TERMS STARTING WITH
The vast traditions not included in the official Mishnah are known as Baraitha (extraneous). These Baraithas were ultimately collected in separate works.
TERMS ANYWHERE
Agni2 (Agni; Agnih) ::: the god of Fire; in Sri Aurobindo"s interpretation of the Veda, the deva as the master of tapas, "the divine Consciousness formulating itself in universal energy"; he is the "secret inhabitant of Matter and its forms" and "the power of conscious Being, called by us will, effective behind the workings of mind and body"; his "divine birth-place and home, ::: though he is born everywhere and dwells in all things, ::: is the Truth, the Infinity, the vast cosmic Intelligence in which Knowledge and Force are unified".
“Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” The Secret of the Veda
*[Agni]. Sri Aurobindo: "Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose of this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame[Agni] is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.” *The Secret of the Veda
AkAsa. (T. nam mkha'; C. xukong; J. koku; K. hogong 虚空). In Sanskrit, "space" or "spatiality"; "sky," and "ether." In ABHIDHARMA analysis, AkAsa has two discrete denotations. First, as "spatiality," AkAsa is an absence that delimits forms; like the empty space inside a door frame, AkAsa is a hole that is itself empty but that defines, or is defined by, the material that surrounds it. Second, as the vast emptiness of "space," AkAsa comes also to be described as the absence of obstruction and is enumerated as one of the permanent phenomena (nityadharma) because it does not change from moment to moment. Space in this sense is also interpreted as being something akin to the Western conception of ether, a virtually immaterial, but glowing fluid that serves as the support for the four material elements (MAHABHuTA). (Because this ethereal form of AkAsa is thought to be glowing, it is sometimes used as a metaphor for buddhahood, which is said to be radiant like the sun or space.) In addition to these two abhidharma definitions, the sphere of infinite space (AKAsANANTYAYATANA) has a meditative context as well through its listing as the first of the four immaterial DHYANAS. AkAsa is recognized as one of the uncompounded dharmas (ASAMSKṚTADHARMA) in six of the mainstream Buddhist schools, including the SARVASTIVADA and the MAHASAMGHIKA, as well as the later YOGACARA; three others reject this interpretation, including the THERAVADA.
amaya ::: the supreme Reality and the power of its "infinite consciousness to comprehend, contain in itself and measure out . . . Name and Shape out of the vast illimitable Truth of infinite existence", the duality of brahman and maya in its highest "biune" form. par parajayananda
ana (vijnana; vijnanam; vijnan) ::: "the large embracing consciousness . . . which takes into itself all truth and idea and object of knowledge and sees them at once in their essence, totality and parts or aspects", the "comprehensive consciousness" which is one of the four functions of active consciousness (see ajñanam), a mode of awareness that is "the original, spontaneous, true and complete view" of existence and "of which mind has only a shadow in the highest operations of the comprehensive intellect"; the faculty or plane of consciousness above buddhi or intellect, also called ideality, gnosis or supermind (although these are distinguished in the last period of the Record of Yoga as explained under the individual terms), whose instruments of knowledge and power form the vijñana catus.t.aya; the vijñana catus.t.aya itself; the psychological principle or degree of consciousness that is the basis of maharloka, the "World of the Vastness" that links the worlds of the transcendent existence, consciousness and bliss of saccidananda to the lower triloka of mind, life and matter, being itself usually considered the lowest plane of the parardha or higher hemisphere of existence. Vijñana is "the knowledge of the One and the Many, by which the Many are seen in the terms of the One, in the infinite unifying Truth, Right, Vast [satyam r.taṁ br.hat] of the divine existence". vij ñana ana ananda
apport ::: Apport The name given to any object such as a coin, a piece of jewellery, etc., which materialises from out of nowhere (normally in a darkened room) to land on a table or a sitter's lap, in the presence of a medium. The practice was commonplace during the late 19th century when Spiritualism was at its height, although the vast majority of mediums producing these phenomena were exposed as fraudulent.
asaMskṛtadharma. (P. asankhatadhamma; T. 'dus ma byas kyi chos; C. wuweifa; J. muiho; K. muwibop 無爲法). In Sanskrit, "uncompounded" or "unconditioned" "factors"; a term used to describe the few DHARMAs that are not conditioned (SAMSKṚTA) and are therefore perduring phenomena (NITYADHARMA) that are not subject to impermanence (ANITYA). The lists differ in the various schools. The PAli tradition's list of eighty-two dharmas (P. dhamma) recognizes only one uncompounded dharma: NIRVAnA (P. nibbAna). The SARVASTIVADA school recognizes three out of seventy-five: space (AKAsA), and two varieties of nirvAna: "analytical" "suppression" or "cessation" (PRATISAMKHYANIRODHA) and "nonanalytical suppression" (APRATISAMKHYANIRODHA). YOGACARA recognizes six of its one hundred dharmas as uncompounded: the preceding three, plus "motionlessness" (AniNjya, [alt. aniNjya]), the "cessation of perception and sensation" (SAMJNAVEDAYITANIRODHA), and "suchness" (TATHATA). NirvAna is the one factor that all Buddhist schools accept as being uncompounded. It is the one dharma that exists without being the result of a cause (ahetuja), though it may be accessed through the three "gates to deliverance" (VIMOKsAMUKHA). Because nirvAna neither produces nor is produced by anything else, it is utterly distinct from the conditioned realm that is subject to production and cessation; its achievement, therefore, means the end to the repeated cycle of rebirth (SAMSARA). In several schools of Buddhism, including the SarvAstivAda, nirvAna is subdivided into two complementary aspects: an "analytical cessation" (pratisaMkhyAnirodha) that corresponds to earlier notions of nirvAna and "nonanalytical suppression" (apratisaMkhyAnirodha), which ensures that the enlightened person will never again be subject to the vagaries of the conditioned world. "Analytical cessation" (pratisaMkhyAnirodha) occurs through the direct meditative insight into the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvAry AryasatyAni) and the cognition of nonproduction (ANUTPADAJNANA), which brings about the disjunction (visaMyoga) from all unwholesome factors (AKUsALADHARMA). "Nonanalytical suppression" (apratisaMkhyAnirodha) prevents the dharmas of the conditioned realm from ever appearing again for the enlightened person. In the VAIBHAsIKA interpretation, this dharma suppresses the conditions that would lead to the production of dharmas, thus ensuring that they remain forever positioned in future mode and unable ever again to arise in the present. Because this dharma is not a result of insight, it is called "nonanalytical." Space (AkAsa) has two discrete denotations. First, space is an absence that delimits forms; like the empty space inside a door frame, AkAsa is a hole that is itself empty but that defines, or is defined by, the material that surrounds it. Second, as the vast emptiness of space, space comes also to be described as the absence of obstruction; in this sense, space also comes to be interpreted as something akin to the Western conception of ether, a virtually immaterial, but glowing fluid that serves as the support for the four material elements (MAHABHuTA). Space is accepted as an uncompounded dharma in six of the mainstream Buddhist schools, including the SARVASTIVADA and the MAHASAMGHIKA, as well as the later YOGACARA; three others reject this interpretation, including the THERAVADA. The YogAcAra additions to this list essentially subsume the upper reaches of the immaterial realm (ArupyAvacara) into the listing of uncompounded dharmas. AniNjya, or motionlessness, is used even in the early Buddhist tradition to refer to actions that are neither wholesome nor unwholesome (see ANINJYAKARMAN), which lead to rebirth in the realm of subtle materiality or the immaterial realm and, by extension, to those realms themselves. The "cessation of perception and sensation" (saMjNAvedayitanirodha) is the last of the eight liberations (VIMOKsA; P. vimokkha) and the ninth and highest of the immaterial attainments (SAMAPATTI). "Suchness" (TATHATA) is the ultimate reality (i.e., suNYATA) shared in common by a TATHAGATA and all other afflicted (SAMKLIstA) and pure (VIsUDDHI) dharmas; the "cessation of perception and sensation" (saMjNAvedayitanirodha) is not only "a meditative trance wherein no perceptual activity remains," but one where no feeling, whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, is experienced.
A/UX "operating system" (Apple's UniX) {Apple}'s first version of {Unix} for {Macintosh} computers. A/UX merges the {Macintosh Finder} ({GUI}) with a Unix core, offering functions from both systems. It will run on some late-model {Motorola 68000} Macs, but not on the {Power Mac}. A/UX is based on {AT&T} Unix {System V}.2.2 with numerous extensions from V.3, V.4 and {BSD} 4.2/4.3. It also provides full {POSIX} compliance. A/UX 3.x.x incorporates {System 7} for the Macintosh, thus supporting the vast majority of Macintosh {applications}. System 7 and Unix are fully integrated under A/UX 3.x.x with the Unix file system being seen as a disk drive by the Finder. {jagubox's A/UX Home Page (http://jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov/aux/Info/FAQ.auxl)}. (1997-12-13)
A/UX ::: (operating system) (Apple's UniX) Apple's first version of Unix for Macintosh computers. A/UX merges the Macintosh Finder (GUI) with a Unix core, offering functions from both systems. It will run on some late-model Motorola 68000 Macs, but not on the Power Macintosh.A/UX is based on AT&T Unix System V.2.2 with numerous extensions from V.3, V.4 and BSD 4.2/4.3. It also provides full POSIX compliance.A/UX 3.x.x incorporates System 7 for the Macintosh, thus supporting the vast majority of Macintosh applications. System 7 and Unix are fully integrated under A/UX 3.x.x with the Unix file system being seen as a disk drive by the Finder. . (1997-12-13)
Bala2 ::: the name of a daitya or Titan, regarded by Sri Aurobindo as a force from the mahat, the plane of the vastness of vijñana, descended into the mental plane and there "disturbing evolution by a premature effort towards perfection".
brhat (Brihat) ::: large, wide; the Large, the Vast (used to describe the world or plane of Truth-Consciousness). [Ved.]
br.hat ::: Indra, the vast.
brhat jyoti ::: the vast light. [Ved.]
br.hat (satyam ritam brihat) ::: "consciousness of essential truth of being (satyam), of ordered truth of active being (r.tam) and the vast self-awareness (br.hat) in which alone this consciousness is possible"; these three terms express the nature of vijñana. [Cf. Atharva Veda 12.1.1, satyaṁ br.had r.tam]
Cyclopean Structures Applied by the Greeks to certain architecture of huge stones without mortar, such as found in Tiryns and Mycenae, and attributed to the cyclopes. Cyclopean masonry is found in the platforms of the Easter Island statues, of Lemurian origin; in the vast walls of Tiahuanaco, Peru; in the colossal statues of Bamian, Asia, and many other places.
Daitya(s), Daiteya(s) (Sanskrit) Daitya-s, Daiteya-s Descendants of Diti. If Aditi is understood as mulaprakriti, or virtually cosmic space, so Diti, the nether pole of the former, may be understood as the aggregate of the prakritis. Cosmically, daityas are titans, often called asuras, whose role is that of urgers of evolutionary progress for all things, as contrasted with the incomparably slower, but unceasing, evolutionary inertia of the vast cosmic powers. Terrestrially, they are the titans and giants of the fourth root-race. According to the Hindu Puranas, these daityas are demons and enemies of the ceremonial sacrifice and ritualistic ceremonies; but according to the secret meaning hid under these stories, some of the daityas were the forwards-looking and impulse-providing intellectual entities striving against the inertia or deadweight of human nature.
desert ::: n. --> That which is deserved; the reward or the punishment justly due; claim to recompense, usually in a good sense; right to reward; merit.
A deserted or forsaken region; a barren tract incapable of supporting population, as the vast sand plains of Asia and Africa are destitute and vegetation.
A tract, which may be capable of sustaining a population, but has been left unoccupied and uncultivated; a wilderness; a solitary
Every round brings about a new evolutionary development on every one of the globes of the earth-chain, and a fundamental change in the physical, psychic, mental, intellectual, and spiritual constitution of man. The manas principle (the fifth or intellectual principle) will be fully developed at the end of the fifth round, and corresponding aspects of the human constitution will be evolved in minor degree during the sixth and seventh root-races of the fourth round. Although the vast majority of human beings in that future round will be far more evolved than is the present-day or fourth round mankind, nevertheless during the fifth round on this globe will occur what theosophical literature calls the moment of choice. At that time the monads which will continue to rise on the ascending arc must have reached a certain point in their unfolding evolution enabling them successfully to pursue their upward evolutionary journey towards spirit. Those monads who shall not have reached this evolutionary status, and who therefore are not able to continue the upward arc, must perforce wait for the future manvantara, a loss in evolutionary opportunity and in time of many hundreds of millions of years.
fangsheng. (T. srog blu/tshe thar; J. hojo; K. pangsaeng 放生). In Chinese, "releasing living creatures," referring to the practice of buying captured animals, such as fish, turtles, or birds, and then setting them free; the focus of a ritual popular in East Asian Buddhism, the "ceremony of releasing living creatures" (FANGSHENG HUI). The Buddhist tradition asserts that merit (PUnYA) is produced by both actively pursuing wholesome actions (KUsALA-KARMAPATHA) as well as refraining from unwholesome actions (AKUsALA-KARMAPATHA); fangsheng is regarded as an enhancement of both types of action, by furthering the first lay precept (sĪLA) that forbids the unsalutary action of killing, as well as the MAHĀYĀNA precept that encourages the salutary act of vegetarianism. ¶ The two representative scriptures on fangsheng are the FANWANG JING ("Book of Brahmā's Net") and the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA (C. Jinguangming jing; "Sutra of Golden Light"), the former providing the doctrinal basis for the practice of fangsheng, the latter a protypical example of a fangsheng hui. The Fanwang jing says that because all sentient beings in the six destinies (sAdGATI; see also GATI) have at some time or other during the vastness of SAMSĀRA been one's parents, a person should always strive to rescue creatures from people who would kill them in order to save them from their torment. The Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra tells a story about Jalavāhana (sĀKYAMUNI Buddha in an earlier life), who saved ten thousand fish who were dying in a dried up pond by bringing water to refill it. He then recited for them the ten epithets of the buddha Ratnasikhin/Ratnabhava, since he had been told that any creatures who heard that Buddha's name at the time of their deaths would be reborn in the heavens. The fish were reborn as divinities in the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven, who then rained jewels down on the earth.¶ In China, the Buddhist custom of vegetarianism had started to pervade the culture by the Qi (479-501) and Liang (502-556) dynasties, a custom that encouraged the freeing of animals. In 619, an imperial decree prohibited fishing, hunting, and the slaughter of animals during the first, fifth, and ninth months of the year. A decree of 759 established eighty-one ponds for the release and protection of fish. Fangsheng appears to have been practiced not only by individual laypeople and monks. There is a record of the Liang dynasty monk Huiji (456-515) who practiced mendicancy so he could buy and release captured animals. TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597), the founder of the TIANTAI ZONG, is known to have performed a formal ceremony for releasing animals in 575. Zhiyi lamented the fact that local folk made their living by catching fish, so he built a "pond where creatures could be released" (fangsheng chi) and preached to the freed fish the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra. Zhiyi thus established the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra as the scriptural authority for fangsheng. Following Zhiyi, the fangsheng ceremony subsequently became one of the important rituals used within the Tiantai school. Ciyun Zunshi (964-1032) and SIMING ZHILI (960-1028), both Tiantai monks during the Song dynasty, were ardent advocates of fangsheng, who established ponds for releasing creatures and performed the ceremony of releasing creatures, especially in conjunction with celebrations of the Buddha's birthday. In the CHAN school, YONGMING YANSHOU (904-975) and YUNQI ZHUHONG (1535-1615) were among the most enthusiastic proponents of fangsheng. Zhuhong wrote works regarding the practice of vegetarianism, including the Shirou ("On Meat-Eating") and the Shasheng feirensuowei ("Killing Is Not What Humans Are Supposed To Do"), and also composed tracts on the ritual practice of fangsheng, such as the Fangsheng yi ("Rite for Releasing Living Creatures") and the Jiesha fangsheng wen ("Text on Prohibiting Killing and Releasing Living Creatures"). His Fangsheng yi is still considered today one of the standard sources for the Fangsheng ritual. Eventually, almost every large monastery in China had a pool for releasing fish and pens for the care of livestock that had been rescued from the butcher. Because these animals had been given Buddhist precepts, they were encouraged to observe them, with males and females segregated and carnivorous fish kept separately. Birds, turtles, and fish were more popular for release than domesticated animals because they required no further assistance. The pious who delivered cows and pigs to the monastery, however, were required to contribute toward their sustenance. ¶ The practice was popular in other Buddhist countries. In medieval Japan the imperial government would order the capture of three times the number of fish needed to be released at a ceremony in order that the requisite number-often from one to three thousand-would still be alive by the time the ceremony took place. In such cases, the practice of releasing animals resulted in the unfortunate death of many before they could be liberated. Among Tibetan Buddhists, the killing of animals is normatively deplored, and protecting the life of even the tiniest insect (srog skyob) is a common practice; in the LHA SA region, a small Muslim community traditionally performed the task of killing and butchering animals; farmers and nomads butcher some of their animals each year. Vegetarianism (sha med) is admired, but not widespread in Tibet, except during the first two weeks of the fourth Tibetan month SA GA ZLA BA when, it is believed, the results of wholesome actions increase one hundred thousand times. Buying an animal destined for slaughter to protect one's own life, or more commonly to protect the life of an important religious figure, is also common; that practice is known as tshe thar, lit., "liberating life" in Tibetan.
Gnostic Being ::: In the supra-intellectual consciousness, dominated by the Truth or causal Idea (called in Veda Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the True, the Right, the Vast), Atman becomes the ideal being or great Soul, vijnanamaya purusa or mahat atman.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 33
godhead ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” *Essays on the Gita
Godhead ::: “… the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead.” Essays on the Gita
Himmler, Heinrich (1900-1945) ::: As head of the SS and the secret police, Himmler had control over the vast network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, the Einsatzgruppen, and the Gestapo. Himmler committed suicide in 1945, after his arrest.
However, even in this first root-race in which individualized intelligence was not yet manifesting, because the forms were not yet ready to carry this intelligence, there were nevertheless certain representatives, the highest in the entire vast racial group, who were already intelligent because of unfolded manasic attributes, and who because of their more advanced state of evolution were enabled to build up an intermediary psychological apparatus of etherealized or tenuous character permitting the transmission of thought and intelligence from the monad into the physical frame. These intelligent entities, few as compared with the vast numbers of the mass, were the first manasaputric incarnations, and were therefore the highest and most evolved, and in consequence the leaders and guardians of the unintelligent multitudes of this race.
illumined mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; . . . .” The Life Divine
"As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power.” The Life Divine*
In considering how the One becomes the many, how the homogeneous becomes heterogeneous, during the differentiations during manvantara, we are posing the ultimate problem. The unity during manvantaric kosmic differentiation does not lose its unity in the vast diversities of such differentiation, for the unity forever remains the originant and expresses itself at the same time as its integral unity and as the emanated hierarchies which temporarily flow forth from it, in time to return into it again.
Indeed, every entity or thing in the universe is in incessant motion or vibrational activity arising from force inherent in the entity or thing itself; and these interblending activities of vibration produce the vast diversity of the universe around us. Thus every atom, electron, molecule, or being anywhere, sings its own vibrational note, which is the sound production of its own characteristic svabhava or individuality; so that our physical bodies, could we but hear their mystical music, would sound like a vast and marvelous symphony of interblended sound. For this reason Pythagoras spoke of the music of the spheres, ascribing to each celestial body its own dominant note, and pointing out that from the blending of such individual notes or sounds arise the harmony of the spheres.
Internet "networking" 1. With a lower-case "i", any set of {networks} interconnected with {routers}. 2. With an upper-case "I", the world's collection of interconnected networks. The Internet is a three-level {hierarchy} composed of {backbone networks}, {mid-level networks}, and {stub networks}. These include commercial (.com or .co), university (.ac or .edu) and other research networks (.org, .net) and military (.mil) networks and span many different physical networks around the world with various {protocols}, chiefly the {Internet Protocol}. Until the advent of the {web} in 1990, the Internet was almost entirely unknown outside universities and corporate research departments and was accessed mostly via {command line} interfaces such as {telnet} and {FTP}. Since then it has grown to become a ubiquitous aspect of modern information systems, becoming highly commercial and a widely accepted medium for all sort of customer relations such as advertising, brand building and online sales and services. Its original spirit of cooperation and freedom have, to a great extent, survived this explosive transformation with the result that the vast majority of information available on the Internet is free of charge. While the web (primarily in the form of {HTML} and {HTTP}) is the best known aspect of the Internet, there are many other {protocols} in use, supporting applications such as {electronic mail}, {chat}, {remote login} and {file transfer}. There were 20,242 unique commercial domains registered with {InterNIC} in September 1994, 10% more than in August 1994. In 1996 there were over 100 {Internet access providers} in the US and a few in the UK (e.g. the {BBC Networking Club}, {Demon}, {PIPEX}). There are several bodies associated with the running of the Internet, including the {Internet Architecture Board}, the {Internet Assigned Numbers Authority}, the {Internet Engineering and Planning Group}, {Internet Engineering Steering Group}, and the {Internet Society}. See also {NYsernet}, {EUNet}. {The Internet Index (http://openmarket.com/intindex)} - statistics about the Internet. (2015-03-26)
Internet ::: (networking) (Note: capital I). The Internet is the largest internet (with a small i) in the world. It is a three level hierarchy composed of (.org, .net) and military (.mil) networks and span many different physical networks around the world with various protocols, chiefly the Internet Protocol.Until the advent of the World-Wide Web in 1990, the Internet was almost entirely unknown outside universities and corporate research departments and was accessed this explosive transformation with the result that the vast majority of information available on the Internet is free of charge.While the web (primarily in the form of HTML and HTTP) is the best known aspect of the Internet, there are many other protocols in use, supporting applications such as electronic mail, Usenet, chat, remote login, and file transfer.There were 20,242 unique commercial domains registered with InterNIC in September 1994, 10% more than in August 1994. In 1996 there were over 100 Internet access providers in the US and a few in the UK (e.g. the BBC Networking Club, Demon, PIPEX).There are several bodies associated with the running of the Internet, including the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the Internet Engineering and Planning Group, Internet Engineering Steering Group, and the Internet Society.See also NYsernet, EUNet. - statistics about the Internet.(2000-02-21)
"In the inner sense of the Veda Surya, the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda ``Sight"". His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man"s dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and leads him to the highest Sight.” The Upanishads*
“In the inner sense of the Veda Surya, the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda ``Sight’’. His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man’s dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and leads him to the highest Sight.” The Upanishads
is often used to describe the vast opportunity provided by the akasha.
is the vastness beyond the ordinaiy firmament of our conscious- ness, vast all-comprehension, — the true, the right, the vast.
It might be said that the universe is infilled with chiliocosms, each one corresponding more or less to a hierarchy with its own integral system of worlds, regions, or divisions, each division again being subdivided to form the vast complexity of universal nature we see around us. Further, each such hierarchy from another standpoint consists of divine, spiritual, intellectual, astral, or astral-physical divisions running from the higher downwards to the lowest; and the three lowest of each such chiliocosm bear the names kama-loka (or kama-dhatu), rupa-loka (or rupa-dhatu), and arupa-loka (or arupa-dhatu), these three commonly spoken of as the trailokya, the name applying to whatever universe, hierarchy, or chiliocosm they may be in or belong to.
