even of this energy there are gradations. It can be deep, controlled, organised or it can be hectic, effusive, Confused: the latter kind expresses and spends itself often in mere external, nervous and muscular movements. Those, however, who are known as great men of action are precisely they who are endowed with life energy of the first kind.
The Yogi the Hatha Yogi, the Raja Yogi, the Tantrikseeks consciously to master this life energy, to possess and use it as he wills. The Yogi, the true Yogi, aims at a higher quality, a deeper potentiality of the life energy: it may be called the Inner Life Energy. This inner life energy is in a line with, is one with the universal life energy; therefore it is said when one possesses and controls this power one has comm and over the universal power. All other energiesvisible, tangible, concretised and canalisedare particular formations and embodiments of till, mother energy. Even the most physical and material energiesmechanical, electrical, nervous, etc.are all derivatives and lesser potentials of this fount and origin. The mastery of the inner vital energy is the whole secret of what is known as occultism, even magic, black or white, spell and other allied powers or miracles. The eight siddhis well known to the Yogis are the natural results of this mastery. With such a mastery the Yogi controls and guides his own destiny; he can also in the same way control and guide the destiny of others, even of peoples and humanity at large. That is the deeper meaning the great phrase of the Gitalokasagrahacarries. Indeed, great souls are precisely they who move with the upward current of Nature, in and through whom Nature works out vast changes, prepares the steps of evolution in the world and humanity.
04.06 - To Be or Not to Be, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Brahmin is he who represents in his nature and character the principle and movement of knowledge, of comprehension and inclusion, of peace and harmonyall the qualities that are termed sttwic. A Brahmin does not fight, the very build of his consciousness prevents him from wounding and hurting; he has no enemy; even if he is attacked or killed, he does not raise his arm to protect himself (although Ramakrishna would prescribe even for him a modified or mollified mode of resisting the evil, hissing at least if not biting). The Biblical injunction, we know, is to present the other cheek too to the smiter. This is for those who follow the Brahminical discipline. But a Kshatriya, who in his nature and consciousness is a warrior, has another dharma; he is the armed guard of knowledge and truth, he is strength and force. He has to resist the evil in the name of the Lord, he has to raise his arm to strike. He is the instrument of Rudra and Mahakali. Does not the mighty goddess declare I draw the bow for Rudra, I hurl the arrow to slay the hater of the truth?4 If the Kshatriya does not follow his own dharma, but seeks to imitate the Brahmin, he brings about a confusion liable to disintegrate the society, he is then un-Aryan, inglorious, unworthy of heaven, deserving all the epithets which Sri Krishna heaped upon the dejected, depressed and Confused Arjuna. So long as the world is held by brute force, so long as there is the sway of evil power over the material earth and the physical body, there will be the need to resist it physically: if I do not do it, other instruments will be found. I may say like Arjuna, overwhelmed with pity and grief, I shall not fight, but God and the cosmic deities may refuse my refusal and compel me to do what in my ignorance and wrong headedness I would not like to do.
Rig Veda, IX. 126
Here lies the secret and the solution of the problem. It is, indeed, the solution given for all ages by the Gita. There will always be a problem, a difficult decision to makea division in the consciousnessso long as one is in the realm of dualities, in one's mental being and consciousness, ruled by relativities and contingencies. There one cannot but have a divided loyalty. A part of you, for example, is loyal to your family, another to your country, a third to yourself or to some ideal which you have set up. And naturally man feels Confused in the midst of their conflicting claims and is at a loss to choose. Therefore, the Gita says, the highest law, the supreme code of conduct, is the Divine Will. And the only work and labour for man is to discover and identify oneself with this Divine Will. Abandon all other standards of conduct, take refuge in Me alone.5 That is the supreme secret of human lifeas well as of the Life Divine.
To know the Divine Will and to be one with it is not easy, to be sure. But that is the only radical solution. That has got to be done, if one is to come out of the chaos he is in.
04.34 - To the Heights-XXXIV, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It dims as it rises into the Confused noise of my thoughts and desires,
It is wholly lost amidst the turmoil and bustle of life and the world.
05.09 - Varieties of Religious Experience, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There have been religions, approaches to the Divine, which did not believe in the divinity of man, the Chaldean line, the Semitic, for example. According to these, the Creator and the created are separate in nature and being; to call anything created as God himself is blasphemy. The ancient Egyptian, the Hebrew or the Muslim place God high in Paradise, and, in their view, man can be only his servant or slave, his worker or warrior. Man is too small and too earthly to be ever identified with God: he can only be a worshipper. Man can love God, at the most, as his Beloved. But this devotion is for something afar, like the desire of the moth for the star. And to equate the two is to Confuse realities. Man as worshipper and devotee can attain certain divine qualities, but limited and modified and always humanized to a large extent. And God can never become man. He sends down his representative, his vicar, prophet or apostle who acts for him and in and through whom He acts, but He himself does not come down and put on the form or flesh. The universe is Gods handiwork and testifies to his miracle and glory; but the universe is not God. Between the watch and the watchmaker there is always a hiatus and an incommensurability.
But can we say, I am born of God, and yet I am not God? So the Indian boldly declares, all this is the supreme Divine, there is nothing else than the Divinesarvam khalvidam brahma I am He, Thou are That, or again, that which is in me and the conscious being which is there in the Sun are one and the same thing. God has created man and the world, He is in man and in the world, He has become and is man and the world. Not only so. Not only does God become the clod of earth by reducing his potentialto zero, so to say; but He descends often enough in his own being and consciousness here below, assuming a human form for a special work and a special purpose. This is the Indian conception of Avatarhood.
05.11 - The Soul of a Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When however the soul withdraws, when a nation in a particular cycle of its soul manifestation has fulfilled its role and mission, the body of the nation falls gradually into decadence. The elements that composed the organic reality, the living consistency of national life disintegrate, lose their energy and cohesive capacity; they die out and are dispersed or persist for a time as a Confused mixture of disconnected and mechanically moving cells. But it may happen too that in an apparently dying or dead nation, the soul that retired comes back' again, not in its old form and mode of life for that cannot beEgypt, if it lives again today cannot repeat the ages of the Pharaohs and the Pyramids-but in a new personality, with a fresh life purpose, In such a case what happens is truly a national resurrectiona Lazarus coming back to life at the touch of the Divine.
We do not believe that India was ever completely dead or hopelessly moribund: her soul, although not always in front, was ever present as a living force, presiding over and guiding her destiny. That is why there is a perennial capacity for renewal in her and the capacity to go through dire ordeals. And to live up to her genius, she too must know how to march with the time, that is to say, not to cling to old and past formsto be faithful to the ancient soul does not mean eternising the external frames and formulas that expressed that soul one time or another. Indeed the soul becomes alive and vigorous when it finds a new disposition of the life plan which can embody and translate a fresh creative activity, a new fulfilment emanating from the depths of the soul.
05.14 - The Sanctity of the Individual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If we do not keep in view this vertical transcendence and Confuse it with immanence, we are likely to arrive at queer conclusions, as for example, one Existentialist says: polarity being an essential truth of the reality, the law of day and night is an eternal and immutable law and therefore, God cannot subsist as pure love; there must be also anger in him. In fact, God too is a becoming God as the human being. The limitation of such a view, characteristically Germanic and intellectual, is evident.
***
05.32 - Yoga as Pragmatic Power, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes it is urged that in the worldly affairs we should move according to the worldly procedure, otherwise to import into mundane things spiritual values would merely Confuse issues and end in failure in both the fieldsfallen from hence, lost from thence". Of course there are spiritual points of view that go ill with the mundane, as indeed there are mundane considerations that do not match with the spiritual. The two categories of view-point have been succinctly and luminously named by Sri Aurobindo as the Materialist Denial and the Ascetic Refusal.1 But there are other points of view, .other lines of approach which seek a harmony and union between Spirit and Matter, that envisage the marriage of Heaven and Earth.
The fundamental truth to be noted is that the Spirit is power, not merely consciousness: indeed the very definition of the spirit is that it is consciousness-energy. And it is this consciousness-energy that is at the source of all cosmic activities. Man's action too springs from this original source, although apparently it seems to be caused by other secondary and derivative energies. As a matter of fact what these energies that seem to be actually in play do is not the origination but rather the deviation and diversion, a diminution and adulteration of the supreme energy, a lowering of the quality, the tone and temper of the dynamism. In other words, as we have already said, a thought force, a vital force, a nervous or physical force, all these are only lower, even minima values, more or less distant and deformed echoes of a true and absolute Power behind and above them all. These forces become powerful in proportion as they are instruments and functions of that one mother energy. The truth is most beautifully illustrated in the story of Brahma a and the gods in the Kena Upanishad. The gods conquered and were proud of their conquest; each thought that it was due to his own personal prowess that he conquered. But they were utterly discomfited and shamed when the Divine Power appeared and proved to them that but for this Power they would not be able even to tackle a blade of grassFire would not burn it, Water would not drench it, Wind would not move it.
06.03 - Types of Meditation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first is to think on one subject in a continuous logical order. When, for example, you have to find the solution of a problem, you go step by step from one operation to another in a chain till you finally arrive at the conclusion. The thought is withdrawn from all other objects and is canalised along a single line. This is a kind of meditation, although it may not be usually known by that name. It marks a progress in the make-up of the human consciousness. For normally the mind moves at random, thoughts run about on many subjects, various, contrary and contradictory, from moment to moment. There is neither direction, consistency nor organisation: it is a Confused mass of incomplete, inchoate thoughts. The control and organisation of this mass, to start with, in a limited sphere and in a definite direction, the rejection of the unnecessary and the irrelevant and the marshalling and ordering of the required elements form the first exercise towards mental growth. All high intelligence, all effective wielding of thought power needs this discipline. Under the present circumstances of the world the school-life gives the best opportunity for this development. This is a meditation that should be obligatory and universal.
The next type we may call concentration, instead of meditation. Here we do not pursue a thought-line, but fix the thought upon one object unmoved. It means a further process of withdrawing the consciousness from its habitual outgoing and dispersive movement. The thought is held at a point and attention is focussed upon it: it is continuous and unbroken attention, for example, upon an idea, a phrase (mantra) or an image. One can concentrate also upon a physical point, say, fixing the gaze upon the tip of one's nose, or on a luminous point outside etc. In this discipline the whole mind is gathered together and focussed: or, everything else is shut out leaving only one thing upon which all the light of the consciousness is directed. It is a standstill consciousness, like a flame erect and immobile in a windless place.
06.19 - Mental Silence, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is possible to put a violent pressure upon oneself and forcibly push out all this Confused movement and make the mind vacant. But the effect of mental will upon mind cannot be perfect or enduring. Besides it is not that, the absolute vacancy, that is our goal. Some other way and manner has to be found for stilling the mind's activities.
It is to call in the peace that is beyond, that is already there somewhere. It happens, with a sincere demand or aspiration in the consciousness, a certain readiness in the being. When that happens (something in the manner of the Upanishadic vivute tanum svmhe unveils himself his own body), you feel as if a sheer blank, even a black void has entered into you and captured you. In the very midst of whirlwind activity comes a dead stop. Nothing is there now, no idea, no thought, no notion, no motion evenan immense emptiness has eaten up, engulfed everything. Keep steady and await. In that stillness something rises upup and upand goes out beyond, a tranquil beam of consciousness. And then something descends, from afara peace, luminousness, au thentic and absolute in its reality. It comes down, enters into you, possesses your brain and body. It has, you find, resolved all problems, harmonised all contraries and conflicts; for it comes from the home of mother truth. Now you do not strive, but you know, you do not grope, for you are led. You await and at each moment you receive the direction as to what is to be done; you have no thought or preoccupation, the inspired movement happens automatically and infallibly.
06.35 - Second Sight, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is interesting to note that animals in the wild state maintain intact their instinctive capacity, their second sight, but begin to lose it when they live with men, come under the influence of human mind and reason, become domesticated. A cow habituated to free grazing in the fields will never touch the poisonous grass, will always avoid it and take only the harm-less and healthy variety; but kept within the stable, accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets Confused, does not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong food, being always given ready-made things by the master.
Human contact has thus a harmful effect upon the animal's instinctive life. But in another way it may have an uplifting influence too. Some of the refined human sentimentssympathy, gratitude, faithfulness, self-sacrificein a pronounced human way find expression in animals that are domesticated and live close to man and within the human atmosphere. It is true many of these feelings are not totally absent in the animal kingdom (especially in the higher strata) in its natural or wild state, but they belong to the level of pure feeling or impulse and have not risen to the level of sentiments which have a mental element infused into their vital stuff. Indeed a strong mental element, a reasoning capacity sometimes very clearly develops in the domestic animal.
06.36 - The Mother on Herself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are two things that should not be Confused with each other, namely, what one is and what one does, what one is essentially and what one does in the outside world. They are very different. I know what I am. And what others think or say or whatever happens in the world, that truth remains unaffected, unaltered, a fact. It is real to itself and the world's denial or affirmation does not increase or diminish that reality. But being what I am, what I do actually is altogether a different question: that will depend upon the conditions and circumstances in which things are and in and through which I am to work. I know the truth I bring, but how much of it finds expression in the world depends upon the world itself. What I bring, the world must have the capacity and the will to accept: otherwise even if I bring with me the highest and the most imperative truth, it will be, absolutely as it were, non-existent for a consciousness that does not recognise or receive it: the being with that consciousness will not profit a jot by it.
You will say if the truth I bring is supreme and omnipotent, why does it not compel the world to accept it, why can it not break the world's resistance, force man to accept the good it refuses? But that is not the way in which the world was created nor the manner in which it moves and develops. The origin of creation is freedom: it is a free choice in the consciousness that has projected itself as the objective world. This freedom is the very character of its fundamental nature. If the world denies its supreme truth, its highest good, it does so in the delight of its free choice; and if it is to turn back and recognise that truth and that good, it must do so in the same delight of free choice. If the erring world was ordered to turn right and immediately did so, if things were done in a trice, through miracles, there would be then no point in creating a world. Creation means a play of growth: it is a journey, a movement in time and space through graded steps and stages. It is a movement awayaway from its source and a movement towards: that is the principle or plan on which it stands. In this plan there is no compulsion on any of the elements composing the world to forswear its natural movement, to obey to a dictate from outside: such compulsion would break the rhythm of creation.
07.01 - Realisation, Past and Future, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But it is so difficult. It is difficult for people to come out of experiences they have had, of what they have heard and read about always and everywhere. It is difficult for them not to think of the Supermind in terms of the Overmind, not to Confuse the Supermind with the Overmind. They are unable to conceive of anything beyond or different. Sri Aurobindo used to say always that his Yoga Began where all the past Yogas ended: in order to realise his Yoga one must have already arrived at the extreme limit of what the ancients realised. In other words, one must have had already the perception of the Divine, the union and identification with the Divine. This divinity, Sri Aurobindo says, is the Divine of the Overmind which is itself something quite unthinkable for the human consciousness, and even to reach there one has to rise through many planes of consciousness and, as I said, one gets dazzled and dazed even at this level.
There are beings of the vital world who, whenever they appear to man, are taken by him for the supreme godhead. You may call it a disguise, but it is a very successful disguise, for people who see it most often get thoroughly convinced that what they see is indeed God himself. And yet such a god is only a vital being. Even so, the beings of the Over mind are stupendous in comparison with us, human beings, who are truly bewildered whenever we come in contact with such entities. And Supermind and supramental beings are yet beyond. So you realise the distance to be covered.
07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But all was still Confused, nothing self-found.
Soul was not there but only cries of life.
07.38 - Past Lives and the Psychic Being, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are people who say and perhaps believe too that they were such and such persons and even give a detailed description of their past lives. There are also the well-known sprit communications through a medium at spirit sitting. Someone comes and tells you he was Napoleon, another was Shakespeare and so on. How many Shakespeares and Napoleons and Caesars have manifested in this way, there is no counting! There are spirits who are extremely talkative and bewitch you with extraordinary stories, many that seem so true and genuine on the face, many others, of course, full of the grossest self-contradictions. The fact, however, is that usually these spirits are small beings of the vital, often remnants of a dead person, broken bits of his decomposed personality, desires that have persisted, coagulated imaginations set free that move about and seek to possess and settle upon a living person. The small spirits of the vital are often not of good disposition; they amuse themselves at the cost of the gullible human being, making a fool of him. In that world it is easy to read the mind of others: the spirit sees clearly what is there in your head even if you do not speak it out. That is how it reveals secrets known to you alone, even secrets you have totally forgotten. They can imitate other personalities. They know many other small tricks to Confuse or astound you.
***
08.02 - Order and Discipline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Hence, to know a man's character you need not spend your time in talking to him, you just go and open a drawer of his or open his almirah, you will know. But I may speak of someone I shall tell you presently who it iswho used to live in the midst of heaps of books and papers. You enter into his room, you find piles of them everywhere. But if by chance, you were, to your misfortune, to displace a single sheet of paper, he would know perfectly well and would ask immediately who was it that had disturbed the papers. There were masses of things, on your entering you would not find your way. But each thing had its placenotes, letters, books, all in order and you could not mishandle them without his knowing it. Well, it was Sri Aurobindo. In other words, you must not Confuse orderliness with poverty. Naturally if you have a few thingsa dozen books and a limited number of objectsit is easier to have them properly arranged. But what is to be aimed at is a logical order, a conscious intelligent order among a multiplicity of objects. That requires a capacity for organisation. It is a capacity which every one must acquire and possess, unless of course you are physically disabledwhen one is ill or sickly or maimed and has not the required strength: even then there is a limit. I know of sick people who could tell you: "Open me that drawer, you will find on the right or on the left or at the bottom such and such a thing." They could not themselves move and handle the things but knew where they were. Apart from such cases, the ideal must be one of order, organisation, like that of a library for example, where you have thousands and thousands of books that are yet all arranged, classified, docketed and you have only to name a title and in a few minutes the book is in your hand of course, it is not the work of a single person; even then, the pattern is there as an example to follow.
You too must organise your affairs in the same way. You need not follow another's method or system. You have your own rule, that which is convenient and true for you but it must be well planned and properly laid out.
