Holy Books

1:A donkey with a load of holy books is still a donkey." ~ Sufi saying,

2:Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.
~ Sri Ramakrishna, [T5],

3:Merely reading holy books will not make one religious. One must practice the virtues taught in books in order to acquire the love of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

4:The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." ~ Saint Padre Pio,

5:For though I have with me good men, devout brethren, faithful friends, holy books, beautiful treatises, sweet songs and hymns, all these help and please but little when I am abandoned by grace and left to my poverty. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ,

6:Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against
your own neck

You won't find me in the mosque
or the sadhus temple.

You wont find me in holy books
or behind the lips of priests.

Nor in eating nothing but vegetables

You will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says : Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.... ~ Kabir,

7:Help yourself during this troubled period by reading holy books. This reading provides excellent food for the soul and conduces to great progress along the path of perfection. By no means is it inferior to what we obtain through prayer and holy meditation. In prayer and meditation it is ourselves who speak to the Lord, while in holy reading it is God who speaks to us. Before beginning to read, raise your mind to the Lord and implore Him to guide your mind Himself, to speak to your heart and move your will. ~ Saint Padre Pio,

8:What Brahman is cannot be described in words. Somebody once said that everything in the world has been made impure, like food that has touched the tongue, and that Brahman alone remains undefiled. The meaning is this: All scriptures and holy books — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, and so forth — may be said to have been defiled because their contents have been uttered by the tongues of men; but what Brahman is no tongue has yet been able to describe. Therefore Brahman is still undefiled. One cannot describe in words the joy of play and communion with Satchidananda. He alone knows, who has realized it. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

* WISDOM TROVE *

1:I disbelieve all holy men and holy books. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove

2:Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove

3:Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.”11 likesLike ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:I disbelieve all holy men and holy books. ~ Thomas Paine,

2:"A donkey carrying a pile of holy books is still a donkey." ~ Zen proverb,

3:Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

4:The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books. ~ Christopher Hitchens,

5:[The writers of the holy books] did not even know the earth revolves around the sun. Why are we listening? ~ Lawrence M Krauss,

6:Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.
~ Sri Ramakrishna, [T5],

7:The best worship is to ease one’s hard life in any way possible; no holy books, no rules, no temples, none is necessary! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

8:Go to countries where you don't speak the language. Eat food that looks like you may not like it. Read all of the holy books. ~ Michael Skolnik,

9:I'm learning that holy books change depending on who reads them. There's a lot of stuff I thought was black and white that isn't. ~ G Willow Wilson,

10:Dharma is that which is enjoined by the holy books, followed by the sages, interpreted by the learned and which appeals to the heart. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,

11:It's good to have these stories in our holy books, to remind us that they were written by humans. Filthy-minded, morally ambiguous humans. ~ Suzanne Morrison,

12:Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton,

13:God is religion; religion is God! There is no need ever for holy books, for holy rules or for so called holy envoys! God is religion; religion is God! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

14:Indeed, adherents of scriptural authority show distressingly little curiosity about the (normally highly dubious) historical origins of their holy books. ~ Richard Dawkins,

15:There was no spoken testimony, no verbal deposition, no swearing upon holy books, for words alone could lie. Decision and action, repeated over time, did not. ~ Karen Hancock,

16:The Zen Gnostics claim forty billion followers,” he rumbled. “But what kind of religion is that, eh? No churches. No priests. No holy books. No concept of sin.” Dur ~ Dan Simmons,

17:When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn't happen with holy books. ~ Richard Dawkins,

18:Don't consider me too demanding if I ask you once again to set great store by holy books and read them as much as you can. This spiritual reading is as necessary to you as the air you ~ Pio of Pietrelcina,

19:Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants and trees - should be your teacher. ~ Morihei Ueshiba,

20:The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder... What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection. ~ Pio of Pietrelcina,

21:The cynic about human nature might say that religious morality is an effective way of keeping people in line. The threat of hell, the reward of heaven, but the rules of the holy books are out of date and often barbaric. ~ Richard Dawkins,

22:While devout Muslim scholars were painstakingly hand-copying holy books with artistic fealty, Lutherans were printing Bibles by the thousands and putting knowledge in the hands of the people to judge for themselves. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto,

23:All holy books are, above all, great stories whose plots deal with the basic aspects of human nature, setting them within a particular moral context and a particular framework of supernatural dogma.
-Andreas Corelli ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,

24:Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind. ~ Umberto Eco,

25:God has not any Holy Book; but Man has many Holy Book writers! Producing Holy Books is a cosmic crime against the God! God has not spoken yet! He has been silent for billions of years, because He is out of this universe! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