Jetavana. (T. Rgyal byed kyi tshal; C. Zhishu Jigudu yuan; J. Giju Gikkodokuon; K. Kisu Kŭpkodok won 祇樹給孤獨園). In Pāli and Sanskrit, "Prince Jeta's Grove" (C. Zhishu), located in "Anāthapindika's Park" (S. Anāthapindadārāma; P. Anāthapindikārāma; C. Jigudu yuan); a park located to the south of the city of sRĀVASTĪ (P. Sāvatthi), which was donated to the Buddha and his disciples by the banker ANĀTHAPIndADA (P. Anāthapindika). The park, which is also called Jetavanārama, is named after its original owner, Prince Jeta (Jetakumāra), from whom Anāthapindada purchased it for an extraordinary price. Anāthapindada had invited the Buddha to srāvastī and resolved to provide him with a suitable residence during his sojourn in the city. Knowing that Jetakumāra's park on the city's outskirts was the loveliest place in town, he offered to buy the park from the prince. But Jeta was unwilling to sell the property and rebuffed Anāthapindada, stating that the banker would have to cover the entire site in coins if he wanted to buy it. Undeterred, Anāthapindada brought the case before the city fathers, who agreed that if he could gather Jeta's stated purchase price, he would be entitled to Jetakumāra's park. Anāthapindada had his servants bring cartloads of gold coins from his treasury, some eighteen crores in total, with which he was able to cover the entire grounds of the park, except for the entrance. Impressed by the banker's generosity, Jetakumāra donated that spot himself, and with the vast purchase price he received, erected a grand entrance over it. Anāthapindada built numerous buildings at the park to serve the Buddha and the monastic community during the rains retreat (VARsĀ). Among these was the Buddha's own residence, the so-called perfumed chamber, or GANDHAKUtĪ. The same spot had served as a monastery and rains-retreat residence for previous buddhas also, although the extent of the grounds varied. According to Pāli sources, during the time of the buddha Vipassī (S. VIPAsYIN), the merchant Punabbasumitta built a monastery that extended a league, while during the time of the buddha Vessabhu, the merchant Sotthika built another that extended half a league. Anāthapindada's monastery covered eighteen karīsa (a square measure of land). Traditional sources often state that Jetavanārāma was GAUTAMA Buddha's favorite residence and he is said to have is passed nineteen rains retreats there. After the laywoman VIsĀKHĀ built another grand monastery named Migāramātupāsāda in srāvastī, the Buddha would alternate between both residences, spending the day at one and the night at another. ¶ Jetavana also refers to a monastery built at ANURĀDHAPURA in the fourth-century CE by the Sinhala king MAHĀSENA for the elder Sanghamitta. Sanghamitta felt great animosity toward the monks of the MAHĀVIHĀRA sect, which prompted him to lobby the king to confiscate its property and pass it on to the Jetavana.
Kalpa(Sanskrit) ::: This word comes from a verb-root klrip, meaning "to be in order"; hence a "period of time," ora "cycle of time." Sometimes a kalpa is called the period of a mahamanvantara -- or "great manvantara"-- after which the globes of a planetary chain no longer go into obscuration or repose, as they periodicallydo, but die utterly. A kalpa is also called a Day of Brahma, and its length is 4,320,000,000 years. Sevenrounds form a Day of Brahma, or a planetary manvantara. (See also Brahma, Manvantara)Seven planetary manvantaras (or planetary cycles, each cycle consisting of seven rounds) form one solarkalpa (or solar manvantara), or seven Days of Brahma -- a week of Brahma.The difficulty that many Western students have had in understanding this word lies in the fact that it isunavoidably a "blind," because it does not apply with exclusive meaning to the length of one time periodalone. Like the English word age, or the English phrase time period, the word kalpa may be used forseveral different cycles. There is likewise the maha-kalpa or "great kalpa," which frequently is the namegiven to the vast time period contained in a complete solar manvantara or complete solar pralaya.
Macrocosm ::: The anglicized form of a Greek compound meaning "great arrangement," or more simply the greatordered system of the celestial bodies of all kinds and their various inhabitants, including theall-important idea that this arrangement is the result of interior orderly processes, the effects ofindwelling consciousnesses. In other and more modern phrasing the macrocosm is the vast universe,without definable limits, which surrounds us, and with particular emphasis laid on the interior, invisible,and ethereal planes. In the visioning or view of the ancients the macrocosm was an animate kosmicentity, an "animal" in the Latin sense of this word, as an organism possessing a directing and guidingsoul. But this was only the outward or exoteric view. In the Mystery schools of the archaic ages, themacrocosm was considered to be not only what is hereinbefore just stated, but also to consist moredefinitely and specifically of seven, ten, and even twelve planes or degrees of consciousness-substanceranging from the superdivine through all the intermediate stages to the physical, and even to degreesbelow the physical, these comprised in one kosmic organic unit, or what moderns would call a universe.In this sense of the word macrocosm is but another name for kosmic hierarchy, and it must beremembered in this connection that these hierarchies are simply countless in number and not only fill butactually compose and are indeed the spaces of frontierless SPACE.The macrocosm was considered to be filled full not only with gods, but with innumerable multitudes orarmies of evolving entities, from the fully self-conscious to the quasi-self-conscious downwards throughthe merely conscious to the "unconscious." Note well that in strict usage the term macrocosm was neverapplied to the Boundless, to boundless, frontierless infinitude, what the Qabbalists called Eyn-soph. Inthe archaic wisdom, the macrocosm, belonging in the astral world, considered in its causal aspect, wasvirtually interchangeable with what modern theosophists call the Absolute.
Madhav: “the dragon bird, the vast enveloping bird of bliss; white to signify purity and fire to indicate the intensity of bliss.” Sat-Sang Vol. VIII
mahākalpa. (P. mahākappa; T. bskal chen; C. dajie; J. daiko; K. taegop 大劫). In Sanskrit, "great eon"; one of the vast units of time in Buddhist cosmology, said to be equal in length to eighty KALPAs. A kalpa is traditionally said to be the length of time it would take to remove all the mustard seeds stored in a cube that was one YOJANA in height, length, and breadth, if one seed were removed each century. It is also said to be the length of time it would take to wear away a stone of similar size by wiping that stone with a piece of silk once every century. When it is said that a great kalpa is equal in length to eighty kalpas, a kalpa is sometimes referred to as an "intermediate eon" (ANTARAKALPA). When used to describe the duration of a particular world system, a great eon is divided into four periods: a period of nothingness, a period of creation, and period of subsistence, and a period of destruction, each twenty kalpas in length (see KALPA).
mahamaya ::: the vast power of "comprehending, measuring, formmahamaya ing Knowledge [maya] . . . in the undivided being" of Aditi; "the Consciousness-Puissance of the Eternal [brahman], timeless and illimitable beyond the universe, but spread out here under a mask of bright and dark opposites for the miracle of the slow manifestation of the Divine in Mind and Life and Matter".
Mahanikai. (P. Mahānikāya). In Thai, "Great Congregation"; the predominant monastic fraternity of Thai Buddhism, to which the vast majority of Thai monasteries belong; sometimes also seen transcribed as Mahanikay, or by its Pāli equivalent, Mahānikāya. The current Mahanikai order traces its lineage back to the fifteenth century, when a group of Siamese monks were sent to Sri Lanka for reordination in order to revitalize and help preserve the Thai monastic tradition. The designation "Mahanikai," however, represents a synthesis of many Thai traditions that were all placed under this rubric in the nineteenth century by the Thai king Mongkut (RĀMA IV), who was a monk from 1824 to 1851. Mongkut was concerned with lax observance of the vinaya precepts within much of the Thai monastic community and used the term Mahanikai to refer to those monks who did not conform to his new "reform" order, the THAMMAYUT. Thus, any monks who did not reordain into the Thammayut order became by default Mahanikai monks. A similar situation occurred in Cambodia, when the Thammayut fraternity was introduced there later in the nineteenth century. In Mongkut's time, the two sects came to differ on many points of monastic practice, including the way robes were worn, how often monks could eat, and whether they could handle money. Thammayut monks were also encouraged to preach sermons in Thai vernacular language, while Mahanikai preached sermons grounded in Pāli. Many of these differences, and the tensions that surround them, still exist today. The largest and most important monastery of the Mahanikai order is WAT MAHATHAT, "Temple of the Great Relic," in Bangkok.
mahas ::: "the great, the vast", "the infinity of the Truth"; same as maharloka.
mahat ::: great; large, vast; containing mahima; the vastness of vijñana.
Mahi ::: the Large, Great or Vast; she of the vastness of knowledge, who represents the Largeness (brhat) of the superconscient in us containing in itself the Truth (rtam); [also called Bharati]. [Ved.]
Matter ::: What men call matter or substance is the existent but illusory aggregate of veils surrounding thefundamental essence of the universe which is consciousness-life-substance. From another point of view,matter or substance is in one sense the most evolved form of expression of manifested spirit in anyparticular hierarchy. This is but another way of saying that matter is but inherent energies or powers orfaculties of kosmical beings, unfolded, rolled out, and self-expressed. It is the nether and lowest pole ofwhat the original and originating spirit is; for spirit is the primal or original pole of the evolutionaryactivity which brought forth through its own inherent energies the appearance or manifestation in thekosmic spaces of the vast aggregate of hierarchies. Between the originant or spirit and the resultant ormatter, there is all the vast range of hierarchical stages or steps, thus forming the ladder of life or theladder of being of any one such hierarchy.When theosophists speak of spirit and substance, of which latter, matter and energy or force are thephysicalized expressions, we must remember that all these terms are abstractions -- generalizedexpressions for hosts of entities manifesting aggregatively. The whole process of evolution is the raisingof units of essential matter, life-atoms, into becoming at one with their spiritual and inmost essence. Asthe kosmic aeons slowly drop one after the other into the ocean of the past, matter pari passu is resolvedback into the brilliant realms of spirit from which it originally came forth. All the sheaths ofconsciousness, all the blinding veils around it, arise from the matter side or dark side or night side ofnature, which is matter -- the nether pole of spirit.
“means man whose frame is built up, finished and decorated without the least noise. But the materials had to be found, gathered together and fashioned in other and distant places. . . . Man could not have his bodily temple to live in until all the matter in and about his world had been found by the Master, who is the inner man, when found the plans for working it required to be detailed. They then had to be carried out in different detail until all the parts should be perfectly ready and fit for placing in the final structure. So in the vast stretch of time which began after the first almost intangible matter had been gathered and kneaded, the material and vegetable kingdoms had sole possession here with the Master — man — who was hidden from sight within carrying forward the plans for the foundations of the human temple. All of this requires many, many ages, since we know that nature never leaps. And when the rough work was completed, when the human temple was erected, many more ages would be required for all the servants, the priests, and the counselors to learn their parts properly so that man, the Master, might be able to use the temple for its best and highest purposes” (Ocean 20).
mind, illumined ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
Nature ::: The consciousness side of nature is composed of vast hierarchies of gods, developed cosmical spirits,spiritual entities, cosmic graduates in the university of life. The material side of nature is theheterogeneous matter, the material world in its many various planes, in all stages of imperfection -- butall these stages filled with armies of entities evolving and growing. The proper term for nature in moderntheosophical usage is prakriti or still more accurately mulaprakriti -- the ever-living kosmic producer, theeternally fecund mother, of the universe. When a theosophist speaks of nature, unless he limits the termto the physical world, he never means the physical world alone, but the vast reaches of universal kosmosand more particularly the inner realms, the causal factors of the boundless All. Hence, a growingunderstanding of nature in this sense -- which is another way of saying an understanding of reality -obviously provides the only basis of a religion founded on the changeless realities.
“Nor by his word kenon, or void, did he mean an utter emptiness, as we misconstrue that word. He meant the vast expanses of the spatial deeps, Space, in fact, which this infinite host of monads filled” (MIE 34-5). The atomists became more materialistic as time passed. The equivalent Hindu atomist schools are the Nyaya and Vaiseshika.
Occultism ::: This word meant originally only the science of things hid; even in the Middle Ages of Europe thosephilosophers who were the forerunners of the modern scientists, those who then studied physical nature,called their science occultism, and their studies occult, meaning the things that were hid or not known tothe common run of mankind. Such a medieval philosopher was Albertus Magnus, a German; and so alsowas Roger Bacon, an Englishman -- both of the thirteenth century of the Christian era.Occultism as theosophists use the term, and as it should be used, means the study of the hid things ofBeing, the science of life or universal nature. In one sense this word can be used to mean the study ofunusual "phenomena," which meaning it usually has today among people who do not think of the vastlylarger field of causes which occultism, properly speaking, investigates. Doubtless mere physicalphenomena have their place in study, but they are on the frontier, on the outskirts -- the superficialities -of occultism. The study of true occultism means penetrating deep into the causal mysteries of Being.Occultism is a generalizing term for the entire body of the occult sciences -- the sciences of the secrets ofuniversal nature; as H. P. Blavatsky phrases it, "physical and psychic, mental and spiritual; calledHermetic and Esoteric Sciences." Occultism may be considered also to be a word virtuallyinterchangeable with the phrase esoteric philosophy, with, however, somewhat more emphasis laid on theoccult or secret or hid portions of the esoteric philosophy. Genuine occultism embraces not merely thephysical, physiological, psychological, and spiritual portions of man's being, but has an equal and indeeda perhaps wider range in the studies dealing with the structure and operations as well as the origin anddestiny of the kosmos.
ocean ::: 1. The vast body of salt water that covers three fourths of the surface of the globe. 2. A vast expanse or quantity. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj. in this sense.) Ocean, ocean"s, oceans, ocean-silence, ocean-ecstasy, world-ocean"s. adj. 3. Of or pertaining to the ocean in its natural and physical relations. Also fig. ::: oceans. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as a v.)
Ogyges is an early king in the legends of Boeotia and Attica, a son of Poseidon, in whose reign a great flood overwhelmed the land. It refers to the tradition of the sinking of one of the last remnants of Atlantis and previous migrations of some of its inhabitants to Greece, where they founded new settlements. Ogygia was one of the last islands of the vast Atlantean continental system, and it may very readily be but another name for the Poseidonis referred to by Plato. As Egypt was settled originally by emigrants from Poseidonis or Ogygia, Egypt’s most ancient name was Ogygia.
packet driver ::: (networking) IBM PC local area network software that divides data into packets which it routes to the network. It also handles incoming data, reassembling the packets so that application programs can read the data as a continuous stream.FTP Software created the specification for IBM PC packet drivers but Crynwr Software dominate the market and have done the vast majority of the implementations.Packet drivers provide a simple, common programming interface that allows multiple applications to share a network interface at the data link layer. Packet drivers demultiplex incoming packets among the applications by using the network media's standard packet type or service access point field(s).The packet driver provides calls to initiate access to a specific packet type, to end access to it, to send a packet, to get statistics on the network interface and to get information about the interface.Protocol implementations that use the packet driver can coexist and can make use of one another's services, whereas multiple applications which do not use the DECnet, Banyan's, LifeNet's, Novell's or 3Com's without the difficulties associated with pre-empting the network interface.Applications which use the packet driver can also run on new network hardware of the same class without being modified; only a new packet driver need be supplied.There are several levels of packet driver. The first is the basic packet driver, which provides minimal functionality but should be simple to implement and which The third level, the high-performance functions, support performance improvements and tuning. . (1994-12-05)
packet driver "networking" {IBM PC} {local area network} software that divides data into {packets} which it routes to the network. It also handles incoming data, reassembling the packets so that {application programs} can read the data as a continuous stream. {FTP Software} created the specification for {IBM PC} packet drivers but {Crynwr Software} dominate the market and have done the vast majority of the implementations. Packet drivers provide a simple, common programming interface that allows multiple {applications} to share a {network interface} at the {data link} layer. Packet drivers demultiplex incoming packets among the applications by using the network media's {standard packet type} or {service access point} field(s). The packet driver provides calls to initiate access to a specific packet type, to end access to it, to send a packet, to get statistics on the network interface and to get information about the interface. Protocol implementations that use the packet driver can coexist and can make use of one another's services, whereas multiple applications which do not use the driver do not coexist on one machine properly. Through use of the packet driver, a user could run {TCP/IP}, {XNS} and a proprietary protocol implementation such as {DECnet}, {Banyan}'s, {LifeNet}'s, {Novell}'s or {3Com}'s without the difficulties associated with pre-empting the network interface. Applications which use the packet driver can also run on new network hardware of the same class without being modified; only a new packet driver need be supplied. There are several levels of packet driver. The first is the basic packet driver, which provides minimal functionality but should be simple to implement and which uses very few host resources. The basic driver provides operations to broadcast and receive packets. The second driver is the extended packet driver, which is a superset of the basic driver. The extended driver supports less commonly used functions of the network interface such as {multicast}, and also gathers statistics on use of the interface and makes these available to the application. The third level, the high-performance functions, support performance improvements and tuning. {(http://crynwr.com/crynwr/home.html)}. (1994-12-05)
Plenum (Latin) Full, fullness, as opposed to void or so-called empty space; the plenitude of fullness of matter in space which in fact forms space. Space in this sense is a plenum or pleroma, not a vacuum; yet philosophically, because of the nature of mahamaya, all manifested existence is illusory and hence empty in the mystical sense. Therefore those great systems of thought which have remained most faithful to the ancient wisdom, such as Northern Buddhism, speak of space and all the vast variety of existence as sunyata (the void).
Referring to the vast expanse of lands, including both continents and islands, occupied by the populations of the fourth root-race, Blavatsky wrote: “at a remote epoch a traveller could traverse what is now the Atlantic Ocean, almost the entire distance by land, crossing in boats from one island to another, where narrow straits then existed” (IU 1:558). While the term Atlantis derived from Greek sources undoubtedly gave its name to what we now call the Atlantic Ocean, yet the Atlantic continental system reached even into what is now called the pacific; and the islanders of this body of water almost universally amongst themselves have legends all pointing to the fact that their ancestors lived on and came from “great islands” which preceded the present distribution of land and sea. See also ATLANTEANS; ROOT-RACE, FOURTH
rocana (rochana) ::: (in the Veda) the three "shining realms" of svar, forming the luminous summit of the mental plane, where "a divine Light radiates out towards our mentality" from "the vast regions of the Truth".
rtam brhat ::: the vast Truth. [Ved.]
rtam satyam brhat ::: the Right, the Truth, the Vast. [Ved.]
rtasya brhate ::: [to or for the vastness of Truth]. [Ved.]
satyam rtam brhat (Satyam Ritam Brihat) ::: the Truth, the Right, the Vast. [Atharva-veda 12.1.1]
Science has not yet solved the problem of the origin of the Cromagnons. Blavatsky hints that they came indirectly from Atlantis by way of Africa: “The earliest Palaeolithic men in Europe — about whose origin Ethnology is silent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known . . . were of pure Atlantean and ‘Africo’-Atlantean stocks. . . . As to the African tribes — themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions — they crossed into Europe over the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these European cave-men; the Cro-Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be expected, progress is almost non-existent through the whole of the vast period allotted by Science to the Chipped Stone-Age. The cyclic impulse downwards weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted — the incubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them” (SD 2:740-1).
Sirius: The Dog-Star. In the Arcane Tradition, the vast star, Sirius,symbolizes the sun behind the sun; i.e. the true father of our Universe.Sirius was the primordial star of all time, as the duplicator or renewer (of time cycles). He was known in Egypt as the Doubling One, therefore a Creator or reflector of the Image. Sirius, or Set, was the original "headless one"-the light of the lower region (the South) who was known (in Egypt) as An (the dog), hence Set-an (Satan), Lord of the infernal regions, the place of heat, later interpreted in a moral sense as ''hell".
steppe ::: n. --> One of the vast plains in Southeastern Europe and in Asia, generally elevated, and free from wood, analogous to many of the prairies in Western North America. See Savanna.
Stone(s) There is available numerous testimony as to animated stones, speaking stones, etc. There is the Christ-stone, which followed the Israelites; the Jupiter Lapis swallowed by Saturn; the testimony of Pausanias as to the Grecian worship of stones; the Ophites and Siderites, serpent-stones and star-stones, the former being alleged to have the gift of speech; the baituloi or alleged animated stones mentioned by Sanchoniathon and Philo Byblius; the liafail or speaking stone of Westminster; Pliny’s stones which ran away when a hand approached them; the importance attached to stone monuments and rocking stones; etc. (SD 2:341 et seq). Again, we have the vast subject of talismans and of gems with potent properties.
Strictly speaking, ’eyn signifies abstract Be-ness or the vast spatial deep in which all existences take their rise. Anything that is existent is a production and exists; and the womb of being or Be-ness, from which existences arise, is not only the cause of all existences but likewise their field of action — the spatial deeps. Often wrongly translated as “nothing”; but Be-ness is certainly not nothing, but essential, full Be-ness itself.
Supermind is the vast self-extension of the Brahman that contains and develops.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 137
SuperZap "tool, IBM" An {IBM} {utility program} used to quickly {patch} {operating system} or {application program} executable {code} in preference to editing the {source code} and recompiling. The SuperZAP program was a quick hack written by one IBM Engineer, possibly from IBM UK, in the late 1960s to directly fix executable files. He needed to fix a bug but it would have taken hours to rebuild the vast {OS/360} executables. The {S/360} architecture has an instruction ZAP (Zero and Add Packed) for {packed decmial} arithmetic, that sets the byte at a given address to a given value. Superzap used this to write data given as a string of hex digits to a given location in an executable file in a matter of seconds. Soon the IBM development labs were releasing all Programming Temporary Fixes (PTFs) to OS/360 in this form. OS/360 included a version called IMASPZAP or AMASPZAP which persisted through {MVS}, {MVS/SP}, {MVS/XA}, {OS/390} and probably still remains in {z/OS}, the distant descendent of OS/360. [Private 2004-02-05 e-mail from Chris Gage, IBM employee and SuperZap user, 1970-]. (2007-03-15)
"The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one"s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one"s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one"s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces — for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness — and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in ::: —the nature.” Letters on Yoga*
“The cosmic consciousness is that in which the limits of ego, personal mind and body disappear and one becomes aware of a cosmic vastness which is or filled by a cosmic spirit and aware also of the direct play of cosmic forces, universal mind forces, universal life forces, universal energies of Matter, universal overmind forces. But one does not become aware of all these together; the opening of the cosmic consciousness is usually progressive. It is not that the ego, the body, the personal mind disappear, but one feels them as only a small part of oneself. One begins to feel others too as part of oneself or varied repetitions of oneself, the same self modified by Nature in other bodies. Or, at the least, as living in the larger universal self which is henceforth one’s own greater reality. All things in fact begin to change their nature and appearance; one’s whole experience of the world is radically different from that of those who are shut up in their personal selves. One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one’s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things; and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree. The thing one has to be on guard against in the cosmic consciousness is the play of a magnified ego, the vaster attacks of the hostile forces—for they too are part of the cosmic consciousness—and the attempt of the cosmic Illusion (Ignorance, Avidya) to prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth. These are things that one has to learn from experience; mental teaching or explanation is quite insufficient. To enter safely into the cosmic consciousness and to pass safely through it, it is necessary to have a strong central unegoistic sincerity and to have the psychic being, with its divination of truth and unfaltering orientation towards the Divine, already in front in—the nature.” Letters on Yoga
The hidden voice or active manifestation of the latent occult potency of the mantras is called vach. The would-be magician attempting to evoke the “spirits of the vasty deep” by uninstructed chanting or singing of any ancient mantras will never succeed in using the mantras effectively in a magical way, until he himself has become so cleansed of all human impurities as to be able at will and with inner vision to enter into communion if not direct confabulation with the inner realms.