08.28 - Prayer and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In all religions people who declared that the consequences of Karma are rigorous and who gave these absolute rules, must have done so, I believe, to put themselves in place of Nature, to pull the strings that move ordinary men. For these rules are mental constructions, more or less sincere perhaps, cutting things into bits and telling you: "Do this, do that; it is not this, it is that." People are Confused, frightened, they do not know what to do at the end.
What they must do is to get to an upper floor. And they must be given the key to open the door. The key is (1) a sufficiently sincere aspiration, or (2) a sufficiently intense prayer. I said or, but it may not be so; there are people who like the one and there are people who prefer the other. But in both magic power and one must know to use them.
08.30 - Dealing with a Wrong Movement, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have told you to seek out the place where the hidden thing lies. The black thing has many a cosy corner in your being. There are people who have it in the head, some in the heart, others down below; but wherever it is when you track it down it has the same look, the little black creature rolled up, not bigger than a pea but hard and firmly set, a microbe-size snake coiled up. If it is something in the head it becomes somewhat difficult to discover. For the head is full of wrong ideas and it is not easy to put it into order for pursuing the right track. A comparatively easier place to discover and to cure is in the heart, though here it gives the greatest pain. But here it is found more easily and cured also most radically. Down below in the vital things are very Confused and obscure. All things are mixed up in a veritable chaos. The movements are also more violent, more uncontrollable and ignorant. Here are all the movements of anger, pride, ambition, passion, all attachments and sentimentalities, the hunger that you call love. And there are a hundred others. There are as many kinds in the head too. There it is the perversions of thought, all the betrayals, the betrayals of your soul. It is inconceivable how one betrays one's soul, in how many ways, how persistently, the decisions, the points of view, the favourable explanations which your brain supplies to buttress you against your perception that you have done something wrong. You have to disentangle all this, put each thing in its place, throw upon each the light of your true consciousness and judgeburn, purify or transform.
***
09.13 - On Teachers and Teaching, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But when did I say that a student is free to come and go as he likes? You must not Confuse matters. I said and I repeat that if a student feels that a particular subject is foreign to him, if for example, he has a capacity for literature and poetry and a disgust or even dislike for mathematics, in that case, if the student comes and tells me, "I prefer not to follow the course of mathematics", I cannot answer him, "No, you must absolutely do it". But once a student has decided to follow a class, it is quite an elementary discipline for him to follow the class, to attend it regularly, to behave decently while he is there. Otherwise it is not becoming of him to go to the school at all. I have never encouraged people to loiter about during class hours or to come one day and be absent the next day, never, for, to begin with, if you are not able to submit yourself to this very elementary discipline, you will never succeed in having the least control over yourself; you will be always the slave of every impulse and fancy of yours.
If you do not want to pursue a certain line of knowledge, it it is all right, you are not obliged to do so. But if you decide to do a thing in life, whatever it is, you must do it honestly in a disciplined, regular and methodical manner, without allowing yourself to be fanciful. I have never approved of a person being the plaything of his impulses and caprices. You can never get sanction for that out of me, for you are then no longer a human being but an animal.
1.00d - DIVISION D - KUNDALINI AND THE SPINE, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
We must always bear in mind that the fires from the base of the spine and the splenic triangle are fires of matter. We must not lose this recollection nor get Confused. They have no spiritual effect, and concern themselves solely with the matter in which the centres of force are located. These centres of force are always directed by manas or mind, or by the conscious effort of the indwelling entity; but that entity is held back in the effects he seeks to achieve until the vehicles through which he is seeking expression, and their directing, energising centres, make adequate response. Hence it is only in due course of evolution, and when the matter of these vehicles is energised sufficiently by its own latent fires that he can accomplish his long-held purpose. Hence again the need of the ascension of the fire of matter to its own place, and its resurrection from its long burial and seeming prostitution before it can be united with its Father in Heaven, the third Logos, Who is the Intelligence of matter itself. The correspondence, again, holds good. Even the atom of the physical plane has its goal, its initiations and its ultimate triumph.
Other angles of this subject, such as the centres and their relationship to manas, the fire of Spirit and manas, and the eventual blending of the three fires, will be dealt with in our next two main divisions. In this division we are confining ourselves to the study of matter and fire, and must not digress, or confusion will ensue.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
These preliminary statements have been laid down in an endeavour to show the synthesis of the whole. In the use of words comes limitation, and a clouding of the idea; words literally veil or hide thoughts, detract from their clarity, and Confuse them by expression. The work of the second and third Logoi (being the production of the objectivity of the essential Spirit) is more easy to grasp in broad outline than the more esoteric work of the first Logos, which is that of the animating will.
In terms of fire another angle of expression may perhaps elucidate.
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
Say: O source of perversion! Abandon thy wilful blindness, and speak forth the truth amidst the people. I swear by God that I have wept for thee to see thee following thy selfish passions and renouncing Him Who fashioned thee and brought thee into being. Call to mind the tender mercy of thy Lord, and remember how We nurtured thee by day and by night for service to the Cause. Fear God, and be thou of the truly repentant. Granted that the people were Confused about thy station, is it conceivable that thou thyself art similarly Confused? Tremble before thy Lord and recall the days when thou didst stand before Our throne, and didst write down the verses that We dictated unto
thee-verses sent down by God, the Omnipotent Protector, the Lord of might and power. Beware lest the fire of thy presumptuousness debar thee from attaining to God's Holy Court. Turn unto Him, and fear not because of thy deeds. He, in truth, forgiveth whomsoever He desireth as a bounty on His part; no God is there but Him, the Ever-Forgiving, the All-Bounteous.
1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
If then we, with our well-trained minds, determine to control this wandering thought, we shall find that we are fairly well able to keep the thoughts running in a narrow channel, each thought linked to the last in a perfectly rational manner; but if we attempt to stop this current we shall find that, so far from succeeding, we shall merely break down the banks of the channel. The mind will overflow, and instead of a chain of thought we shall have a chaos of Confused images.
This mental activity is so great, and seems so natural, that it is hard to understand how any one first got the idea that it was a weakness and a nuisance. Perhaps it was because in the more natural practice of devotion, people found that their thoughts interfered. In any case calm and self-control are to be prefered to restlessness. Darwin in his study presents a marked contrast with a monkey in a cage.
1.00 - PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Though still Confused his service unto Me,
I soon shall lead him to a clearer morning.
1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
This vision lasted for two hours, it Confused me and made me ill. I was not able to interpret it. Two weeks passed then the vision returned, still more violent than before, and an inner voice spoke:
Look at it, it is completely real, and it will come to pass. You cannot doubt this. I wrestled again for two hours with this vision, but it held me fast. It left me exhausted and Confused. And I thought my mind had gone crazy.16
From then on the anxiety toward the terrible event that stood directly before us kept coming back. Once I also saw a sea of blood over the northern lands.
10.10 - Education is Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Education is organisation. Mind's education means organisation of mental faculties. Organisation naturally involves development. The faculties in the normal and natural state are an undeveloped disorganised lot, a Confused mass,unformed, ill-formed ideas, notions, thoughts, form a jumble. They have no purpose, no direction, no common impulse or end, each runs in its own way. The mind's faculties such for example as attention, memory, discrimination, reasoning, cogent thinking have to be clear and efficient and learn how to work harmoniously for a common objective. In the process and for that purpose they have to be developed, that is to say each of them has to be strong, able, ample, concentrated. They have to present a united front and function towards an ever increasing consciousness and knowledge.
As for the mental faculties so for the faculties of the vital. The normal vital being in man is in a greater and perhaps more dangerous chaos. The impulsions, emotions, upsurges that belong to this domain have not so much to be developed or increased as to be purified, made conscious, yoked together in a common drive towards a harmonious dynamic realisation in life and life's achievements. And lastly the organisation in the physical body. The limbs of the body have not even growth, they do not move together in a balanced and rhythmic way. Some are unhealthy, some do not work, some others are overworked. These too have to be co-ordinated, each set in its place and made to function in unison with others. That is physical education and that too means perfect organisation.
10.14 - Night and Day, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To have control over the night one must, first of all, be conscious of what happens in the night, that is to say, one must remember the events that occur in sleep. Usually one forgets and cannot recall easily the experiences that one has gone through while asleep. The first exercise then is, as soon as you awake, to retain whatever happens to linger still in memory, and then with this as the leading string to go backward to happenings associated with it. Even otherwise when you cannot recall any particular happening or experience, you can begin your enquiry by noting the nature of the feeling that the experiences have left on you, that is to say, you note whether you passed a good night or a bad night. A bad night means either a tamasic state or a disturbed state. Tamasic means when you get up you feel inert, heavy, depressed, still feeling like going to sleep again. The disturbed state is one in which you feel agitated, unable to control, unable to do any organised work. Instead of this unhappy condition the night may bring to you peace and happiness, a positively pleasurable sensation. That is the first step of the discipline of what I may call night-control viz. to distinguish these two states and react accordingly through your conscious will. The next step would be to distinguish two other categories of the experiences. The one is the Confused and chaotic condition in which sensations and ideas and impulsions are in a jumble, a meaningless whirl or otherwise you find your sensations or notions or impulsions moving in an organised and purposeful way. The first naturally brings you discomfort and sadness, the second, on the contrary, gives you a sense of uncommon happiness.
There are occasions when the dream experience comes to you with a clear au thenticity as if you were taking part in a real drama. Everything is happening truly and undisputably exactly like a happening in the normal life. Indeed when it is happening you feel it is happening in your waking life. You find the difference only when you wake up. As a matter of fact it is a region very near to the material world running parallel to it. And at times we are lifted bodily as it were into it and the experiences and adventures we go through are very analogous to those in normal life. Still when we are awake and compare the two, we notice there is a difference in pattern and movement. Yet there are other experiences of quite a different nature. You feel and see, you are transported to a region made, it would appear, of elements of a different kind. The atmosphere gives a different feel from the earthly atmosphere, there is a light which seems to have a different vibration, even the earth there, for the earth still exists, is made of different density and solidity. These are the worlds perhaps, which Sri Aurobindo refers to when he speaks of "the other earths." Beings and things have a happy, a pure beauty in their form and movement. This does not come to you merely as a thought or an imagination but a very concrete reality in which you live your being.
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
and should not be Confused with the four castes, which
are no more than their calcified caricature. It is in the hu-
1.01 - Appearance and Reality, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
Hylas has hitherto believed in matter, but he is no match for Philonous, who mercilessly drives him into contradictions and paradoxes, and makes his own denial of matter seem, in the end, as if it were almost common sense. The arguments employed are of very different value: some are important and sound, others are Confused or quibbling. But Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity, and that if there are any things that exist independently of us they cannot be the immediate objects of our sensations.
There are two different questions involved when we ask whether matter exists, and it is important to keep them clear. We commonly mean by
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
that takes us to our destination and a divergent way that misleads or Confuses. This metaphorical
contrast haunts the whole of Christian literature: we start reading Dantes Commedia, and the third line
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
There is still one farther observation that deserves to be made. If a person by the payment of a thousand pieces of gold, could become master of alchemy, yet the condition of the man who is absolutely master of ten thousand pieces of gold would be better and preferable. And this illustrates the position of the soofees. If a person follow their method and attain to the knowledge of some things, he still does not equal in excellence, the doctors of the law. Just as we see, that books on alchemy, and students of alchemy are very numerous, while those who are successful are the least of few, so the path of mysticism is sought for by all men, and longed for by all classes of society, yet those who [34] attain to the end are exceedingly rare. Perhaps, as in the case of alchemy, it only exists now in name and form. The greater part of the notions and fancies of most of the mystics, which they esteem as revelations and mysteries, are nothing but vain triflings and pure self complacency; just as that while visions are a reality, still mere Confused dreams are very abundant. The mystic, however, who by spiritual revelation has learned all that a doctor of the law has been able to learn after many years of study, and who has no remaining doubts in matters of internal or external knowledge, is certainly more excellent than the doctor of the law who is learned only in external knowledge, and this should not be denied. And it follows that the way of the mystics must be acknowledged to be a true one, and that you must not destroy the belief of those weak minded and vain persons who follow them; for, the reason why they cast reproaches upon knowledge and calumniate the doctors of law is that they have no acquirements or knowledge themselves.
O, inquirer after divine mysteries! do you ask how it is known that the happiness of man consists in the knowledge of God, and that his enjoyment consists in the love of God ? We observe in reply, that every man's happiness is found in the place where he obtains enjoyment and tranquility. Thus sensual enjoyment is found in eating and drinking and the like. The enjoyment of anger is derived from taking revenge and from violence. The enjoyment of the eye consists in the view of correct images and agreeable objects. The enjoyment of the ear is secured in listening to harmonious voices. In the same way the enjoyment of the heart depends upon its being employed in that for which it was created, in learning to know every thing in its reality and truth. Hence, every man glories in what he knows, even if the thing is but of little importance. He [35] who knows how to play chess, boasts over him who does not know: and if he is looking on while a game of chess is played, it is of no use to tell him not to speak, for as soon as he sees an improper move, he has not patience to restrain himself from showing his skill, and glorying in his knowledge, by pointing it out....
1.01 - The Offering, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
This restless multitude, Confused or orderly, the
immensity of which terrifies us; this ocean of hu-
1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
"Help me, mother," he pleaded. "Please, take hold of my hand. Pull me out of here. The earth in this hole is sandy and burning hot. I can't bear it any more." His mother, Confused and upset, moved this way and that attempting to reach out her hand to him. But by then the intense heat inside the hole was sending up thick billows of black smoke.
Hearing his cries, villagers came running to help. They tried in various ways to rescue him, but flames shooting up from the hole grew to such strength they seemed bent on scorching the very skies.
1.01 - Two Powers Alone, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
13:An inert passivity is constantly Confused with the real surrender, but out of an inert passivity nothing true and powerful can come. It is the inert passivity of physical Nature that leaves it at the mercy of every obscure or undivine influence. A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the Truth, of the inner Warrior who fights against obscurity and falsehood, of the faithful servant of the Divine.
14:This is the true attitude and only those who can take and keep it, preserve a faith unshaken by disappointments and difficulties and shall pass through the ordeal to the supreme victory and the great transmutation.
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(Illustration: One does not Confuse the pain of toothache with the decay which causes it. Inanimate objects are sensitive to certain physical forces, such as electrical and thermal conductivity; but neither in us nor in them so far as we know is there any direct conscious perception of these forces. Imperceptible influences are therefore associated with all material phenomena; and there is no reason why we should not work upon matter through those subtle energies as we do through their material bases. In fact, we use magnetic force to move iron, and solar radiation to reproduce images.)
14. Man is capable of being, and using, anything which he perceives; for everything that he perceives is in a certain sense a part of his being. He may thus subjugate the whole Universe of which he is conscious to his individual Will.
--
We might fare even worse if we tried to clear things up by making lists of events in history, tradition, or experience and classifying this as being, and that as not being, true Magick. The borderl and cases would Confuse and mislead us.
But since I have mentioned history I think it might help, if I went straight on to the latter part of your question, and gave you a brief sketch of Magick past, present and future as it is seen from the inside.
1.01 - Who is Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
readiness to step into the realms of suffering, Confused beings in order to
help us. Due to her altruistic intention, Tara can appear in these realms without being adversely affected by the environment. She doesnt shy away from
1.02.2.1 - Brahman - Oneness of God and the World, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
is unified, self-existent, not Confused by the figures of Birth and
Death. It is called, therefore, Amritam, Immortality, and offered
--
the Confused activities of the Mind, Life and Body, ensures and
compels the right arrangement of the universe. It is called in the
10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This sorrowful world kneels before Thee, 0 Lord, in mute supplication; this tortured Matter nestles at thy feet, its last, its sole refuge; and so imploring Thee, it adores Thee, Thee whom it neither knows nor understands! Its prayer rises like the cry of one in a last agony; that which is disappearing feels Confusedly the possibility of living again in Thee; the earth awaits Thy decree in a grandiose prostration.
Mother, sweet Mother, who I am, Thou art at once the destroyer and the builder.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
valid plan re-emerge, in a Confused jumble. I am anxious (what will I do? What if there was a fire?),
frustrated (Im certainly not going to get any more work done tonight, under these conditions!) angry
--
culture, and must not be Confused with the sky and earth of modern empirical thinking. An and Ki
are, instead, the dramatically-represented Great Father and Great Mother of all things (including the son
--
some mind. Why do you think we have wars at home? Why do you think people get Confused and
unhappy? Because they all live their own, separate, individual lives. Ive been trying to explain to you in
1.02 - Meditating on Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
them. If they tried to adopt Buddhist views, they might become Confused.
Before getting attached to calling ourselves Buddhists and boasting of
1.02 - Skillful Means, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
At that time riputra, aware of the confusion of the fourfold assemblies and himself also feeling Confused, addressed the Buddha saying: O
Bhagavat! For what reason and on what grounds have you so earnestly praised
the unique skillful means of the buddhas and the profound and subtle Dharma that is difficult to understand? Never before have I heard such a thing from the Buddha. Now Bhagavat, I entreat you to explain this because the fourfold assemblies are Confused. O Bhagavat! Why have you so earnestly praised the Dharma that is profound, subtle, and difficult to understand?
Thereupon riputra, wanting to further explain what he meant, spoke these verses:
--
Among the rvakas, yet now I am Confused
About my own knowledge and unable to understand.
--
And are Confused by suffering.
Having devised this skillful means
--
Would be Confused and perplexed
And would not accept the teaching.
--
But they will be Confused and will not accept it.
They will reject the Dharma
1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
These various arguments or appearances, Confusedly per-
ceived and accepted, undoubtedly divert our attention from the
--
ever Confusedly, to re-create what we can of their history. What im-
measurable toil went into the weaving of each garment, what
1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
It also powerfully impacts the effective use of financial assets. How often do people Confuse principal with interest? Have you ever invaded principal to increase your standard of living, to get more golden eggs? The decreasing principal has decreasing power to produce interest or income. And the dwindling capital becomes smaller and smaller until it no longer supplies even our basic needs.
Our most important financial asset is our own capacity to earn. If we don't continually invest in improving our own PC, we severely limit our options. We're locked into our present situation, running scared of our corporation or our boss's opinion of us, economically dependent and defensive.