26:The truth is that most of our modern values are antithetical to the specific teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And where we do find these values expressed in our holy books, they are almost never best expressed there. ~ Sam Harris,

27:I don't believe in burning holy books, but I am organizing a protest. I'll be burning all my Dennis Miller VHS cassettes as a special protest. I don't want to hear the introduction 'you may have seen our next comedian on the Hannity show'. ~ Andy Kindler,

28:In classrooms and living rooms across the globe, an agnostic or an atheist may be heard to strenuously argue, 'But the Bible is just a book.' Similar arguments may be raised against other holy books. But they all are too ironic, by half. A book is the Bible. ~ Gerald Weaver,

29:In classrooms and living rooms across the globe, an agnostic or an atheist may be heard to strenuously argue, “But the Bible is just a book.” Similar arguments may be raised against other holy books. But they all are too ironic, by half. A book is the Bible. ~ Gerald Weaver,

30:Every religion ... has rituals, practices, holy writings or traditions, etc. Nothing like that has ever developed from Atheism. There are no holy men, holidays or holy books and no agreed-upon canons of faith. In fact, the only thing you can get some Atheists to agree upon is that there is no god. ~ Darrel Ray,

31:All through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture. Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton,

32:You may be asking yourself, 'Am I the right type of person to go to this rally?' The fact that you would even stop to ask yourself that question, as opposed to, let's say, just jumping up, grabbing the nearest stack of burnable holy books, strapping on a diaper and pointing your car towards D.C. -- that means I think you just might be right for it. ~ Jon Stewart,

33:If you do not understand the Golden Rule, which is the most important law in the universe, then you are in trouble. All other rules in your holy books combined — are not as valuable as the ONE Golden Rule. Take two minutes to learn the most crucial law in life. Killing another human comes with the highest penalty, regardless of how you justify it. All life is sacred. ~ Suzy Kassem,

34:Many verses of the holy books, above all the Upanishads of Sama-Veda spoke of this innermost thing. It is written: “Your soul is the whole world.” It says that when a man is asleep, he penetrates his innermost and dwells in Atman. There was wonderful wisdom in these verses; all the knowledge of the sages was told here in enchanting language, pure as honey collected by the bees. ~ Hermann Hesse,

35:The religious do not say that they are defending the truth from libellous attack, because in their hearts they know that the truth of the holy books cannot be defended. Instead, like celebrities’ lawyers trying to hide secrets, they threaten the gains made in the struggle for religious toleration by saying that those who ask searching questions of religion must be punished for invading the privacy of the pious. ~ Nick Cohen,

36:they worry about Western racists, who use Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha to taunt ethnic minorities. But it is as important to worry about religious extremists who use the arguments for male supremacy, homophobia and the exploitation of women and children in holy books to justify oppression – and to notice that there is not a great deal of difference between the ideologies of the religious and the racial extremists. ~ Nick Cohen,

37: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,

38:Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against
your own neck

You won't find me in the mosque
or the sadhus temple.

You wont find me in holy books
or behind the lips of priests.

Nor in eating nothing but vegetables

You will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says : Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.... ~ Kabir,

39:They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods, they knew infinitely much—but was it valuable to know all of this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing? ~ Hermann Hesse,

40:We can't say, "Listen, you barbarians: These holy books of yours are filled with murderous nonsense. In the interest of getting you to behave like civilized human beings, we're going to redact them and give you back something that reads like Kahlil Gibran. There you go ... Don't you feel better now that you no longer hate homosexuals?” However, that's really what one should be able to do in any intellectual tradition in the twenty-first century. ~ Sam Harris,

41:All those bickering worshippers, each one convinced their version is the right one. Imagine getting prayers from ten million believers, not one of them believing the same thing as the one kneeling beside him or her. Imagine all those Holy Books, not one of them agreeing on anything, yet all of them purporting to be the word of that one god. Imagine two armies annihilating each other, both in that god's name. Who wouldn't be driven mad by that? ~ Steven Erikson,

42:Every beautiful place is your temple, you can always visit them; every useful book is your holy book, you can always read them; every place you find love is your heaven, you can always go there! Don’t get stuck in the temples, in the so-called holy books and heavens of the religions because life is much richer, much superior and much intelligent than all the religions because life is alive, it is dynamic and it continuously develops itself! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