There is a close connection in thought with the theosophic and Hindu teaching of the atman or paramatman — Brahman, the egg out of which the universe is born, filling the universe with divine and spiritual inspirations and dwelling in and working through the innumerable hierarchies of minor beings which compose and build that hierarchy, and which indeed are the universe. Another parallel is the Pythagorean teaching of Monas monadum (monad of monads). In the Qabbalah itself the correspondence is to Kether the Crown, out of which all the other, lower hierarchical grades flow emanationally. This Kether, the highest of the Sephiroth, is the Macroprosopus (the great or immense cosmic face) — an intuition of which may be gained by looking into the violet dome of night begemmed with worlds and instinct with life; the Chaldean ’Arikh ’Anpin (the vast countenance of nature), hiding the indwelling spirit. Kether, Macroprosopus, ’Arikh ’Anpin, and ’Adam Qadmon are but different manners of expressing the same hierarchical acme or originant which thus is the manifested vehicle of the Qabbalistic ’eyn soph, the parabrahman of the Vedantists, or the Boundless. Speaking of this phrase, Blavatsky remarks that it “denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it would read, ‘One is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life’ ” (SD 1:130n). See also ARBA-IL
The scheme of terrestrial evolution from the standpoint of the ancient wisdom given in The Secret Doctrine is, in a few words: the earth we see is the fourth of a sevenfold “chain” of globes which constitutes a single organism, as we may call it. The other six globes are not visible to our gross senses but the entire group is intimately connected. The vast stream of human monads circulates seven times round the earth planetary chain during the great cycle. We are now in the fourth circulation or round of the great pilgrimage on our globe and so this period is called the fourth round. While on our globe we pass through seven stages called “root-races,” each lasting for millions of years. Each in its turn is subdivided into smaller septenary sections. Each succeeding root-race is shorter than its predecessor, and there is some overlapping. Great geological changes separate each root-race from its successor and only a comparatively few survivors remain to provide the seed for the next root-race.
"The supermind is the vast Truth-Consciousness of which the ancient seers spoke; there have been glimpses of it till now, sometimes an indirect influence or pressure, but it has not been brought down into the consciousness of the earth and fixed there. To so bring it down is the aim of our yoga.” *Letters on Yoga
“The supermind is the vast Truth-Consciousness of which the ancient seers spoke; there have been glimpses of it till now, sometimes an indirect influence or pressure, but it has not been brought down into the consciousness of the earth and fixed there. To so bring it down is the aim of our yoga.” Letters on Yoga
The vast body of salt water that covers three fourths of the surface of the globe. 2. A vast expanse or quantity. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj. in this sense.) Ocean, ocean’s, oceans, ocean-silence, ocean-ecstasy, world-ocean’s. adj. 3. Of or pertaining to the ocean in its natural and physical relations. Also fig.
The vast traditions not included in the official Mishnah are known as Baraitha (extraneous). These Baraithas were ultimately collected in separate works.
The waking consciousness is no longer there, for all has been withdrawn within into the inner realms of which we are not aware when we are awake, though they exist ; for then all that is put behind a veil by the waking mind and nothing remains except the surface self and the outward world — much as the veil of the sunlight hides from us the vast worlds ^of the stars
Third Eye Possessed by early humans and, up to the physicalization of the third root-race, it was the only seeing organ in most living species. At the beginning of that root-race, the organ which has developed into the eye was beneath a semitransparent covering or membrane, like some of the blind vertebrata today. In early humanity, the third eye was the organ of spiritual vision, as it was that of objective vision in the animals (SD 2:299), as indeed it still remains, and it appears as the pineal gland inside the skull of modern mankind. In the course of physical evolution, with corresponding loss of spiritual vision, the cyclopean eye was gradually replaced by the physical vision of the two front eyes. The original eye has since then continued to function — although unrecognized by the vast majority of people — as the organ of intuitive discernment. As this recession was not complete before the close of the fourth root-race, there were late subraces of Lemurians and of early Atlanteans who were still in some degree at least physically three-eyed (SD 2:302).
“This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” The Life Divine
This new dictionary seeks to address the needs of this present age. For the great majority of scholars of Buddhism, who do not command all of the major Buddhist languages, this reference book provides a repository of many of the most important terms used across the traditions, and their rendering in several Buddhist languages. For the college professor who teaches "Introduction to Buddhism" every year, requiring one to venture beyond one's particular area of geographical and doctrinal expertise, it provides descriptions of many of the important figures and texts in the major traditions. For the student of Buddhism, whether inside or outside the classroom, it offers information on many fundamental doctrines and practices of the various traditions of the religion. This dictionary is based primarily on six Buddhist languages and their traditions: Sanskrit, PAli, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Also included, although appearing much less frequently, are terms and proper names in vernacular Burmese, Lao, Mongolian, Sinhalese, Thai, and Vietnamese. The majority of entries fall into three categories: the terminology of Buddhist doctrine and practice, the texts in which those teachings are set forth, and the persons (both human and divine) who wrote those texts or appear in their pages. In addition, there are entries on important places-including monasteries and sacred mountains-as well as on the major schools and sects of the various Buddhist traditions. The vast majority of the main entries are in their original language, although cross-references are sometimes provided to a common English rendering. Unlike many terminological dictionaries, which merely provide a brief listing of meanings with perhaps some of the equivalencies in various Buddhist languages, this work seeks to function as an encyclopedic dictionary. The main entries offer a short essay on the extended meaning and significance of the terms covered, typically in the range of two hundred to six hundred words, but sometimes substantially longer. To offer further assistance in understanding a term or tracing related concepts, an extensive set of internal cross-references (marked in small capital letters) guides the reader to related entries throughout the dictionary. But even with over a million words and five thousand entries, we constantly had to make difficult choices about what to include and how much to say. Given the long history and vast geographical scope of the Buddhist traditions, it is difficult to imagine any dictionary ever being truly comprehensive. Authors also write about what they know (or would like to know); so inevitably the dictionary reflects our own areas of scholarly expertise, academic interests, and judgments about what readers need to learn about the various Buddhist traditions.
Thudhamma. (P. Sudhamma). The majority Buddhist monastic fraternity (B. GAING; P. gana, cf. NIKĀYA) in contemporary Myanmar (Burma), comprising 85-90 percent of the monastic population of the country. The name derives from the Thudhamma Council, an ecclesiastical body appointed by royal decree in 1782, which was charged with reforming the Burmese sangha (S. SAMGHA) and uniting its various factions into a single fraternity under Thudhamma leadership. The Thudhamma Council established a common monastic curriculum and in general promoted uniformity of doctrinal interpretation and VINAYA practice among the kingdom's monasteries. With the exception of a short hiatus in the 1810s, the council remained a permanent governing body of the Burmese sangha until the late nineteenth century, when it was dissolved following the British conquest of Upper Burma in 1885 and the deposition of the Burmese king. Even before that event, the authority of the council had declined in Lower Burma as a consequence of Britain's seizure of Burma's maritime provinces in 1824 and 1852. During the reign of MINDON MIN (1853-1878), Burmese monks living in British-controlled Lower Burma refused to recognize the authority of the Thudhamma Council and organized themselves into an independent fraternity called the DWAYA GAING (P. Dvāragana). In the Burmese kingdom itself, the council's policies were not supported by ultra-orthodox monks who, because of their prominent disciplinary observances and scriptural expertise, gained popular support and royal patronage. From among these reformist monks, two prominent factions emerged, the SHWEGYIN and Hngettwin, both of which eventually organized themselves into independent fraternities with their own network of monasteries. After the disestablishment of Buddhism as the state religion of Burma by the British, all "unreformed" monasteries, which were the vast majority in the country, came to be designated Thudhamma by default, even though there was no longer an ecclesiastical umbrella under which they operated nor a hierarchy to which they were answerable. This allowed for the politicization of Thudhamma monks during the British colonial period, some of whom became leaders of the Burmese independence movement. In 1980, the Burmese government's Ministry of Religious Affairs recognized the Thudhamma gaing as one of nine officially sanctioned monastic fraternities comprising the Burmese sangha. Somewhat more relaxed in matters of outward deportment than especially the Shwegyin and Dwaya, the Thudhamma gaing is renowned for its scholarship and maintains major monastic colleges in Yangon (Rangoon), Mandalay, and Pakokku.
Truth-Consciousness ::: the Supermind; the consciousness of essential truth of being (satyam), of ordered truth of active being (rtam), and the vast self-awareness (brhat) in which alone this consciousness is possible.
Twofold Man Used of the period in human history when human beings were androgynous. This in one sense was the representative on earth of the cosmic ’Adam Qadmon which becomes the Microprosopus (small face) as distinguished from the cosmos itself, called in the Qabbalah Macroprosopus (great face). The twofold man, whether cosmic or terrestrial, belongs to the secondary creation, the creation of darkness or matter, or the vast intricacies of cosmic differentiations, as distinguished from the primary creation, the first emanations from cosmic spirit imbodying entities of spiritual and intellectual power, and hence often called the creation of light, which in its latter stage became that of the self-evolved gods or ’elohim.
vast ::: superl. --> Waste; desert; desolate; lonely.
Of great extent; very spacious or large; also, huge in bulk; immense; enormous; as, the vast ocean; vast mountains; the vast empire of Russia.
Very great in numbers, quantity, or amount; as, a vast army; a vast sum of money.
Very great in importance; as, a subject of vast concern.
vastujNāna. (T. gzhi shes; C. yiqiexiang zhi; J. issaisochi; K. ilch'esang chi 一切相智). In Sanskrit, "knowledge of bases" (VASTU), in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ literature, referring to knowledge that the bases (SKANDHA, ĀYATANA, DHĀTU, etc.) described in main-stream Buddhist sources lack any semblance of a personal self. It is one of the three knowledges (along with SARVĀKĀRAJNATĀ and MĀRGAJNATĀ) set forth in the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, a commentary on the PANCAVIMsATISĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA that describe the MAHĀYĀNA path and result. In the AbhisamayālaMkāra, the vastujNāna is more commonly called just SARVAJNATĀ ("all-knowledge"). When it is not informed by skillful means (UPĀYA), that is, great compassion (MAHĀKARUnĀ), it is understood negatively as the practice of a sRĀVAKA or PRATYEKABUDDHA that leads to their inferior goal of NIRVĀnA and must be forsaken. When it is informed by skillful means, it is an essential component both of the practice of a bodhisattva (mārgajNatā), and of a buddha's knowledge (sarvākārajNatā). As an authentic knowledge of nonself gained through a direct understanding of the four noble truths, it is possessed by those who have reached the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA).
Volcano [It from Latin Vulcanus the fire god] Small special manifestations of the general, large-scale phenomenon of volcanism, by which the continents are cyclically subjected to catastrophes, alternatively with the cyclic cataclysmal deluges. The geological record contains proofs of volcanism in the vast outpourings of lava-sheets now found interstratified with the sedimentary rocks. It is the physical manifestation of the work of the kabeiroi, whose father was Vulcan or Hephaestos.
Wirtschafts-und Verwaltungshauptamt ::: The Economic and Administrative Office of the SS. Created in 1942 it controlled the vast economic interests of the SS. These were tied up with concentration camp and extermination programs through the administration of slave labor and the saleable outputs from the Jewish ghettoes and concentration and extermination camps. The SS official in charge was Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl.
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1:Supermind is the vast self-extension of the Brahman that contains and develops.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
2:Form is delimitation—Name and Shape out of the vast illimitable Truth of infinite existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Maya, #KEYS
3:Awake, my dear. Be kind to your sleeping heart. Take it out into the vast fields of light and let it breathe." ~ Hafiz, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
4:In the vast ocean of cause and effect, actions happen and impermanent results follow. If one takes them as 'my' actions the idea of having a free will gets stronger. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
5:He [Francis Bacon] was a devoutly religious man and was convinced that he would rather believe all the fables of antiquity than deny that the vast fabric of creation is without a mind. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book, #KEYS
6:Whenever you feel like it and have the time, sit in solitude and try to visualize everything as pure light. Look at the vast sky and try to merge in that expansiveness. Look within and observe the thoughts and trace them back to their source. ~ MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI, #KEYS
7:Ascending out of the limiting breadths of mind,
They shall discover the world's huge design
And step into the Truth, the Right, the Vast. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
8:He would stamp his single figure on the world,
Obsess the world's rumours with his single name.
His moments centre the vast universe.
He sees his little self as very God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
9:Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll,#KEYS
10:Impenetrable, a mystery recondite
Is the vast plan of which we are a part;
Its harmonies are discords to our view
Because we know not the great theme they serve. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.05,#KEYS
11:The miraculous Nihil, origin of our souls
And source and sum of the vast world's events,
The womb and grave of thought, a cipher of God,
A zero circle of being's totality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness,#KEYS
12:I looked into my own heart and I saw reflected there in its entirety the vast world with all its passions,-pride, hope, fear and the conflagration of the desires. So gazing I understood the word of the ancient sage, "Man is a mirror in which there appears the image of the world." ~ Ryonen, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
13:Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought
The free logic of an infinite Consciousness,
Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature's dance,
Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,
Made figure and nu ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#KEYS
14:Just as eagles soar through the vast expanse of the sky without meeting any obstructions, needing only minimal effort to maintain their flight, so advanced meditators concentrating on emptiness can meditate on emptiness for a long time with little effort. Their minds soar through space-like emptiness, undistracted by any other phenomenon. When we meditate on emptiness we should try to emulate these meditators. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #KEYS
15:This awareness, free from an inside or an outside, is open like the sky.
It is penetrating Wakefulness free from limitations and partiality.
Within the vast and open space of this all-embracing mind,
All phenomena of samsara and nirvana manifest like rainbows in the sky.
Within this state of unwavering awareness,
All that appears and exists, like a reflection,
Appears but is empty, resounds but is empty.
Its nature is Emptiness from the very beginning.
~ Tsogdruk Rinpoche, The Flight of Garuda,#KEYS
16:There are not many, those who have no secret garden of the mind. For this garden alone can give refreshment when life is barren of peace or sustenance or satisfactory answer. Such sanctuaries may be reached by a certain philosophy or faith, by the guidance of a beloved author or an understanding friend, by way of the temples of music and art, or by groping after truth through the vast kingdoms of knowledge. They encompass almost always truth and beauty, and are radiant with the light that never was on sea or land. - Clare Cameron, Green Fields of England ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden Of Pomegranates, #KEYS
17:The system of negation is indispensable to it in order to get rid of its own definitions and limited experience; it is obliged to escape through a vague Indefinite into the Infinite. For it lives in a closed prison of constructions and representations that are necessary for its action but are not the self-existent truth either of Matter or Life or Mind or Spirit. But if we can once cross beyond the Minds frontier twilight into the vast plane of supramental Knowledge, these devices cease to be indispensable. supermind has quite another, a positive and direct and living experience of the supreme Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
18:Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carried by the Eternal Will of the Father, and not for your sake alone. Dismiss from your mind the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of Necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake. The wide aerial flight of birds gives no true knowledge, nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud: flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled." ~ Zoroaster, #KEYS
19:This Dog
Every morning this dog, very attached to me,
Quietly keeps sitting near my seat
Till touching its head
I recognize its company.
This recognition gives it so much joy
Pure delight ripples through its entire body.
Among all dumb creatures
It is the only living being
That has seen the whole man
Beyond what is good or bad in him
It has seen
For his love it can sacrifice its life
It can love him too for the sake of love alone
For it is he who shows the way
To the vast world pulsating with life.
When I see its deep devotion
The offer of its whole being
I fail to understand
By its sheer instinct
What truth it has discovered in man.
By its silent anxious piteous looks
It cannot communicate what it understands
But it has succeeded in conveying to me
Among the whole creation
What is the true status of man.
~ Rabindranath Tagore,#KEYS
20: There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distri bute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, 1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #KEYS
21:He found the vast Thought with seven heads that is born of the Truth; he created some fourth world and became universal. . . .
The Sons of Heaven, the Heroes of the Omnipotent, thinking the straight thought, giving voice to the Truth, founded the plane of illumination and conceived the first abode of the Sacrifice. . . . The Master of Wisdom cast down the stone defences and called to the Herds of Light, . . . the herds that stand in the secrecy on the bridge over the Falsehood between two worlds below and one above; desiring Light in the darkness, he brought upward the Ray-Herds and uncovered from the veil the three worlds; he shattered the city that lies hidden in ambush, and cut the three out of the Ocean, and discovered the Dawn and the Sun and the Light and the Word of Light. Rig Veda.2 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge,#KEYS
22:
There is no darkness, we only close our eyes
and shut out the Light;
There is no pain, it is only our shrinking
from an intense and unwelcome Delight;
There is no death, it is only our dread of the Life Eternal
that comes back upon us and smites us.
Our senses are tremulous and fearsome
and cling to the empty littlenesses of the surface moment,
they heed not the vast surges of Infinitude
that sweep and pass by.
Calm, calm, my soul! Sink down and deep:
Fashion the crystal bowl of thy heart
with all the serene profundity of the unknown spaces -
And drop by drop will gather there
a bliss immortals only can taste,
And ray by ray will dawn the Light supernal....
Or - be prepared for this too, soul, my soul -
the down-rush of a myriad undyked cataracts,
the sudden bursting of a whole stellar conflagration
March 17, 1935 ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, , To the Heights,#KEYS
23: The fourth group: Saraswati, the wealth of the fullest inspiration of the complete Truth, signifies speedy and rhythmic truth. She is the divine hearing. No doubt, we see and meet the Truth with our divine vision, but to make, the Truth active and dynamic and fill the creation with the power of Truth we needs must take the help of divine hearing. As the truth possesses a form, even so it has a name. It is precisely because of form and name that the truth becomes concrete. The form of truth is Visible in the divine vision, the name of truth in the divine hearing. Saraswati gives the divine name and Ila gives the divine form to the truth. Under the inspiration of Saraswati the truth casts aside all untruths. Hence she is called Pavaka(the Purifier). Above the mind there abides the vast ocean of Truth. We have neither any knowledge nor any experience of it. In a sense, we are quite unconscious of it. Saraswati raises the intelligence into the vast ocean of Truth and purifies it Afterwards she brings it down to our understanding. She manifests the complete knowledge in all its facets and make them living. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, 08, 36.08 - A Commentary on the First Six Suktas of Rigveda, #KEYS
24:Musa Spiritus :::
O Word concealed in the upper fire,
Thou who hast lingered through centuries,
Descend from thy rapt white desire,
Plunging through gold eternities.
Into the gulfs of our nature leap,
Voice of the spaces, call of the Light!
Break the seals of Matter's sleep,
Break the trance of the unseen height.
In the uncertain glow of human mind,
Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts,
Carve thy epic mountain-lined
Crowded with deep prophetic grots.
Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds
Over the swirl of the heart's sea.
Touch into sight with thy fire-words
The blind indwelling deity.
O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make
In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice,
In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake
Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice.
Out, out with the mind and its candles flares,
Light, light the suns that never die.
For my ear the cry of the seraph stars
And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye!
Let the little troubled life-god within
Cast his veils from the still soul,
His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,
His clamour and glamour and thole and dole;
All make tranquil, all make free.
Let my heart-beats measure the footsteps of God
As He comes from His timeless infinity
To build in their rapture His burning abode.
Weave from my life His poem of days,
His calm pure dawns and His noons of force.
My acts for the grooves of His chariot-race,
My thoughts for the tramp of His great steeds' course! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,#KEYS
25:Apotheosis ::: One of the most powerful and beloved of the Bodhisattvas of the Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan is the Lotus Bearer, Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord Looking Down in Pity," so called because he regards with compassion all sentient creatures suffering the evils of existence. To him goes the millionfold repeated prayer of the prayer wheels and temple gongs of Tibet: Om mani padme hum, "The jewel is in the lotus." To him go perhaps more prayers per minute than to any single divinity known to man; for when, during his final life on earth as a human being, he shattered for himself the bounds of the last threshold (which moment opened to him the timelessness of the void beyond the frustrating mirage-enigmas of the named and bounded cosmos), he paused: he made a vow that before entering the void he would bring all creatures without exception to enlightenment; and since then he has permeated the whole texture of existence with the divine grace of his assisting presence, so that the least prayer addressed to him, throughout the vast spiritual empire of the Buddha, is graciously heard. Under differing forms he traverses the ten thousand worlds, and appears in the hour of need and prayer. He reveals himself in human form with two arms, in superhuman forms with four arms, or with six, or twelve, or a thousand, and he holds in one of his left hands the lotus of the world.
Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance. "When the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change." This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain-through herohood; for, as we read: "All things are Buddha-things"; or again (and this is the other way of making the same statement) : "All beings are without self."
The world is filled and illumined by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva ("he whose being is enlightenment"); rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them-and with profound repose. And since he is what all of us may be, his presence, his image, the mere naming of him, helps. "He wears a garland of eight thousand rays, in which is seen fully reflected a state of perfect beauty.
The color of his body is purple gold. His palms have the mixed color of five hundred lotuses, while each finger tip has eighty-four thousand signet-marks, and each mark eighty-four thousand colors; each color has eighty-four thousand rays which are soft and mild and shine over all things that exist. With these jewel hands he draws and embraces all beings. The halo surrounding his head is studded with five hundred Buddhas, miraculously transformed, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, who are attended, in turn, by numberless gods. And when he puts his feet down to the ground, the flowers of diamonds and jewels that are scattered cover everything in all directions. The color of his face is gold. While in his towering crown of gems stands a Buddha, two hundred and fifty miles high." - Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra, 19; ibid., pp. 182-183. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Apotheosis,#KEYS
26:It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 183, #KEYS
27:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.
But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
28:The recurring beat that moments God in Time.
Only was missing the sole timeless Word
That carries eternity in its lonely sound,
The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,
The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum
That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.
There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.
So it towered up to heights intangible
And disappeared in the hushed conscious Vast
As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;
Its spire touches the apex of the world;
Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses
It marries the earth to screened eternities.
Amid the many systems of the One
Made by an interpreting creative joy
Alone it points us to our journey back
Out of our long self-loss in Nature's deeps;
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.
It is within, below, without, above.
Acting upon this visible Nature's scheme
It wakens our earth-matter's heavy doze
To think and feel and to react to joy;
It models in us our diviner parts,
Lifts mortal mind into a greater air,
Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,
Links the body's death with immortality's call:
Out of the swoon of the Inconscience
It labours towards a superconscient Light.
If earth were all and this were not in her,
Thought could not be nor life-delight's response:
Only material forms could then be her guests
Driven by an inanimate world-force.
Earth by this golden superfluity
Bore thinking man and more than man shall bear;
This higher scheme of being is our cause
And holds the key to our ascending fate;
It calls out of our dense mortality
The conscious spirit nursed in Matter's house.
The living symbol of these conscious planes,
Its influences and godheads of the unseen,
Its unthought logic of Reality's acts
Arisen from the unspoken truth in things,
Have fixed our inner life's slow-scaled degrees.
Its steps are paces of the soul's return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.
An idol of self is our mortality.
Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds
And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;
An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell.
Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality;
They consent to share her doom of birth and death;
They kindle partial gleams of the All and drive
Her blind laborious spirit to compose
A meagre image of the mighty Whole.
The calm and luminous Intimacy within
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
29:To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?
Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.
Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the heaven of our mentality.
Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.
Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.
Each of these primary deities has others associated with him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature, there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood, - and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses, - this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, - this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering, - this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya. For the whole bliss of Soma to be established perfectly in our nature a happy and enlightened and unmaimed condition of mind, vitality and body are necessary. This condition is given to us by the twin Ashwins; wedded to the daughter of Light, drinkers of honey, bringers of perfect satisfactions, healers of maim and malady they occupy our parts of knowledge and parts of action and prepare our mental, vital and physical being for an easy and victorious ascension.
Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.
There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.