1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Such are some of the principal images of the Veda and a very brief and insufficient outline of the teaching of the Forefa thers. So understood the Rig Veda ceases to be an obscure, Confused and barbarous hymnal; it becomes the high-aspiring Song of Humanity; its chants are episodes of the lyrical epic of the soul in its immortal ascension.
This at least; what more there may be in the Veda of ancient science, lost knowledge, old psycho-physical tradition remains yet to be discovered.
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
and I remember saying to myself how easy it is to have divine thoughts, or perhaps even visions, at that altitude, but what about in the valley below? I was not entirely wrong, although I later learned that one can act and work for the world in the silence and stillness of one's own body. (A clinging illusion makes us Confuse agitation with action.) Still, what remains of our divine moments once we are removed from our solitude and brought down to the plains? This is a mirage that Western enthusiasts of Hinduism should consider, for if we merely want to escape the world, a retreat in the Alps or the Yosemite Valley, or even a small whitewashed cell, would do just as well; the Pilgrimage to the Source12 has little, if nothing, to do with the Ganges or the Brahmaputra. What was India going to bring to Sri Aurobindo, then? Did she hold some secret relevant to action in life?
Reading books on Hinduism, it would appear that it is a kind of spiritual paleontology interspersed with polysyllabic Sanskrit words,
--
and one who is ready to understand a little Lalita's childlike face and to bring her his incense and flowers may not be able to address the Eternal Mother in the silence of his heart; still another may prefer to deny all forms and plunge into the contemplation of That which is formless. "Even as men come to Me, so I accept them. It is my path that men follow from all sides," says the Bhagavad Gita (IV,11). 14 As we see, there are so many ways of conceiving of God, in three or three million persons, that we should not dogmatize, lest we eliminate everything, finally leaving nothing but a Cartesian God, one and universal by virtue only of his narrowness. Perhaps we still Confuse unity with uniformity. It was in the spirit of that tradition that Sri Aurobindo was soon to write: The perfection of the integral Yoga will come when each man is able to follow his own path of Yoga, pursuing the development of his own nature in its upsurging towards that which transcends the nature. For freedom is the final law and the last consummation.15
Nor does an Indian ever ask: "Do you believe in God?" The question would seem to him as childish as: "Do you believe in CO2?"
1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The quiescence of the mental turbulence is the primary essential. With this faculty at command, the student is taught to exalt the mind by the various technical methods of Magick until it overrides the normal limitations and barriers of its nature, ascending in a tremendous unquenchable column of fire-like ecstasy to the Universal Consciousness, with which it becomes united. Once having become at one with transcendental Existence, it intuitively partakes of universal knowledge, which is considered to be a more reliable source of information than the rational introspection of the intellect or the experimental scientific investigation of matter can give. It is the tapping of the source of Life itself, the fons et origo of existence, rather than a blind groping in the dark after Confused symbols which alone appear on the so-called practical or rational plane of thought.
Secular science or Positivism has busied itself with the investigation of matter and the visible universe as perceived through the five senses. It affirms that by a study of phenomena we are able to approach to the world as it really is, to the things-in-themselves. It is that system which affirms that apprehension is only a name for a certain series of biological and chemical changes occurring in certain of the contents of our material skulls, and that by an investigation of things as they appear to be we can come to an understanding of their causes, what they really are.
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
It is not surprising that all this appears to many as illusion. "What is the use of such visions," they ask, "and such hallucinations?" And many will thus fall away and abandon the path. But this is precisely the important point: not to Confuse spiritual reality with imagination at this difficult stage of human evolution, and furthermore, to have the courage to press onward and not become timorous and faint-hearted. On the other hand, however, the necessity must be emphasized of maintaining unimpaired and of perpetually cultivating that healthy sound sense which distinguishes truth from illusion. Fully conscious self-control must never be lost during all these exercises, and they must be accompanied by the same sane, sound thinking which is applied to the details of every-day life. To lapse into reveries would be fatal. The intellectual clarity, not to say the sobriety of thought, must never for a moment be dulled. The greatest mistake would be made if the student's mental balance
p. 64
10.30 - India, the World and the Ashram, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the same way it may be said that our Ashram here is the symbol of all the difficulties that humanity faces, difficulties psychological and material, national and social. All varieties of contradictions and contraries, obstacles and impediments, ignorances and prejudices are here that Confuse the issue and seek to delay the journey as much as possible, towards progress and new creation. This is because it is a place where there is behind the surface movements of negation, an aspiration and a supporting consciousness supreme in power and effectivity. The individuals here have to meet all kinds of difficulties so that a way out of them may be discovered both in the individual nature and in collective achievement. .
We have here in the Ashram varieties of races and religions, all social types, samples of humanity as it were, each representing a particular facet of human nature, a particular possibility and its own field of work. Not only with regard to outward work or enterprise, each one carries his own inner nature different from everybody else's, each one has his own psychological assets and liabilities. In other words, each one undertakes the yoga of, understanding and purifying himself and finding out his particular role. Apart from that, here each one is not exclusively for himself, in fact, he is not himself only but is part and parcel of a living unity, in a larger whole.
10.37 - The Golden Bridge, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, that is the hiatus, the inadequacy that still cripples and stultifies the mind, the physical mind in its attempt to seize other realities beyond. It is the mind which gives the formal structure, the pattern of expression in the material frame. The mind being bound to the life of the ignorant and outgoing senses is constitutionally incapable of receiving or holding or expressing facts of the higher life, the life beyondwhat we name as the spiritual or the divine. Not only so, the mind in trying to express the higher or supraterrestrial truths inevitably diminishes, dilutes, devalues, even negates and annuls them. The attempt through parables and allegories is the story of the difficulty the impossibility of expressing through the mind truths beyond the mind. We land into the weird and Confused worlds of myths and mythologies,myths and mythologies for example about popular Radha and Krishna, and Kali or Shiva. We are compelled to reduce to our human measures, to accentuate our human failings in order to present graphically to us the inexpressible intensities or extensions of the high experiences above. The Vaishnava lyrics or the songs of Solomon become to us high spiritual documents.
Man started his life on earth as an animal and is still continuing to be so in a large measure: his mental equipment also was almost wholly conditioned by the necessities of such a situation: his language, his culture even built upon an outward view of things, upon the mode and manner of his physical reactions to impacts of the gross outward world, the brute objects of physical life.
1.03 - A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
"Why, _she_, of course," said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one finger; and the whole party at once crowded 'round her, calling out, in a Confused way, "Prizes! Prizes!"
Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a box of comfits (luckily the salt-water had not got into it) and handed them 'round as prizes. There was exactly one a-piece, all 'round.
1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
Will become Confused and will not comprehend it.
This sutra is beyond the comprehension
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
unconscious procedure. As a consequence, it is easy for us to become Confused about the nature of
morality, and to draw inappropriate, untimely and dangerous fixed conclusions.
--
been and are at present constantly Confused with solutions to the former to the constant (often mortal)
detriment of those attempting to address the former.
1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
should not be Confused with any dogmatic Christian idea of the
soul or with any of the previous philosophical conceptions of it.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Their reactions were remarkably alike. During the violent combat and in the acute emergencies that arose during it, they were all quietly precise on the interphone and decisive in action. The tail gunner, right waist gunner and navigator were severely wounded early in the fight, but all three kept at their duties efficiently and without cessation. The burden of emergency work fell on the pilot, engineer and ball turret gunner, and all functioned with rapidity, skilful effectiveness and no lost motion. The burden of the decisions, during, but particularly after the combat, rested essentially on the pilot and, in secondary details, on the co-pilot and bombar ther. The decisions, arrived at with care and speed, were unquestioned once they were made, and proved excellent. In the period when disaster was momentarily expected, the alternative plans of action were made clearly and with no thought other than the safety of the entire crew. All at this point were quiet, unobtrusively cheerful and ready for anything. There was at no time paralysis, panic, unclear thinking, faulty or Confused judgment, or self-seeking in any one of them.
One could not possibly have inferred from their behaviour that this one was a man of unstable moods and that that one was a shy, quiet, introspective man. They all became outwardly calm, precise in thought and rapid in action.
1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The aim set before our Yoga is nothing less than to hasten this supreme object of our existence here. Its process leaves behind the ordinary tardy method of slow and Confused growth through the evolution of Nature. For the natural evolution is at its best an uncertain growth under cover, partly by the pressure of the environment, partly by a groping education and an ill-lighted purposeful effort, an only partially illumined and half-automatic use of opportunities with many blunders and lapses and relapses; a great portion of it is made up of apparent accidents and circumstances and vicissitudes, - though veiling a secret divine intervention and guidance. In Yoga we replace this Confused crooked crab-motion by a rapid, conscious and self-directed evolution which is planned to carry us, as far as can be, in a straight line towards the goal set before us. In a certain sense it may be an error to speak of a goal anywhere in a progression which may well be infinite. Still we can conceive of an immediate goal, an ulterior objective beyond our present achievement towards which the soul in man can aspire. There lies before him the possibility of a new birth; there can be an ascent into a higher and wider plane of being and its descent to transform his members. An enlarged and illumined consciousness is possible that shall make of him a liberated spirit and a perfected force - and, if spread beyond the individual, it might even constitute a divine humanity or else a new, a supramental and therefore a superhuman race. It is this new birth that we make our aim: a growth into a divine consciousness is the whole meaning of our Yoga, an integral conversion to divinity not only of the soul but of all the parts of our nature.
* *
Our purpose in Yoga is to exile the limited outward-looking ego and to enthrone God in its place as the ruling Inhabitant of the nature. And this means, first, to disinherit desire and no longer accept the enjoyment of desire as the ruling human motive. The spiritual life will draw its sustenance not from desire but from a pure and selfless spiritual delight of essential existence. And not only the vital nature in us whose stamp is desire, but the mental being too must undergo a new birth and a transfiguring change. Our divided, egoistic, limited and ignorant thought and intelligence must disappear; in its place there must stream in the catholic and faultless play of a shadowless divine illumination which shall culminate in the end in a natural self-existent Truth-consciousness free from groping half-truth and stumbling error. Our Confused and embarrassed ego-centred small-motived will and action must cease and make room for the total working of a swiftly powerful, lucidly automatic, divinely moved and guided unfallen Force. There must be implanted and activised in all our doings a supreme, impersonal, unfaltering and unstumbling will in spontaneous and untroubled unison with the will of the Divine. The unsatisfying surface play of our feeble egoistic emotions must be ousted and there must be revealed instead a secret deep and vast psychic heart within that waits behind them for its hour; all our feelings, impelled by this inner heart in which dwells the Divine, will be transmuted into calm and intense movements of a twin passion of divine Love and manifold Ananda. This is the definition of a divine humanity or a supramental race. This, not an exaggerated or even a sublimated energy of human intellect and action, is the type of the superman whom we are called to evolve by our Yoga.
In the ordinary human existence an outgoing action is obviously three-fourths or even more of our life. It is only the exceptions, the saint and the seer, the rare thinker, poet and artist who can live more within themselves; these indeed, at least in the most intimate parts of their nature, shape themselves more in inner thought and feeling than in the surface act. But it is not either of these sides separated from the other, but rather a harmony of the inner and the outer life made one in fullness and transfigured into a play of something that is beyond them which will create the form of a perfect living. A Yoga of works, a union with the Divine in our will and acts - and not only in knowledge and feeling - is then an indispensable, an inexpressibly important element of an integral Yoga. The conversion of our thought and feeling without a corresponding conversion of the spirit and body of our works would be a maimed achievement.
--
For these are in human and earthly experience relative modes, none giving its single and absolute fruit; all are intermixed with each other and there is not the pure action of any one of them anywhere. It is their Confused and inconstant interaction that determines the experiences of the egoistic human consciousness swinging in Nature's uncertain balance.
The sign of the immersion of the embodied soul in Prakriti is the limitation of consciousness to the ego. The vivid stamp of this limited consciousness can be seen in a constant inequality of the mind and heart and a Confused conflict and disharmony in their varied reactions to the touches of experience. The human reactions sway perpetually between the dualities created by the soul's subjection to Nature and by its often intense but narrow struggle for mastery and enjoyment, a struggle for the most part ineffective. The soul circles in an unending round of Nature's alluring and distressing opposites, success and failure, good fortune and ill fortune, good and evil, sin and virtue, joy and grief, pain and pleasure. It is only when, awaking from its immersion in Prakriti, it perceives its oneness with the One and its oneness with all existences that it can become free from these things and found its right relation to this executive world-Nature.
Then it becomes indifferent to her inferior modes, equal-minded to her dualities, capable of mastery and freedom; it is seated above her as the high-throned knower and witness filled with the calm intense unalloyed delight of his own eternal existence.
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Already in the practical dealing with life there are advanced progressive tendencies which take their inspiration from this profounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet been firmly accomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first feeling out towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant activities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of nations in Europe and the stirrings and changes within the nations which preceded and followed it, were rather the result of a Confused half struggle half effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and the new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West. The latter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were necessarily impelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand upon life; the world was moving towards a monstrously perfect organisation of the Will-to-live and the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out in the clash of War and has now found or is finding new forms of life for itself which show better its governing idea and motive. The Asuric or even Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision was due to this formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force of servile intelligence and reasoning contrivance subjected to it as instrument and the genius of an accomplished materialistic Science as its Djinn, its giant worker of huge, gross and soulless miracles. The War was the bursting of the explosive force so created and, even though it strewed the world with ruins, its after results may well have prepared the collapse, as they have certainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant disorder, of the monstrous combination which produced it, and by that salutary ruin are emptying the field of human life of the principal obstacles to a truer development towards a higher goal.
Behind it all the hope of the race lies in those infant and as yet subordinate tendencies which carry in them the seed of a new subjective and psychic dealing of man with his own being, with his fellow-men and with the ordering of his individual and social life. The characteristic note of these tendencies may be seen in the new ideas about the education and upbringing of the child that became strongly current in the pre-war era. Formerly, education was merely a mechanical forcing of the childs nature into arbitrary grooves of training and knowledge in which his individual subjectivity was the last thing considered, and his family upbringing was a constant repression and compulsory shaping of his habits, his thoughts, his character into the mould fixed for them by the conventional ideas or individual interests and ideals of the teachers and parents. The discovery that education must be a bringing out of the childs own intellectual and moral capacities to their highest possible value and must be based on the psychology of the child-nature was a step forward towards a more healthy because a more subjective system; but it still fell short because it still regarded him as an object to be handled and moulded by the teacher, to be educated. But at least there was a glimmering of the realisation that each human being is a self-developing soul and that the business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised what this soul is or that the true secret, whether with child or man, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real psychic entity within. That, if we ever give it a chance to come forward, and still more if we call it into the foreground as the leader of the march set in our front, will itself take up most of the business of education out of our hands and develop the capacity of the psychological being towards a realisation of its potentialities of which our present mechanical view of life and man and external routine methods of dealing with them prevent us from having any experience or forming any conception. These new educational methods are on the straight way to this truer dealing. The closer touch attempted with the psychical entity behind the vital and physical mentality and an increasing reliance on its possibilities must lead to the ultimate discovery that man is inwardly a soul and a conscious power of the Divine and that the evocation of this real man within is the right object of education and indeed of all human life if it would find and live according to the hidden Truth and deepest law of its own being. That was the knowledge which the ancients sought to express through religious and social symbolism, and subjectivism is a road of return to the lost knowledge. First deepening mans inner experience, restoring perhaps on an unprecedented scale insight and self-knowledge to the race, it must end by revolutionising his social and collective self-expression.
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
state, the conflicting spiritual tendencies which are Confusedly in-
termingled in the present world, at the heart of human freedom.
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:Constantly asserted by human experience and belief since the origins of thought, this truth, now that the necessity of an exclusive preoccupation with the secrets of the material world no longer exists, begins to be justified by new-born forms of scientific research. The increasing evidences, of which only the most obvious and outward are established under the name of telepathy with its cognate phenomena, cannot long be resisted except by minds shut up in the brilliant shell of the past, by intellects limited in spite of their acuteness through the limitation of their field of experience and inquiry, or by those who Confuse enlightenment and reason with the faithful repetition of the formulas left to us from a bygone century and the jealous conservation of dead or dying intellectual dogmas.
7:It is true that the glimpse of supraphysical realities acquired by methodical research has been imperfect and is yet ill-affirmed; for the methods used are still crude and defective. But these rediscovered subtle senses have at least been found to be true witnesses to physical facts beyond the range of the corporeal organs. There is no justification, then, for scouting them as false witnesses when they testify to supraphysical facts beyond the domain of the material organisation of consciousness. Like all evidence, like the evidence of the physical senses themselves, their testimony has to be controlled, scrutinised and arranged by the reason, rightly translated and rightly related, and their field, laws and processes determined. But the truth of great ranges of experience whose objects exist in a more subtle substance and are perceived by more subtle instruments than those of gross physical Matter, claims in the end the same validity as the truth of the material universe. The worlds beyond exist: they have their universal rhythm, their grand lines and formations, their self-existent laws and mighty energies, their just and luminous means of knowledge. And here on our physical existence and in our physical body they exercise their influences; here also they organise their means of manifestation and commission their messengers and their witnesses.
1.03 - Yama and Niyama, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
9:The only difficult question is that of continence, which is complicated by many considerations, such as that of energy; but everybody's mind is hopelessly muddled on this subject, which some people Confuse with erotology, and others with sociology. There will be no clear thinking on this matter until it is understood as being solely a branch of athletics.
10:We may then dismiss Yama and Niyama with this advice: let the student decide for himself what form of life, what moral code, will least tend to excite his mind; but once he has formulated it, let him stick to it, avoiding opportunism; and let him be very careful to take no credit for what he does or refrains from doing - it is a purely practical code, of no value in itself.
1.03 - YIBHOOTI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
knowledge, which are ordinarily Confused, comes the
knowledge of all animal sounds.
--
three Confused, make our sense objects. Suppose I hear a
word; there is first the external vibration, next the internal
1.04 - Body, Soul and Spirit, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
being "shape" or "form." The word used in this sense must not be Confused with the word body when used to designate physically sensible bodies. Used in this sense the term body can also be applied to forms which soul and spirit may assume.