43:Many Christians say that they get their morality from the Bible, but this cannot be true because as holy books go the Bible is possibly the most unhelpful guide ever written for determining right from wrong. It’s chock-full of bizarre stories about dysfunctional families, advice about how to beat your slaves, how to kill your headstrong kids, how to sell your virgin daughters, and other clearly outdated practices that most cultures gave up centuries ago. ~ Michael Shermer,

44:In fact, I would even suggest that reading the holy books of the world’s major religions is necessary for anyone who wishes to develop an understanding of human culture in general. However, we must resist the inclination to give them a status beyond that which they genuinely deserve. Instead, we should embrace the notion, sacrilegious to some, that there is greater knowledge, deeper wisdom, and more profound truths to be found in other, no less fictional, books. ~ Alom Shaha,

45:To me, there is only one God. An unnamed presence we'll never understand. Everything else is human politics. It was human beings who wrote the holy books, and human beings who made all the rules and rituals. In other words, it is human beings who turn life into hell. So yes'--he picked up his wine glass--'I try to live by the spirit of God, but not by the rules, because rules are made by man, and man is nothing but a fatally conceited flea on the mammoth of Creation. ~ Anne Fortier,

46:Or maybe just confused. All those bickering worshippers, each one convinced their version is the right one. Imagine getting prayers from ten million believers, not one of them believing the same thing as the one kneeling beside him or her. Imagine all those Holy Books, not one of them agreeing on anything, yet all of them purporting to be the word of that one god. Imagine two armies annihilating each other, both in that god’s name. Who wouldn’t be driven mad by all that? ~ Steven Erikson,

47:Whereupon then can I hope, or wherein may I trust, save only in the great mercy of God, and the hope of heavenly grace? For whether good men are with me, godly brethren or faithful friends, whether holy books or beautiful discourses, whether sweet hymns and songs, all these help but little, and have but little savour when I am deserted by God's favour and left to mine own poverty. There is no better remedy, then, than patience and denial of self, and an abiding in the will of God. ~ Thomas Kempis,

48:Help yourself during this troubled period by reading holy books. This reading provides excellent food for the soul and conduces to great progress along the path of perfection. By no means is it inferior to what we obtain through prayer and holy meditation. In prayer and meditation it is ourselves who speak to the Lord, while in holy reading it is God who speaks to us. Before beginning to read, raise your mind to the Lord and implore Him to guide your mind Himself, to speak to your heart and move your will. ~ Saint Padre Pio,

49:Some people spend their entire lives devoted to a religion that claims to be the ‘right’ religion... they often deny scientific evidence that contradicts their archaic holy books, they sometimes oppress those who disagree with them, and they always do what they do in the name of an unknowable deity... but sometimes, they wake up. Occasionally, they realize that all religions are man-made and that none of them are ‘right.’ And when they do, they can live happy and fulfilling lives without dogma and without anticipating or fearing an afterlife. ~ David G McAfee,

50:Respect is the enemy of tolerance. The loud calls from the religious for censorship in the name of ‘respect’ reveal the fatuity of modern faith. The religious do not say that they are defending the truth from libellous attack, because in their hearts they know that the truth of the holy books cannot be defended. Instead, like celebrities’ lawyers trying to hide secrets, they threaten the gains made in the struggle for religious toleration by saying that those who ask searching questions of religion must be punished for invading the privacy of the pious. ~ Nick Cohen,

51:[Fables] teach us that human beings learn and absorb ideas and concepts through narrative, through stories, not through lessons or theoretical speeches. This is what any of the religious texts teach us. They're all tales about characters who must confront life and overcome obstacles, figures setting off on a journey of spiritual enrichment through exploits and revelations. All holy books are, above all, great stories whose plots deal with the basic aspects of human nature, setting them within a particular moral context and a particular framework of supernatural dogmas. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n,

52:The science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvellous. Yet the whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.... For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their in most being still follow the Christian ideal ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

53:Worry! What a waste of time. All the holy books were right. Clearly ‘worry’ was the mark of a primitive and spiritually unevolved person. What was that line from Yeats, about the bemused Chinese sages? All things fall and are built again. Ancient glittering eyes. This was wisdom. People had been raging and weeping and destroying things for centuries and wailing about their puny individual lives, when—what was the point? All this useless sorrow? Consider the lilies of the field. Why did anyone ever worry about anything? Weren’t we, as sentient beings, put upon the earth to be happy, in the brief time allotted to us? ~ Donna Tartt,

54:Someone once said to me, 'There are so many religions in the world. They can't all be right.'

And my reply was, 'Well, they can't all be wrong either.'