The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels, - in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Doctrine of the Mystics,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:We have ploughed the vast ocean in a fragile bark. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 2:The vast unfathomable sea Is but a Notion-unto me. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove 3:We live as ripples of energy in the vast ocean of energy. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 4:When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 5:Relationship are part of the vast plan for our enlightenment. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 6:Spirit is the vast stillness which is behind all created things. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 7:Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove 8:Be kind to your sleeping heart. Take it out into the vast fields of light…And let it breathe. ~ hafez, @wisdomtrove 9:If you can create harmony in your own life, This harmony will enter into the vast world. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 10:If you want to build a ship, teach the men to yearn for the vast and endless sea. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 11:Remember, in the vast infinity of life, all is perfect, whole, and complete... and so are you. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 12:Education: that which reveals to the wise and conceals from the stupid the vast limits of their knowledge. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 13:He [Bilbo] fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 14:I learned about the benefits and the vast limitations of such types of exploration, as did all my generation. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 15:A higher level of consciousness is awakened. I get in touch with the vast realm of intelligence beyond thought. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 16:The vast majority of the students I have taught have become self-sufficient and confident individuals who enjoy their lives. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 17:The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 18:There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 19:Beyond this world, beyond other worlds, be they inter-dimensional worlds or physical worlds, there is something else, which is the vast unknown eternity. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 20:We can't slow up because of our love for democracy and our love for America. Someone should tell Faulkner that the vast majority of the people on this globe are colored. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 21:Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric; yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being. ~ samuel-johnson, @wisdomtrove 22:Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure. ~ george-carlin, @wisdomtrove 23:The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 24:There's lots of good fish in the sea... maybe... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 25:The idea of the Universe being ruled by that marvelous old gentleman, is no longer plausible. It isn't that anybody has disproved it, but it just somehow doesn't go with the vast infinitude of the Universe. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 26:The belief that we were born, that we change, evolve, grow old and die is simply a belief to which the vast majority of humanity subscribes without realizing that they are doing so. It is the religion of our culture. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 27:Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 28:Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 29:Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his observation and merely say ‚ÄòGive me death‚Äô-the alternative being manifestly impossible under modern conditions. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 30:People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 31:The vast majority of terrestrial species are in fact microbes, and scientists have only begun scratching the surface of the microbial realm. It is entirely possible that examples of life as we don't know it have so far been overlooked. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 32:The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 33:I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that's sweeping. There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 34:The vast difference between astrology and other sciences, if I may put it thus, is that astrology deals not with facts but with profundities. The solid ground on which the scientist pretends to rest gives way, in astrology, to imponderables. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 35:Every living being is psychic. Whether or not we are consciously aware of it, we feel vibrations and energies coming to us from other people all the time. The vast majority of the thoughts you think and the emotions you feel aren't your own. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 36:The vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 37:It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 38:We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals! ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 39:The vast majority of people are born, grow up, struggle, and go through life in misery and failure, not realizing that it would be just as easy to switch over and get exactly what they want out of life, not recognizing that the mind attracts the thing it dwells upon. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 40:And there is the matter of abortion. We must with calmness and resolve help the vast majority of our fellow Americans understand that the more than 112 million abortions performed in America in 1980 amount to a great moral evil, an assault on the sacredness of human life. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 41:Just like in a cinema all is light, so does consciousness become the vast world. Look closely, and you will see that all names and forms are but transitory waves on the ocean ofc onsciousness, that only consciousness can be said to be, not its transformations. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 42:It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 43:Just like in a cinema all is light, so does consciousness become the vast world. Look closely, and you will see that all names and forms are but transitory waves on the ocean of one sciousness, that only consciousness can be said to be, not its transformations. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 44:scarcely a human being in the course of history has fallen to a woman's rifle; the vast majority of birds and beasts have been killed by you, not by us. Obviously there is for you some glory, some necessity, some satisfaction in fighting which we have never felt or enjoyed. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 45:Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and wonder surrounding him. ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 46:Our country, we have faith to believe, is only at the beginning of its growth. Unless the forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast demands which this growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 47:The mystery of the evening-star brilliant in silence and distance between the downward-surging plunge of the sun and the vast, hollow seething of inpouring night. The magnificence of the watchful morning-star, that watches between the night and the day, the gleaming clue to the two opposites. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 48:No one can count the terrors that the earth spawns, catastrophic, gruesome, and the vast arms of the sea swarm with brute monsters bent on harm, and everywhere between the sky and ground lights bloom by day in flares and sudden bolts; and birds and beasts alike can tell of the whirlwind's whirling wrath. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 49:Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 50:If you’re willing to be objective and watch all your thoughts, you’ll see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. They have no effect on anything or anybody, except you. They are simply making you feel better or worse about what is going on now, what has gone on in the past, or what might go on in the future. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 51:The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians... The & 52:The human imagination may be the most elastic thing in the universe, stretching to encompass the millions of dreams that in centuries of relectless struggle built modern civilization, to entertain the endless doubts that hamper every human enterprise, and to conceive the vast menagerie of boogeymen that trouble every human heart. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 53:Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 54:The energy requirements for interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades. If they want to make contact, they would make contact; if not, they would save their energy and go elsewhere. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 55:Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid? ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 56:Q: I am a person and therefore limited in space and time. I occupy little space and last but a few moments; I cannot even conceive myself to be eternal and all-pervading. M: Nevertheless, you are. As you dive deep into yourself in search of your true nature, you will discover that only your body is small and only your memory is short; while the vast ocean of life is yours. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 57:For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 58:He who knows his soul knows this truth: I am beyond everything finite; I I now see that the Spirit, alone in a space with Its ever-new joy, has expressed Itself as the vast body of nature. I am the stars, I am the waves, I am the Life of all, I am the laughter within all hearts, I am the smile on the faces of the flowers and in each soul. I am the Wisdom and Power that sustain all creation. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 59:You and I are standing this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can't possible live in either of those eternities - no, not even for a split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let's be content to live the only time we can possible live: from now until bedtime. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 60:For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often - will it be for always? - how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 61:Meditation is the only way to overcome fear. There is no other way. Why does meditation help us overcome fear? In meditation we identify ourselves with the vast, with the Absolute. When we are afraid of someone or something, it is because we do not feel that particular person or thing is a part of us. When we have established conscious oneness with the Absolute, with the Infinite Vast, the everything there is part of us. And how can we be afraid of ourselves? ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 62:Let man then contemplate nature in full and lofty majesty, and turn his eyes away from the mean objects which surround him. Let him look at the dazzling light hung aloft as an eternal lamp to lighten the universe; let him behold the earth, a mere dot compared with the vast circuit which that orb describes, and stand amazed to find that the vast circuit itself is but a very fine point compared with the orbit traced by the starts as they roll their course on high. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 63:Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 64:We all know of the dangers and inequities of the traditional digital divide: People who have good access tocomputer networks have a distinct advantage - in terms of both life opportunities and quality of life, I wouldargue - over the vast majority of the world's population that does not yet have good access to computernetworks. The "other" digital divide points to an increasingly unstable situation that has developed inlibrarianship as digital libraries have evolved and matured. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 65:For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 66:Early morning, the orange sun is slowly rising, shining forth in empty luminous clarity. The mind and the sky are one, the sun is rising in the vast space of primordial awareness, and there is just this. Yasutani Roshi once said, speaking of satori, that it was the most precious realization in the world, because all the great philosophers had tried to understand ultimate reality but had failed to do so, yet with satori or awakening all of your deepest questions are finally answered: it's just this. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 67:We find the vast majority of people in every country believing that there will be a time when this world will become perfect, when there will be no disease, nor death, nor unhappiness, nor wickedness. That is a very good idea, a very good motive power to inspire and uplift the ignorant. But if we think for a moment, we shall find on the very face of it that it cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin? How can you have good without evil at the same time? ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 68:Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibbler is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the worst white-slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 69:I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. ... I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 70:Through concentration we become one-pointed and through meditation we expand our consciousness into the Vast. But in contemplation we grow into the Vast itself. We have seen the Truth. We have felt the Truth. But the most important thing is to grow into the Truth and become totally one with the Truth. If we are concentrating on God, we may feel God right in front of us or besides us. When we are meditating, we are bound to feel Infinity, Eternity, Immortality within us. But when we are contemplating, we will see that we ourselves are Infinity, Eternity, Immortality. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 71:[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 72:Following Homo sapiens, domesticated cattle, pigs and sheep are the second, third and fourth most widespread large mammals in the world. From a narrow evolutionary perspective, which measures success by the number of DNA copies, the Agricultural Revolution was a wonderful boon for chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep. Unfortunately, the evolutionary perspective is an incomplete measure of success. It judges everything by the criteria of survival and reproduction, with no regard for individual suffering and happiness. Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived. The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueller with the passing of the centuries. The natural lifespan of wild chickens is about seven to twelve years, and of cattle about twenty to twenty-five years. In the wild, most chickens and cattle died long before that, but they still had a fair chance of living for a respectable number of years. In contrast, the vast majority of domesticated chickens and cattle are slaughtered at the age of between a few weeks and a few months, because this has always been the optimal slaughtering age from an economic perspective. (Why keep feeding a cock for three years if it has already reached its maximum weight after three months?) Egg-laying hens, dairy cows and draught animals are sometimes allowed to live for many years. But the price is subjugation to a way of life completely alien to their urges and desires. It’s reasonable to assume, for example, that bulls prefer to spend their days wandering over open prairies in the company of other bulls and cows rather than pulling carts and ploughshares under the yoke of a whip-wielding ape. In order for humans to turn bulls, horses, donkeys and camels into obedient draught animals, their natural instincts and social ties had to be broken, their aggression and sexuality contained, and their freedom of movement curtailed. Farmers developed techniques such as locking animals inside pens and cages, bridling them in harnesses and leashes, training them with whips and cattle prods, and mutilating them. The process of taming almost always involves the castration of males. This restrains male aggression and enables humans selectively to control the herd’s procreation. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:The vast unfathomable sea ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
2:Death is the vast perhaps. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
3:In the vast, and the minute, we see ~ William Cowper, #NFDB
4:The vast silence of Buddha overtakes ~ Denise Levertov, #NFDB
5:We have ploughed the vast ocean in a fragile bark. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
6:The vast majority of the CGI budget is labor. ~ Peter Jackson, #NFDB
7:The vast sky is not hindered by the floating clouds. ~ Shitou Xiqian, #NFDB
8:The power of thought, the vast regions it can master. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
9:We live as ripples of energy in the vast ocean of energy. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
10:Perhaps we suffer to understand the vast extent of human emotions ~ Various, #NFDB
11:The vast and beautiful world is the home we share together. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
12:The vast majority of adults have never met themselves. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
13:in the vast majority of systems, efficiency isn't critical. ~ Steve McConnell, #NFDB
14:The vast majority of people who have guns never hurt anybody. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
15:They became a part of darkness, of the vast spaces between stars. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
16:The vast majority of child prodigies don’t become adult geniuses. ~ John Green, #NFDB
17:The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
18:The vast majority of people are unthinking prejudice machines. ~ Stefan Molyneux, #NFDB
19:The earth itself is their church; the vast, open sky its ceiling. ~ Wayne Teasdale, #NFDB
20:When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
21:Relationship are part of the vast plan for our enlightenment. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
22:only poetry could best fit into the vast emptiness created by men. ~ Manning Marable, #NFDB
23:Vertical thought likes to imagine the vast distances between the stars. ~ Robert Bly, #NFDB
24:When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
25:How alone everyone is in the vast tomb of the universe! ~ Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, #NFDB
26:The vast world rainless, one may bid adieu
To charity and penance. ~ Thiruvalluvar,#NFDB
27:The vast majority of people conform to whatever is normal for the time. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
28:Spirit is the vast stillness which is behind all created things. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
29:To walk through walls go two steps slower in the vast conspiracy of ignorace. ~ Gary Gach, #NFDB
30:I love the vast surface of silence; and it is my chief delight to break it. ~ Carl Nielsen, #NFDB
31:The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. ~ Swami Prabhavananda, #NFDB
32:Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
33:The vast majority of people are each the greatest only at being them. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
34:The vast space sparkling with stars seemed to want to become part of my body. ~ Ren Depestre, #NFDB
35:Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
36:The vast sage desert undulates with almost imperceptible tides like the oceans. ~ Frank Waters, #NFDB
37:We find ourselves constantly in battle in the vast human theaters of conflict. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
38:Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
39:Certainly on the vast windy plain, there was plenty of nothing to be looked at. ~ Larry McMurtry, #NFDB
40:Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean. ~ Ram Dass, #NFDB
41:The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
42:A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language. ~ Giacomo Leopardi, #NFDB
43:In the vast majority of businesses, there is simply no such thing as “the best.” ~ Michael Porter, #NFDB
44:My ship stood out in the vast array of vessels, since it was the only giant robot. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
45:The vast blue ocean is waiting for her, and this is only the beginning of her story. ~ Gill Lewis, #NFDB
46:The vast majority (over 80 percent) of fast-food and similar low wage service jobs ( ~ David Rolf, #NFDB
47:the vast edifice of expectation and commitment that a marriage would pile on her. ~ Marius Gabriel, #NFDB
48:The vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust never saw a concentration camp. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
49:Is there any corner of the vast world where people live without tormenting each other? ~ Ay e Kulin, #NFDB
50:Love, he had ventured, was like the vast and sudden uncreasing of a lifelong frown. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
51:The vast peace and the calm are there, ready for you to open to them and receive them. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
52:I find that the vast majority of people who are judging are just fearful or insecure. ~ Kristen Bell, #NFDB
53:If the vast and the spiritual are omitted, so are the practical and the moral. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
54:Somewhere in the vast jewelry of the Long Island night we walked, in wind and rain... ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
55:If you can create harmony in your own life, This harmony will enter into the vast world. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
56:The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing. ~ William Broad, #NFDB
57:The vast majority of buttocks are overused, whereas that of minds are underused. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
58:Be kind to your sleeping heart. Take it out into the vast fields of light...And let it breathe. ~ Hafez, #NFDB
59:In sleep I visit the vast unknown to dream wondrous possibilities into existence. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
60:The Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
61:But the fact is that the vast majority of Republicans support the Sinn Fein leadership. ~ Martin McGuinness, #NFDB
62:Remember, in the vast infinity of life, all is perfect, whole, and complete... and so are you. ~ Louise Hay, #NFDB
63:The very sound of Creation still echoes throughout the vast darkness: The universe remembers. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
64:If you want to build a ship, teach the men to yearn for the vast and endless sea. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, #NFDB
65:All Americans (from the vast continent America) were, are, or will be border crossers. ~ Guillermo Gomez Pena, #NFDB
66:I am positive that in the vast majority of cases we are hammering nails with microscopes. ~ Arkady Strugatsky, #NFDB
67:I reported everything I was given, even if I didn't keep - I did not keep the vast majority of it. ~ Tim Kaine, #NFDB
68:Look!" said Foaly, pointing with some urgency into the vast steel-gray gloom, "Someone who cares! ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
69:The world is but a Thought," said he:
"The vast unfathomable sea
Is but a Notion—unto me. ~ Lewis Carroll,#NFDB
70:Except that maybe in the vast white class of victims there is a subclass: the victims of victims. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
71:The vast waterfall of history pours down, and a few obituarists fill teacups with the stories. ~ Marilyn Johnson, #NFDB
72:Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited. ~ Jane Addams, #NFDB
73:The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
74:The vast majority of incest begins years before the earliest conceivable age of consent. p4 ~ Judith Lewis Herman, #NFDB
75:The vast majority of so-called research turned out in the modern university is essentially worthless. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
76:Foreign aid is not something the vast majority of Americans support, but definitely not conservatives. ~ Rand Paul, #NFDB
77:Humanity faced either the peace of “the vast graveyard of the human race” or peace by reasoned design. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
78:The vast knowledge we have to prevent cancer, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses is staggering. ~ Tom Rath, #NFDB
79:The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth. ~ Jim Lovell, #NFDB
80:The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
81:Supermind is the vast self-extension of the Brahman that contains and develops.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#NFDB
82:First there was Chaos,
the vast immeasurable abyss
Outrageous as a sea,
dark, wasteful, wild. ~ John Milton,#NFDB
83:The big man in a small village is the big ship in a small lake! Let him sail to the vast oceans! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
84:The vast majority of the world knows there's no reason to circumcise. Someone should tell the doctors. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
85:when soldiers were left to their own devices, the vast majority of them, on all sides, could not kill. ~ Dave Grossman, #NFDB
86:What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
87:I place my intention into the vast ocean of all possibilities and allow the universe to work through me. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
88:The Bible is an ocean of instruction and wisdom. Dip daily into the vast pool to discover its truths. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
89:Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
90:Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
91:Good is the enemy of great.. The vast majority of good companies remain just that - good, but not great. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
92:He found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment. ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB
93:He [Bilbo] fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
94:He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment. ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB
95:We are all born in a little port but not all of us sail the vast oceans! Majority remains in the port! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
96:Among the great glories of the MGM lot were the vast outdoor sets that had been constructed over the years. ~ Joseph Barbera, #NFDB
97:If someone asks
about the mind of this monk,
say it is no more than
a passage of wind
in the vast sky. ~ Ry kan,#NFDB
98:The vast majority of all consequences, especially in 21st century America, are completely meaningless bullshit. ~ Tucker Max, #NFDB
99:The vast majority of people in any organization, even quite high up, have got no idea who the real masters are. ~ David Icke, #NFDB
100:Mount Shasta - a vision of immensity such as pertains to the vast universe rather than to our own planet. ~ James Dwight Dana, #NFDB
101:I learned about the benefits and the vast limitations of such types of exploration, as did all my generation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
102:The vast majority of mankind never gives a thought of gratitude towards God for all His care and blessings. ~ Donald Barnhouse, #NFDB
103:Like many Indian children, I grew up on the vast, varied, and fascinating tales of the Mahabharat. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
104:The sun and its retinue of planets drift as a group through the vast gulfs of space that separate the stars. ~ Bernard M Oliver, #NFDB
105:The vast majority of Greeks accept the need for reform and want to keep our country inside the euro zone. ~ Evangelos Venizelos, #NFDB
106:What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled? ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
107:For a few glorious moments, all his problems seemed to recede into nothing, insignificant in the vast, starry sky. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
108:It’s sadness coming on like the old days, the vast seamless hopeless weight of sadness looking for a place to rest. ~ Tim Winton, #NFDB
109:Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
110:The vast majority of scientists devote a large part of their efforts to writing articles which are never read. ~ Theodore Zeldin, #NFDB
111:Each one has hopes and dreams. Isn’t it tragic that the vast majority are satisfied living beneath their potential ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
112:I think the ideal way of living is to live like the vast majority of people whom we attempt to serve and represent. ~ Jose Mujica, #NFDB
113:So long as the vast population doesn’t wander about quoting the Magna Charta and the Constitution, it’s all right. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
114:The vast majority of my time is traveling and talking about the issues. It isn't really calling and asking for money. ~ Rand Paul, #NFDB
115:Rather, he found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment. ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB
116:Having plead guilty, I do not believe that I am any different than the vast majority of the members of Congress. ~ Dan Rostenkowski, #NFDB
117:the vast majority of men would far rather be told what to do than make their own choices. Obedience is easy.’ The ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
118:Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people. ~ Russell Brand, #NFDB
119:God is certainly one. He has no second. He is unfathomable, unknowable and unknown to the vast majority of mankind. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
120:As I stepped on the moon, I looked around, dazed...magnifice nt. The vast, sandy silver surface was almost illusory. ~ Neil Armstrong, #NFDB
121:Despite the vast expanse of shoreline in this country, more than 90 percent of the seafood Americans eat is imported. ~ Judy Woodruff, #NFDB
122:Do noble things, not dream them all day long: And so make Life, Death, and the vast Forever one grand, sweet song. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
123:To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority. ~ Morris Raphael Cohen, #NFDB
124:Because the vast majority of men would far rather be told what to do than make their own choices. Obedience is easy. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
125:Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
126:The sea is the vast reservoir of Nature. The globe began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it? ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
127:if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
128:There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
129:weakness will persist in part because of the vast amounts of debt governments took on during and after the financial crisis. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
130:Through using our memory to its fullest we can unlock the vast reservoir of human potential that isn't currently being used. ~ Tony Buzan, #NFDB
131:A lot of us don’t get a sense of our personal power. I know the vast difference that one person can make in changing things. ~ Boots Riley, #NFDB
132:The vast majority of experiments and studies show no sex difference, she adds. But they’re not the ones that get published. ~ Angela Saini, #NFDB
133:The vast majority of gun owners don't kill, but people who do kill, tend to kill with guns, and often with illegal guns. ~ Alan Dershowitz, #NFDB
134:Forth into the quiet evening, where above the smooth downs the wind was lulled to sleep in the vast silent spaces of the sky. ~ E R Eddison, #NFDB
135:Rather, he found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment. ========== ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
136:The vast majority of hydrogenated oils consumed by Americans are made from soybeans, and this has been true since the 1960s ~ Nina Teicholz, #NFDB
137:Beneath the vast diamond sky, I felt both all important and utterly significant, the goddess and the damned in equal measure. ~ Sarah Ockler, #NFDB
138:Even as I think them, the words lose their context, dissolve into grains of absurdity in the vast ocean of day-to-day hunger. ~ Isaac Marion, #NFDB
139:I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
140:One of the great themes in American literature is the individual's confrontation with the vast open spaces of the continent. ~ Justin Cronin, #NFDB
141:Stretched out,
Tipsy,
Under the vast sky:
Splendid dreams
Beneath the cherry blossoms.