In the life-body we still have something external to man. With the first stirrings of sensation the inner self responds to the excitations of the outer world. You may trace what one is justified in calling the outer world ever so far, but you will not be able to find the sensation. Rays of light stream into the eye, penetrating till they reach the retina. There they call forth chemical processes (in the so-called visual-purple); the effect of this stimulus is passed on through the optic nerve to the brain; there further physical processes arise. Could one observe these one would see more physical processes, just as elsewhere in the physical world. If I am able to observe the ether-body, I will see how the physical-brain process is at the same time a life-process. But the sensation of blue color which the recipient of the rays of light has, I can find nowhere in this manner. It arises only within the soul of the
1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
81 In the following night, the air was filled with many voices. A loud voice called, I am falling. Others cried out Confused and excited during this: Where to? What do you want? Should I entrust myself to this confusion? I shuddered. It is a dreadful deep. Do you want me to leave myself to chance, to the madness of my own darkness? Wither? Wither? You fall and, I want to fall with you, whoever you are.
The spirit of the depths opened my eyes and I caught a glimpse of the inner things, the world of my soul, the many-formed and changing.
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
The devil battles with those in obedience, sometimes to defile them with bodily pollutions and make them hard-hearted, and sometimes to provoke more than usual restlessness. At other times he makes them dry and barren, sluggish in prayer, drowsy and Confused by spiritual darkness, in order to tear them away from their struggle by making them think they have gained nothing by their obedience but are only backsliding. For he does not allow them time to reflect that often the providential withdrawal of our imagined goods or blessings leads us to the deepest humility.
However, some have often repelled that deceiver by patience; but while he is still speaking, another angel2 stands by us and after a little while tries to hoodwink us in another way.
1.04 - Religion and Occultism, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must not Confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual one.
Religious teaching belongs to the past and halts progress.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
theory, wrote to a friend, At the moment physics is again terribly Confused. In any case, it is too
difficult for me, and I wish I had been a movie comedian or something of the sort and had never heard
1.04 - The Qabalah The Best Training for Memory, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Well, when you've got this Alphabet of Numbers (in its proper shape) absolutely by heart, with as many sets of attri butions as you can commit to memory without getting Confused, you may try a few easy exercises, beginning with the past.
("How many sets of attri butions?" Well, certainly, the Hebrew and Greek Alphabets with the names and numbers of each letter, and its mean- ing: a couple of lists of God-names, with a clear idea of the character, qualities, functions, and importance of each; the "King-scale" of colour, all the Tarot attri butions, of course; then animals, plants, drugs, per- fumes, a list or two of archangels, angels, intelligences and spirits that ought to be enough for a start.)
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is one fundamental perception indispensable towards any integral knowledge or many-sided experience of this Infinite. It is to realise the Divine in its essential self and truth unaltered by forms and phenomena. Otherwise we are likely to remain caught in the net of appearances or wander Confusedly in a chaotic multitude of cosmic or particular aspects, and if we avoid this confusion, it will be at the price of getting chained to some mental formula or shut up in a limited personal experience. The one secure and all-reconciling truth which is the very foundation of the universe is this that life is the manifestation of an uncreated Self and Spirit, and the key to lifes hidden secret is the true relation of this Spirit with its own created existences. There is behind all this life the look of an eternal Being upon its multitudinous becomings; there is around and everywhere in it the envelopment and penetration of a manifestation in time by an unmanifested timeless Eternal. But this knowledge is valueless for Yoga if it is only an intellectual and metaphysical notion void of life and barren of consequence; a mental realisation alone cannot be sufficient for the seeker. For what Yoga searches after is not truth of thought alone or truth of mind alone, but the dynamic truth of a living and revealing spiritual experience. There must awake in us a constant indwelling and enveloping nearness, a vivid perception, a close feeling and communion, a concrete sense and contact of a true and infinite Presence always and everywhere. That Presence must remain with us as the living, pervading Reality in which we and all things exist and move and act, and we must feel it always and everywhere, concrete, visible, inhabiting all things; it must be patent to us as their true Self, tangible as their imperishable Essence, met by us closely as their inmost Spirit. To see, to feel, to sense, to contact in every way and not merely to conceive this Self and Spirit here in all existences and to feel with the same vividness all existences in this Self and Spirit, is the fundamental experience which must englobe all other knowledge.
This infinite and eternal Self of things is an omnipresent Reality, one existence everywhere; it is a single unifying presence and not different in different creatures; it can be met, seen or felt in its completeness in each soul or each form in the universe. For its infinity is spiritual and essential and not merely a boundlessness in Space or an endlessness in Time; the Infinite can be felt in an infinitesimal atom or in a second of time as convincingly as in the stretch of the aeons or the stupendous enormity of the intersolar spaces. The knowledge or experience of it can begin anywhere and express itself through anything; for the Divine is in all, and all is the Divine.
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In this Duality too there is possible a separative experience. At one pole of it the seeker may be conscious only of the Master of Existence putting forth on him His energies of knowledge, power and bliss to liberate and divinise; the Shakti may appear to him only an impersonal Force expressive of these things or an attribute of the Ishwara. At the other pole he may encounter the World-Mother, creatrix of the universe, putting forth the Gods and the worlds and all things and existences out of her spirit-substance. Or even if he sees both aspects, it may be with an unequal separating vision, subordinating one to the other, regarding the Shakti only as a means for approaching the Ishwara. There results a one-sided tendency or a lack of balance, a power of effectuation not perfectly supported or a light of revelation not perfectly dynamic. It is when a complete union of the two sides of the Duality is effected and rules his consciousness that he begins to open to a fuller power that will draw him altogether out of the Confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance. He has begun to lay his hand on the integral secret which in its fullness can be grasped only when he overpasses the double term that reigns here of Knowledge inextricably intertwined with an original Ignorance and crosses the border where spiritual mind disappears into supramental Gnosis. It is through this third and most dynamic dual aspect of the One that the seeker begins with the most integral completeness to enter into the deepest secret of the being of the Lord of the Sacrifice.
For it is behind the mystery of the presence of personality in an apparently impersonal universeas in that of consciousness manifesting out of the Inconscient, life out of the inanimate, soul out of brute Matter that is hidden the solution of the riddle of existence. Here again is another dynamic Duality more pervading than appears at first view and deeply necessary to the play of the slowly self-revealing Power. It is possible for the seeker in his spiritual experience, standing at one pole of the Duality, to follow Mind in seeing a fundamental Impersonality everywhere. The evolving soul in the material world begins from a vast impersonal Inconscience in which our inner sight yet perceives the presence of a veiled infinite Spirit; it proceeds with the emergence of a precarious consciousness and personality that even at their fullest have the look of an episode, but an episode that repeats itself in a constant series; it arises through experience of life out of mind into an infinite, impersonal and absolute Superconscience in which personality, mind-consciousness, life-consciousness seem all to disappear by a liberating annihilation, Nirvana. At a lower pitch he still experiences this fundamental impersonality as an immense liberating force everywhere. It releases his knowledge from the narrowness of personal mind, his will from the clutch of personal desire, his heart from the bondage of petty mutable emotions, his life from its petty personal groove, his soul from ego, and it allows them to embrace calm, equality, wideness, universality, infinity. A Yoga of works would seem to require Personality as its mainstay, almost its source, but here too the impersonal is found to be the most direct liberating force; it is through a wide egoless impersonality that one can become a free worker and a divine creator. It is not surprising that the overwhelming power of this experience from the impersonal pole of the Duality should have moved the sages to declare this to be the one way and an impersonal Superconscience to be the sole truth of the Eternal.
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It is for this that a surrender and submission to That which is beyond us enabling the full and free working of its Power is indispensable. As that self-giving progresses, the work of the sacrifice becomes easier and more powerful and the prevention of the opposing Forces loses much of its strength, impulsion and substance. Two inner changes help most to convert what now seems difficult or impracticable into a thing possible and even sure. There takes place a coming to the front of some secret inmost soul within which was veiled by the restless activity of the mind, by the turbulence of our vital impulses and by the obscurity of the physical consciousness, the three powers which in their Confused combination we now call our self. There will come about as a result a less impeded growth of a Divine Presence at the centre with its liberating Light and effective Force and an irradiation of it into all the conscious and subconscious ranges of our nature. These are the two signs, one marking our completed conversion and consecration to the great Quest, the other the final acceptance by the Divine of our sacrifice.
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1.04 - To the Priest of Rytan-ji, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
Please understand the reason for my obstinacy. Why, I haven't a single person around to give the kind of advice and assistance I would need to carry out such an assignment. If a priest of my inexperience were to agree to your request and attempt the task you have set, I would only make myself a general laughingstock for not realizing the limits of my ability. On the other hand, were I to give in to my personal feelings, refuse the invitation, and retreat into my carapace, I would no doubt always be reproached for turning my back on the desires and expectations of all those who supported the idea. Thus Confused in mind and decrepit in body, this indolent old monk now finds himself forced into a very tight corner.
Things being so, in autumn (the seventh month), after the summer retreat, I will set out from here for
1.04 - Wake-Up Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
Confuse you, just as the water will Confuse you if you don't forget
about it.
1.04 - Wherefore of World?, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
Even if we suppose at the beginning of things a chaos such as sometimes Confuses our own ideas, we cannot refuse to this melancholy condition the power to assume progressive form, that is to say, to realise the principle of order which it holds in itself. Otherwise there would be no possibility of anything more rational issuing out of that chaos.
It would be vain to mass together indefinitely a heap of letters of the alphabet; they would never of themselves arrange words and phrases, if the idea of those phrases and those words did not intervene and preside over the arrangement. Nor, any more, would the elements constituting Matter have organised themselves as they have done if previous affinities, that is to say, first reasons had not determined and rendered possible their combinations.
1.056 - Lack of Knowledge is the Cause of Suffering, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This restlessness which is the immediate outcome of ignorance produces unnatural, abnormal attitudes in respect of things, because a drowning person may try to catch even a straw that is floating on the surface of water, whether or not it is going to be of any help. The mind that is defeated from every side and cannot express itself at all for various reasons, tries to hold on to any support of satisfaction that is visible before it. At the same time, it is not allowed to hold on to it for a long time due to the force of the flood in which it is caught. It will be showing its head above for a few minutes, and then sinking down again. This condition goes on for a long time, and one cannot say who will win. The feelings of the individual during this time are obvious. They are unthinkable, unanalysable, not subject to scrutiny in a logical manner. They remain in a very Confused state.
The tendencies of the individual towards external objects remain either dormant, when they cannot be expressed at all because facilities are not forthcoming, or they can be present in a manifest state, but in a very attenuated form, like a fine, silken thread visible, and yet very slender, not strong and powerful. It is also possible that these tendencies can appear to be completely absent at some time, and suddenly crop up at another time, like a fever in typhoid one day we look normal and the next day we have fever. These tendencies will look completely buried and almost extinct for some time and we will be under the impression that they have gone for good, but it is not so. They will suddenly show their heads when the atmosphere becomes favourable. And there are occasions when they can be fully manifest and they can be at war with us, daggers drawn.
1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes Confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother On Education
1.05 - Ritam, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If we suppose evil in this rik to connote or include moral evil we find Dakshina to have a share, the active energy of the viveka to take its part in the function of protection from sin which is one of the principal attributes of Varuna. It is part of the ideas of Vedanta that sin is in reality a form of ignorance and is purified out of the system by the illumination of divine knowledge. We begin to find by this sin-effacing attri bute of Varuna, prachet, uruchakshas, ptadaksha, ritasya jyotishas pati, by this sin-repelling attri bute of Dakshina, the energy of ideal discrimination, the same profound idea already anticipated in the Rigveda. The Veda abounds with confirmatory passages, of which I will quote at present one only from the hymn of Kanwa to Agni, the thirty-sixth of thisMandala. High-uplifted protect us from evil by the perception, burn utterly every devourer, phi anhaso ni ketun a. All evil is a deviation from the right & truth, from the ritam, a deviation from the self-existent truth & right of the divine or immortal nature; the lords of knowledge dwelling in the human consciousness as the prachetasah, informing its acts of consciousness which include in the ancient psychology action & feeling no less than thought & attuning them to follow spontaneously the just rhythm of the divine right & truth, deliver effectually this human & mortal nature from evil & sin. The place of Daksha & Dakshina in that action is evident; it is primary & indispensable; for the mortal nature being full of wrong perceptions, warped impulses, evil & mixed & Confused states of feeling, it is the business of the viveka to sort out the confusion & accustom the mind & heart of man to a juster, truer & purer working. The action of the other faculties of the Truth may be said to come after that of Daksha, of the viveka. In these hymns of Sunahshepa the clear physiognomy of Varuna begins to dawn upon us. He is evidently the master of right knowledge, wide, self-luminous & all-containing in the world-consciousness & in human consciousness. His physical connection with the all-containing ether,for Varuna is Uranus, the Greek Akasha, & wideness is constantly associated with him in the Veda,leads us to surmise that he may also be the master in the ideal faculty, ritam brihat, where he dwells, urukshaya, of pure infinite conscious-being out of which knowledge manifests & with which it is, ultimately, one entity
The hymns of Kanwa follow the hymns of Sunahshepa and Hiranyastupa in the order of the first Mandala. In the hymns of Kanwa we find three or four times the mention, more or less extended in sense, of the Ritam. In his first reference to it he connects it not with Varuna, Mitra or Daksha, but with Agni. That Agni whom Kanwa Medhyatithi has kindled from the truth above (or it may equally mean upon the truth as a basis or in the field of the truth) and again Thee, O Agni, the Manu has set as a light for the eternal birth; thou hast shone forth in Kanwa born from the Truth. This passage is of great importance in fixing the character & psychological functions of Agni; for our present purpose it will be sufficient to notice the expression jyotir janya shashwate which may well have an intimate connection with the ritam jyotih of an earlier hymn, & the description in connection with this puissant phrase of Agni as born from the Truth, and again [of the Truth] as a sort of field in which or from which Kanwa has drawn the light of Agni.
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
The exercises described in the preceding chapters, if practiced in the right way, involve certain changes in the organism of the soul (astral body). The latter is only perceptible to the clairvoyant, and may be compared to a cloud, psycho-spiritually luminous to a certain degree, in the center of which the physical body is discernible. (A description will be found in the author's book, Theosophy.) In this astral body desires, lusts, passions, and ideas become visible in a spiritual way. Sensual appetites, for instance, create the impression of a dark red radiance with a definite shape; a pure and noble thought finds its expression in a reddish-violet radiance; the clear-cut concept of the logical thinker is experienced as a yellowish figure with sharply defined outline; the Confused thought of the muddled head appears as a figure with vague outline. The thoughts of a person with one-sided, queer views appear sharply outlined but immobile, while the
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The further the student advances in his inner development, the more regular will be the differentiation within his astral body. The latter is Confused and undifferentiated in the case of a person of undeveloped inner life; yet the clairvoyant can perceive even the unorganized astral body as a figure standing out distinctly from its environment. It extends from the center of the head to the middle of the physical body, and appears like an independent body possessing certain organs. The organs now to be considered are perceptible to the clairvoyant near the following parts of the
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filled with life. The clairvoyant in whom this sense is developed can describe, for every mode of thought and for every law of nature, a form which expresses them. A revengeful thought, for example, assumes an arrow-like, pronged form, while a kindly thought is often formed like an opening flower, and so on. Clear-cut, significant thoughts are regular and symmetrical in form, while Confused thoughts have wavy outlines. Quite different perceptions are received through the twelve-petalled lotus. These perceptions may, in a sense, be likened to warmth and cold, as applied to the soul. A clairvoyant equipped with this faculty feels this warmth and cold streaming out from the forms discerned by the sixteen-petalled lotus. Had he developed the sixteen and not the twelve-petalled lotus he would only perceive, in the kindly thought, for instance, the figure described above, while a clairvoyant in whom both senses were developed would also notice what can only be described as soul-warmth, flowing from the thought. It would be noted in passing that esoteric training never develops one organ without the other, so that the above-mentioned example may be regarded as a
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organs, and instead of perceiving the truth he would be subject to deceptions and illusions. He would attain a certain clairvoyance, but for the most part, be the victim of greater blindness than before. Formerly he at least stood firmly within the physical world; now he looks beyond this physical world and grows Confused about it before acquiring a firm footing in a higher world. All power of distinguishing truth from error would then perhaps fail him, and he would entirely lose his way in life. It is just for this reason that patience is so necessary in these matters. It must ever be borne in mind that the instructions given in esoteric training may go no further than is compatible with the willing readiness shown to develop the lotus flowers to their regular shape. Should these flowers be brought to fruition before they have quietly attained their correct form, mere caricatures would be the result. Their maturity can be brought about by the special instructions given in esoteric training, but their form is dependent on the method of life described above.
An inner training of a particularly intimate character is necessary for the development of the
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permits intercourse with beings of higher worlds, though only when their existence is manifested in the astral or soul-world. The development of this lotus flower, however, is not advisable unless the student has made great progress on that path of esoteric development which enables him to raise his spirit into a still higher world. This entry into the spiritual world proper must always run parallel with the development of the lotus flowers, otherwise the student will fall into error and confusion. He would undoubtedly be able to see, but he would remain incapable of forming a correct estimate of what he saw. Now, the development of the six-petalled lotus flower itself provides a certain security against confusion and instability, for no one can be easily Confused who has attained perfect equilibrium between sense (or body), passion (or soul), and idea (or spirit). And yet, something more than this security is required when, through the development of the six-petalled lotus flower, living beings of independent existence are revealed to his spirit, beings belonging to a world so completely different from the world known to his physical senses. The development
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1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
goal and finally flows back towards it; having Confusedly
set the cosmic mass in motion, it emerges from it to form the
1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience -- or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions or instigations of the Life-force, the positive necessities of physical things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes false lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for the rest either detain or Confuse us. The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and comm and and dynamic presence of the Divine shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga.