All religions in the world today share more commonalities than differences, yet language blinds many from seeing these truths. Some people will tell me that what I write about is straight from their holy book, but the truth is that the main principles found in all holy books were already engraved in all our hearts. If you think common sense, the golden rule and knowing right from wrong are exclusive only to your faith, then you need to open yourself up to the rest of the world's religions. ~ Suzy Kassem,

55:In the face of God's obvious inadequacies, the pious have generally held that one cannot apply earthly norms to the Creator of the universe. This argument loses its force the moment we notice that the Creator who purports to be beyond human judgment is consistently ruled by human passions— jealousy, wrath, suspicion, and the lust to dominate. A close study of our holy books reveals that the God of Abraham is a ridiculous fellow—capricious, petulant, and cruel—and one with whom a covenant is little guarantee of health or happiness. If these are the characteristics of God, then the worst among us have been created far more in his image than we ever could have hoped. ~ Sam Harris,

56:some general principles in the holy books of all religions that teach love, charity, liberty, justice and equality for all the human family, there are many grand and beautiful passages, the golden rule has been echoed and re-echoed around the world. There are lofty examples of good and true men and women, all worthy our acceptance and imitation whose lustre cannot be dimmed by the false sentiments and vicious characters bound up in the same volume. The Bible cannot be accepted or rejected as a whole, its teachings are varied and its lessons differ widely from each other. In criticising the peccadilloes of Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, we would not shadow the virtues of Deborah, Huldah and Vashti. In criticising the Mosaic code, we would not question ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton,

57:Love Springs Eternal
Love springs eternal!
When I learnt the lesson of Love
I dreaded going to the mosque.
Hesitantly, I found a temple
Where they beat a thousand drums.
Love springs eternal! Come!
I am tired of reading holy books,
Fed up with prostrations good.
God is not in Mathura or Mecca.
He who finds Him is enlightened!
Love springs eternal! Come!
Burn the prayer mat, break the beaker!
Quit the rosary, chuck the staff!
Lovers shout at the top of their voices:
Break all rules that tie you down!
Love springs eternal! Come!
Heer and Ranjha are united:
While she searches for him in orchards,
He is in her warm embrace!
She has her love, she is fulfilled!
Love springs eternal! Come!
~ Bulleh Shah,

58:Love springs eternal! When I learnt the lesson of Love I dreaded going to the mosque. Hesitantly, I found a temple Where they beat a thousand drums. Love springs eternal! Come! I am tired of reading holy books, Fed up with prostrations good. God is not in Mathura or Mecca. He who finds Him is enlightened! Love springs eternal! Come! Burn the prayer mat, break the beaker! Quit the rosary, chuck the staff! Lovers shout at the top of their voices: Break all rules that tie you down! Love springs eternal! Come! Heer and Ranjha are united: While she searches for him in orchards, He is in her warm embrace! She has her love, she is fulfilled! Love springs eternal! Come! [2469.jpg] -- from Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi, Translated by Mahmood Jamal

~ Bulleh Shah, Love Springs Eternal
,

59:I want to be clear that when I used terms such as “pretense” and “intellectual dishonesty” when we first met, I wasn’t casting judgment on you personally. Simply living with the moderate’s dilemma may be the only way forward, because the alternative would be to radically edit these books. I’m not such an idealist as to imagine that will happen. We can’t say, “Listen, you barbarians: These holy books of yours are filled with murderous nonsense. In the interests of getting you to behave like civilized human beings, we’re going to redact them and give you back something that reads like Kahlil Gibran. There you go … Don’t you feel better now that you no longer hate homosexuals?” However, that’s really what one should be able to do in any intellectual tradition in the twenty-first century. Again, this problem confronts religious moderates everywhere, but it’s an excruciating problem for Muslims. ~ Sam Harris,

60:Remember young man, unceasingly,' Father Paissy began, without preface, 'that the science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous. Yet the whole world still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, is it not still a living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of the people? It is still as strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

61:As long as the ego overcomes the heart of a man, evil will always exist, and the enemies of God will continue to multiply and thrive. If a tree is bearing bad fruit, you do not destroy the tree by cutting off its branches or eliminating its fruit, but by destroying its roots. I want you to look at the world as this poisoned tree. Even if we eliminate our enemies today, we will create new ones tomorrow. The solution is very simple and this formula is written in all your holy books. LOVE IS THY ANSWER. The strongest weapon to destroy the snakes of hate and evil is LOVE. PURE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. However, to be able to emit the right frequency of love, you must succeed daily in your own personal battle of good versus evil: heart (conscience) vs. mind (ego). Once you learn how to use your heart to embrace all living things as you do your own reflection, and use your heart to detect truths and dictate your actions, your heart will not be fully activated to LOVE. Where there is LOVE, there will remain Truth and LIGHT. Take away the LOVE, and you will always remain in the dark. ~ Suzy Kassem,