~ Taigu Ryokan, Stretched Out
,#NFDB
142:You are the culmination of all that ever was. You are the highest point of the vast pyramid of history and of your own life. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
143:Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
144:Our tax plan by the way shows the vast, vast majority of Americans, upwards of 96 percent can fill out their taxes on a postcard. ~ Paul Ryan, #NFDB
145:The vast majority of the students I have taught have become self-sufficient and confident individuals who enjoy their lives. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
146:The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for those realities. ~ Gifford Pinchot, #NFDB
147:Here at its extremities the terrified transients gathered, gazing out at the vast refulgent ocean for some sign of security. We ~ William Boyd, #NFDB
148:Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women. ~ Naomi Wolf, #NFDB
149:Each is like a river that leaves behind its name and shape, the whole course of its path , to vanish into the vast sea of God. ~ Richard Selzer, #NFDB
150:Form is delimitation—Name and Shape out of the vast illimitable Truth of infinite existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Maya, #NFDB
151:Taobao generates the vast bulk of its revenue from advertising-related services, including keyword bidding and display positioning. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
152:So, given that the vast majority of humans who ever lived are not alive today, it would be an oversight to ignore their insights. ~ Robert Lanza, #NFDB
153:The vast majority of those who are famous are not significant and the vast majority of those who are significant are not famous. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
154:Five to 10 years from now, if not sooner, the vast majority of 'The New Republic' readers are likely to be reading it on a tablet. ~ Chris Hughes, #NFDB
155:The vast majority of fiction is written to markets and to this damnable business we have nowadays of categorizing everything. ~ Theodore Sturgeon, #NFDB
156:...In the vast majority of drug experiments, it is not uncommon for none or one or two of hundreds of patients to benefit from the drug. ~ Ted Gup, #NFDB
157:Dear soul, if you were not friends with the vast nothing inside, why would you always be casting your net into it, and waiting so patiently? ~ Rumi, #NFDB
158:how small a strip has as yet been explored of the vast continent of Sanskrit literature, and how much still remains terra incognita. ~ F Max M ller, #NFDB
159:I love to soar in the boundless sky. In the vast emptiness of the blue, my soul rejoices listening to the soundless music of the wind. ~ Banani Ray, #NFDB
160:I think we close our psychic field so that we can protect ourselves from the vast and unpredictable energies of the universe. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
161:Lesson one in time travel, Thursday. First of all, we are all time travellers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day. ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
162:The duty of motherhood, which the vast majority of woman will always undertake, requires the qualities which men need not possess. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
163:Our most important allies in the fight against ISIL are the vast majority of Muslims who reject its apocalyptic ideology of hatred. ~ Lindsey Graham, #NFDB
164:Then I plop into the sand, look up at the vast starry sky above, and cry until my tears run dry. I am alone, as I always have been. ~ Kate Stradling, #NFDB
165:Since the vast majority of our words and actions are unnecessary, corralling them will create an abundance of leisure and tranquility. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
166:Ty swept his arms around, encompassing everything around them, the vast campus above. “All this. The fucking shark that eats the world. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
167:The price for sitting and watching game shows and betting on lottery is that the vast majority of the viewers will never become rich ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
168:Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible. ~ David Ogilvy, #NFDB
169:Therefore the vast majority of the people who affirm leftist beliefs think of their views as the only way to properly think about life. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
170:When you look at the vast size of the universe, and how insignificant and accidental human life is in it, that seems most implausible. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
171:You render the small vast and few many,
use integrity to repay hatred,
see the complexity in simplicity,
find the vast in the minute. ~ Lao Tzu,#NFDB
172:But it only passes through her mind, and then, like a dusty book consigned to a shelf, it joins the vast sad library of things left unsaid. ~ Jude Morgan, #NFDB
173:He climbed through the vast stillness, alone...and yet somehow, he knew, no longer alone. For now his two fathers climbed with him. ~ James Ramsey Ullman, #NFDB
174:Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse. ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB
175:The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God’s vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
176:The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.” This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
177:The vast majority of our beliefs are really beliefs once removed. Our faith that we are right is faith that someone else is right. (p.141) ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
178:I have seen plenty of humanity. The vast majority would not help their fellow neighbor unless forced to do so at gunpoint,” Nathaniel said. ~ Christina Henry, #NFDB
179:And, as I mused, the years fell away, hair sprouted on the vast steppes of my head, where never hair has been almost within the memory of man. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
180:It was better to live; better to carry a memory of a memory, than suffer the vast burden of knowing. He was not meant to think like a god. ~ Alastair Reynolds, #NFDB
181:The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell. ~ James Whistler, #NFDB
182:where on earth can I go to save my son from such suffering? Is there any corner of the vast world where people live without tormenting each other? ~ Ay e Kulin, #NFDB
183:While in Africa, Musk contracted the most virulent version of malaria—falciparum malaria—which accounts for the vast majority of malaria deaths. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
184:Judging by the vast amount of cookbooks printed and sold in the United States one would think the American woman a fanatical cook. She isn't. ~ Marlene Dietrich, #NFDB
185:Sins are like chains and locks preventing their perpetrator from roaming the vast garden of Tawheed and reaping the fruits of righteous actions. ~ Ibn Taymiyyah, #NFDB
186:The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great, and are destined to be forgotten. ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
187:If airports can be seen as temples to travel, gateways to other worlds, then airport carpets are the vast prayer mats upon which we all genuflect. ~ George Pendle, #NFDB
188:One of the most interesting things in the world to me is the vast difference between what people say they are going to do, and what they actually do. ~ Myrtle Reed, #NFDB
189:Instead of the vast organization to exploit the weakness of the Many, should we not possess one for the exploitation of the intelligence of the Few? ~ Wyndham Lewis, #NFDB
190:The real income reported on federal tax returns by the vast majority of Americans, the 90 percent, doubled between the end of the war and 1973. ~ David Cay Johnston, #NFDB
191:The vast majority of species that are vanishing, we haven't even discovered yet. How can you possibly put them back in nature if the ecosystem is gone? ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
192:The vast wasteland of television programming had finally reached its zenith, and the average person was no longer limited to fifteen minutes of fame. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
193:Once you realize that the vast majority of people see and know very little, you will rarely be affected when someone speaks ill or well of you. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
194:Aggressive capitalism leads the world, and we can see the results, especially in Europe: more poverty for the vast majority, and more riches for a few. ~ Costa Gavras, #NFDB
195:By the time a child reaches out to an adult, the vast majority of kids have been dealing with the bullying and trying to ignore it for a long time. ~ Rosalind Wiseman, #NFDB
196:For example, the vast majority of security break-ins occur as a result of problems with known fixes. With an automated system, you can keep up to date. ~ Ben Horowitz, #NFDB
197:There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
198:All knowledge and understanding of the Universe was no more than playing with stones and shells on the seashore of the vast imponderable ocean of truth. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
199:Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
200:Tragedies of this world behave like the storms of the vast oceans! While you are inside this storm, let your mind stand upright like a lighthouse! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
201:Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two... The duty of a human being is to diminish hatred and to promote love. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
202:There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money. ~ George Lakoff, #NFDB
203:I feel that the vast numbers of readers who move through our classrooms unmotivated and uninterested in reading are as troubling as the developing ones. ~ Donalyn Miller, #NFDB
204:I spent my adult life as a scientist, and science is, essentially, the most successful approach we have to try and understand the vast mysteries around. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
205:The vast amount of waste and sheer stupidity in government - from the Pentagon to the Food and Drug Administration - could fill committee agendas for years. ~ Tom Coburn, #NFDB
206:The vast flood Rolls onward But yield yourself, And it floats you upon it. [2669.jpg] -- from Zen and Zen Classics, by R. H. Blyth
~ Ikkyu, The vast flood
,#NFDB
207:They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
208:Beyond this world, beyond other worlds, be they inter-dimensional worlds or physical worlds, there is something else, which is the vast unknown eternity. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
209:I’m like a twenty two year old kid in a new band trying to get noticed and break through, because the vast majority of people have never seen me play live. ~ John Fogerty, #NFDB
210:The vast majority of the rich in this country did not inherit their wealth; they earned it. They are the country's achievers, producers, and job creators. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
211:And farther still, in the vast prairies mythologized in the American mind, a figure stood shadowed in the dark, biding his time, a scarecrow awaiting harvest. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
212:I think the vast majority of the American people say you shouldn't be able to collect my phone records if I'm not suspicious, if you don't have probable cause. ~ Rand Paul, #NFDB
213:Know that whatever your culture trained you to believe, the vast majority of human beings probably do not believe. And you can choose to disbelieve, too. ~ Vishen Lakhiani, #NFDB
214:the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the blue morning sea. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
215:[Democrats] have lost the capacity to speak to the vast middle of America, an America that is, in large part, white, very religious and not highly educated. ~ Steve Inskeep, #NFDB
216:Different minds incline to different objects; one pursues the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; another sighs for harmony and grace, and gentlest beauty. ~ Mark Akenside, #NFDB
217:Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events. ~ Brian Ferneyhough, #NFDB
218:He was still talking, audible now, the same flat tones from the telephone, scolding, belittling, humiliating, his head jerking above the vast wattle of his neck. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
219:Drifting across the vast space, silent except for wind and footsteps, I felt uncluttered and unhurried for the first time in a while, already on desert time. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
220:Johnson was unknown to the vast majority of the blues audience and ignored by all but a handful of his musical peers until the “blues revival” hit in the 1960s. ~ Elijah Wald, #NFDB
221:War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
222:Every new increase in the vast imperial organism seemed to me an unsound growth, like a cancer or dropsical edema which would eventually cause our death. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar, #NFDB
223:extremists at both ends of the political continuum have more in common with each other than they do with the vast majority of people from their own constituencies. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
224:In the vast game of Darwinian musical chairs, whenever the music stopped there were large numbers of people without a seat—and some smartass had sold them guns. ~ Daniel Suarez, #NFDB
225:THE FOUNDATIONAL BELIEF OF THE RULING ELITE IS THAT THEY were born to rule, while the vast majority of the populace is born to slavery, in one form or another. They ~ Jim Marrs, #NFDB
226:The spinning wheel is the one thing to which all must turn to in the Indian clime for the transition stage at any rate and the vast majority must for all time. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
227:All my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
228:Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
229:Humanity is still much more a means than an end. It is the type: the human
race is merely the test material, the vast excess of failure, a debris field. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
230:The vast majority of Muslim residents of the United Kingdom voted to stay in the EU. And the balance of the British population voted to leave the European Union. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
231:But once the ants and termites jumped the high barrier that prevents the vast variety of evolving animal groups from becoming fully social, they dominated the world. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
232:First, the vast number of carnal people who identify themselves with the church is the result of the unbiblical gospel preached from most evangelical pulpits. ~ Paul David Washer, #NFDB
233:The spirit of Life began her chapter by introducing a simple living cell against the tremendously powerful challenge of the vast Inert. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man, #NFDB
234:The vast majority of organizations today have more than enough intelligence, experience and knowledge to be successful. What they lack is organizational health. ~ Patrick Lencioni, #NFDB
235:...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
236:My God, she thought, where on earth can I go to save my son from such suffering? Is there any corner of the vast world where people live without tormenting each other? ~ Ay e Kulin, #NFDB
237:Was she happy? She thought – yes, reasonably so. Then again, what was happiness but the vast terrain between ecstasy and agony? Was this too small an ambition? ~ Roy L Pickering Jr, #NFDB
238:As marble was there lavish, to the vast
Of one fair palace, that far far surpass’d,
Even for common bulk, those olden three,
Memphis, and Babylon, and Nineveh. ~ John Keats,#NFDB
239:That's how he saw climbing, a physical exercise in positive and negative space. The vast expanse of white drawing the small, person-shaped speck into sharp relief. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
240:I am not the first to note the vast differences between the Wall Street protesters and the tea partiers. To name three: The tea partiers have jobs, showers and a point. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
241:To stress the negative aspect of self-discipline is to contribute to the vast amount of indirect propaganda which is made, in our society, against the spiritual life. ~ Prabhavananda, #NFDB
242:Alone within the vast tribunal that is the stormy sky, the pilot is in contention for his mailbags with three elemental divinities: mountain, sea and storm. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
243:When I became secretary of state, we had 200,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I'm very grateful that we have brought home the vast majority of those. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
244:Although Social Security’s benefits are modest, they are extremely important for the vast majority of beneficiaries, especially those with low and moderate incomes. ~ David Cay Johnston, #NFDB
245:Seneca did this too: “Place before your mind’s eye the vast spread of time’s abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity. ~ Sarah Bakewell, #NFDB
246:Sometimes I have thought that human misery goes far beyond human imagination,—imagination has its limits, and misery, like the vast seas, appears to be without end. ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz, #NFDB
247:I feel like the vast majority of the world's problems would disappear if suddenly everyone on the planet were relatively self-aware and capable of honest self-love and compassion. ~ Moby, #NFDB
248:If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
249:In fact, Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
250:On the other hand, the vast majority of all westernized countries, including every single European country along with Israel and Japan, do not offer birthright citizenship. ~ Nathan Deal, #NFDB
251:The vast upheaval of the World War set in motion forces that will either destroy civilization or raise mankind to undreamed of heights of human welfare and prosperity. ~ Arthur Henderson, #NFDB
252:In the vast majority of instances today a Protestant has no idea what the word itself denotes, what the historical background behind it was, nor why he should really care. ~ James R White, #NFDB
253:Worldly love can be like an ocean, yet an ocean has a bottom. Divine love is like the sky - limitless, infinite. From the bottom of the ocean soar into the vast sky ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
254:Nobody in a leadership level in American politics is trying to inspire the American people. Everybody needs to be goosed. The vast majority of people are not self-starters. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
255:The vast majority of $100 bills are abroad, not in the United States. So yes, of course there's a use here but nowhere near as much as there's a use for $100 bills abroad. ~ Michael Hudson, #NFDB
256:The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
257:Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them. ~ William Cobbett, #NFDB
258:Right before The Civil War, only 8% of white people owned slaves. Some plantations would have hundreds and hundreds of slaves, but the vast majority of whites didn't have any. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
259:The market is going to love it. The market always seems to applaud major mergers, even though the vast majority of them don't work out and don't increase shareholder value. ~ Barry Ritholtz, #NFDB
260:There are a lot of books about the passing of the English aristocracy, but the vast majority of Long Islanders don't understand their own backyard. It's a private preserve. ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
261:They alone moved through the vast inertness. They alone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in order that they might devour them and continue to live. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
262:This meant that while the vast majority of the country’s citizens stayed at home, the War for Independence was being waged, in large part, by newly arrived immigrants. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick, #NFDB
263:He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
264:state and local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
265:The vast majority of our troubles and heartaches would simply vanish from view if only we could remember - before we act - that we are made victims mostly by our own tendencies. ~ Guy Finley, #NFDB
266:It is the prayer of my innermost being to realize my supreme identity in the liberated play of consciousness, the Vast Expanse. Now is the moment, Here is the place of Liberation. ~ Alex Grey, #NFDB
267:Obama just announced Americans don't consider themselves victims, or entitled. Actually, the vast majority of Obama supporters believe exactly that. They believe exactly that. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
268:I have wondered before now whether the vast astronomical distances may not be God’s quarantine precautions. They prevent the spiritual infection of a fallen species from spreading. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
269:Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric; yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
270:Such were the loud and startling words which resounded through the air, above the vast watery desert of the Pacific, about four o'clock in the evening of the 23rd of March, 1865. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
271:Even though the vast majority of my work was outside television, the amount of creation and inventing that went into the TV shows was non stop and, unknown to me, a great strain. ~ Paul Daniels, #NFDB
272:She pivoted right, and sensed the vast, open space of the wasteland stretching before her under the opaque sky, a darkness as thin and final as the velvet lining of a shroud. ~ Caragh M O Brien, #NFDB
273:The vast difference between starting a train of events, and directing into a particular groove a series already started, is rarely apparent to the person confounded by the issue. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
274:We can't slow up because of our love for democracy and our love for America. Someone should tell Faulkner that the vast majority of the people on this globe are colored. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
275:We, it seems, have entered newly In the sphere of dreams enchanted. Do thy bidding, guide us truly, That our feet be forwards planted In the vast, the desert spaces! ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
276:If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. ANTOINE DE ST. EXUPERY ~ Liz Wiseman, #NFDB
277:In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
278:Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
279:It is the nature of the universe that things remain. Nothing ever disappears completely. The very sound of Creation still echoes throughout the vast darkness: The universe remembers. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
280:So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out. ~ Samuel Eliot Morison, #NFDB
281:The vast majority of women who say that they are being abused are telling the truth. I know this to be true because the abusers let their guard down with me, belying their denial. ~ Lundy Bancroft, #NFDB
282:By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
283:The vast majority of American boys and girls are psychologically healthy. On the other hand, there is strong evidence that they are morally and academically undernourished. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers, #NFDB
284:The vast majority of the shuttle program was a success. We learned so much about how a reusable spacecraft interacts with its environment, how it ages-and what to design next time. ~ Eileen Collins, #NFDB
285:The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don’t, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it— ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
286:This new middle-class elite sought reforms against the interests of a political class that had succeeded in mobilizing the vast mass of nonelite voters into the patronage system. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
287:But just as the vast majority of all complex statements are untrue, the vast majority of negative things you can say about anyone, even the worst person in the world, are untrue. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB
288:I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with ~ Plato, #NFDB
289:It's incredibly painful to think back to the time I had to come back to work. I was so, so needed at home. Like the vast majority of people in America, I couldn't take unpaid leave. ~ Brigid Schulte, #NFDB
290:The sad fact is that the vast majority of drunks stay drunks. There's a small minority of us who reach that fork in the road where one side says 'live' and the other says 'drink'. ~ John Larroquette, #NFDB
291:Much was said and written, at the time, concerning the policy of adding the vast regions of Louisiana, to the already immense, and but half-tenanted territories of the United-States. ~ James F Cooper, #NFDB
292:The rationale for the vast network of government welfare programs as well as regulation and control over private enterprise is based on the socialist analysis of the market economy. ~ Richard Ebeling, #NFDB
293:If you’re willing to be objective and watch all your thoughts, you will see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. They have no effect on anything or anybody, except you. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
294:The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
295:The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
296:One thing to remember is that the vast majority of decisions are not lifelong ones. They may seem pressing in the moment, but in the grand scheme of things, most are just that: a moment. ~ Pam Laricchia, #NFDB
297:Surprisingly, the Christian faith today is perceived as disconnected from the supernatural world – a dimension that the vast majority of outsiders believe can be accessed and influenced. ~ David Kinnaman, #NFDB
298:Surrender is the path to freedom through our unique authenticity, where we experience the flow of life not through the narrow lens of the mind, but through the vast refuge of the heart. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
299:Unlike the vast majority of people, I've been locked in a box like an animal and I've also been on the receiving end of bloody thrashings, so I feel uniquely qualified to judge which is worse. ~ Jim Goad, #NFDB
300:He tasted each one of them. The raw power and majesty of Wrath. The vast strength of Rhage. The burning, protective loyalty of Phury. The cold savagery of Zsadist. The sharp cunning of Vishous. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
301:I, God, am in your midst. Whoever knows me can never fall. Not in the heights, nor in the depths, nor in the breadths. For I am love, which the vast expanses of evil can never still. ~ Hildegard of Bingen, #NFDB
302:Nothing is predetermined for us, and yet all our possible choices are threads in the vast weave of things, so that we have free will even though the consequences of our will are predictable. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
303:Seeing as how nothing is outside the vast, wide-meshed net of heaven, who is there to say just how it is cast?” “I find good people good, and I find bad people good, if I am good enough. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
304:That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
305:By 2012 the average income of the vast majority had shrunk to the equivalent of 45 weeks of 1973 income—a 13 percent decline to $30,997 from $35,584 in 1973, expressed in 2012 dollars. ~ David Cay Johnston, #NFDB
306:From the top of the bus she could see the vast bowl of London spreading out to the horizon: splendid shops with mannequins in the window, interesting people and already a much bigger world. ~ Julia Gregson, #NFDB
307:So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is compromised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication. ~ Garth Stein, #NFDB
308:Do I dream you? Or you dream me? Or does someone, something bigger than all' - her hands swept the vast constellations above them - 'this beauteous calamity, dream everything we see and more? ~ David Hewson, #NFDB
309:Earth and the Moon, seemingly falling into existence out of the vast emptiness of space as though God himself had created it in that very spot, there were millions who witnessed its fall. Their ~ M R Forbes, #NFDB
310:Let's make two things clear: Isil is not "Islamic." No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of Isil's victims have been Muslim. And Isil is certainly not a state. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
311:The Ambassador and the General were briefing me on the....the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
312:The idea of a priori moral judgements ('It is morally wrong to inflict gratuitous pain') is completely acceptable to the vast majority of human beings. Only a few philosophers would disagree. ~ William Boyd, #NFDB
313:Whoever said ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ clearly hasn’t been on the receiving end of people who spend the vast majority of their time using hateful words. ~ Matt Shaw, #NFDB
314:Die Güte, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
315:Hitler had built the National Socialist movement in Germany not on capricious electoral votes, but on people, and they gave him – in the vast majority – their unconditional support to the end. ~ David Irving, #NFDB
316:[...] the vast mass of mankind are incapable of doing anything reasonably well, art among the rest. The worthless artist would not improbably have been
a quite incompetent baker. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,#NFDB
317:Our lives are like ripples in the vast ocean of consciousness; like waves we rise and fall, yet we never disappear, for the ocean is infinite and eternal, and a wave is nothing but that ocean. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
318:The Ploughmen is part inspired fever-dream, part adventure story, a lyric parable of not just goodand evil but of the vast and beautiful and often lonely country in-between. Kim Zupan is a wonder. ~ Rick Bass, #NFDB
319:The vast majority of the coverage had to do with him basically saying, for the first 100 days of my administration, the [Donald] Trump administration, I'd be going after people who ticked me off. ~ Star Jones, #NFDB
320:The Buddha once told the monastics to look up at the sky at night to see the moon, and he asked them whether they saw how great the moon’s happiness was as it traveled in the vast open space. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
321:But if you make use of the vast fund of knowledge now available to educated persons, you are going to be lonesome as hell. The guessers outnumber you -and now I have to guess - about ten to one. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
322:Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
323:Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man’s cruelty and baseness. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
324:The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky. When ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
325:The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
326:I have no way of knowing how people really feel, but the vast majority of those I meet couldn't be nicer. Every once in a while someone barks at me. My New Year's resolution is not to bark back. ~ Tucker Carlson, #NFDB
327:The immediate future is going to be tragic for all of us unless we find a way of making the vast educational resources of this country serve the true purpose of education, truth and justice. ~ Anne Sullivan Macy, #NFDB
328:Advertising enjoins everyone to consume, while the economy prohibits the vast majority of humanity from doing so. The command that everyone do what so many cannot becomes an invitation to crime. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
329:Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
330:me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
331:People don’t mind your being rich if you made the money yourself; what they don’t like is your inheriting wealth. And the evidence is clear that the vast majority of Forbes billionaires are self-made. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
332:The vast majority of people that have gotten mad at me for a joke that I've made were people that were, A, never going to see me in the first place, or, B, were dragged to see me by somebody else. ~ Brad Williams, #NFDB
333:Americans believe with all their heart, the vast majority of them, and the vast majority of Floridians, that the United States of America is simply the single greatest nation in all of human history. ~ Marco Rubio, #NFDB
334:I'm compelled to continue on, because although it's not true for every person on Earth, it's true for the vast majority that death waits for no man and if he does, he doesn't usually wait very long. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
335:Love will make the beloved more & more free, love will give wings and love will open the vast sky. It cannot becomes a prison & enclosure. But the quality of love comes only when there is awareness. ~ Osho, #NFDB
336:Maybe living was no more than getting swept over a riverbed and eventually out to sea, no choices to make, only the vast, formless ocean ahead, the frothing waves, the lightless tomb of its depths. ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
337:She was like a forest, like the dark interlacing of the oakwood, humming inaudibly with myriad unfolding buds. Meanwhile the birds of desire were asleep in the vast interlaced intricacy of her body. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
338:The vast majority of the American people are hard-working taxpayers who take responsibility for their families, go to work every day, they pay their mortgage on time, they volunteer in the community. ~ Marco Rubio, #NFDB
339:I assure my fellow citizens that the vast majority of Muslims experience the same fear they do. ISIS and Al Qaeda are my enemies, too. Most of the people killed by these groups have been Muslim. ~ Debbie Almontaser, #NFDB