In accordance with the triple character of the sacrifice we may divide works too into a triple order, the works of Knowledge, the works of Love, the works of the Will-in-Life, and see how this more plastic spiritual rule applies to each province and effects the transition from the lower to the higher nature.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
(and not just Christianity). It has constantly been the case that proper-thinking people Confuse the
existence of threats to their security and moral integrity with evil. This means that the proper-thinking
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Ideology is fixed world-picture; not empirical description, although constantly Confused with such; is
portrait of significance, of meaning mythically-grounded determinant of interpretation of present actuality
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follow the rules is a necessary precondition to adult flexibility, but should not be Confused with truly
adult morality, which is the capacity to produce new sets of rules, with (updated) adaptive utility. This is
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was simultaneously able to provide valid criticism of his ideas. Often, Jungs notions are Confused with
Freuds insofar as Freuds are understood. Freud himself certainly did not make this error. It was in fact
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Then, obviously, who created God? Sometimes we have a Demiurge, a creative God behind whom is an eternal formless Greatness anything to Confuse the issue!
Sometimes the Universe is supported by an elephant; he, in turn, stands on a tortoise . . . by that time it is hoped that the enquirer is too tired and muddled to ask what holds up the tortoise.
1.06 - Definition of Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colours, laid on Confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus Tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to the action.
Third in order is Thought,--that is, the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances. In the case of oratory, this is the function of the Political art and of the art of rhetoric: and so indeed the older poets make their characters speak the language of civic life; the poets of our time, the language of the rhetoricians.
1.06 - Dhyana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
18:But, whatever it may be, the result on the mind of the student is tremendous; all his thoughts are pushed to their greatest development. He sincerely believes that they have the divine sanction; perhaps he even supposes that they emanate from this "God." He goes back into the world armed with this intense conviction and authority. He proclaims his ideas without the restraint which is imposed upon most persons by doubt, modesty, and diffidence; footnote: This lack of restraint is not to be Confused with that observed in intoxication and madness. Yet there is a very striking similarity, though only a superficial one. while further there is, one may suppose, a real clarification.
19:In any case, the mass of mankind is always ready to be swayed by anything thus authoritative and distinct. History is full of stories of officers who have walked unarmed up to a mutinous regiment, and disarmed them by the mere force of confidence. The power of the orator over the mob is well known. It is, probably, for this reason that the prophet has been able to constrain mankind to obey his law. I never occurs to him that any one can do otherwise. In practical life one can walk past any guardian, such as a sentry or ticket-collector, if one can really act so that the man is somehow persuaded that you have a right to pass unchallenged.
1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:The universe and the individual are the two essential appearances into which the Unknowable descends and through which it has to be approached; for other intermediate collectivities are born only of their interaction. This descent of the supreme Reality is in its nature a self-concealing; and in the descent there are successive levels, in the concealing successive veils. Necessarily, the revelation takes the form of an ascent; and necessarily also the ascent and the revelation are both progressive. For each successive level in the descent of the Divine is to man a stage in an ascension; each veil that hides the unknown God becomes for the God-lover and God-seeker an instrument of His unveiling. Out of the rhythmic slumber of material Nature unconscious of the Soul and the Idea that maintain the ordered activities of her energy even in her dumb and mighty material trance, the world struggles into the more quick, varied and disordered rhythm of Life labouring on the verges of self-consciousness. Out of Life it struggles upward into Mind in which the unit becomes awake to itself and its world, and in that awakening the universe gains the leverage it required for its supreme work, it gains self-conscious individuality. But Mind takes up the work to continue, not to complete it. It is a labourer of acute but limited intelligence who takes the Confused materials offered by Life and, having improved, adapted, varied, classified according to its power, hands them over to the supreme Artist of our divine manhood. That Artist dwells in supermind; for supermind is superman. Therefore our world has yet to climb beyond Mind to a higher principle, a higher status, a higher dynamism in which universe and individual become aware of and possess that which they both are and therefore stand explained to each other, in harmony with each other, unified.
6:The disorders of life and mind cease by discerning the secret of a more perfect order than the physical. Matter below life and mind contains in itself the balance between a perfect poise of tranquillity and the action of an immeasurable energy, but does not possess that which it contains. Its peace wears the dull mask of an obscure inertia, a sleep of unconsciousness or rather of a drugged and imprisoned consciousness. Driven by a force which is its real self but whose sense it cannot yet seize nor share, it has not the awakened joy of its own harmonious energies.
1.06 - On Thought, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So let us not Confuse complacency with confidence and let us return to our subject.
When you are able by methodical and repeated effort to objectivise and keep at a distance all this flood of incoherent thoughts which assail us, you will notice a new phenomenon.
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The light it sheds illuminates the other parts of the nature which, for want of any better guidance than their own Confused and groping powers, have been wandering in the rounds of the Ignorance; it gives to mind the intrinsic feeling of the thoughts and perceptions, to life the infallible sense of the movements that are misled or misleading and those that are well-inspired; something like a quiet oracle from within discloses the causes of our stumblings, warns in time against their repetition, extracts from experience and intuition the law, not rigid but plastic, of a just direction for our acts, a right stepping, an accurate impulse. A will is created that becomes more in consonance with evolving Truth rather than with the circling and dilatory mazes of a seeking Error. A determined orientation towards the greater Light to be, a soul-instinct, a psychic tact and insight into the true substance, motion and intention of things, coming always nearer and nearer to a spiritual vision, to a knowledge by inner contact, inner sight and even identity, begin to replace the superficial keenness of mental judgment and the eager graspings of the life-force. The works of Life right themselves, escape from confusion, substitute for the artificial or legal order imposed by the intellect and for the arbitrary rule of desire the guidance of the soul's inner insight, enter into the profound paths of the
Spirit. Above all, the psychic being imposes on life the law of the sacrifice of all its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call to that which is beyond Life; its every smallest act enlarges with the sense of the Infinite.
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In this process and at an early stage of it it becomes evident that what we know of ourselves, our present conscious existence, is only a representative formation, a superficial activity, a changing external result of a vast mass of concealed existence. Our visible life and the actions of that life are no more than a series of significant expressions, but that which it tries to express is not on the surface; our existence is something much larger than this apparent frontal being which we suppose ourselves to be and which we offer to the world around us. This frontal and external being is a Confused amalgam of mind-formations, lifemovements, physical functionings of which even an exhaustive analysis into its component parts and machinery fails to reveal the whole secret. It is only when we go behind, below, above into the hidden stretches of our being that we can know it; the most thorough and acute surface scrutiny and manipulation cannot give us the true understanding or the completely effective control of our life, its purposes, its activities; that inability indeed is the cause of the failure of reason, morality and every other surface action to control and deliver and perfect the life of the human race. For below even our most obscure physical consciousness is a subconscious being in which as in a covering and supporting soil are all manner of hidden seeds that sprout up, unaccountably to us, on our surface and into which we are constantly throwing fresh seeds that prolong our past and will influence our future, - a subconscious being, obscure, small in its motions, capriciously
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1.06 - The Third Circle The Gluttonous. Cerberus. The Eternal Rain. Ciacco. Florence., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
Which utterly with sadness had Confused me,
New torments I behold, and new tormented
1.06 - The Transformation of Dream Life, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
AN INTIMATION that the student has reached or will soon reach the stage of development described in the preceding chapter will be found in the change which comes over his dream life. His dreams, hitherto Confused and haphazard, now begin to assume a more regular character. Their pictures begin to succeed each other in sensible connection, like the thoughts and ideas of daily life. He can discern in them law, cause, and effect. The content, too, of his dreams is changed. While hitherto he discerned only reminiscences of daily life and transformed impressions of his surroundings or of his physical condition, there now appear before him pictures of a world he has hitherto not known. At first the general character of his dream life remains
p. 190
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spiritual organs we can form none other than the Confused conceptions of it described above. It is only in so far present for us as, for instance, the world of sense could be for a being equipped with no more than rudimentary eyes. That is why we can see nothing in this world but counterfeits and reflections of daily life. The latter are perceptible to us because our own soul paints its daily experiences in pictorial form into the substance of which that other world consists. It must be clearly understood that in addition to our ordinary conscious work-a-day life we lead a second, unconscious life in that other world. We engrave in it all our thoughts and perceptions. These tracings only become visible when the lotus flowers are developed. Now, in every human being there are slender rudiments of these lotus flowers. We cannot perceive by means of them during waking consciousness because the impressions made on them are very faint. We cannot see the stars during the daytime for a similar reason: their visibility is extinguished by the mighty glare of the sun. Thus, too, the faint spiritual impressions cannot make themselves felt in the face
p. 193
--
Now, when the gate of the senses is closed during sleep, these other impressions begin to emerge Confusedly, and the dreamer becomes aware of experiences in another world. But as already explained, these experiences consist at first merely of pictures engraved in the spiritual world by our mental activity attached to the physical senses. Only developed lotus flowers make it possible for manifestations not derived from the physical world to be imprinted in the same way. And then the etheric body, when developed, brings full knowledge concerning these engraved impressions derived from other worlds.
This is the beginning of life and activity in a new world, and at this point esoteric training must set the student a twofold task. To begin with, he must learn to take stock of everything he observes in his dreams, exactly as though he were awake. Then, if successful in this, he is led to make the same observations during ordinary waking consciousness. He will so train his attention and receptivity for these spiritual impressions
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
and was apparently charismatic, but then became psychologically manipulative, which left the students Confused.
In thinking of the potential corruptions great gurus and small gurus
--
As a previous verse said, we Confuse the name with the object and think
that the name abides in the basis of imputation. We do this in relation to our-
--
disgusting components. Adding these other wrong views to our self-grasping, we become totally Confused.
We dont realize just how out of touch with reality our mind is. In the
--
need when we feel Confused. Mother Theresa once said:
When I am hungry, give me someone that I can feed,
--
Its important not to Confuse pure lands with the Christian idea of
heaven. Furthermore, a pure land is not nirvana. Nirvana is the state in which
1.07 - On Dreams, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The doctors who carried out these experiments were led to the conclusion that mental activity never really ceases; and it is this activity which is more or less Confusedly transcribed in our brains by what we know as dreams. Thus, whether we are aware of it or not, we always dream.
Certainly, it is possible to suppress this activity completely and to have a total, dreamless sleep; but to be able in this way to immerse our mental being in a repose similar to the repose of our physical being, we must have achieved a perfect control over it, and this is not an easy thing to do.
--
These activities usually leave behind them only a few rare and Confused memories.
However, it is noteworthy that a chance circumstance, an impression received, a word pronounced, is sometimes enough to bring suddenly back to the consciousness a whole long dream of which we had no recollection a moment before.
1.07 - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:To those who can act only on a rigid standard, to those who can feel only the human and not the divine values, this truth may seem to be a dangerous concession which is likely to destroy the very foundation of morality, Confuse all conduct and establish only chaos. Certainly, if the choice must be between an eternal and unchanging ethics and no ethics at all, it would have that result for man in his ignorance. But even on the human level, if we have light enough and flexibility enough to recognise that a standard of conduct may be temporary and yet necessary for its time and to observe it faithfully until it can be replaced by a better, then we suffer no such loss, but lose only the fanaticism of an imperfect and intolerant virtue. In its place we gain openness and a power of continual moral progression, charity, the capacity to enter into an understanding sympathy with all this world of struggling and stumbling creatures and by that charity a better right and a greater strength to help it upon its way. In the end where the human closes and the divine commences, where the mental disappears into the supramental consciousness and the finite precipitates itself into the infinite, all evil disappears into a transcendent divine Good which becomes universal on every plane of consciousness that it touches.
7:This, then, stands fixed for us that all standards by which we may seek to govern our conduct are only our temporary, imperfect and evolutive attempts to represent to ourselves our stumbling mental progress in the universal self-realisation towards which Nature moves. But the divine manifestation cannot be bound by our little rules and fragile sanctities; for the consciousness behind it is too vast for these things. Once we have grasped this fact, disconcerting enough to the absolutism of our reason, we shall better be able to put in their right place in regard to each other the successive standards that govern the different stages in the growth of the individual and the collective march of mankind. At the most general of them we may cast a passing glance. For we have to see how they stand in relation to that other standardless spiritual and supramental mode of working for which Yoga seeks and to which it moves by the surrender of the individual to the divine Will and, more effectively, through his ascent by this surrender to the greater consciousness in which a certain identity with the dynamic Eternal becomes possible.
1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
16:In short, every within turns us out into more of the Kosmos. This is what seems to so Confuse the flatl and holists (and the ecological critics of contemplation), because in their flatl and world of self and cosmos, the more attention you place on one, the less attention you have for the other (and they want everyone's eyes riveted on exterior nature), whereas in the pluridimensional and holoarchic Kosmos, the more the depths of the self are disclosed, the more the corresponding depths of the Kosmos reveal themselves. (We will see where all that leads in a moment.)
17:This general movement of within-and-beyond is nothing new with humans: it is a simple continuation of the Kosmic evolutionary process, which is "self-development through self-transcendence," the same process at work in atoms and molecules and cells, a process that, in the human domains, continues naturally into the superconscious, with precisely nothing occult or mysterious about it.
1.07 - The Ideal Law of Social Development, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, this is an ideal law which the imperfect human race has never yet really attained and it may be very long before it can attain to it. Man, not possessing, but only seeking to find himself, not knowing consciously, obeying only in the rough subconsciously or half-consciously the urge of the law of his own nature with stumblings and hesitations and deviations and a series of violences done to himself and others, has had to advance by a tangle of truth and error, right and wrong, compulsion and revolt and clumsy adjustments, and he has as yet neither the wideness of knowledge nor the flexibility of mind nor the purity of temperament which would enable him to follow the law of liberty and harmony rather than the law of discord and regimentation, compulsion and adjustment and strife. Still it is the very business of a subjective age when knowledge is increasing and diffusing itself with an unprecedented rapidity, when capacity is generalising itself, when men and nations are drawn close together and partially united though in an inextricable, Confused entanglement of chaotic unity, when they are being compelled to know each other and impelled to know more profoundly themselves, mankind, God and the world and when the idea of self-realisation for men and nations is coming consciously to the surface,it is the natural work and should be the conscious hope of man in such an age to know himself truly, to find the ideal law of his being and his development and, if he cannot even then follow it ideally owing to the difficulties of his egoistic nature, still to hold it before him and find out gradually the way by which it can become more and more the moulding principle of his individual and social existence.
It may be said that since man is a mental being limited by the mind, life and body, this development and organisation of a power beyond mind, a supramental power, would be the creation of a new superhuman race and that the use of the words human and humanly would no longer be in place. This is no doubt true, but the possibility for the race still remains, if not for all in the same degree or at the same time, yet in an eventual fulfilment.
1.07 - The Plot must be a Whole., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is Confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. The limit of length in relation to dramatic competition and sensuous presentment, is no part of artistic theory. For had it been the rule for a hundred tragedies to compete together, the performance would have been regulated by the water-clock,--as indeed we are told was formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.
author class:Aristotle
1.07 - The Psychic Center, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
To grow we need to forget. If, in our hopelessly childish outer consciousness, we were to remember having once been a virtuous banker, for example, while we now find ourselves in the skin of an adept crook, we would be understandably Confused! Perhaps we are still too young to understand that our soul needed to experience the opposite of virtue or, rather, that the abscess our virtue was concealing had to be punctured. Evolution has nothing to do with becoming more saintly or intelligent; it has to do with becoming more conscious. It takes a great many ages for one to be able to fruitfully bear the truth of past lives.
Everything, then, depends upon the degree of our development and the extent to which our psychic being has participated in our outer life;
1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Hoping that you are now recovered from the devastating revelations in the matter of the Yellow School, I must ask you to brace yourself for disclosures even more formidable about the Black. Do not Confuse with the Black Lodge, or the Black Brothers. The terminology is unfortunate, but it wasn't I that did it. Now then, to work!
The Black School of Magick, which must by no means be Confused with the School of Black Magick or Sorcery, which latter is a perversion of the White tradition, is distinguished fundamentally from the Yellow School in that it considers the Universe not as neutral, but as definitely a curse. Its primary theorem is the "First Noble Truth" of the Buddha "Everything is Sorrow." In the primitive classics of this School the idea of sorrow is Confused with that of sin. (This idea of universal lamentation is presumably responsible for the choice of black as its symbolic colour. And yet? Is not white the Chinese hue of mourning?)
The analysis of the philosophers of this School refers every phenomenon to the category of sorrow. It is quite useless to point out to them that certain events are accompanied with joy: they continue their ruthless calculations, and prove to your satisfaction, or rather dissatisfaction, that the more apparently pleasant an event is, the more malignantly deceptive is its fascination. There is only one way of escape even conceivable, and this way is quite simple, annihilation. (Shallow critics of Buddhism have wasted a great deal of stupid ingenuity on trying to make out that Nirvana or Nibbana means something different from what etymology, tradition and the evidence of the Classics combine to define it. The word means, quite simply, cessation: and it stands to reason that, if everything is sorrow, the only thing which is not sorrow is nothing, and that therefore to escape from sorrow is the attainment of nothingness.)
1.08 - Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
"This being, then, knelt down upon the ground, and raising his hands respectfully to his head, said to Mahādeva, 'Sovereign of the gods, command what it is that I must do for thee.' To which Maheśvara replied, Spoil the sacrifice of Dakṣa.' Then the mighty Vīrabhadra, having heard the pleasure of his lord, bowed down his head to the feet of Prajāpati; and starting like a lion loosed from bonds, despoiled the sacrifice of Dakṣa, knowing that the had been created by the displeasure of Devī. She too in her wrath, as the fearful goddess Rudrakālī, accompanied him, with all her train, to witness his deeds. Vīrabhadra the fierce, abiding in the region of ghosts, is the minister of the anger of Devī. And he then created, from the pores of his skin, powerful demigods, the mighty attendants upon Rudra, of equal valour and strength, who started by hundreds and thousands into existence. Then a loud and Confused clamour filled all the expanse of ether, and inspired the denizens of heaven with dread. The mountains tottered, and earth shook; the winds roared, and the depths of the sea were disturbed; the fires lost their radiance, and the sun grew pale; the planets of the firmament shone not, neither did the stars give light; the Ṛṣis ceased their hymns, and gods and demons were mute; and thick darkness eclipsed the chariots of the skies[5].