62:Remember, young man, unceasingly,” Father Paissy began, without preface, “that the science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvellous. Yet the whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, is it not still a living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of people? It is still as strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been attempted, the result has been only grotesque. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

63:Up to this point, the story of the Gzilt and their holy book was, to students of this sort of thing, quite familiar: an upstart part of a parvenu species/civ gets lucky, proclaims itself Special and waves around its own conveniently vague and multiply interpretable holy book to prove it. What set the Book of Truth apart from all the other holy books was that it made predictions that almost without exception came true, and anticipated phenomena that nobody of the time of Briper Drodj could possibly have guessed at. At almost every scientific/technological stage over the following two millennia, the Book of Truth called it right, whether it was on electromagnetism, radioactivity, atomic theory, the cosmic microwave background, hyperspaciality, the existence of aliens or the patternings of the energy grid that lay between the nested universes. The language was even quite clear, too; somewhat opaque at the time before you had the technological knowledge to properly understand what it was it was talking about and you were reading, but relatively unambiguous once the accompanying technical breakthrough had been made. There ~ Iain M Banks,

64:Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind. The unicorn, as these books speak of him, embodies a moral truth, or allegorical, or analogical, but one that remains true, as the idea that chastity is a noble virtue remains true. But as for the literal truth that sustains the other three truths, we have yet to see what original experience gave birth to the letter. The literal object must be discussed, even if its higher meaning remains good. In a book it is written that diamond can be cut only with a billy goat’s blood. My great master Roger Bacon said it was not true, simply because he had tried and had failed. But if the relation between a diamond and goat’s blood had had a nobler meaning, that would have remained intact.” “Then higher truths can be expressed while the letter is lying,” I said. “Still, it grieves me to think this unicorn doesn’t exist, or never existed, or cannot exist one day.” “It is not licit to impose confines on divine omnipotence, and if God so willed, unicorns could also exist. But console yourself, they exist in these books, which, if they do not speak of real existence, speak of possible existence.” “So must we then read books without faith, which is a theological virtue?” “There are two other theological virtues as well. The hope that the possible is. And charity, toward those who believed in good faith that the possible was.” “But ~ Umberto Eco,

65:unlike, say, the sun, or the rainbow, or earthquakes, the fascinating world of the very small never came to the notice of primitive peoples. if you think about this for a minute, it's not really surprising.. they had no way of even knowing it was there, and so of course they didn't invent any myths to explain it. it wasn't until the microscope was invented in the sixteenth century that people discovered that ponds and lakes, soil and dust, even our body, teem with tiny living creatures, too small to see, yet too complicated and, in their own way, beautiful, or perhaps frightening, depending on how you think about them.

the whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye - and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all knowing god, mentions them at all. in fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. they don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or nuclear fusion, or electricity, or anaesthetics. in fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive people who first started telling them. if these 'holly books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? ~ Richard Dawkins,

66:Apart from the regime of the Last Man, the other nightmare that plagued Nietzsche was the 'long plentitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm that is now impending' as a result of the Death of God. The Death of God resulted when Christianity's chief virtue, truthfulness, was at last turned against religion. The search for historical truth resulted in skepticism about the transcendent claims of religion, and 'eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective....' Luther was an archetypical Christian who, impelled by the love of truth 'surrendered the holy books to everyone - until they finally came into the hands of the philologists, who are the destroyers of every faith that rests on books.' At times, it appears that for Nietzsche the death of God was a supremely liberating event, and one to be celebrated. On the other hand, he also speaks of an 'approaching gloom' which will overwhelm Europe as morality gradually perishes: 'this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe - the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all spectacles. -' So although Nietzsche harbors hopes for an eventual transvaluation of all values, he does not by any means consider this a foregone conclusion, nor does he look forward to the gloom and cataclysm that will result between the death of the old values and the birth of the new. 'Nihilism represents a pathological transitional stage,' he writes; and he wonders 'whether the productive forces are not yet strong enough, or whether decadence still hesitates and has not yet invented its remedies. ~ Peter Levine,