340:I think it is interesting that we have come back to star- and space ships. Jet will do for a transport shorthand; yet when man really reaches, across the vast seas of space, he still reaches in ships. ~ John Fowles, #NFDB
341:The ship’s officers shared the views of their leader. They could be heard chatting, discussing, arguing, calculating the different chances of an encounter, and observing the vast expanse of the ocean. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
342:We didn't say that 80% [of terrorists], for example, or the majority or the vast majority, are foreigners. We said the vast majority are Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda offshoot organizations in this region. ~ Bashar al Assad, #NFDB
343:There's lots of good fish in the sea...maybe...but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
344:We spend the vast majority of our time moving at full speed ahead, both physically and mentally, and we literally bulldoze over the very answers we're seeking because they can't be heard above the din. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
345:Where the vast cloudless sky was broken by one crow I sat upon a hill - all alone - long ago; But I never felt so lonely and so out of God's way, As here, where I brush elbows with a thousand every day. ~ Harry Kemp, #NFDB
346:I think the vast majority of Americans would have supported military action to stop the second plane from hitting the World Trade Center, if that had been possible. I would have been among them. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
347:The glorious transmutation of autumn had come on: all the vast Canadian shores were clothed with a splendour never seen in France; to which all the pageants of all the kings were as a taper to the sun. ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
348:The truth is that the vast majority of young people don’t need a financial adviser to help them get rich. We need to set up accounts at a reliable no-fee bank and then automate savings and bill payment. ~ Ramit Sethi, #NFDB
349:The vast Pacific ocean would always remain the islanders' great solace, escape and nourishment, the amniotic fluid that would keep them hedonistic and aloof, guarded, gentle and mysterious. ~ Francine du Plessix Gray, #NFDB
350:I'm compelled to continue on, because although it's not true for every person on earth, it's true for the vast majority - that death waits for no man - and if he does, he doesn't usually wait very long. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
351:People need to be made conscious of a very simple reality: we have no choice but to share this planet, this small blue sphere floating in the vast reaches of space, with all of our fellow 'passengers.' ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
352:There are an infinite variety of secret connections and associations in the vast system of things,” and no one can know what he or she might be able to do sometime in the unforeseeable future. ~ Jennifer Michael Hecht, #NFDB
353:I looked into the vast dome of blue emptiness that stretched out above me in all directions and the illusion was still there, the size and speed, and what information they were sending to mother earth. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
354:The vast generosity of women is a mysterious tunnel, and nobody knows where it leads. The writing on the walls spells out trick questions, and as a man, you must know that you cannot reason your way out. ~ Tayari Jones, #NFDB
355:We are ripples of consciousness of the vast ocean of consciousness. If we get agitated and become part of the reactionary and vitriolic behavior sometimes around us, we will only add to the disturbance. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
356:The idea of the Universe being ruled by that marvelous old gentleman, is no longer plausible. It isn't that anybody has disproved it, but it just somehow doesn't go with the vast infinitude of the Universe. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
357:The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
358:He stared across the vast water, his mind filled with all the broken pieces of his life: Journey, Caroline, Dustin, the Kinders, his job, his future. They somehow all fit together, he just had no idea how. ~ Tammy L Gray, #NFDB
359:Manage” was the word that Guyen had used. Nobody was going behind that. Nobody wanted to think about the limited range of fates possible for such a speck of human dust in the vast face of the cosmos. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
360:the Age of Pisces, an age of mirrors, tenacity, instinct, twinship, and hidden things. We are contented by this notion. It further affirms our faith in the vast and knowing influence of the infinite sky. ~ Eleanor Catton, #NFDB
361:The sense of the vast gulf between the ego and the world disappears and one's subjective inner life seems no longer to be separate from everything else, from one's total experience of the stream of nature. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
362:The vast majority of people do not have, nor will they ever have a personal computer. They haven't been exposed to Windows or Office, or anything like that, and in their lives it's unlikely that they will. ~ Stephen Elop, #NFDB
363:When I look around, all I see is black. Maybe I’m looking right at the Earth and not seeing any lights because we’re passing over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, or perhaps I’m just looking at space. ~ Scott Kelly, #NFDB
364:Almost all deception scholars (and the broader deception detection “industry”) focus exclusively on BFLs; whereas the vast majority of actual deceptive messages involve other forms of information manipulation. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
365:There's a rising level of frustration with the disconnect between where the vast majority of conservatives are in this country and how Congress is behaving. There's going to be a wake-up call sooner or later. ~ Pat Toomey, #NFDB
366:... Any pension fund manager who doesn't have the vast majority-and I mean 70% or 80% of his or her portfolio-in passive investments is guilty of malfeasance, nonfeasance or some other kind of bad feasance! ~ Merton Miller, #NFDB
367:No economy can continue to function when the vast middle class and everybody else don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing without going deeper and deeper into debt. ~ Robert Reich, #NFDB
368:Regardless, it is self-evident that rights come with responsibilities, yet the vast majority of the Empire’s population demands the former without the latter. Such a system cannot survive for long. ~ Christopher G Nuttall, #NFDB
369:The difference between classes of men is that the vast majority remember youth as their glory, and the tiniest fraction, in escaping a life of drudgery and increasing difficulty, finds something even better. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
370:A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
371:The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left. ~ Friedrich Engels, #NFDB
372:Isn't it possible that this midcentury moment enters the skin more lastingly than the vast shaping strategies of eminent leaders, generals steely in their sunglasses -- the mapped visions that pierce our dreams? ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
373:The vast majority of us are slaves to our minds. Most don’t even make the first effort when it comes to mastering their thought process because it’s a never-ending chore and impossible to get right every time. ~ David Goggins, #NFDB
374:But the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries. Books written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary black hole. ~ Sergey Brin, #NFDB
375:David Beckham is Britain's finest striker of a football not because of God-given talent but because he practises with a relentless application that the vast majority of less gifted players wouldn't contemplate. ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
376:The vast majority of the inmates, however, heard the news, pretended to be shocked and sad, but actually felt relieved because once more the exterminating angel had passed over Villete, and they had been spared. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
377:Most churchless people aren’t looking for a church. They’re seeking an encounter with God. And even if they’re not seeking him directly, the vast majority are seeking to experience the essence of who he is: love. ~ George Barna, #NFDB
378:Our minds are all that defend us from the horror of the void. The majority of the time we simply think about something-anything-else, and that itself is an act of defiance against the vast nothing of the universe. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
379:We may casually talk of all sorts of new programs and 'stimulus,' but the vast trillion-dollar collective national debt and rising annual deficits will insidiously hamstring almost everything we plan to do. ~ Victor Davis Hanson, #NFDB
380:Impenetrable, a mystery recondite
Is the vast plan of which we are a part;
Its harmonies are discords to our view
Because we know not the great theme they serve. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Godheads of the Little Life,#NFDB
381:Malcolm X was the first prominent American to attack and to criticize the U.S. role in Southeast Asia, and he came out four-square against the Vietnam War in 1964, long before the vast majority of Americans did. ~ Manning Marable, #NFDB
382:The vast majority of the race whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind at heart and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
383:The vast majority of writers out there, they finish their books and no one cares whether their book is late or ever comes out at all. And then it comes out and two reviews are published and it sells 12 copies. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
384:If at that moment Clement had caught sight of the dog and had managed to capture him, the fates of a number of people in this story would have been entirely different. Such is the vast play of chance in human lives. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
385:Ironically, and perhaps unfortunately, the vast storehouse of western European imagery relating to “devil worship,” witchcraft, and “Satanism” is for the most part the invention of the church and witch-hunters. ~ Stephen E Flowers, #NFDB
386:They never told you that this would be your future, that you would look back on the vast expanse of crumbling nothingness and say, with confidence, with assertiveness, with authority, Yes, I did it all for the retweet. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
387:Watching the vast ocean, the flickering sunlight, thinking of the distant lands, Eliza was enveloped by a feeling quite unlike any she'd experienced before. A warmth, a glimpse of possibility, an absence of wariness- ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
388:You—are the lucky ones. The vast majority of demons never have a chance to return to the mortal plane. You are our future vanatori—our hunters. Providing you meet the grade.” “Except for Worm,” someone whispered. ~ Barbara Elsborg, #NFDB
389:He [Francis Bacon] was a devoutly religious man and was convinced that he would rather believe all the fables of antiquity than deny that the vast fabric of creation is without a mind. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book, #NFDB
390:He was somewhere, he had come back through the vast regions from nowhere; there was the certitude of an infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness, but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar. ~ Paul Bowles, #NFDB
391:The belief that we were born, that we change, evolve, grow old and die is simply a belief to which the vast majority of humanity subscribes without realizing that they are doing so. It is the religion of our culture. ~ Rupert Spira, #NFDB
392:The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society. ~ Cody Lundin, #NFDB
393:He [Francis Bacon] was a devoutly religious man and was convinced that he would rather believe all the fables of antiquity than deny that the vast fabric of creation is without a mind. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book, #NFDB
394:In fact, your thoughts have far less impact on this world than you would like to think. If you’re willing to be objective and watch all your thoughts, you will see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
395:It hit her then how miniscule she was in a comparison to the vast landscape below and the endless skies above, yet God cared about each little bird and flower. That meant He cared about every detail of her life, too. ~ Susan Sleeman, #NFDB
396:Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know. ~ Walter Benjamin, #NFDB
397:The hardhearted individual never sees people as people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever-turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands … He depersonalizes life. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
398:The light filtered through the trees, rays of sunlight splitting around the vast trunks, the branches above us fluttering in a faint wind, and the green needles of Douglas Firs shimmering silver underneath in the breeze. ~ Ned Hayes, #NFDB
399:I just did 101 shows in 86 different cities in America and Europe and Canada, and I'm not lying or exaggerating when I say, at the vast majority of shows, they loved it. There were encores, there were standing ovations. ~ David Cross, #NFDB
400:The vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people. But the truth is that the massive processor known as the human brain is neither a literature organ or a math organ. It is both and more. ~ John Green, #NFDB
401:We still need animals for research. But the vast majority of this research is currently for humans’ benefit. We need less of that and more research that directly benefits the animals themselves. Let’s start with dogs. ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
402:A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks. ~ John C Calhoun, #NFDB
403:Ascending out of the limiting breadths of mind,
They shall discover the world’s huge design
And step into the Truth, the Right, the Vast. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#NFDB
404:I gave them nothing back because all I knew was the vast amount they had taken from me, robbed me of, cheated me out of, all in the name of a God whose son bore the long hair none of us were allowed to wear any more. ~ Richard Wagamese, #NFDB
405:It was as if unreality had been given . . . what? A face? No. The vast and humming silver shimmer ahead of them had no face, was the very antithesis of a face, in fact, but it had a body . . . an aspect . . . a presence. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
406:the vast majority of rapes, well over eighty percent, are actually non-stranger rapes.” One of the other myths, he added, was the widely held belief that “a non-stranger assault is less serious and has less serious harm, ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
407:The vast majority of the American people agree with me and many others. You don't simply repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement. Republicans have had six years to come up with a replacement. They got nothing. ~ John Lewis, #NFDB
408:The vast majority of things in the world are either harmful or not very useful. When we experience the emotion of “like,” we are learning to identify the tiny fraction of things in the environment that are beneficial to us. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
409:As they sang, this nondescript and indifferent street audience gazed, held by the peculiarity of such an unimportant-looking family publicly raising its collective voice against the vast skepticism and apathy of life. ~ Theodore Dreiser, #NFDB
410:Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think about what you are doing. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
411:Unfortunately, for the vast majority of us, a vast majority of the time, we surrender our true autonomy to this illusion of agency. I'm as guilty as anybody, and I write about it in a book. I'm not condemning anybody. ~ Douglas Rushkoff, #NFDB
412:You are too good for me,” I said. “You are a luxury I cannot afford. Despite this, I insist you come with me today. I will buy you dinner and spend hours waxing rhapsodic over the vast landscape of wonder that is you. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
413:Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
414:The presence of some serious budgetary myopia is obvious here, as the vast majority of money is spent on studying diseases and virtually none is spent on understanding why healthy people are healthy in the first place. ~ Richard Matthews, #NFDB
415:But the vast majority of humans are descendants of the children of the dirt. And no matter how long they search the earth, they'll never find what they're looking for because there's nobody for them, not anybody in the world. ~ Simon Rich, #NFDB
416:I believe seeing earth a small blue ball in the vast dark ocean of space, gives you a new perspective on life and what is important. You can see how small we are as compared to the universe and how fragile our lives are. ~ Anousheh Ansari, #NFDB
417:one’s universe would appear very different from the vast bulk of space around it, which would still be inflating. In this picture, inflation is eternal. Some regions, indeed most of space, will go on inflating forever. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
418:A small minority—3 percent—of the population on Level 4 suffers from a phobia so strong it hinders their daily life. For the vast majority of us not blocked by phobias, the fear instinct harms us by distorting our worldview. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
419:Growth will be slower. The vast consumer market that is America may no longer be the principal global economic driver it has been, and countries intent on creating jobs for their people will be much slower to import our goods. ~ Ram Charan, #NFDB
420:You think that the mental anguish you are experiencing is a permanent condition, but for the vast majority of people it is only a temporary state.
(But what if I’m special? What if I’m in the minority?) ~ Jenny Offill,#NFDB
421:We are as gods on our little rock in the vast bleak cosmos and it’s way past time we started getting good at that instead of just posing on Olympus and photoshopping our zits out. The future is more than an Instagram filter. ~ Warren Ellis, #NFDB
422:Hold onto your periwigs, I'm going to start you off with a whirlwind tour of the history of Stuart Britain; a time that encompassed the vast majority of the seventeenth century and the first fourteen years of the eighteenth. ~ Andrea Zuvich, #NFDB
423:My view is that, just as in many businesses, brands really matter. There will always be a role for destination sites. Eighty million users come to our destination. I think that will be the vast majority of our future business. ~ Meg Whitman, #NFDB
424:One of the reasons a strategist never sits in a stadium and gets caught up in the crowds - and never sits watching a debate in person - is because the vast majority of American voters watch these political events on television. ~ Ed Rollins, #NFDB
425:The vast army of McClellan spread out before me. The marching columns extended back as far as eye could see in the distance. It was a grand and glorious spectacle, and it was impossible to look at it without admiration. ~ Daniel Harvey Hill, #NFDB
426:Well, Frank, my thoughts are very similar. The vast loneliness up here at the moon is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize what you have back there on earth. The earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space. ~ Jim Lovell, #NFDB
427:As he cut, the wildness of the world receded, the vast invisible web of filaments that connected human life to animals, trees to flesh and bones to grass shivered as each tree fell and one by one the web strands snapped. After ~ Annie Proulx, #NFDB
428:Hold on to your periwigs, I'm going to start you off with a whirlwind tour of the history of Stuart Britain; a time that encompassed the vast majority of the seventeenth century and the first fourteen years of the eighteenth. ~ Andrea Zuvich, #NFDB
429:It does not help the vast majority of Americans, but it does really well for people already at the top. Well, we're going to turn that upside down. We're going to make the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes for a change. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
430:This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
431:Obviously, the vast majority of evolutionary change is invisible to direct eye-witness observation. Most of it happened before we were born, and in any case, it is usually too slow to be seen during an individual's lifetime. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
432:Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, #NFDB
433:That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. And besides that, it’s fucking dorky. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
434:There is often variations of evil on both sides of the war. What we have to decide is whether or not regime change is a good idea. It's what the neoconservatives have wanted. It's what the vast majority of those on the stage want. ~ Rand Paul, #NFDB
435:...along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world. ~ David Abram, #NFDB
436:Coming delights, like tropical beaches, send out their native enchantment over the vast spaces that precede them - a perfumed breeze that lulls and drugs you out of all anxiety as to what may yet await you below the horizon. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
437:I have overspread the world like a syrup and the emptiness of it it's terrifying, but there is no dislodging the seed; the seed has become a little knot of cold fire which roars like a sun in the vast hollow of the dead carcass. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
438:There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
439:The world is never ready for any innovation,” he grumbled. “The vast majority of people stubbornly cling to the past until people possessing foresight and a sense of adventure break a trail and bring them into the future. ~ Jennifer Chiaverini, #NFDB
440:We are so used to considering everything through the prism of our current feelings and our most recent acquisitions that it is a radical change to consider the vast before. But if we would live well, it is necessary. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
441:Why do women prefer adventurers who make them suffer, rather than men who are kind and attentive? Are they seduced by the man or by the vast horizons he allows them to glimpse? Is it the man they love or the dream he represents? ~ Keniz Mourad, #NFDB
442:Sometimes, I think I could have been a major movie star with the vast mansion and staff. I look at my Volvo and think it could be a limousine. I think of the roles I turned down. But then I wouldn't have had any children. ~ Kristin Scott Thomas, #NFDB
443:If, amid the multitude of contending counsel, you have hesitated and doubted; if, when a great measure suggested itself, you have shrunk from the vast responsibility, afraid to go forward lest you should go wrong, what wonder? ~ Robert Dale Owen, #NFDB
444:Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment. ~ Morihei Ueshiba, #NFDB
445:He would stamp his single figure on the world,
Obsess the world’s rumours with his single name.
His moments centre the vast universe.
He sees his little self as very God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#NFDB
446:On Earth, Discord! A gloomy Heaven above, opening her jealous gates to the nineteen thousandth part of the tithe of mankind! And below, an inescapable & inexorable Hell, expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of Mortals! ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
447:The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe.
The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightening and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not. ~ Prabhavananda,#NFDB
448:Were Patrick Henry to return to earth and look around on the vast economic order of the day, he might revise his observation and merely say ‘Give me death’-the alternative being manifestly impossible under modern conditions. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
449:I'd say the vast majority of my interview experiences have been pleasant, better than pleasant. But sometimes there will be people who will size you up. There can be that "rock star" thing where they think it's cool to pull back. ~ Anthony DeCurtis, #NFDB
450:If there is one common theme to the vast range of crises...it is that excessive debt accumulation, whether it be by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom. ~ Carmen Reinhart, #NFDB
451:It would take a cosmic level of cynicism to accuse Muslim scholars of feigning entirely their commitment to preserving the Prophet’s Sunna and concocting the vast body of Hadiths out of whole cloth to justify received practice. ~ Jonathan A C Brown, #NFDB
452:People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
453:Recycling is a good thing to do. It makes people feel good to do it. The thing I want to emphasize is the vast difference between recycling for the purpose of feeling good and recycling for the purpose of solving the trash problem. ~ Barry Commoner, #NFDB
454:Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
455:The rising sun managed to peek around the vast column of smoke that forever rose from Ankh-Morpork, City of Cities, illustrating almost up to the edge of space that smoke means progress or, at least, people setting fire to things. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
456:these traditions did not come from the Quran. They are found in hadith. From marital rites to martial restrictions, commercial laws to civil suits, the vast majority of sharia and the Islamic way of life is derived from the hadith. ~ Nabeel Qureshi, #NFDB
457:The vast country is still there, but it has somehow been altered by intrusions, "peopled" to death.
It is all gone, all changed, all tamed and pacified and cleaned and boiled and sanitized and made healthy and politically correct. ~ Gary Paulsen,#NFDB
458:I am a little thing, a tiny little thing on the vast prairies. I know nothing. My mouth is dirty. I cannot tell what I want. My feet are sunk in the black swampy land, but I am a lover. I love life. In the end love shall save me. ~ Sherwood Anderson, #NFDB
459:The vast majority of terrestrial species are in fact microbes, and scientists have only begun scratching the surface of the microbial realm. It is entirely possible that examples of life as we don't know it have so far been overlooked. ~ Paul Davies, #NFDB
460:While dramatic progress was apparent in the political and social realms, civil rights activists became increasingly concerned that, without major economic reforms, the vast majority of blacks would remain locked in poverty. Thus ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
461:I tell you truly, when we are born, we enter the world with the sound of God in our ears, even the singing of the vast chorus of the sky, and the holy chant of the stars in their fixed rounds; it is the Holy Stream of Sound. ~ Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, #NFDB
462:It is only when we are very happy, that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. ~ Emmuska Orczy, #NFDB
463:The last place I want to be is the hospital, but I'm not stupid. I know when it's time to go in. I am so terrified of myself and of the vast, frightening world, that the psych ward, with its safe locked doors, sounds like a relief. ~ Marya Hornbacher, #NFDB
464:The vast amount of time it takes to make my paintings is very challenging. I have so many exciting ideas I would love to bring to a final painting, but my time-consuming technique limits the number of ideas that get to become a painting. ~ Mark Ryden, #NFDB
465:The vast majority of the people who populate our planet live lives of quiet desperation that are all too often quite harsh and painful, lives in which events and circumstances usually don't turn out the way they had hoped or planned. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
466:We like to think that all people have hidden depths, but the fact is that a lot of people are shallow.
The vast majority don't have an opinion until they tune in to AM radio or read the papers. Then they become social critics. ~ Jessica Zafra,#NFDB
467:After all, humans - especially adult ones - want to believe the most mundane truths possible. They need to, in order to stop their world-views, and their sanity, from capsizing and plunging them into the vast ocean of the incomprehensible. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
468:After all, humans – especially adult ones – want to believe the most mundane truths possible. They need to, in order to stop their world-views, and their sanity, from capsizing and plunging them into the vast ocean of the incomprehensible. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
469:Few people achieve greatness. One reason is that the opportunity, for the vast majority of us, never even shows up. Another is that if it does, it will inevitably look like a long shot. And the temptation invariably is to play it safe. ~ Jack McDevitt, #NFDB
470:I'm going to try to get everybody who makes less than $125,000 in their family, which is the vast majority of people, to be able to go to a public college or university totally tuition-free. And if you make more than that, debt-free. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
471:I would put it this way. There are objects for which we have found uses. We use them, but almost certainly not the way the visitors use them. I am positive that in the vast majority of cases we are hammering nails with microscopes. ~ Arkady Strugatsky, #NFDB
472:Nothing there but a distant airplane crawling across the sky, red blinking lights, vulnerable in the vast empty, faint red beacons flashing the message HELLO. A SMALL ISLAND OF LIFE UP HERE, VERY CLOSE TO SPACE. PRAY FOR US. PRAY FOR US. ~ Joseph Fink, #NFDB
473:There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and
not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is
more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I
could not live. ~ H G Wells,#NFDB
474:there were communities everywhere, sprinkled across the vast landscape of the known world, in which people suffered. Not always from beatings and hunger, the way he had. But from ignorance. From not knowing. From being kept from knowledge. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
475:The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
476:Many Christians believe that the vast majority of those created by God will burn in Hell for All Eternity. Many Christians not only believe the world will end soon, but are looking forward to it. I MUST WALK AWAY FROM IT ALL. IN JESUS' NAME. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
477:Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do. The vast majority of child prodigies don’t become adult geniuses. ~ John Green, #NFDB
478:Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred." - by Mohandas K. Gandhi - ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
479:Hatred made me rise. Hatred forced one foot in front of the other as I staggered away from the graves.
With each step, blood dripped from my ragged fingers, dotting a trail across the vast black gravestone. A tether from me to Jack. ~ Kresley Cole,#NFDB
480:I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that's sweeping. There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless. ~ Alan Moore, #NFDB
481:The sun dropped beneath the horizon and then detonated, torching the racks of clouds stacked up above the downtown skyline. Wyatt had forgotten how quickly, in the vast empty sky of the southern plains, the ordinary could turn so flamboyant. ~ Lou Berney, #NFDB
482:You wait 'til you're my age, and wake every morning to gaze on the vast tract of uncreased linen that is the other side of the divan. Try being gallant to that... We shan't even have children, don't forget, to look after us in our old age. ~ Sarah Waters, #NFDB
483:The ship ploughed through the darkness, a pinpoint of light skimming the great curve of water. A million beasts rolled, fled and laughed in the vast distance beneath it, while the stars multiplied and roared in the perpetual silence above. ~ Brian Catling, #NFDB
484:Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, So I my life conduct. Each morning see some task begun, Each evening see it chucked. But still, in sudden moods of dusk, I hear those great weird wings, Feel vaguely thankful to the vast Stupidity of things. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
485:You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue law, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. ~ John Henninger Reagan, #NFDB
486:Before 1492, Europe suffered from scarcity and famine. After 1492, the vast wealth carried to Europe from the Americas and extracted by the forced labor of Africans granted governments new powers that contributed to the rise of nation-states. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
487:Here’s my approach: Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think about what you are doing. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
488:There's a big conservative press unabashedly and for the Democrats and even people to the left of the Democratic party, there's almost virtually no outlets that you can compare with the vast array of conservative press that's out there. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
489:The vast difference between astrology and other sciences, if I may put it thus, is that astrology deals not with facts but with profundities. The solid ground on which the scientist pretends to rest gives way, in astrology, to imponderables. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
490:Every living being is psychic. Whether or not we are consciously aware of it, we feel vibrations and energies coming to us from other people all the time. The vast majority of the thoughts you think and the emotions you feel aren't your own. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
491:Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred."