"Then from the gloom emerged fearful and numerous forms, shouting the cry of battle; who instantly broke or overturned the sacrificial columns, trampled upon the altars, and danced amidst the oblations. Running wildly hither and thither, with the speed of wind, they tossed about the implements and vessels of sacrifice, which looked like stars precipitated from the heavens. The piles of food and beverage for the gods, which had been heaped up like mountains; the rivers of milk; the banks of curds and butter; the sands of honey and butter-milk and sugar; the mounds of condiments and spices of every flavour; the undulating knolls of flesh and other viands; the celestial liquors, pastes, and confections, which had been prepared; these the spirits of wrath devoured or defiled or scattered abroad. Then falling upon the host of the gods, these vast and resistless Rudras beat or terrified them, mocked and insulted the nymphs and goddesses, and quickly put an end to the rite, although defended by all the gods; being the ministers of Rudra's wrath, and similar to himself[6]. Some then made a hideous clamour, whilst others fearfully shouted, when Yajña was decapitated. For the divine Yajña, the lord of sacrifice, then began to fly up to heaven, in the shape of a deer; and Vīrabhadra, of immeasurable spirit, apprehending his power, cut off his vast head, after he had mounted into the sky[7]. Dakṣa the patriarch, his sacrifice being destroyed, overcome with terror, and utterly broken in spirit, fell then upon the ground, where his head was spurned by the feet of the cruel Vīrabhadra[8]. The thirty scores of sacred divinities were all presently bound, with a band of fire, by their lion-like foe; and they all then addressed him, crying, 'Oh Rudra, have mercy upon thy servants: oh lord, dismiss thine anger.' Thus spake Brahmā and the other gods, and the patriarch Dakṣa; and raising their hands, they said, 'Declare, mighty being, who thou art.' Vīrabhadra said, 'I am not a god, nor an Āditya; nor am I come hither for enjoyment, nor curious to behold the chiefs of the divinities: know that I am come to destroy the sacrifice of Dakṣa, and that I am called Vīrabhadra, the issue of the wrath of Rudra. Bhadrakālī also, who has sprung from the anger of Devī, is sent here by the god of gods to destroy this rite. Take refuge, king of kings, with him who is the lord of Umā; for better is the anger of Rudra than the blessings of other gods.'
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
The word transpersonal is somewhat awkward and Confuses many people. But the point is simply, as Emerson put it, "The soul knows no persons." He explains (and note: Emerson throughout these quotes uses the masculine, as was the custom of the time; were he alive today he would use feminine and masculine, for the whole point of his notion of the Over-Soul was that it was neither male nor female, which is why it could anchor a true liberation from any and all restrictive roles: "The soul knows no persons"):
:::Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the larger experience of man discovers the identical nature [the same self or soul] appearing through them all. In all conversation between two persons tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.1
--
With the Over-Soul, the World Soul, it is not that individuality disappears, but that-once again-it is negated and preserved in a deeper and wider ground, a ground that conspicuously includes all of nature and its glories. This cosmic consciousness is sometimes referred to as "nature mysticism," but that is a somewhat misleading term. For this psychic-level mysticism embraces not just nature but also culture, and calling it "nature mysticism" Confuses it with a merely biocentric regression, an ecocentric indissociation, and this is not at all what Emerson has in mind (as we will see).
But since the Over-Soul is an experienced identity with all manifestation, it is an identity that most definitely and exuberantly embraces nature; and, to that degree, it begins to undercut the subject/object dualism.10 Emerson explains:
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Austerity is usually Confused with self-mortification, and when someone speaks of austerities, we think of the discipline of the ascetic who, in order to avoid the arduous task of spiritualising the physical, vital and mental life, declares it incapable of transformation and casts it away ruthlessly as a useless encumbrance, as a bondage and an impediment to all spiritual progress, in any case as something incorrigible, as a load that has to be borne more or less cheerfully until Nature, or divine Grace, delivers you from it by death. At best, life on earth is a field for progress and one should take advantage of it as best one can in order to reach as soon as possible the degree of perfection which will put an end to the ordeal by making it unnecessary.
For us the problem is quite different. Life on earth is not a passage or a means; by transformation it must become a goal and a realisation. Consequently, when we speak of austerities, it is not out of contempt for the body nor to detach ourselves from it, but because of the need for control and mastery. For there is an austerity which is far greater, far more complete and far more difficult than all the austerities of the ascetic: it is the austerity which is necessary for the integral transformation, the fourfold austerity which prepares the individual for the manifestation of the supramental truth. For example, one can say that few austerities are as strict as those which physical culture demands for the perfection of the body. But we shall return to this point in due time.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the rest, Sayana in this particular passage lends some support [to] this suggestion of Saraswatis etymological good luck; for he tells us that Saraswati has two aspects, the embodied goddess of Speech and the figure of a river. He distributes, indeed, these two capacities with a strange inconsistency and in his interpretation, as in so many of these harsh & twisted scholastic renderings, European & Indian, of the old melodious subtleties of thought & language, the sages of the Veda come before us only to be convicted of a baffling incoherence of sense and a pointless inaptness of language. But possibly, after all, it is the knowledge of the scholar that is at fault, not the intellect of the Vedic singers that was Confused, stupid and clumsy! Nevertheless we must consider the possibility that Sayanas distribution of the sense may be ill-guided, & yet his suggestion about the double role of the goddess may in itself be well-founded. There are few passages of the ancient Sanhita, into which these ingenuities of the ritualistic & naturalistic interpretations do not pursue us. Our inquiry would protract itself into an intolerable length, if we had at every step to clear away from the path either the heavy ancient lumber or the brilliant modern rubbish. It is necessary to determine, once for all, whether the Vedic scholars, prve ntan uta, are guides worthy of trustwhe ther they are as sure in taste & insight as they are painstaking and diligent in their labour,whether, in a word, these ingenuities are the outcome of an imaginative licence of speculation or a sound & keen intuition of the true substance of Veda. Here is a crucial passage. Let us settle at least one side of the account the ledger of the great Indian scholiast.
Madhuchchhanda turns to Saraswati at the close of his hymn after successively calling to the Aswins, Indra & the Visvadevas. To each of these deities he has addressed three riks of praise & invocation; the last three of the twelve reiterate in each verse the name, epithets & functions of Saraswati. The Sukta falls therefore into four equal parts of which the last alone immediately concerns us.
--
On the strength of Sayanas commentary these lines would have to bear in English the following astounding significance. Let the purifying goddess of Speech, equipped by means of food offerings with a ritual full of food, desire (that is to say, up-bear) the sacrifice, she who is the cause of wealth as a result of the ritual. Sender of pleasant & true sayings and explainer (of this sacrifice) to the performers of the ritual who have a good intelligence, the goddess of Speech upholds the sacrifice. The river Saraswati makes known by her action (that is, her stream) much water, she (the Muse) illumines all the ideas of the sacrificer. Truly, whatever Saraswati may do for the sacrificer,who does not appear at all in the lines except to the second sight of Sayana,the great scholar does not succeed in illumining our ideas about the sense of the Sukta. The astonishing transition from the Muse to the river & the river to the Muse in a single rik is flagrantly impossible. How does Saraswatis thoughtful provision of much water lead to her illumination of the sacrificers evidently Confused intellect?Why should dhiy in dhiyvasu mean ritual act, and dhiyo in dhiyo vsv ideas? How can desire mean upbear, ritual act mean wealth or action mean a stream of water? What sense can we extract from arnah prachetayati in Sayanas extraordinary combination? If s nritnm expresses speech or thought, why should the parallel expression sumatnm in defiance of rhythm of sound & rhythm of sense, refer to the sacrificers? I have offered these criticisms not for any pleasure in carping at the great Southern scholar, but to establish by a clear, decisive & typical instance the defects which justify my total rejection of his once supreme authority in Vedic scholarship. Sayana is learned in ritualism, loaded with grammatical lore, a scholar of vast diligence and enormous erudition, but in his mentality literary perception & taste seem either to have been non-existent or else oppressed under the heavy weight of his learning. This and other defects common enough in men of vast learning whose very curiosity of erudition only lead them to prefer a strained to a simple explanation, the isolated suggestions of single words to a regard for the total form & coherence, & recondite, antiquarian or ceremonial allusions to a plain meaning, render his guidance less than useful in the higher matters of interpretation and far from safe in questions of verbal rendering.
The effectual motive for Sayanas admission of Saraswatis double rle in this Sukta is the expression maho arnas, the great water, of the third rik. Only in her capacity as a river-goddess has Saraswati anything to do with material water; an abundance of liquid matter is entirely irrelevant to her intellectual functions. If therefore we accept arnah in a material sense, the entrance of the river into the total physiognomy of Saraswati is imposed upon us by hard necessity in spite of the resultant incoherence. But if on the other hand, arnah can be shown to bear other than a material significance or intention, then no other necessity exists for the introduction of a deified Aryan river. On the contrary, there is an extraordinary accumulation of expressions clearly intellectual in sense. Pvak, dhiyvasuh, chodayitr snritnm, chetant sumatnm, prachetayati ketun, dhiyo vsv vi rjati are all expressions of this stamp; for they mean respectively purifying, rich in understanding, impeller of truths, awakening to good thoughts, perceives or makes conscious by perception, governs variously all the ideas or mental activities. Even yajnam vashtu and yajnam dadhe refer, plainly, to a figurative moral upholding,if, indeed, upholding be at all the Rishis intention in vashtu. What is left? Only the name Saraswati thrice repeated, the pronoun nah, and the two expressions vjebhir vjinvat and maho arnah. The rest is clearly the substance of a passage full of strong intellectual and moral conceptions. I shall suggest that these two expressions vjebhir vjin vat and maho arnah are no exception to the intellectuality of the rest of the passage. They, too, are words expressing moral or intellectual qualities or entities.
--
O Aswins, arrive with energetic force of a bright-flaming strength, givers of that which is radiant and brilliant or, if we take the interpretation of the ritualists, of wealth of cows & wealth of gold. We see that here too we have ish with two epithets denoting strength and force; here also we meet the words dasr and avray in connection with the Aswins; here also they are connected with light or radiance, go, rays or diffused light which we shall find to be the standing symbol-word in the Vedas for the diffusion of the light of the vijnana or mahas, for that ritam jyotih or light of ideal Truth which constitutes the luminous force hymned in connection with the Aswins by Praskanwa Kanwa, jyotishmatm isham. These fixed ideas, this constant relation of epithets, this order in the divine functions, points to a settled system large in idea & minute in detail accepted by all the Vedic Rishis throughout the long period covered by the ensemble of the hymns of the Rigveda. In the ritualistic and naturalistic interpretations we get an artificial sense, an incoherent connection of ideas, a vague, purposeless & merely ornamental use of figures & epithets, one Rishi apparently reproducing stupidly the decorative ideas, images & words of his predecessors. In the subjective interpretation of the Vedas we shall find always a simple, lucid & straightforward sense perfectly connected & coherent, arising spontaneously from the text, in which there is a reason for the constant recurrence of ideas & terms, a complete appropriateness & fullness of meaning for every word that is used and an absolutely satisfying logical reason for the connection of each word with its predecessor & successor. According to our idea of the mentality of the Rishis we shall accept either the one interpretation which results in a Confused barbaric intelligence or the other which reveals the culture & contents of a deep & splendid intellectuality. But there can be no doubt, which gives the best & most satisfying sense to the language of the Veda.
There are two epithets yet left which we have to fix to their right significance, before we sum up the evidence of this passage and determine the subjective physiognomy of the Aswins,purudansas & nsaty. Sayana interprets dansas as active,the Aswins are gods of a great activity; I suggest fashioning or forming activity,they are abundant fashioners. Sayanas interpretation suits better with the idea of the Aswins as gods full of strength, speed and delight, purudansas, full of a rich activity. But the sense of fashioning is also possible; we have in I.30.16 the expression sa no hiranyaratham dansanvn sa nah sanit sanaye sa no adt, where the meaning may be he gave a car, but would run better he fashioned for us a brilliant car, unless with Sayana we are to disregard the whole structure & rhythmic movement of unahepas sentence. The other epithet Nsaty has long been a puzzle for the grammarians; for the ingenious traditional rendering of Yaska & Sayana, na asaty, not untruthful, is too evidently a desperate shift of entire ignorance. The word by its formation must be either a patronymic, Sons of Nasata, or an adjective formed by the termination tya from the old Aryan noun Nsa, which still exists in the Greek o, an island. The physical significance of n in the Aryan tongues is a gliding or floating motion; we find it in the Latin, nare, to swim or float, the Greek Nais, a river goddess, nama, a stream, nxis, swimming, floating, naros, water, (S. nra, water), necho, I swim, float or sail; but in Sanscrit, except in nra, water, and nga, a snake, elephant, this signification of the long root n, shared by it originally with na, ni, n, nu & n, has disappeared. Nevertheless, the word Nsa, in some sense of motion, floating, gliding, sailing, voyaging, must have existed among the more ancient Sanscrit vocables. But in what sense can it be applied to the Aswins? It seems to me that we get the clue in the seventh sloka of Praskanwas Hymn to the Aswins which I have already quoted. For immediately after he has spoken of the jyotishmat ish, the luminous force which has carried him over to the other shore of the Ignorance, Praskanwa proceeds,
--- Overview of verb confuse
The verb confuse has 5 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (10) confuse, confound ::: (mistake one thing for another; "you are confusing me with the other candidate"; "I mistook her for the secretary")
2. (5) confuse, throw, fox, befuddle, fuddle, bedevil, confound, discombobulate ::: (be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly; "These questions confuse even the experts"; "This question completely threw me"; "This question befuddled even the teacher")
3. confuse, flurry, disconcert, put off ::: (cause to feel embarrassment; "The constant attention of the young man confused her")
4. jumble, confuse, mix up ::: (assemble without order or sense; "She jumbles the words when she is supposed to write a sentence")
5. confuse, blur, obscure, obnubilate ::: (make unclear, indistinct, or blurred; "Her remarks confused the debate"; "Their words obnubilate their intentions")
--- Grep of noun confuse
confusedness
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33621523-diary-of-a-confused-harry-potter
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35163388-diary-of-a-confused-harry-potter
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/766319.Born_Confused
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/881924.Dazed_and_Confused
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/952385.Are_You_Liberal_Conservative_Or_Confused_
https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Forum:New_Reader_Very_Confused
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Deva_(Buddhism)#Confused_with_devas
Integral World - The Ultimate Fallacy, Why Not to Confuse a Road Map for Absolutes, David Lane
Integral World - Confused from Eden, From the Very Start Ken Wilber Misunderstood Darwinian Evolution, David Lane
Integral World - Ken Wilber's Confused Hype of Da Free John, David Lane
selforum - science is as confused as ever about
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/DazedAndConfused
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/DazedAndConfused
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/NotToBeConfusedWith
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConfusedBystanderInterview
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConfusedQuestionMark
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheVictimMustBeConfused
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebVideo/ConfusedMatthew
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/AlirozTheConfused
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Confused
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dazed_and_Confused
Sonic the Hedgehog (1993 - 1994) - Not to be confused with the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog with Tails. This show was a bit different. For one thing, eggman and sonic looked slightly different, and the plots were very different.
Fighting Foodons (2001 - 2002) - Anime series based off of the manga of the same name. It all started some years ago when a culinary-confused king asked a question to his chefs. Which would be stronger: tofu surprise or stuffed duck? The king's chefs thought the king had gone a little too heavy on the nutmeg. One mysterious chef kn...
Dazed and Confused(1993) - It's the last day of school at a high school in a small town in Texas in 1976. The upperclassmen are hazing the incoming freshmen, and everyone is trying to get stoned, drunk, or laid, even the football players that signed a pledge not to. The film launched several prominent film careers including,...
The Pee-wee Herman Show(1981) - Not to be confused with Pee Wee's Playhouse, an adult oriented special that aired on HBO. Considerablly the origin of Pee Wee's Playhouse.
Pinocchio & The Emperor of the Night(1987) - Pinocchio and the Emperor of The Night is an animated feature film that was released in December 1987. It should not be confused with the acclaimed classic 1940 film Pinocchio by Walt Disney. Running for 87 minutes and created by the now-defunct Filmation Studios, the film has gained mixed reviews f...
Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation(1990) - When a long-running horror series brings in cult director Brian Yuzna (Society, The Dentist), the resulting film is generally a huge change of pace. Sometimes, as in the marvelous Return of the Living Dead III, that is a good thing. In this case, the result is a big, confused mess. Maud Adams stars...
Airplane II: The Sequel(1982) - Years have passed since Ted Striker heroically saved many lives by avoiding a plane crash. Working as a test pilot for a new Lunar Shuttle (the XR-2200, not to be confused with the XR-2300), he gets innocently sent into a mental ward after a crash of the badly constructed, computer-navigated spacesh...
Delta Force 2: Operation Stranglehold(1990) - This confused sequel bearing many names in the credits: Delta Force 2, Delta Force 2: Operation Stranglehold, Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection to the first Delta Force movie lacks the nightmarish collection of guest stars gracing the first film, i.e. Hanna Shygulla, Martin Balsam, Shell...
Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach(1988) - America's most inept law enforcement team mixes business with pleasure as they head to sunny Florida in this comedy. The aging and often-confused head of the Police Academy, Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes), has reached mandatory retirement age, much to the pleasure of the devious Capt. Harris (G....
Held Up(1999) - In this fish-out-of-water comedy, Jamie Foxx plays a man named Michael Dawson, though he's confused for both Puff Daddy and Mike Tyson by the citizenry of the podunk southwest town that serves as the setting for Held Up. Road-tripping Michael and Rae (Nia Long) stop in for gas in Michael's new vinta...
Down and Out in Beverly Hills(1986) - Beverly Hills couple Barbara and Dave Whiteman are very rich but not happy Dave is a hard working business man, his wife is only interested in yoga, aerobics and other meditation classes, and he sleeps with the house maid. Their teenage son is confused about his sexuality and their daughter is suffe...
Slacker(1991) - A virtually plot-less look at a day in the life of the 20-something slackers of Austin, Texas. Directed by Richard Linklater (Dazed & Confused, Waking Life).
National Lampoon Goes to the Movies(1982) - National Lampoon Goes to the Movies is a 1982 National Lampoon anthology of three shorts spoofing everything from personal growth films, glossy soap operas, and police stories. In the first story "Growing Yourself", stars Peter Riegert as a confused family man who throws his wife out of the house in...