67:The battle of good versus evil is the oldest and most re-occurring story tale in the book of life. It never ends because no matter how you cut off the tail of evil, it will always grow back again and again. This old story will always continue into infinity until we closely examine our past errors to prevent giving the snake a new head in the future. You can destroy a demon, but a new one will always come back later in time. You can bring down a corrupt leader, but another one will rise up again with time. As long as the ego overcomes the heart of a man, evil will always exist, and the enemies of God will continue to multiply and thrive. If a tree is bearing bad fruit, you do not destroy the tree by cutting off its branches or eliminating its fruit, but by destroying its roots. I want you to look at the world as this poisoned tree. Even if we eliminate our enemies today, we will create new ones tomorrow. The forumla to cut off the head of the snake once and fall is very simple, and this basic solution is written in all your holy books — 'LOVE IS THE ANSWER'. The strongest counterspell to destroy all forces of black magic is love. Pure unconditional love. However, to be able to emit the right frequency of love, one must first succeed in their own personal battle of good versus evil: heart (conscience) vs. mind (ego). Once you learn how to use your heart to embrace all living things as you do your own reflection, and use your heart to detect truths and dictate your actions, your heart will not be fully activated to love all of mankind the right way. Where there is love, there will be truth and light. Take away the love or truth, and we will forever remain in the dark. Truth, light and love must all co-exist in perfect harmony to overcome evil on earth. And they cannot just be secluded to one part of the world, but reign as divine royalty across the entire globe. ~ Suzy Kassem,

68:The problem is that moderates of all faiths are committed to reinterpreting, or ignoring outright, the most dangerous and absurd parts of their scripture—and this commitment is precisely what makes them moderates. But it also requires some degree of intellectual dishonesty, because moderates can’t acknowledge that their moderation comes from outside the faith. The doors leading out of the prison of scriptural literalism simply do not open from the inside. In the twenty-first century, the moderate’s commitment to scientific rationality, human rights, gender equality, and every other modern value—values that, as you say, are potentially universal for human beings—comes from the past thousand years of human progress, much of which was accomplished in spite of religion, not because of it. So when moderates claim to find their modern, ethical commitments within scripture, it looks like an exercise in self-deception. The truth is that most of our modern values are antithetical to the specific teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And where we do find these values expressed in our holy books, they are almost never best expressed there. Moderates seem unwilling to grapple with the fact that all scriptures contain an extraordinary amount of stupidity and barbarism that can always be rediscovered and made holy anew by fundamentalists—and there’s no principle of moderation internal to the faith that prevents this. These fundamentalist readings are, almost by definition, more complete and consistent—and, therefore, more honest. The fundamentalist picks up the book and says, “Okay, I’m just going to read every word of this and do my best to understand what God wants from me. I’ll leave my personal biases completely out of it.” Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God’s literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn’t hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery—you just put in a few lines like “Don’t take sex slaves!” and “When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don’t rape any of them!” And yet God couldn’t seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth. ~ Sam Harris,

69:Or, in your case, as wide. Wait. Did you just say Gandalf?”
“He is the founder of our order, and the first of the Five Warlocks. He comes from afar across the Western Ocean, from Easter Island, or perhaps from Japan.”
“No, I think he comes from the mind of a story writer. An old-fashioned Roman Catholic from the days just before First Space Age. Unless I am confusing him with the guy who wrote about Talking Animal Land? With the Cowardly Lion who gets killed by a Wicked White Witch? I never read the text, I watched the comic.”
“Oh, you err so! The Witches, we have preserved this lore since the time of the Fall of the Giants, whom we overthrew and destroyed. The tale is this: C. S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke were led by the Indian Maiden Sacagawea to the Pacific Ocean and back, stealing the land from the Red Man and selling them blankets impregnated with smallpox. It was called the Lewis and Clarke Expedition. When they reached the Pacific, they set out in the Dawn Treader to find the sea route to India, where the sacred river Alph runs through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. They came to the Last Island, called Ramandu or Selidor, where the World Serpent guards the gateway to the Land of the Dead, and there they found Gandalf, returned alive from the underworld, and stripped of all his powers. He came again to mortal lands in North America to teach the Simon Families. The Chronicle is a symbolic retelling of their journey. It is one of our Holy Books.”
“Your Holy Books were written for children by Englishmen.”
“The gods wear many masks! If the Continuum chooses the lips of a White Man to be the lips through which the Continuum speaks, who are we to question? Tolkien was not Roman. He was of a race called the hobbits, Homo floresiensis, discovered on an isle in Indonesia, and he would have lived in happiness, had not the White Man killed him with DDT. So there were no Roman Catholics involved. May the Earth curse their memory forever! May they be forgotten forever!”
“Hm. Earth is big. Maybe it can do both. You know about Rome? It perished in the Ecpyrosis, somewhat before your time.”
“How could we not? The Pope in Rome created the Giants, whom the Witches rose up against and overthrew. Theirs was the masculine religion, aggressive, intolerant, and forbidding abortion. Ours is the feminine religion, peaceful and life-affirming and all-loving, and we offer the firstborn child to perish on our sacred fires. The First Coven was organized to destroy them like rats! When Rome was burned, we danced, and their one god was cast down and fled weeping on his pierced feet, and our many gods rose up. My ancestors hunted the Christians like stoats, and when we caught them, we burned them slowly, as they once did of us in Salem. What ill you do is returned to you tenfold!”
“Hm. Are you willing to work with a Giant? I saw one in the pit, and saw the jumbo-sized coffin they pried him out from. What if he is a baptized Christian? Most of them were, since they were created by my pet pope and raised by nuns.”
“All Christians must perish! Such is our code.”
“Your code is miscoded.”
“What of the Unforgettable Hate?”
“Forget about it. ~ John C Wright,