- by Mohandas K. Gandhi - ~ Mahatma Gandhi,#NFDB
492:It was a flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing. ~ Tim O Brien, #NFDB
493:The Australian sees itself not as a mere newspaper, but as a player in the game of national politics, calling upon the vast resources of the Murdoch empire and the millions of words it has available to it to try to make and unmake governments. ~ Robert Manne, #NFDB
494:The vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
495:whose waves were still dashing with tremendous violence! It was the ocean, without any visible limits, even for those whose gaze, from their commanding position, extended over a radius of forty miles. The vast liquid plain, lashed without mercy ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
496:As an interdependent person, I have the opportunity to share myself deeply, meaningfully, with others, and I have access to the vast resources and potential of other human beings. Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
497:I know not how I seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with while the vast ocean of undiscovered truth lay before me. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
498:I think again we're way out of balance. We've got to rein in what has become almost an article of faith that almost anybody can have a gun anywhere at any time. And I don't believe that is in the best interest of the vast majority of people. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
499:I think if you look at the statistics and you deal with fake media - and fake media and distorted media is a continuum - the vast majority of the population says, "I don't know what to believe." There are no checks and balances in quality control. ~ Ray Dalio, #NFDB
500:The Empathic Civilization is emerging. A younger generation is fast extending its empathic embrace beyond religious affiliations and national identification to include the whole of humanity and the vast project of life that envelops the Earth. ~ Jeremy Rifkin, #NFDB
501:By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. ~ Matt Taibbi, #NFDB
502:I also saw a huge expansion of the Internet, with many major corporations, afraid of being left behind, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop World Wide Web sites in a frantic scramble to reach the vast new consumer market of Web use ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
503:Since the familiar particles and the objects they compose—stars, planets, people, etc.—amount to less than 5 percent of the mass of the universe, such a disruption would not affect the vast majority of the universe, at least as measured by mass. ~ Brian Greene, #NFDB
504:The vast majority of beings who incarnate on this planet are at the stage of their evolution where power is the dominant theme. They are learning about power. That is why we live in a world where there are so many wars and so much destruction. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
505:Women are one of the most important segments of the adventure travel industry. Women make the vast majority of travel decisions in families - not only the destinations, but the activities. They are the predominant adventure travel planners. ~ Christopher Doyle, #NFDB
506:Although the vast country which we have been describing was inhabited by many indigenous tribes, it may justly be said at the time of its discovery by Europeans to have formed one great desert. The Indians occupied without possessing it. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
507:Democrats should not respond to my defeat by retreating from our strong commitments on these life-or-death issues. The vast majority of Americans agree that we need to do more on gun safety. This is a debate we can win if we keep at it. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, #NFDB
508:Since neither black animosity nor the Left's falsehood of 'racial tensions' is based on the actual behavior of the vast majority of white Americans, nothing white America could do will affect either many blacks' perceptions or the leftist libel. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
509:Unfortunately the next day was not the vast, extraneous expanse of time which I had feverishly looked forward. When it drew to a close my laziness and my painful struggle to overcome internal obstacles had simply lasted twenty-four hours longer. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
510:How can I—how can an insignificant little dewdrop on the grass ever aspire to the sun? How would it ever come to pass?” “Indeed; there’s no comparing them, after all. But the dewdrop does capture the vast, seething ball of fire within itself, doesn’t it? ~ Kalki, #NFDB
511:Most of all I loved the serenity that came from being alone in a world of books at the same time not being alone because the world was around me, some if it real, the vast majority of it worlds all their own, contained on pages bound to a cover. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
512:A cosmic mystery of immense proportions, once seemingly on the verge of solution, has deepened and left astronomers and astrophysicists more baffled than ever. The crux ... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing. ~ William Broad, #NFDB
513:He writes in his book that mycelia—the vast, cobwebby whitish net of single-celled filaments, called hyphae, with which fungi weave their way through the soil—are intelligent, forming “a sentient membrane” and “the neurological network of nature. ~ Michael Pollan, #NFDB
514:It is true that the vast majority of gun deaths in America are not the consequence of the use of an 'assault weapon.' But that begs the question of whether assault weapons have any real utility either in terms of any sporting or self protection needs. ~ Joe Biden, #NFDB
515:Research has shown, in fact, that the vast majority of successful new business ventures abandoned their original business strategies when they began implementing their initial plans and learned what would and would not work in the market. 9 ~ Clayton M Christensen, #NFDB
516:The vast increase in spending on border security has inadvertently transformed the people-smuggling business from an optional, cheap, amateur affair into a near-compulsory, very expensive, and cartel-dominated one. It is a gift to organized crime. ~ Tom Wainwright, #NFDB
517:The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
518:[NFL fans] wish they'd shut up and play football, and I think the vast majority of people, "Shut up and act! Shut up and sing! Shut up and star in your TV show! Just shut up and do what you do, but shut up!" I think they're wearing out their welcome. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
519:The meeting between the narrowly delimited, but intensely clear, individual consciousness and the vast expanse of the collective unconscious is dangerous, because the unconscious has a decidedly disintegrating effect on consciousness. ~ Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies, #NFDB
520:The human condition for the vast majority of people on this planet for the entire time of what humanity has been here has been bondage and tyranny, dictatorship, pestilence. That's really what American exceptionalism is, when you get right down to it. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
521:If there is value in the standardized, performance-based curriculums utilized by the vast majority of schools, that value is realized primarily by the institutions themselves and by the economic and social structures that are fed by standardized learning. ~ Ben Hewitt, #NFDB
522:The most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms. The level of self-delusion is bordering frankly on the racist. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the occupation of Iraq by the American and British forces. ~ George Galloway, #NFDB
523:In the radiance and the silence, she ran on the vast expanse of hard, smooth sand, beside herself with joy. Ah, when you only have a holiday once in a while, what a happiness it is! Each golden minute had to be held and perfected before it was let go. ~ Dorothy Whipple, #NFDB
524:I record at the same place [Toe Rag or FatSounds Studios in London], with the same people [Liam Watson at Toe Rag and Ed Deegan at Fatsounds], every time. It makes it effortless, and another reason for the vast output when I do go in and record stuff. ~ Holly Golightly, #NFDB
525:Jesus Christ, with His divine understanding of every understanding of our human nature, understood that not all men were called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world, and, to a certain extent, for the world. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
526:More than most, I believe I'm highly attuned to how heresies eventually become mainstream belief systems and how the vast majority of people who consider themselves 'edgy' are those who only embraced radical ideas LONG after it became safe for them to do so. ~ Jim Goad, #NFDB
527:Nor did she merely smile, she glowed with inner goodness that made him think of the vast iron cookstove in his grandmother's kitchen back on the farm. Here, he knew by certain instinct, was a woman who made wonderful cookies and would give you some. ~ Charlotte MacLeod, #NFDB
528:now he knew that there were communities everywhere, sprinkled across the vast landscape of the known world, in which people suffered. Not always from beatings and hunger, the way he had. But from ignorance. From not knowing. From being kept from knowledge. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
529:Since neither black animosity nor the Left’s falsehood of “racial tensions” is based on the actual behavior of the vast majority of white Americans, nothing white America can do will affect the perceptions of many black Americans or of the leftist libel. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
530:I think most Native American literature is unreadable by the vast majority of Native Americans. Generally speaking Indians don't read books. It's not a book culture. That's why I'm trying to make movies. Indians go to movies; Indians own video recorders. ~ Sherman Alexie, #NFDB
531:Perhaps this was how the sparrows did it too; perhaps they were looking so hard at the peaks and tips of the new rooftops coated with dew, and the vast new horizon, that they only forgot that they did not know how to fly until they were already in midair. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
532:The miraculous Nihil, origin of our souls
And source and sum of the vast world’s events,
The womb and grave of thought, a cipher of God,
A zero circle of being’s totality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness,#NFDB
533:There was no bombing of the U.S. mainland, no civilian casualties, no destruction of millions of homes. Indeed, while the standard of living plummeted for the vast majority of Britons during the war, many if not most Americans lived better than ever before. ~ Lynne Olson, #NFDB
534:The future continues to preoccupy me as a reliable source of hopes, fears and anxieties, but increasingly the present seems to have no outstanding qualities of its own, being merely a way-station through which events travel to the vast shadow lands of the past. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
535:This path is very rarely the result of any choice, or even of personal predilection. The victims, in the vast majority of cases, were not tortured or killed because they were good any more than their executioners tormented them because they were evil. It ~ Jonathan Littell, #NFDB
536:Inflammatory, anti-Muslim rhetoric and threatening to ban the families and friends of Muslim Americans as well as millions of Muslim business people and tourists from entering our country hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
537:The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
538:We are seeing every night on the television news now a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. These climate-related extreme weather events have convinced the vast majority of people that the scientists have been right for a long time. We have to address this. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
539:It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
540:No longer is science asked to understand the world, or to improve any part of it. It is asked instead to immediately justify everything that happens... spectacular domination has cut down the vast tree of scientific knowledge in order to make itself a truncheon. ~ Guy Debord, #NFDB
541:Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
542:Will ya look at it?” Dad threw his arms wide, as if he wanted to embrace it all. He seemed to be growing before their eyes, like a tree, spreading branches wide, becoming strong. He liked the nothingness he saw, the vast emptiness. It was what he’d come for. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
543:I know not how I seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with while the vast ocean of undiscovered truth lies before me . . .”’ Agnes ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
544:Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems; And e'en the dearest--that I love the best-- Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest. ~ John Clare, #NFDB
545:Because of the nature of my illness, and its effect on my brain, I remember only flashes of actual events, and brief but vivid hallucinations, from the months in which this story takes place. The vast majority of that time remains blank or capriciously hazy. ~ Susannah Cahalan, #NFDB
546:How many really great writers are there who are totally non-political? You can hear the French Revolution in the poetry of [Percy Bysshe] Shelly and [John] Wordsworth; you can sense the vast inequalities of Tsarist Russia in [Anton] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy. ~ Adam Hochschild, #NFDB
547:The vast carnival of cruelty called animal exploitation goes on and on - and it is all so needless, even counter-productive. There is already an adequate (often superior) non-animal substitute for virtually everything obtained by animal suffering and slaughter. ~ H Jay Dinshah, #NFDB
548:In case it has slipped your notice, the vast majority of your education has emphasized survival and not getting caught.”
“I’d say you talked more about the code than anything else,” Tory pointed out.
“What did you think I meant by survival,” Ivan countered. ~ Drew Hayes,#NFDB
549:The truth, as I see it, is that everything you think, say, and do is a choice—and you don’t need to think, speak, or act as you’ve done for your entire life. When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses. Right now, while reading this book, ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
550:you will see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. They have no effect on anything or anybody, except you. They are simply making you feel better or worse about what is going on now, what has gone on in the past, or what might go on in the future. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
551:It was called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. If not for the monks, everything the world had ever learned would have been lost. Well, we live in a similar time, when we're losing the vast majority of what we do and see and learn. But it doesn't have to be that way. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
552:The unknown is generally taken to be terrible, not as the proverb would infer, from the inherent superstition of man, but because it so often is terrible. He who would tamper with the vast and secret forces that animate the world may well fall a victim to them. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
553:While gender stereotypes can have negative impacts on men as well, the vast majority of structural gender inequality: socially, politically, professionally and economically, as well as the overwhelming burden of sexual violence is disproportionately borne by women. ~ Laura Bates, #NFDB
554:Children, together with women, constitute 90 percent of all refugee populations on the planet as well as the vast majority of those living in absolute poverty: the 'feminization of poverty' means that children are poor, too, since most parenting is done by mothers. ~ Robin Morgan, #NFDB
555:The vast majority of our film producers are independent producers who live hand to mouth trying to get projects made that they love. They are not owners, they're not money people, and in fact, those who just have the money don't always get a producer credit. ~ Marshall Herskovitz, #NFDB
556:I don't know the vast majority of you personally and it may sound kind of corny, but I really feel as if we've become friends through the years. And you've been with me during a lot of good times. And some very difficult ones... I can't tell you how grateful I am... ~ Katie Couric, #NFDB
557:In a long life there are thirty or thirty-five thousand days to be got through, but only a few dozen that really matter, Big Days when Something Momentous Happens. The rest—the vast majority, tens of thousands of days—are unremarkable, repetitive, even monotonous. ~ William Landay, #NFDB
558:In contravention of my belief that any life ending in death is essentially pointless, I needed my friends to open up that plastic bag and take one last look at me. Someone had to remember me, if only for a few more minutes in the vast silent waiting room of time. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
559:It's important to know that the vast majority of people who were excited in 2008 are still really enthusiastic. We've got more volunteers now than ever, and they're engaged, they're motivated, they're not paying attention to the ups and downs of polls or Washington. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
560:The vast mass of mankind is mere material, and only exists in order by some great effort, by some mysterious process, by means of some crossing of races and stocks, to bring into the world at last perhaps one man out of a thousand with a spark of independence. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
561:I had once had twenty bodies, twenty pairs of eyes, and hundreds of others that I could access if I needed or desired it. Now I could only see in one direction, could only see the vast expanse behind me if I turned my head and blinded myself to what was in front of me. ~ Ann Leckie, #NFDB
562:Robert Vavra is one of these artists, part magician, part alchemist, who is able to create a series of photographs in unforgettable compositions. Only visible are the dunes, the blinding fields of flowers and the vast sky, the epic intimacy of Robert Vavra's vision. ~ Peter Ustinov, #NFDB
563:Snowden’s penetration went beyond whistle-blowing, however. In the vast number of files he copied were documents that contained the NSA’s most sensitive sources and methods that had little if anything to do with domestic surveillance or whistle-blowing. Snowden ~ Edward Jay Epstein, #NFDB
564:The socially redeeming aspect of golf lies in the vast number of lawyers and bankers and managers who play it, and when you think of the damage they would do if they were at the job instead, you can see why golf courses are a wise investment for any municipality. ~ Garrison Keillor, #NFDB
565:The vast majority of people are born, grow up, struggle and go through life in misery and failure, not realizing that it would be just as easy to switch over and get exactly what they want out of life, not recognizing that the mind attracts the thing it dwells upon. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
566:Unlike the vast majority of Americans, he did not assume that a woman seeking an abortion late in pregnancy was lazy or stupid or too busy having sex to have attended to matters early on. He did not assume that her body ceased to be her own because she was pregnant. ~ Katha Pollitt, #NFDB
567:We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals! ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
568:While it's very hard to know exactly how to measure public opinion there, because there's no really good polling, the fact of the matter is, in all of the polls I've seen, the vast majority of the Iraqis prefer to be free and are pleased that the coalition freed them. ~ Paul Bremer, #NFDB
569:As always, the illusion of self-transcendence is far more facile and available than self-transcendence itself: in the vast majority of cases what human consciousness opens up to is merely a more encompassing form of finitude (another captivating illusion or delusion). ~ Kenny Smith, #NFDB
570:Men and women do not live by culture alone,
the vast majority of them throughout history have been deprived of the chance of living by it at all, and those few who are fortunate enough to live by it now are able to do so because of the labour of those who do not. ~ Terry Eagleton,#NFDB
571:She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself. ~ Kate Chopin, #NFDB
572:The vast concourse of people who had assembled to witness the triumphant arrival of the successful travellers was of the lowest orders of mechanics and artisans, among whom great distress and a dangerous spirit of discontent with the government at that time prevailed. ~ Fanny Kemble, #NFDB
573:A furious researcher stumbled out of one of the lab buildings and shouted, 'I'm a scientist working on the AIDS cure. Why are you here? You are making too much noise.' It was a statement that epitomized the vast and growing rift between scientists and patients. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
574:Faith is the substance that God used to create the universe, and He transported that faith with His words. God used His words as containers to transport His faith out there into the vast nothingness, into the darkness. He said, ''Light, be!" (Gen. 1:3.) And light was! ~ Charles Capps, #NFDB
575:The underlying foundation of life in New England was one of profound, unutterable, and therefore unuttered, melancholy, which regarded human existence itself as a ghastly risk, and, in the case of the vast majority of human beings, an inconceivable misfortune. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
576:Politicians are propaganda, the people with guns are the enforcers and the media is the enthusiastic lapdog who enables the entire behavior and acts as the verbal abuser against those who deviate from nodding their heads at the vast statues of evil that we inherited. ~ Stefan Molyneux, #NFDB
577:By and large, the answer to the question "How do large institutions survive?" is "They don't!" The vast majority of large modern-day institutions - some of them extremely vital to the functioning of our complex civilization - simply fail to exist in the first place. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB
578:Christianity was found in places, notably in Yemen, and among the Arab tribes in the north under Byzantine rule; Judaism too was practised in Yemen, and in and around Yathrib, later renamed Madina (Medina), but the vast majority of the population of Arabia were polytheists. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
579:We shall defend every village, every town and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
580:How often—will it be for always?—how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realized my loss till this moment’? The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
581:There is an aspect of my character that tends to latch on to one difficult but potentially solvable problem, rather than grapple with the vast and unsolvable problem that would be all I could see, if I were to look up, figuratively speaking, from my small blue notebooks. ~ Ben H Winters, #NFDB
582:This, however, is OKCupid, the vast, weird pink-and-blue toned jungle of the id masquerading as a dating site, where rare birds of modern romance flutter amongst the night-terrors of human loneliness and despair and the suspicious skin irritants of late-night hook-uppery. ~ Laurie Penny, #NFDB
583:What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence; and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done something utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men. ~ G H Hardy, #NFDB
584:And chiefly thou, O spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st. Thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sattest brooding on the vast abyss,
And madst it pregnant. ~ John Milton,#NFDB
585:And there is the matter of abortion. We must with calmness and resolve help the vast majority of our fellow Americans understand that the more than 112 million abortions performed in America in 1980 amount to a great moral evil, an assault on the sacredness of human life. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
586:I think tension between the intimate and the vast is at the heart of every poem by any poet, though of course the terms with which it is explored vary. Perhaps it is something we seek out in order to affirm that our small lives are tethered to something large and ongoing. ~ Tracy K Smith, #NFDB
587:That’s right. Five minutes into the all-hands meeting, the fundamental values of this totalitarian society had received the support of the vast majority of the crew. So, let me tell you, when humans are lost in space, it takes only five minutes to reach totalitarianism. Boris ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
588:I looked into my own heart and I saw reflected there in its entirety the vast world with all its passions,—pride, hope, fear and the conflagration of the desires. So gazing I understood the word of the ancient sage, “Man is a mirror in which there appears the image of the world.” ~ Ryonen, #NFDB
589:It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
590:The world is a book of many pages waiting to be read. The self is a library of ancient tomes written in languages you cannot fully understand. You grow accustomed with the characters you find on the first shelf and never get to know what remains on the vast arena of you. ~ Gregory V Diehl, #NFDB
591:Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike. ~ William O Douglas, #NFDB
592:But life had shifted its weight from one point to another, from one leg to the other, like a silent giant in the vast shadows against the ridge, and I did not feel like the person I had been when this day began, and I did not even know if that was something to be sorry for. ~ Per Petterson, #NFDB
593:Corporations don't create jobs, customers do. So when all the economic gains go to the top, as they're doing now, the vast majority of Americans don't have enough purchasing power to buy the things corporations want to sell - which means businesses stop creating enough jobs. ~ Robert Reich, #NFDB
594:Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
595:I mean, if you've ever been a governor of a state, you understand the vast potential of broadband technology, you understand how hard it is to make sure that physics, for example, is taught in every classroom in the state. It's difficult to do. It's, like, cost-prohibitive. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
596:Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. ~ John Clare,#NFDB
597:I was also moved by William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, which not only helped me put my childhood experience in perspective but also showed me how my search to find a new, more authentic spiritual identity fit within the vast landscape of American culture. ~ Phil Jackson, #NFDB
598:By the time the clock had moved past midnight on Christmas 1993, they finally clicked the last piece into place: Angola, nestled between Zaire and Namibia and bordering the vast lapping Atlantic. Then, having succeeded in putting the world back together, they went to bed. ~ Jessie Ann Foley, #NFDB
599:Has man reached his ceiling? What about the future? It is here that we meet the vast phenomenon of the almost unlimited power of disposition over matter that man is beginning to acquire in his environment. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Place of Technology in a General Biology of Mankind, #NFDB
600:I can't even dial one phone number right away. But you strained your own body to go and see them. I was surprised. The frightened little me had always wondered how to swim through the vast ocean, but you didn't even want a ship. You wanted wings. I thought you were amazing. ~ Arina Tanemura, #NFDB
601:People always like to have a good time and laugh, and, [among] the vast majority of the seven billion people on this earth, one thing that we all have in common is at some point we all need to pair up and find some sort of significant other, some sort of romantic counterpart. ~ Jay Baruchel, #NFDB
602:scarcely a human being in the course of history has fallen to a woman's rifle; the vast majority of birds and beasts have been killed by you, not by us. Obviously there is for you some glory, some necessity, some satisfaction in fighting which we have never felt or enjoyed. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
603:The brothers chanted as he drank, their voices getting louder and louder, ringing out. He tasted each one of them. The raw power and majesty of Wrath. The vast strength of Rhage. The burning, protective loyalty of Phury. The cold savagery of Zsadist. The sharp cunning of Vishous. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
604:There are literally a thousand works with the title Malcolm X in them. There are over 350 films and over 320 web-based educational resources with the title Malcolm X, yet the vast majority of them are based on secondary literatures, that is, not on primary source material. ~ Manning Marable, #NFDB
605:It may be that the best time for Otherness has already passed. Clearly part of the basis for this renaissance has been wealth, especially the unprecedented comfort enjoyed by the vast majority of Westerners since World War II, in which very few of us can even conceive of starving ~ David Brin, #NFDB
606:nobody in the West should forget that what unites the two main branches of Islam is far greater that what divides them, and that the vast majority of all Muslims still cherish the ideal of unity preached by Muhammad himself—an ideal the more deeply held for being so deeply broken. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
607:People travel to wonder
at the height of the mountains,
at the huge waves of the seas,
at the long course of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars,
and yet they pass by themselves
without wondering. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo,#NFDB
608:Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination. ~ Danny Boyle, #NFDB
609:We have to understand why the politics of some societies lead to inclusive institutions that foster economic growth, while the politics of the vast majority of societies throughout history has led, and still leads today, to extractive institutions that hamper economic growth. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
610:I think we're vastly over-invested in universities. Universities should be relatively small and provide excellent education and research in a number of specialized areas. I think the vast majority of young people should be going through non-university, post-secondary training. ~ Stephen Harper, #NFDB
611:A conditional love is nothing but an infatuation, sexuality. Unconditional is the only way love can be. Wherever a condition comes in, love disappears. It cannot live in bondage, and a condition gives it an imprisonment. Love can only live like the vast sky. Love knows no boundaries. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
612:All of a sudden, if you think about the entire ecosystem of connected devices that can pull down information, access content and allow me to share and work and communicate, the vast majority now are not Windows computers. They are iPhones. They are iPads. They are Android devices. ~ Aaron Levie, #NFDB
613:Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries, and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and wonder surrounding him. ~ Ansel Adams, #NFDB
614:I guess I believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science. Certainly most things can--including the vast majority of what people ascribe to fate, ghosts, ESP, Jupiter rising--but not all ~ Mary Roach, #NFDB
615:The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
616:Can the vast technology beneath our gaze be anything but a representation? Any optical artifact... The city panorama is a theoretical (ie visual) simulacrum: in short, a picture, of which the preconditions for feasibility are forgetfulness and a misunderstanding of processes. ~ Michel de Certeau, #NFDB
617:Indeed, the long-standing establishment embrace of the Malthusian worry explodes any suggestion that anti-growth is a particularly radical position. But then elites have never really liked the vast bulk of humanity, believing us all to be lesser creatures, unlettered, unrefined. ~ Leigh Phillips, #NFDB
618:usertesting.com. This doesn’t need to be a time-consuming or expensive exercise. You will only need to test with five or six people. Anything more than that and the number of new issues identified will decrease dramatically. Five or six people will find the vast majority of problems. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
619:Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
620:You and I are standing this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can’t possibly live in either of those eternities—no, not even for one split second. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
621:car seat-belts. The vast majority of the time they served no real purpose. Even bad drivers could go years between accidents. But when an accident finally did occur—in that precise instant—a seat-belt became the only thing standing between a chance for life and a grisly death. ~ Douglas E Richards, #NFDB
622:Each of us is several, is many, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. (Text 396) ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
623:People may be persuaded that the machine is doing good. In fact, good is only capable of being done on a small scale. Evil is more versatile. You can hate those you have never seen, all the vast multitudes of them, but you can only love those you know — and that with difficulty. ~ John Christopher, #NFDB
624:Ten percent of the American population thinks that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Those are the people that have not learned the skill of filtering information from the vast barrage of inaccurate information that we're all faced with everyday. I think that's a very 21st century skill. ~ Michael Azerrad, #NFDB
625:The vast majority of Muslims would never accept the lawfulness of an active homosexual lifestyle. I don't see that happening. But there is also no authority in the tradition for any individual to take things into his own hands and impose their version of the religion on someone else. ~ Hamza Yusuf, #NFDB
626:Well, the vast majority of people don't steal to get ahead. A lot of people work their way up from nothing without stealing."