Ghost Warrior(1984) - A deep-frozen 400-year-old samurai is shipped to Los Angeles, where he comes back to life. Dazed and confused, he goes on a rampage. Can the female scientist and her colleague who revived him stop him before it's too late?
Prancer Returns(2001) - Preteen siblings from a broken marriage live with their mother, Denise, in a rural town called Three Oaks in Michigan. Ryan, the oldest, wants to go live with their father in Chicago. This confuses shy Charlie, the youngest, who is also the butt of bigger school kids' often mean pranks. Then he find...
Alex Strangelove (2018) ::: 6.3/10 -- TV-MA | 1h 39min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 8 June 2018 (USA) -- Alex, high school class president, nerd and a straight A student, has been dating Claire a long time. They decide to sleep together but then he meets a gay guy and he's confused. Director: Craig Johnson Writer:
Dazed and Confused (1993) ::: 7.6/10 -- R | 1h 42min | Comedy | 24 September 1993 (USA) -- The adventures of high school and junior high students on the last day of school in May 1976. Director: Richard Linklater Writer: Richard Linklater
Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road (2002) ::: 7.7/10 -- R | 1h 56min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama | 10 September 2003 -- Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road Poster Neal Oliver, a very confused young man and an artist, takes a journey of a lifetime on a highway I60 that doesn't exist on any of the maps, going to the places he never even heard of, searching for an answer and his dreamgirl. Director: Bob Gale Writer: Bob Gale
Lovely & Amazing (2001) ::: 6.7/10 -- R | 1h 31min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 2 August 2002 (USA) -- Self-esteem and insecurity are at the heart of this comedy about the relationship between a mother and her three confused daughters. Director: Nicole Holofcener Writer: Nicole Holofcener
Love & Mercy (2014) ::: 7.4/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 1min | Biography, Drama, Music | 19 June 2015 (USA) -- In the 60s, Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson struggles with emerging psychosis as he attempts to craft his avant-garde pop masterpiece. In the 80s, he is a broken, confused man under the 24-hour watch of shady therapist Dr. Eugene Landy. Director: Bill Pohlad Writers:
People of Earth ::: TV-MA | 30min | Comedy, Mystery, Sci-Fi | TV Series (20162017) -- Journalist Ozzie Graham is skeptical when he investigates a support group for oddballs who think they have been abducted by aliens -- yet the more he learns, the more confused, intrigued, and seduced he becomes. Creator:
Star vs. the Forces of Evil ::: TV-Y7 | 22min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (20152019) -- Star Butterfly arrives on Earth to live with the Diazes, a Mexican-American family. She continues to battle villains throughout the universe and high school, mainly to protect her extremely powerful wand, an object that still confuses her. Creators:
Trouble in Paradise (1932) ::: 8.0/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 23min | Comedy, Crime, Romance | 30 October 1932 (USA) -- A gentleman thief and a lady pickpocket join forces to con a beautiful perfume company owner. Romantic entanglements and jealousies confuse the scheme. Director: Ernst Lubitsch Writers: Samson Raphaelson (screenplay), Grover Jones (adaptation) | 1 more credit
WarGames (1983) ::: 7.1/10 -- PG | 1h 54min | Action, Adventure, Drama | 3 June 1983 (USA) -- A young man finds a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III. Director: John Badham Writers: Lawrence Lasker, Walter F. Parkes
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Confused.com
https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/Confuse
https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/Confused
https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Confuse
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Confused.com:_The_Movie
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/La_vie_confuse_de_Thomas_Aubel
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/K'nozz_the_Confuser
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Confuse_languages
https://inanimateinsanity.fandom.com/wiki/Mazed_and_Confused
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Dazed_and_Confused
https://mygympartneramonkey.fandom.com/wiki/Glazed_and_Confused
https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Confused
https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/Thomas/Dazed_and_Confused_(1993)
https://stoked.fandom.com/wiki/Board_and_Confused
Ano Natsu de Matteru -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Original -- Comedy Drama Romance Sci-Fi Slice of Life -- Ano Natsu de Matteru Ano Natsu de Matteru -- While testing out his camera on a bridge one summer night, Kaito Kirishima sees a blue light streaking across the sky, only to be blown off the railing seconds later. Just before succumbing to unconsciousness, a hand reaches down to grab ahold of his own. Dazed and confused, Kaito wakes up the next morning wondering how he ended up back in his own room with no apparent injuries or any recollection of the night before. As he proceeds with his normal school life, Kaito and his friends discuss what to do with his camera, finally deciding to make a film with it over their upcoming summer break. Noticing that Kaito has an interest in the new upperclassmen Ichika Takatsuki, his friend Tetsurou Ishigaki decides to invite her, as well as her friend Remon Yamano, to join them in their movie project. -- -- In what becomes one of the most entertaining and exciting summers of their lives, Kaito and his friends find that their time spent together is not just about creating a film, but something much more meaningful that will force them to confront their true feelings and each other. -- -- 316,498 7.48
Ano Natsu de Matteru -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Original -- Comedy Drama Romance Sci-Fi Slice of Life -- Ano Natsu de Matteru Ano Natsu de Matteru -- While testing out his camera on a bridge one summer night, Kaito Kirishima sees a blue light streaking across the sky, only to be blown off the railing seconds later. Just before succumbing to unconsciousness, a hand reaches down to grab ahold of his own. Dazed and confused, Kaito wakes up the next morning wondering how he ended up back in his own room with no apparent injuries or any recollection of the night before. As he proceeds with his normal school life, Kaito and his friends discuss what to do with his camera, finally deciding to make a film with it over their upcoming summer break. Noticing that Kaito has an interest in the new upperclassmen Ichika Takatsuki, his friend Tetsurou Ishigaki decides to invite her, as well as her friend Remon Yamano, to join them in their movie project. -- -- In what becomes one of the most entertaining and exciting summers of their lives, Kaito and his friends find that their time spent together is not just about creating a film, but something much more meaningful that will force them to confront their true feelings and each other. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 316,498 7.48
Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black - Kimi no Na wo Yobu -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Supernatural Shounen -- Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black - Kimi no Na wo Yobu Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black - Kimi no Na wo Yobu -- After a mysterious pair attack Rukia Kuchiki and erase her memories while she is in Seireitei, Ichigo Kurosaki, a substitute Soul Reaper, briefly forgets Rukia, until he is reminded of her by Kon, an Underpod Mod-Soul. Confused, he seeks his town's candy-shop owner, Kisuke Urahara, who opens the pathway to Seireitei for them. Ichigo is then shocked to find that his allies in Seireitei, the Shinigami of the Soul Society, have forgotten him. -- -- Filled with action, Kimi no Na wo Yobu follows Ichigo and Kon as they fight against their former comrades while searching for the missing Rukia and discovering her assailants before they strike again. -- -- -- Licensor: -- VIZ Media -- Movie - Dec 13, 2008 -- 189,102 7.51
Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black - Kimi no Na wo Yobu -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Supernatural Shounen -- Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black - Kimi no Na wo Yobu Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black - Kimi no Na wo Yobu -- After a mysterious pair attack Rukia Kuchiki and erase her memories while she is in Seireitei, Ichigo Kurosaki, a substitute Soul Reaper, briefly forgets Rukia, until he is reminded of her by Kon, an Underpod Mod-Soul. Confused, he seeks his town's candy-shop owner, Kisuke Urahara, who opens the pathway to Seireitei for them. Ichigo is then shocked to find that his allies in Seireitei, the Shinigami of the Soul Society, have forgotten him. -- -- Filled with action, Kimi no Na wo Yobu follows Ichigo and Kon as they fight against their former comrades while searching for the missing Rukia and discovering her assailants before they strike again. -- -- Movie - Dec 13, 2008 -- 189,102 7.51
Diabolik Lovers -- -- Zexcs -- 12 eps -- Visual novel -- Harem School Shoujo Vampire -- Diabolik Lovers Diabolik Lovers -- At the behest of her father, Yui Komori goes to live in a secluded mansion, home to the six Sakamaki brothers—Shuu, Reiji, Ayato, Kanato, Laito, and Subaru—a family of vampires. Though at first the siblings are confused as to why the girl has arrived, they soon realize that she is to be their new "sacrificial bride," not to mention their other, more carnal intentions for her. After meeting the brothers, Yui quickly begins to question why her father would have sent her here and why she feels a strange, new pain in her chest. With each brother more sadistic than the last, Yui's life as a captive takes a harrowing turn in her new home. As her days turn into endless nights, and each brother vows to make her his own, Yui falls deeper and deeper into madness and ecstasy. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Sep 16, 2013 -- 261,538 5.28
Durarara!!x2 Shou: Watashi no Kokoro wa Nabe Moyou -- -- Shuka -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Action Mystery Supernatural -- Durarara!!x2 Shou: Watashi no Kokoro wa Nabe Moyou Durarara!!x2 Shou: Watashi no Kokoro wa Nabe Moyou -- One night, Mikado Ryuugamine accepts an invitation to Shinra Kishitani's apartment, eager to talk to Celty as quite some time has passed since the two last spoke. But, much to his astonishment, he finds that a large group of Ikebukuro's finest has gathered there for a hot pot party. -- -- Already confused with the current situation, Mikado is further surprised to see that his friend and fellow Raira Academy student Anri Sonohara is there as well. As the two decide to take a seat together, a few members of the group begin reminiscing over events from days past: Mikado recalls an adventure from his childhood with Masaomi Kida, Anri explains how she came to be friends with Mika Harima, and Shizuo Heiwajima tells of his first meeting with Tom Tanaka. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- Special - Jul 22, 2015 -- 55,742 7.71
Durarara!!x2 Shou: Watashi no Kokoro wa Nabe Moyou -- -- Shuka -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Action Mystery Supernatural -- Durarara!!x2 Shou: Watashi no Kokoro wa Nabe Moyou Durarara!!x2 Shou: Watashi no Kokoro wa Nabe Moyou -- One night, Mikado Ryuugamine accepts an invitation to Shinra Kishitani's apartment, eager to talk to Celty as quite some time has passed since the two last spoke. But, much to his astonishment, he finds that a large group of Ikebukuro's finest has gathered there for a hot pot party. -- -- Already confused with the current situation, Mikado is further surprised to see that his friend and fellow Raira Academy student Anri Sonohara is there as well. As the two decide to take a seat together, a few members of the group begin reminiscing over events from days past: Mikado recalls an adventure from his childhood with Masaomi Kida, Anri explains how she came to be friends with Mika Harima, and Shizuo Heiwajima tells of his first meeting with Tom Tanaka. -- -- Special - Jul 22, 2015 -- 55,742 7.71
Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo -- -- Khara -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Psychological Drama Mecha -- Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo -- Fourteen years after the Third Impact, the Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, human civilization is in ruins, and the people Shinji knows are almost unrecognizable. Trapped inside Evangelion Unit-01, he is recovered from space by Asuka and Mari, only to find himself a prisoner of Wille, a military faction led by his former guardian Misato Katsuragi. Cold and bitter, his former allies view him with suspicion and refuse to support him as he comes to terms with the consequences of his actions. -- -- A hurt and confused Shinji is rescued from Wille by Rei and returned to Nerv headquarters. There, he meets and quickly befriends the enigmatic Kaworu Nagisa, who offers him warmth and insight into the state of Nerv's war with the Angels. But Shinji and Kaworu's brief respite lies on the eve of a new battle, one in which Shinji finds that his enemies are no longer Angels but former comrades. In this bitter confrontation to determine the future of the world, Shinji will learn first-hand that the past truly cannot be undone. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Nov 17, 2012 -- 283,890 7.60
Fujimi 2-choume Koukyougakudan -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Drama Music Psychological Romance Slice of Life Yaoi -- Fujimi 2-choume Koukyougakudan Fujimi 2-choume Koukyougakudan -- High school music teacher, Morimura Yuuki, is the concert master and first violinist of the amateur orchestra, Fujimi Orchestra. Surprisingly, a young conductor named Tonoin Kei (known as a musical genius) joins this small orchestra to conduct. Even though Tonoin is a strict conductor, all the members adore him for the notable improvements in their performances and soon Yuuki feels his efforts for the orchestra have been fruitless. Yuuki soon comes to the conclusion that his crush of 3 years likes Tonoin, and he decides to give up on her and leave the orchestra. Tonoin refuses to let him quit, confessing that he loves Yuuki, which reveals that he's gay. Tonoin's love confession confuses Yuuki and it leads to a very horrible misunderstanding. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- OVA - Jul 22, 1997 -- 6,980 5.53
Gintama: The Semi-Final -- -- - -- 2 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Historical Parody Samurai Shounen -- Gintama: The Semi-Final Gintama: The Semi-Final -- As the war temporarily calms down and Edo rebuilds, Gintoki finds Shinpachi—who is still unaware of his return—on a bridge. However, as a fight quickly breaks out between the Yorozuya and the Tenshouin Naraku, suspicion grows, forcing Gintoki to use what is nearest—a loincloth—to mask his identity. Saved for the time being, Gintoki enters the Yorozuya office, but unbeknownst to him, someone else is already waiting there... -- -- Meanwhile, Kondou departs Earth to marry Princess Bubbles in an attempt to improve diplomatic relations. After boarding the Gorilla Amanto mother ship, he realizes that he doesn't speak their language. Confused, Kondou tries conversing with them, only to inadvertently gain their support. However, someone associated with the princess crashes the ongoing ceremony. Will the wedding continue, or has Kondou just been saved from becoming the next Gorilla Prince? -- -- Special - Jan 15, 2021 -- 26,460 8.52
Green Green -- -- Studio Matrix -- 12 eps -- Visual novel -- Comedy Ecchi Romance School Slice of Life -- Green Green Green Green -- Kanenone Gakuen is an all-male boarding school located in the countryside of Japan. Although an all-male school is nothing new, life can become quite difficult when there are no female students for miles around. In order to help the psychological health of everyone involved, the school board has decided to try and merge with the nearest all-girl boarding school in order to become co-ed. The boys of Kanenone are more than thrilled at the prospect, and the girls are curious as to how interesting school life might become if there were more boys around. Before any serious decisions are made, the girls have been invited to stay at Kanenone for one month as a test. -- -- Green Green follows Yuusuke Takazaki and his naughty room mates called the Baka (Idiot) Trio, and their ability to talk to the girls without making complete fools of themselves. But as soon as the school bus with the girls arrives, things become weird, hormonal, and hysterical. In particular, a girl named Midori Chitose leaps off the bus and immediately embraces a very confused Yuusuke. Is he a natural ladies' man, or do the two of them have a shared history that he is not aware of? -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters -- TV - Jul 12, 2003 -- 107,248 6.20
Hachimitsu to Clover II -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Drama Josei Romance Slice of Life -- Hachimitsu to Clover II Hachimitsu to Clover II -- Back from his journey across Japan, Yuuta Takemoto reminisces about his college life so far. He has matured significantly since his second year and is motivated to move forward. -- -- Feeling more confident than ever before, he finally confesses to Hagumi Hanamoto, the girl he has been in love with since their first encounter. However, Hagumi has been confused by her attempts to understand the mysterious Shinobu Morita. Hiding behind a playful demeanor, Morita may be the most burdened by his own potential. Meanwhile, Takumi Mayama has become a full-fledged working adult and has landed Ayumi Yamada several pottery orders through his company in an act of friendship. -- -- The five youths continue to face individual hardships in academics, work, love, and friendship as they push each other toward the paths that they are destined to walk. -- -- 91,967 8.25
Hachimitsu to Clover II -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Drama Josei Romance Slice of Life -- Hachimitsu to Clover II Hachimitsu to Clover II -- Back from his journey across Japan, Yuuta Takemoto reminisces about his college life so far. He has matured significantly since his second year and is motivated to move forward. -- -- Feeling more confident than ever before, he finally confesses to Hagumi Hanamoto, the girl he has been in love with since their first encounter. However, Hagumi has been confused by her attempts to understand the mysterious Shinobu Morita. Hiding behind a playful demeanor, Morita may be the most burdened by his own potential. Meanwhile, Takumi Mayama has become a full-fledged working adult and has landed Ayumi Yamada several pottery orders through his company in an act of friendship. -- -- The five youths continue to face individual hardships in academics, work, love, and friendship as they push each other toward the paths that they are destined to walk. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media, VIZ Media -- 91,967 8.25
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kaku: Outbreak -- -- Studio Deen -- 1 ep -- Visual novel -- Mystery Horror Psychological Thriller -- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kaku: Outbreak Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kaku: Outbreak -- It is 1983, and Hinamizawa is under quarantine. A mysterious and deadly virus has been discovered within the small village, and its residents—such as teenager Keiichi Maebara and his friends Mion Sonozaki and Rena Ryuuguu—are left confused and frightened by the situation. -- -- As the villagers begin to search for a way to stop the affliction from spreading, some make drastic plans, which leaves Keiichi and his friends looking for a way to escape the village. But when tensions reach an all-time high, some of his group may not make it out unscathed as they fight for their lives against enemies both seen and unseen. -- -- OVA - Aug 15, 2013 -- 58,289 7.23
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear -- -- EMT Squared -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Fantasy -- Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear -- After fanatically playing the VRMMO World Fantasy Online for almost a year, the shut-in yet relatively affluent fifteen-year-old Yuna receives a bear costume from the game's administrators. The outfit, while somewhat embarrassing to wear, turns out to have overpowered stats and effects that make her character significantly more powerful. After accepting the bear equipment, she finds herself transported to another in-game world that prevents her from returning to reality. -- -- Confused and unable to log out, Yuna sets out to explore this new environment. She rescues a girl named Fina from wild wolves, who then guides her to the city of Crimonia. With her eccentric bear attire, however, Yuna stands out wherever she goes, and alongside her boosted fighting prowess, her reputation quickly rises—to the point that people give her the nickname "Bloody Bear." -- -- Undeterred by this change in her life, Yuna decides to take on the role of an adventurer and fully enjoy herself in her new world. -- -- 79,067 7.15