70:Bruadar And Smith And Glinn
Bruadar and Smith and Glinn,
Amen, dear God, I pray,
May they lie low in waves of woe,
And tortures slow each day!
Amen!
Bruadar and Smith and Glinn
Helpless and cold, I pray,
Amen! I pray, O king,
To see them pine away.
Amen!
Bruadar and Smith and Glinn
May flails of sorrow flay!
Cause for lamenting, snares and cares
Be theirs by night and day!
Amen!
Blindness come down on Smith,
Palsy on Bruadar come,
Amen, O King of Brightness! Smite
Glinn in his members numb,
Amen!
Smith in the pangs of pain,
Stumbling on Bruadar’s path,
King of the Elements, Oh, Amen!
Let loose on Glinn Thy Wrath.
Amen!
For Bruadar gape the grave,
Up-shovel for Smith the mould,
Amen, O King of the Sunday! Leave
Glinn in the devil’s hold.
Amen!
Terrors on Bruadar rain,
And pain upon pain on Glinn,
Amen, O King of the Stars! And Smith
May the devil be linking him.
Amen!
Glinn in a shaking ague,
Cancer on Bruadar’s tongue,
Amen, O King of the Heavens! and Smith
Forever stricken dumb.
Amen!
Thirst but no drink for Glinn,
Smith in a cloud of grief,
Amen! O King of the Saints; and rout
Bruadar without relief.
Amen!
Smith without child or heir,
And Bruadar bare of store,
Amen, O King of the Friday! Tear
For Glinn his black heart’s core.
Amen!
Bruadar with nerveless limbs,
Hemp strangling Glinn’s last breath,
Amen, O King of the World’s Light!
And Smith in grips with death.
Amen!
Glinn stiffening for the tomb,
Smith wasting to decay,
Amen, O King of the Thunder’s gloom,
And Bruadar sick alway.
Amen!
Smith like a sieve of holes,
Bruadar with throat decay,
Amen, O king of the Orders! Glinn
A buck-show every day.
Amen!
Hell-hounds to hunt for Smith,
Glinn led to hang on high,
Amen, O King of the Judgment Day!
And Bruadar rotting by.
Amen!
Curses on Glinn, I cry,
My curse on Bruadar be,
Amen, O king of the Heavens high!
Let Smith in bondage be.
Amen!
Showers of want and blame,
Reproach, and shame of face,
Smite them all three, and smite again,
Amen, O King of Grace!
Amen!
Melt, may the three, away,
Bruadar and Smith and Glinn,
Fall in a swift and sure decay
And lose, but never win.
Amen!
May pangs pass through thee, Smith,
(Let the wind not take my prayer),
May I see before the year is out
Thy heart’s blood flowing there.
Amen!
Leave Smith no place nor land,
Let Bruadar wander wide,
May the Devil stand at Glinn’s right hand,
And Glinn to him be tied.
Amen!
All ill from every airt
Come down upon the three,
And blast them ere the year be out
In rout and misery.
Amen!
Glinn let misfortune bruise,
Bruadar lose blood and brains,
Amen, O Jesus! hear my voice,
Let Smith be bent in chains.
Amen!
I accuse both Glinn and Bruadar,
And Smith I accuse to God,
May a breach and a gap be upon the three,
And the Lord’s avenging rod.
Amen!
Each one of the wicked three
Who raised against me their hand,
May fire from heaven come down and slay
This day their perjured band,
Amen!
May none of their race survive,
May God destroy them all,
Each curse of the psalms in the holy books
Of the prophets upon them fall.
Amen!
Blight skull, and ear, and skin,
And hearing, and voice, and sight,
Amen! before the year be out,
Blight, Son of the Virgin, blight.
Amen!
May my curses hot and red
And all I have said this day,
Strike the Black Peeler, too,
Amen, dear God, I pray!
Amen!
~ Douglas Hyde,