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear -- -- EMT Squared -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Fantasy -- Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear -- After fanatically playing the VRMMO World Fantasy Online for almost a year, the shut-in yet relatively affluent fifteen-year-old Yuna receives a bear costume from the game's administrators. The outfit, while somewhat embarrassing to wear, turns out to have overpowered stats and effects that make her character significantly more powerful. After accepting the bear equipment, she finds herself transported to another in-game world that prevents her from returning to reality. -- -- Confused and unable to log out, Yuna sets out to explore this new environment. She rescues a girl named Fina from wild wolves, who then guides her to the city of Crimonia. With her eccentric bear attire, however, Yuna stands out wherever she goes, and alongside her boosted fighting prowess, her reputation quickly rises—to the point that people give her the nickname "Bloody Bear." -- -- Undeterred by this change in her life, Yuna decides to take on the role of an adventurer and fully enjoy herself in her new world. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 79,067 7.15
Machikado Mazoku -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Magic -- Machikado Mazoku Machikado Mazoku -- After a strange dream of a mysterious ancestor, high school student Yuuko Yoshida wakes to see that she has grown demonic horns and a tail. Dazed and confused, her mother reveals to her a dark family secret: her family is descended from a Dark Clan that was banished to live powerless and destitute by their mortal enemies, the magical girls of the Light Clan. The only way to lift their ancestry's curse is for Yuuko to find a magical girl, murder her, and splatter her blood all over her ancestor's Demon God statue. -- -- Fortunately for "Shadow Mistress Yuuko," a magical girl saves her from being run over by an oncoming truck. Unfortunately, Momo Chiyoda happens to be Yuuko's classmate at Sakuragaoka High and is much stronger than her in both strength and endurance. Taking pity on her wimpy assailant, the magical girl agrees to train Yuuko and help her unlock her dormant powers. Now, Yuuko must rise up and defeat her generous frenemy to save her family from the terrible grip of poverty. -- -- 98,599 7.67
Machikado Mazoku -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Magic -- Machikado Mazoku Machikado Mazoku -- After a strange dream of a mysterious ancestor, high school student Yuuko Yoshida wakes to see that she has grown demonic horns and a tail. Dazed and confused, her mother reveals to her a dark family secret: her family is descended from a Dark Clan that was banished to live powerless and destitute by their mortal enemies, the magical girls of the Light Clan. The only way to lift their ancestry's curse is for Yuuko to find a magical girl, murder her, and splatter her blood all over her ancestor's Demon God statue. -- -- Fortunately for "Shadow Mistress Yuuko," a magical girl saves her from being run over by an oncoming truck. Unfortunately, Momo Chiyoda happens to be Yuuko's classmate at Sakuragaoka High and is much stronger than her in both strength and endurance. Taking pity on her wimpy assailant, the magical girl agrees to train Yuuko and help her unlock her dormant powers. Now, Yuuko must rise up and defeat her generous frenemy to save her family from the terrible grip of poverty. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 98,599 7.67
Mahoutsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora -- -- Hal Film Maker -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Drama Magic Romance Shounen -- Mahoutsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora Mahoutsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora -- Get ready for a second magical journey to the world of Someday's Dreamers, where spellcasting is a profession that requires both the proper training AND a license. It's to get that license and fulfill a promise made to her late father that young Sora Suzuki has made the long journey from her distant home in the countryside town of Biei to the big city of Tokyo. It's a daunting challenge, but she's got a little bit of talent, a charming personality and, most important of all, the promise of an internship! What she ISN'T expecting, though, is how different life in the city will be, especially the people themselves. While she gets along with the confident Asagi, Kuroda and the gentle Hiyori, she's completely confused with the mysterious boy Gouta. And yet, as a result of their internships they keep ending up in the same situations and slowly learning to understand more about each other than they ever imagined possible! -- -- (Source: Sentai Filmworks) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Jul 3, 2008 -- 22,704 7.28
Mahoutsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora -- -- Hal Film Maker -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Drama Magic Romance Shounen -- Mahoutsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora Mahoutsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora -- Get ready for a second magical journey to the world of Someday's Dreamers, where spellcasting is a profession that requires both the proper training AND a license. It's to get that license and fulfill a promise made to her late father that young Sora Suzuki has made the long journey from her distant home in the countryside town of Biei to the big city of Tokyo. It's a daunting challenge, but she's got a little bit of talent, a charming personality and, most important of all, the promise of an internship! What she ISN'T expecting, though, is how different life in the city will be, especially the people themselves. While she gets along with the confident Asagi, Kuroda and the gentle Hiyori, she's completely confused with the mysterious boy Gouta. And yet, as a result of their internships they keep ending up in the same situations and slowly learning to understand more about each other than they ever imagined possible! -- -- (Source: Sentai Filmworks) -- TV - Jul 3, 2008 -- 22,704 7.28
Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to The Animation -- -- Zexcs -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Harem Slice of Life Comedy Ecchi Seinen -- Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to The Animation Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to The Animation -- Yuuki Aito is a perverted manga artist who appreciates panties, wishing to draw as many as he can. Being surrounded by numerous female assistants, he is constantly asking to use them as references for the manga he draws. -- -- Although Aito has an extremely degenerate mind, he can also be a very kind, generous, and helpful person. The duality of his behavior confuses his assistants—do they love the considerate side of him that he rarely displays, or do they hate him for the perverted thoughts he has most of the time? -- -- 227,304 7.17
Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to The Animation -- -- Zexcs -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Harem Slice of Life Comedy Ecchi Seinen -- Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to The Animation Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to The Animation -- Yuuki Aito is a perverted manga artist who appreciates panties, wishing to draw as many as he can. Being surrounded by numerous female assistants, he is constantly asking to use them as references for the manga he draws. -- -- Although Aito has an extremely degenerate mind, he can also be a very kind, generous, and helpful person. The duality of his behavior confuses his assistants—do they love the considerate side of him that he rarely displays, or do they hate him for the perverted thoughts he has most of the time? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 227,304 7.17
Maoyuu Maou Yuusha -- -- Arms -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Demons Romance Fantasy -- Maoyuu Maou Yuusha Maoyuu Maou Yuusha -- Fifteen years have passed since the war between humans and demons began. Dissatisfied with their slow advance into the Demon Realm, the Hero abandons his companions to quickly forge ahead towards the Demon Queen's castle. Upon his arrival at the royal abode, the Hero makes a startling discovery: not only is the Demon Queen a woman of unparalleled beauty, but she also seeks the Hero's help. Confused by this unexpected turn of events, the Hero refuses to ally himself with his enemy, claiming that the war the demons have waged is tearing the Southern Nations apart. -- -- However, the Demon Queen rebuts, arguing that the war has not only united humanity but has also brought them wealth and prosperity, providing evidence to support her claims. Furthermore, she explains that if the war were to end, the supplies sent by the Central Nations in aid to the Southern Nations would cease, leaving hundreds of thousands to starve. Fortunately, she offers the Hero a way to end the war while bringing hope not only to the Southern Nations, but also to the rest of the world, though she will need his assistance to make this a reality. -- -- Finally convinced, the Hero agrees to join his now former enemy in her quest. Vowing to stay together through sickness and health, they set off for the human world. -- -- TV - Jan 5, 2013 -- 369,878 7.30
Mardock Scramble: The First Compression -- -- GoHands -- 1 ep -- Novel -- Action Sci-Fi Psychological -- Mardock Scramble: The First Compression Mardock Scramble: The First Compression -- Rune Balot is a down-and-out teen prostitute in Mardock City. One day, she's picked up by an ambitious casino manager named Shell who gives her everything she could want. Renewed by a false innocence, a false past, and now the false life Shell has given her, Balot feels grateful. However, she can't help but be curious about why he's done so much for her, so she does some research about his past on a computer. This turns out to be a mistake which will change her life greatly. When Shell finds out what she's done, he attempts to burn her to death by blowing up her car. -- -- Due to the high crime rate in Mardock, a new law called "Scramble 09" has given police carte blanche to take extreme and otherwise illegal measures to revive crime witnesses. With this in mind, they allow a professor to bring Balot back from the brink of death by reassembling her entire body with reinforced synthetic fiber. When she finally wakes up, her confused mental state eventually turns toward revenge as Shell is revealed as her killer. -- -- (Source: Nippon Cinema) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- Movie - Oct 8, 2010 -- 64,211 7.47
Nobunaga Concerto -- -- Fuji TV -- 10 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Historical Romance Shounen -- Nobunaga Concerto Nobunaga Concerto -- "Who cares about what happened in Japan's past? It has nothing to do with my life." -- -- With these words, carefree high school student Saburou finds himself unceremoniously thrown back in time to the Sengoku Era, landing directly in front of the legendary general Nobunaga Oda. Nobunaga, on the run from his retainers and wishing to rest due to his frailty, beseeches Saburou to take his place, as the two bear an uncanny resemblance. Although Saburou is still confused by his surroundings, Nobunaga hurriedly provides the boy with the necessary items to prove that he is the bona fide feudal lord and makes a hasty getaway. -- -- Now a stand-in for someone he doesn't even know all that much about—though his modern experiences and knowledge are sure to help him—Saburou begins his unexpected quest to pose as the man who attempted to unite all of Japan. -- -- TV - Jul 12, 2014 -- 48,530 7.59
Ryuuseiki Gakusaver -- -- Production I.G -- 6 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Space Comedy Parody Mecha School -- Ryuuseiki Gakusaver Ryuuseiki Gakusaver -- A gigantic meteorite landed on earth a few years back. A mysterious capsule believed to have belonged to the aliens was discovered. Called the "black box," an international organization called "Project BB" was created to research it. -- -- Eight boys, including Manabu Yoshimura, attend International Academy, a school located near Project BB headquarters. They are enticed by their teacher Toukichi Hashiba's promise of "I'll give you class credit," and end up getting involved in his experiment. The experiment was to enter the eight empty chambers of meteorite. According to Hashiba's theory, the meteorite should strongly respond to strong human thoughts. He tells them to have a clear image of a great looking gigantic robot; if they do, something should happen... -- -- Then, a big spaceship appears in the sky and an alien calling himself Wercury appears in a 3-D image. He tells them he is from the Star of Prokimasi and that he has come to collect the meteorite of the Choshin people. If they do not hand it over, he will challenge the earth beings to a battle. Manabu and his friends are confused by the unexpected turn of events but the meteorite responds to the thoughts of the group and suddenly starts to transform itself into a gigantic robot. Then, attacked by the invading Prokimasi robot, they are forced to pull their strength together and fight back. But it is extremely difficult to put the wills of the eight together as one and the robot cannot fight in the way it should. The gigantic robot that Hashiba named "Gakusaver" and Manabu's eight; can they manage to protect Earth and the meteorite from the Prokimasi invasion? -- -- (Source: King Records) -- OVA - Aug 21, 1993 -- 1,103 6.47
Seikon no Qwaser -- -- Hoods Entertainment -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Action Super Power Supernatural Ecchi Seinen -- Seikon no Qwaser Seikon no Qwaser -- When Tomo Yamanobe's father—the former headmaster of Saint Mikhailov Academy—disappeared, he left nothing behind except for a piece of art called the "icon." Soon after his disappearance, rumors of a serial killer attacking female students of the academy began to spread. -- -- As Tomo and her sister Mafuyu Oribe head home after being tormented at school, Tomo trips over an injured silver-haired boy who abruptly vanishes while being tended to. Mafuyu goes to look for him, only to discover that the church holding the icon is burning down. When she tries to save the painting, the rumored serial killer suddenly attacks her with a mysterious ability to control magnesium. Appearing out of nowhere, the silver-haired boy, who can control iron, rescues Mafuyu. -- -- Mafuyu finds out that the boy, named Alexander Nikolaevich "Sasha" Hell, is a "qwaser"—a being who is capable of controlling an element through the power of "soma," received through the act of breastfeeding. Confused by the ordeal, Mafuyu attempts to move past it with little luck, as Sasha transfers to her class the next day. What will become of Tomo and Mafuyu's normal school life with the danger of other qwasers looming close to them? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 270,286 6.43
Seirei Gensouki -- -- TMS Entertainment -- ? eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Harem Drama Romance Fantasy -- Seirei Gensouki Seirei Gensouki -- Amakawa Haruto is a young man who died before reuniting with his childhood friend who disappeared five years ago. Rio is a boy living in the slums who wants revenge for his mother who was murdered in front of him when he was five years old. -- -- Earth and another world. Two people with completely different backgrounds and values. For some reason, the memories and personality of Haruto who should've died is resurrected in Rio's body. As the two are confused over their memories and personalities fusing together, Rio decides to live in this new world. -- -- Along with Haruto's memories, Rio awakens an unknown "special power," and it seems that if he uses it well, he can live a better life. But before that, Rio encounters a kidnapping that turns out to be of a princess of the Bertram Kingdom that he lives in. -- -- After saving the princess, Rio is given a scholarship at the Royal Academy, a school for the rich and powerful. Being a poor orphan in a school of nobles turns out to be an extremely detestable place to be. -- -- (Source: MU) -- TV - Jul ??, 2021 -- 8,439 N/A -- -- Tiger & Bunny Pilot -- -- Sunrise -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Comedy Super Power -- Tiger & Bunny Pilot Tiger & Bunny Pilot -- The pilot episode for Tiger & Bunny released on the first DVD & BD volume. -- Special - May 27, 2011 -- 8,424 6.19
Suki ni Naru Sono Shunkan wo.: Kokuhaku Jikkou Iinkai -- -- Qualia Animation -- 1 ep -- Music -- Comedy Drama Romance School -- Suki ni Naru Sono Shunkan wo.: Kokuhaku Jikkou Iinkai Suki ni Naru Sono Shunkan wo.: Kokuhaku Jikkou Iinkai -- Following Natsuki Enomoto's confession rehearsals with Yuu Setoguchi, their younger siblings Kotarou and Hina struggle to confess their own love. Despite a disastrous first meeting in middle school with her upperclassman Koyuki Ayase, Hina’s heart is captured by his warm smile. Initially confused by these newfound feelings, Hina soon realizes that she has fallen in love for the very first time. -- -- Chasing after her brother Yuu and her crush Koyuki, Hina also enrolls in Sakuragaoka High School; but the threads of love are far-reaching, and they entangle Hina and her friends. Boisterous but sensitive, Hina hopes to confess her feelings to the tender-hearted Koyuki. Meanwhile, Kotarou, oblivious to his own feelings for her, is determined to always keep Hina smiling. -- -- Suki ni Naru Sono Shunkan wo.: Kokuhaku Jikkou linkai follows Hina, Kotarou, and Koyuki in high school. Their youthful love forges new relationships, but also threatens to break others. -- -- Movie - Dec 17, 2016 -- 78,182 7.09
Tsubasa Chronicle: Tori Kago no Kuni no Himegimi -- -- Production I.G -- 1 ep -- - -- Action Adventure Fantasy Drama Shounen -- Tsubasa Chronicle: Tori Kago no Kuni no Himegimi Tsubasa Chronicle: Tori Kago no Kuni no Himegimi -- In their continuing journey to find the feathers that are the fragments of Sakura's lost memory, Syaoran, Kurogane, Fai, and Sakura move through time and space with Mokona. Here, they visit the "Land of the Birdcage," a seemingly peaceful country where people and birds live together, each person having a bird companion. After a boy named Koruri confuses Syaoran and Sakura for "bodyguards" and attacks them, they learn that the king of the country possesses a mysterious power. Princess Tomoyo, Koruri, and the other oppressed citizens, having had their birds taken from them, live in hiding within the forest. In order to take back Sakura's feather, Syaoran and the others stand up against the scheming king. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Aug 20, 2005 -- 42,083 7.32
Tsubasa Chronicle: Tori Kago no Kuni no Himegimi -- -- Production I.G -- 1 ep -- - -- Action Adventure Fantasy Drama Shounen -- Tsubasa Chronicle: Tori Kago no Kuni no Himegimi Tsubasa Chronicle: Tori Kago no Kuni no Himegimi -- In their continuing journey to find the feathers that are the fragments of Sakura's lost memory, Syaoran, Kurogane, Fai, and Sakura move through time and space with Mokona. Here, they visit the "Land of the Birdcage," a seemingly peaceful country where people and birds live together, each person having a bird companion. After a boy named Koruri confuses Syaoran and Sakura for "bodyguards" and attacks them, they learn that the king of the country possesses a mysterious power. Princess Tomoyo, Koruri, and the other oppressed citizens, having had their birds taken from them, live in hiding within the forest. In order to take back Sakura's feather, Syaoran and the others stand up against the scheming king. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Movie - Aug 20, 2005 -- 42,083 7.32
Wolf's Rain OVA -- -- Bones -- 4 eps -- Original -- Sci-Fi Adventure Psychological Supernatural Drama -- Wolf's Rain OVA Wolf's Rain OVA -- As the world accelerates toward its own destruction, Kiba and Cheza—with the help of Tsume, Hige, Toboe, and Blue—race to reach true paradise before the entire world is rendered uninhabitable. Now reunited, Cher and Hubb decide to accompany the wolves in hopes of seeing the journey through to its end, while a distraught and confused Quent wanders aimlessly into the wasteland with his mind fixated on revenge. -- -- Meanwhile, Lord Darcia the Third has finally put his plot into motion and pursues Cheza, pitting him against the pack. As everything falls apart yet simultaneously falls into place, the wolves struggle to survive in an increasingly dangerous environment. Though the end draws near, paradise seems further away than ever before. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Funimation -- OVA - Jan 23, 2004 -- 55,762 8.03
Wolf's Rain OVA -- -- Bones -- 4 eps -- Original -- Sci-Fi Adventure Psychological Supernatural Drama -- Wolf's Rain OVA Wolf's Rain OVA -- As the world accelerates toward its own destruction, Kiba and Cheza—with the help of Tsume, Hige, Toboe, and Blue—race to reach true paradise before the entire world is rendered uninhabitable. Now reunited, Cher and Hubb decide to accompany the wolves in hopes of seeing the journey through to its end, while a distraught and confused Quent wanders aimlessly into the wasteland with his mind fixated on revenge. -- -- Meanwhile, Lord Darcia the Third has finally put his plot into motion and pursues Cheza, pitting him against the pack. As everything falls apart yet simultaneously falls into place, the wolves struggle to survive in an increasingly dangerous environment. Though the end draws near, paradise seems further away than ever before. -- -- OVA - Jan 23, 2004 -- 55,762 8.03
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