71:In Country Sleep
Never and never, my girl riding far and near
In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,
Fear or believe that the wolf in a sheepwhite hood
Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap,
My dear, my dear,
Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year
To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.
Sleep, good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise,
My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire
Of the hobnail tales: no gooseherd or swine will turn
Into a homestall king or hamlet of fire
And prince of ice
To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise
In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn,
Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed
And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep.
From the broomed witch's spume you are shielded by fern
And flower of country sleep and the greenwood keep.
Lie fast and soothed,
Safe be and smooth from the bellows of the rushy brood.
Never, my girl, until tolled to sleep by the stern
Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell
Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near,
For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves
Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear
From the starred well?
A hill touches an angel. Out of a saint's cell
The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves
Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays.
_Sanctum sanctorum_ the animal eye of the wood
In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost
The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood.
Now the tales praise
92
The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze
On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. Fear most
For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood
Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind
And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew.
The country is holy: O bide in that country kind,
Know the green good,
Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood
Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you
Lie in grace. Sleep spelled at rest in the lowly house
In the squirrel nimble grove, under linen and thatch
And star: held and blessed, though you scour the high four
Winds, from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch,
Cool in your vows.
Yet out of the beaked, web dark and the pouncing boughs
Be you sure the Thief will seek a way sly and sure
And sly as snow and meek as dew blown to the thorn,
This night and each vast night until the stern bell talks
In the tower and tolls to sleep over the stalls
Of the hearthstone tales my own, lost love; and the soul walks
The waters shorn.
This night and each night since the falling star you were born,
Ever and ever he finds a way, as the snow falls,
As the rain falls, hail on the fleece, as the vale mist rides
Through the haygold stalls, as the dew falls on the windMilled dust of the apple tree and the pounded islands
Of the morning leaves, as the star falls, as the winged
Apple seed glides,
And falls, and flowers in the yawning wound at our sides,
As the world falls, silent as the cyclone of silence.
II
Night and the reindeer on the clouds above the haycocks
And the wings of the great roc ribboned for the fair!
The leaping saga of prayer! And high, there, on the hareHeeled winds the rooks
93
Cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books
Of birds! Among the cocks like fire the red fox
Burning! Night and the vein of birds in the winged, sloe wrist
Of the wood! Pastoral beat of blood through the laced leaves!
The stream from the priest black wristed spinney and sleeves
Of thistling frost
Of the nightingale's din and tale! The upgiven ghost
Of the dingle torn to singing and the surpliced
Hill of cypresses! The din and tale in the skimmed
Yard of the buttermilk rain on the pail! The sermon
Of blood! The bird loud vein! The saga from mermen
To seraphim
Leaping! The gospel rooks! All tell, this night, of him
Who comes as red as the fox and sly as the heeled wind.
Illumination of music! the lulled black-backed
Gull, on the wave with sand in its eyes! And the foal moves
Through the shaken greensward lake, silent, on moonshod hooves,
In the winds' wakes.
Music of elements, that a miracle makes!
Earth, air, water, fire, singing into the white act,
The haygold haired, my love asleep, and the rift blue
Eyed, in the haloed house, in her rareness and hilly
High riding, held and blessed and true, and so stilly
Lying the sky
Might cross its planets, the bell weep, night gather her eyes,
The Thief fall on the dead like the willy nilly dew,
Only for the turning of the earth in her holy
Heart! Slyly, slowly, hearing the wound in her side go
Round the sun, he comes to my love like the designed snow,
And truly he
Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew's ruly sea,
And surely he sails like the ship shape clouds. Oh he
Comes designed to my love to steal not her tide raking
Wound, nor her riding high, nor her eyes, nor kindled hair,
But her faith that each vast night and the saga of prayer
He comes to take
94
Her faith that this last night for his unsacred sake
He comes to leave her in the lawless sun awaking
Naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come.
Ever and ever by all your vows believe and fear
My dear this night he comes and night without end my dear
Since you were born:
And you shall wake, from country sleep, this dawn and each first dawn,
Your faith as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun.
~ Dylan Thomas,

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