"I don't think a lot of people work their way up from nothing, ever. People like you want to believe it happens all the time. But it really doesn't. ~ J Ryan Stradal,#NFDB
627:Barack Obama's devastating. His policies and his presidency are devastating. But I have this confidence that he's not gonna succeed in total transforming this country into a Western European socialist democracy where the vast majority of the population just lays down and accepts it. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
628:At night, she slipped into the shelter of the boy’s arms as they stood together on deck, picking out constellations from the vast spill of stars: the Hunter, the Scholar, the Three Foolish Sons, the bright spokes of the Spinning Wheel, the Southern Palace with its six crooked spires. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
629:Look at the history of civil laws in our world and the source from which they emerged, and you will see that the vast majority of them arose directly from, or where based in principle on, Roman Canon Law, or the laws of other religious origin. Sharia is another notable example. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
630:Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll,#NFDB
631:To look at the height of Snäfell it seemed impossible to reach the summit. But after an hours' fatigue and athletic exercise, a sort of staircase suddenly appeared in the midst of the vast carpet of snow lying on the croup of the volcano, and this greatly simplified our ascent. (p. 73) ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
632:Our country, we have faith to believe, is only at the beginning of its growth. Unless the forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast demands which this growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
633:As the clutter of outrageous, fantastical photographs that today occupy Sandy Island’s place on Google Earth suggests, Sandy Island’s disappearance established it as a rebel base for the imagination, an innocent and an upstart that managed to escape the vast technologies of omni-knowledge. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
634:From the radiating point of Siwenna, the forces of the Empire reached out cautiously into the black unknown of the Periphery. Giant ships passed the vast distances that separated the vagrant stars at the Galaxy’s rim, and felt their way around the outermost edge of Foundation influence. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
635:The vast and terrible depth."
“Of course,” he said.
“The inexhaustibility.”
“I understand.”
“The whole huge nameless thing.”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“The massive darkness.”
“Certainly, certainly.”
“The whole terrible endless hugeness.”
“I know exactly what you mean. ~ Don DeLillo,#NFDB
636:Right now, the index is fairly low, meaning that the vast majority of Americans don’t feel threatened or fear a terrorist attack is pending. The longer we go without a major terrorist incident, the more secure our citizens feel. We have an expectation of feeling safe in public places, ~ Andrew Peterson, #NFDB
637:Something happen inside me as I looked out into the vast universe. Through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than I'd ever imagined. And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and- I don't know- it make me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered. ~ Benjamin Alire S enz, #NFDB
638:The rest-the vast majority, tens of thousands of days-are unremarkable, repetitive, even monotonous. We glide through them then instantly forget them. We tend not to think about this arithmetic when we look back on our lives. We remember the handful of Big Days and throw away the rest. ~ William Landay, #NFDB
639:I am very proud that, since 2014, Sweden now tracks quarterly greenhouse gas emissions (the first and still the only country to do so). This is Factfulness in action...Climate change is way too important a global risk to be ignored or denied, and the vast majority of the world knows that. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
640:Science too proceeds by lantern-flashes; it explores nature's inexhaustible mosiac piece by piece. Too often the wick lacks oil; the glass panes of the lantern may not be clean. No matter : his work is not in vain who first recognizes and shows to others one speck of the vast unknown. ~ Jean Henri Fabre, #NFDB
641:Unfortunately, the vast majority of people spend their days either living in the dead past or the imagined future. This sort of mental activity cheats a person out of the most precious time we have ... NOW. Give everything you have to what you are doing NOW and life will richly reward you. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
642:Home ownership,and the vast consumption of materials and energy it requires, forces some pretty exploitative foreign policy manoeuvres. This makes people in those resource-rich places as mad as natives were at the practices of the colonial empires exploiting them two hundred years ago. ~ Douglas Rushkoff, #NFDB
643:…the vast theme
Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate
Amid the calm which rapture doth create
After its tumult, her heart vibrating,
Her spirit o’er the Ocean’s floating state
From her deep eyes far wandering...
From "Revolt of Islam", Canto 2, Verse 29 ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
644:The notion that whites comprise the vast majority of drug users and dealers—and may well be more likely than other racial groups to commit drug crimes—may seem implausible to some, given the media imagery we are fed on a daily basis and the racial composition of our prisons and jails. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
645:This Tony Haywire guy, whatever his name is, he told the BBC on Sunday that he believes the new oil cap that they've installed will eventually capture the vast majority of oil spewing from the well. You know, if they could capture half the BS spewing from Tony Hayward, people would be thrilled. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
646:How do you think we have the home mortgage deduction? We have it because way back when it was determined that the American dream equaled home ownership. And everybody knows that the vast majority of the American people will never be able to write a check for a house. You have to finance it. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
647:Try not to be self-conscious […] or so critical. Don’t mope around looking for someone else to make you happy, and remember that the vast majority of homosexuals are looking for a superman to love and find it very difficult to love anyone merely human, which we unfortunately happen to be. ~ Andrew Holleran, #NFDB
648:Anger has become one of the trendiest emotions of all. In moderation it can be a righteous force for constructive change. But its hackneyed omnipresence means the vast majority of its outbreaks are trivial. The paucity of colorful obscenities is aggravated by an abundance of frivolous fury. ~ Rob Brezsny, #NFDB
649:Each of us is several, is many,is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the vast colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. Livro Do Desassossego ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
650:If you were to look at each atom as a universe unto itself, think of the number of universes within each of us;at the same time, look at any one of us in the vast space I am seeing out the window of this bus, which is a molecule on a cell on a flea on a hair on a wart of the known universe. ~ Chris Crutcher, #NFDB
651:The mystery of the evening-star brilliant in silence and distance between the downward-surging plunge of the sun and the vast, hollow seething of inpouring night. The magnificence of the watchful morning-star, that watches between the night and the day, the gleaming clue to the two opposites. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
652:We have found that when men and women are left free to find the places for which they are best fitted, some few of them will indeed attain less exalted stations than under a regime of privilege; but the vast multitude will rise to a higher level, to wider horizons, to worthier attainments. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
653:A decline in the national housing price level would need to be substantial to trigger a significant rise in foreclosures, because the vast majority of homeowners have built up substantial equity in their homes despite large mortgage-market financed withdrawals of home equity in recent years. ~ Alan Greenspan, #NFDB
654:All the labours of ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noon-day brightness of human genius, are destined to extinciton in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
655:All the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noon-day brightnessof human genius, are destined to extinctionin the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievementmust inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
656:In many cases, we make sleep a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Sleep difficulties can turn into serious medical problems. For the vast majority of us, however, sleep difficulties are a lifestyle problem. Yet we tend to treat all our sleep-related woes the same way: with a pill. ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
657:Willy Lazeer is an acquaintance. His teeth and his feet hurt. He hates the climate, the Power Squadron, the government and his wife. The vast load of hate has left him numbed rather than bitter. In appearance, it is as though somebody bleached Sinatra, skinned him, and made Willy wear him. ~ John D MacDonald, #NFDB
658:The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
659:The word "Auschwitz" has become a metonym for the Holocaust as a whole. Yet the vast majority of Jews had already been murdered, further east, by the time that Auschwitz became a major killing facility. Yet while Auschwitz has been remembered, most of the Holocaust has been largely forgotten. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
660:To the vast majority of people a photograph is an image of something within their direct experience: a more-or-less factual reality. It is difficult for them to realize that the photograph can be the source of experience, as well as the reflection of spiritual awareness of the world and of self. ~ Ansel Adams, #NFDB
661:We have come tardily to the tremendous task of cleaning up our environment. We should have moved with similar zeal at least a decade ago. But no purpose is served by post-mortems. With visionary zeal but the greatest realism, we must now address ourselves to the vast problems that confront us. ~ Gerald R Ford, #NFDB
662:[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
663:As the black night descended from the heavens, I knew that in the blink of an eye I would witness the death of the sunset. I saw the exposed and firm chest of the vast earth; its pose was one of calling, of beckoning. And just as a mother beckons her children, so the earth beckoned the coming of night. ~ Yu Hua, #NFDB
664:There are half a billion people that listen to music online and the vast majority are doing so illegally. But if we bring those people over to the legal side and Spotify, what is going to happen is we are going to double the music industry and that will lead to more artists creating great new music. ~ Daniel Ek, #NFDB
665:all this stuff you’re involved in, it’s all gossip. It’s people talking about each other behind their backs. That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
666:Jewish voters care. They want someone who's good on Israel and who's good on Jewish issues. But they also want somebody who's going to be pro-choice and pro-gun control and pro-gay rights. To the vast majority of the Jewish community, just being good on Israel or on Jewish issues is not enough. ~ Charles Schumer, #NFDB
667:Krishna answers that what he sees is maya, the illusion of life, at once fascinating and confusing. No one can decide what is dharma and what is adharma, who is the victor and who is the vanquished. Mortals are but tiny specks in the vast universe, blips in the great ocean of time. Disgusted, ~ Anand Neelakantan, #NFDB
668:More riveting to me in the end than the politics of Berlin was the vast social experiment its division had become... it was possible to have freedom and plenty in the West and craft an empty life; it was possible to "have nothing" in the East and create a life of intimacy and dignity and beauty. ~ Krista Tippett, #NFDB
669:What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss. ~ Sebastian Junger, #NFDB
670:The time has come for us to admit our insignificance by making discoveries in the infinite unexplored cosmos. Only then shall we realize that we are nothing but ants in the vast state of the universe. And yet our future and our opportunities lie in the universe, where gods promised they would. ~ Erich von D niken, #NFDB
671:They had witnessed the flowing winds of the Vorrh, long, singing currents of turbulence that flew and rippled between the contoured ground and the vast canopy of still leaves. Its profound, limited hurricane was still in their lungs, the cleanest air ever breathed; sharp as lime, soft as new snow. ~ Brian Catling, #NFDB
672:Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
673:...the mind is just as immeasurable as the vast universe. An integral being settles his mind just as the vast universe settles itself. He unites his mind with the unnameable Subtle Origin of the multi-universe in which there is no past, present or future. This is how an integral being deals with his mind. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
674:The vast majority of us don't want to face the fact that we're in the middle of a sweeping social revolution. In sex. In spiritual values. In opposition to wars no one wants. In opposition to government big-brotherhood. In civil rights. In basic human goals. They're all facets of a general upheaval. ~ Johnny Carson, #NFDB
675:He was part of something larger, of course: part of the vast infusion of new blood that kept the country young and churning, and that defined its essential being. This was America’s strange, stirring commitment: to keep itself vital by allowing itself, again and again, to become somebody else’s. ~ Anand Giridharadas, #NFDB
676:I'm infatuated with you, I cannot deny it. Physically speaking, you're a very attractive man. But I don't like you, the vast majority of the time. So far as I can gather, you behave abominably in public and are only marginally better in private. I only find you remotely tolerable when you're kissing me. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
677:In fact, for a period stretching over seven hundred years, the international language of science was Arabic. For this was the language of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, and thus the official language of the vast Islamic Empire that, by the early eighth century CE, stretched from India to Spain. ~ Jim Al Khalili, #NFDB
678:Millions more, the vast majority, remain in camps. And through our tax contributions to the UN, we all pay billions of dollars to keep them there. In Dadaab that means funding schools, hospitals and shipping 8,000 tonnes of food per month into the middle of the blistering desert to feed everyone. This ~ Ben Rawlence, #NFDB
679:No one can count the terrors that the earth spawns, catastrophic, gruesome, and the vast arms of the sea swarm with brute monsters bent on harm, and everywhere between the sky and ground lights bloom by day in flares and sudden bolts; and birds and beasts alike can tell of the whirlwind's whirling wrath. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
680:A president is a high-level official who is elected to carry out a function. He is not a king, not a god. He is not the witch doctor of a tribe who knows everything. He is a civil servant. I think the ideal way of living is to live like the vast majority of people whom we attempt to serve and represent. ~ Jose Mujica, #NFDB
681:Every year I hear people complain that the quality of screenplays and movies is declining. In my opinion, the vast majority of scripts written - as well as most movies that are released - are not very original, well-written, or interesting. It has always been that way, and I think it always will be. ~ Viggo Mortensen, #NFDB
682:We who hold his (Wolfe Tone) principles believe that any movement which would successfully grapple with the problem of national freedom must draw its inspiration not from the mouldering records of the past, but from the glowing hopes of the living present, the vast possibilities of the mighty future. ~ James Connolly, #NFDB
683:That's when the vast consensus of the world's climatologists, brought together by the UN and The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, really announced that this was going on, and since then the accumulation of data and wickedly hot years has served to only congeal that consensus much more firmly. ~ Bill McKibben, #NFDB
684:When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain. ~ Thomas Malthus, #NFDB
685:The most striking fact of the day was the misery of the industrial proletariat. Despite the growth of the economy, or perhaps in part because of it, and because, as well, of the vast rural exodus owing to both population growth and increasing agricultural productivity, workers crowded into urban slums. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
686:Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
687:He drew attention to the vast amount of money (£194 million in banks and £14 million post office deposits) ‘lying idle in banks’, the huge capital outflows and forecast ‘with scope for our energies, with restoration of confidence, the inevitable tendency will be towards a return of this capital to Ireland ~ Tim Pat Coogan, #NFDB
688:Life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys of a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of a illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the known. ~ Saul Alinsky, #NFDB
689:Putin’s Russia is clearly the biggest and most dangerous threat facing the world today, but it is not the only one. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are (despite the latter’s name) stateless and without the vast resources and weapons of mass destruction Putin has at his fingertips. The ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
690:Your wife tolerates your weaknesses and does not rant or scold, and if she worries, it is only because she wants you to live forever. You count the reasons why you have held her close to you for so many years, and surely this is one of them, one of the bright stars in the vast constellation of enduring love. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
691:As far as the low-information segment of the population - the vast, vast, vast majority of which votes Democrat - if you are a progressive as Barack Obama is and you want to sell the direction you're taking this country, it's okay to call it great now 'cause you've got it moving in the direction of decline. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
692:The first century was an era of apocalyptic expectation among the Jews of Palestine, the unofficial Roman designation for the vast tract of land encompassing modern day Israel/Palestine as well as large parts of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon (the land would not be officially called Palestine until after 135 C.E.) ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
693:The vast majority of things parents and kids get in conflict over are highly predictable. We're disagreeing about the same expectations the kid is having difficulty meeting every hour, every day, every week. Because it's predictable, we can have these conversations proactively. That is very hard for people. ~ Ross W Greene, #NFDB
694:From this day forward, until victory or defeat, transfer, discharge, capture, or death took them from it, the vast Pacific would be beneath and around them. Its bottom was already littered with downed warplanes and the ghosts of lost airmen. Every day of this long and ferocious war, more would join them. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
695: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
696:Life buzzed in, fumed about, rattled around and quite thoroughly infested the entire galaxy, and probably - almost certainly - well beyond. The vast ongoingness of it all somehow put all one's own petty concerns and worries into context, making them seem not irrelevant, but of much less distressing immediacy. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
697:The Gita we overhear is essentially that which is narrated by a man with no authority but infinite sight (Sanjaya) to a man with no sight but full authority (Dhritarashtra). This peculiar structure of the narrative draws attention to the vast gap between what is told (gyana) and what is heard (vi-gyana). ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
698:The vast majority of Americans want a government that creates the conditions for them to have a chance to get into the middle class, the kind of growth and the kind of educational opportunities. Most people would - the vast majority of Americans would much rather have a job that pays more than a welfare check. ~ Marco Rubio, #NFDB
699:And after that, there was only the ship, large and glistening; the cool production of 12,000 years of Imperial progress; and himself, with his doctorate in mathematics freshly obtained and an invitation from the great Hari Seldon to come to Trantor and join the vast and somewhat mysterious Seldon Project. What ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
700:At its worst, privilege is blindness: Amid the vast literature on race and privilege, one especially useful book from a Christian perspective for those from the dominant culture is Paula Harris and Doug Schaupp, Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multiethnic World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004). ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
701:In America the vast spaces accentuate the vast spaces between people, deserts which stretch between human beings. It is a void which has to be spanned by the automobile. It takes an hour to reach a movie, two hours to reach a friend. So the coyotes howl and wail at the awful emptiness of mountains, deserts, hills. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
702:In Cuba, we have a democracy that represents the humble, the dispossessed, those who make up the vast majority of the population. It is for those who carry the main weight of society's load in matters of the production of goods and services. These are not the ones that live from financial speculation. ~ Alejandro Castro Espin, #NFDB
703:In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs-in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
704:We are all the heroes of our own stories, and on of the arts of perspective is to see yourself small on the stage of another's story, to see the vast expanse of the world that is not about you, and to see your power, to make your life, to make others, or break them, to tell stories rather that be told by them. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
705:no matter Pretoria’s thirst for Congo’s megawatts or Washington’s hopes that Inga can help transform Congo and lift its people out of poverty. The world can’t want Inga more than the people of Congo want Inga; that just won’t work. Until then, the vast power of the Congo churns on, waiting to be harnessed — one day. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
706:She hunkered down, stared across the horizon. Felt the vast cold world spread out all around her and was reassured by the impersonality of it. This land--wild and serene, huge, ruthless and gentle by turns, was always unconcerned with her, small Madeline who was a tiny dot on it's landscape for a moment in time. ~ Ellen Airgood, #NFDB
707:We are all the heroes of our own stories, and one of the arts of perspective is to see yourself small on the stage of another's story, to see the vast expanse of the world that is not about you, and to see your power, to make your life, to make others, or break them, to tell stories rather than be told by them. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
708:We're not enamored of Trump's braggadocio narcissism. We're not enamored of Trump's lifestyle. None of that. We're just fed up with current Washington leadership. It has failed and it needs to be turned upside down and emptied and re-shaken. And that's what the vast majority of Trump supporters actually believe. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
709:The vast majority of the guns in the U.S. are sold to white people who live in the suburbs or the country. When we fantasize about being mugged or home invaded, what's the image of the perpetrator in our heads? Is it the freckled-face kid from down the street - or is it someone who is, if not black, at least poor? ~ Michael Moore, #NFDB
710:Whether you fear uncertainty and let it trigger stress responses or embrace uncertainty and let it elicit relaxation responses is your choice. Personally, I’ve come to recognize the beauty in uncertainty. While one face of uncertainty is the vast, scary unknown, the flip side of uncertainty is infinite possibility. ~ Lissa Rankin, #NFDB
711:for the vast majority of people, being overweight is not caused by how much they eat but by what they eat. The idea that people get heavy because they consume a high volume of food is a myth. Eating large amounts of the right food is your key to success and is what makes this plan workable for the rest of your life. ~ Joel Fuhrman, #NFDB
712:I knew, even as we touched that I had never wanted anything more in all my life. All my crabbed cravings were as a cupful of pond water beside the vast ocean of longing I felt surging through me. My head swam; my eyes blurred. I burned from the inside out as if my blood and bones were consumed with liquid fire. ~ Stephen R Lawhead, #NFDB
713:The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience. There's lots of good fish in the sea... maybe... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
714:Washington quibbled with Hamilton on one or two points but otherwise stood in perfect agreement. His letter to Hamilton again corroborates what the Jeffersonians found difficult to credit: that Washington never shied away from differing with the redoubtable Hamilton but agreed with him on the vast majority of issues. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
715:We, proudly, were the only campaign not to have a super PAC. In a manner unprecedented in American history, we received some 8 million individual campaign contributions. The average contribution was $27. These donations came from 2.5 million Americans, the vast majority of whom were low- or moderate-income people. ~ Bernie Sanders, #NFDB
716:Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought
The free logic of an infinite Consciousness,
Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature’s dance,
Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,
Made figure and nu ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind,#NFDB
717:The desert at night was black and a strange madder-tinted silver; the sky was black, and the great contorted cliffs, and the vast expanses of sand that stretched out in all directions. But the red moon cast a pale crimson-tinged luminescence over everything, and far above the stars were glittering points of silver. ~ Rachel Neumeier, #NFDB
718:There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners. ~ Peter Ustinov, #NFDB
719:The vast interplanetary and vast interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
720:The task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church. It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present-day society make all the more urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize. ~ Pope Paul VI, #NFDB
721:Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
722:Against Nature's silence I use action In the vast indifference I invent a meaning I don't watch unmoved I intervene and say that this and this are wrong and I work to alter them and improve them The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes ~ Peter Weiss, #NFDB
723:Each us is more than one person, many people, a proliferation of our one self. That's why the same person who scorns his surroundings is different from the person who is gladdened or made to suffer by them. In the vast colony of our being there are many different kinds of people, all thinking and feeling differently. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
724:In an era when too many Americans are losing their jobs or working for less, trying to make ends meet, in close cases Judge [Samuel] Alito has ruled the vast majority of the time against the claims of the individual citizens. He has acted instead in favor of government, large corporations and other powerful interests. ~ Edward Kennedy, #NFDB
725:We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease. ~ S Jay Olshansky, #NFDB
726:For far too long the world's poorest people have seen no benefit from the vast natural resources in their own backyards. It is time to end the injustice where ordinary people are silent witnesses, left to suffer without basic services, as the profits from their countries' assets are hidden and plundered by corrupt regimes. ~ Nick Clegg, #NFDB
727:He loved her hair. It was like sunshine. Not the sunshine he saw here in England, but the all-consuming sun found on the open water, traveling between England and France. The vast spread of waves magnified the glory of the sun by reflecting it back on you until the golden glow swallowed you whole. That was her hair. ~ Kristi Ann Hunter, #NFDB
728:In one remote corner of the vast sea of information on the Internet, there was a remote corner, and in a remote corner of that remote corner, and then in a remote corner of a remote corner of a remote corner of that remote corner—that is, in the very depths of the most remote corner of all—a virtual world came back to life. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
729:The word religion literally means, in Latin, to link or bind together; and despite the vast variation in the world's religions, Wilson shows that religions always serve to coordinate and orient people's behavior toward each other and toward the group as a whole, sometimes for the purpose of competing with other groups. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
730:The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience. There's lots of good fish in the sea . . . maybe . . . but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
731:Until the end of his life, whenever the subject of the vast growth of the LBJ Company and associated business enterprises was raised, Lyndon Johnson would emphasize that he owned none of it (“All that is owned by Mrs. Johnson.… I don’t have any interest in government-regulated industries of any kind and never have had”). ~ Robert A Caro, #NFDB
732:We scientists have fantasies of being uniquely qualified to make great discoveries. Alas, reality is cruel: most of us are replaceable. For the vast majority of scientific contributions, if scientist X hadn't achieved it that year, scientist Y would have achieved the same result or something very similar soon thereafter. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
733:At some point, no matter how repressive the regime, the citizenry will come to comprehend the vast power in their hands. The destitute, the Indebted, the beleaguered middle classes; in short, the myriad victims. Control was sleight of hand trickery, and against a hundred thousand defiant citizens, it stood no real chance. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
734:While the details of the Amirs’ religion have been lost to history, most scholars are convinced that by the sixth century C.E., henotheism had become the standard belief of the vast majority of sedentary Arabs, who not only accepted Allah as their High God, but insisted that he was the same god as Yahweh, the god of the Jews. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
735:Chaung Tzu was one of the most natural men the world has seen. He has not given any discipline, he has not given any doctrine, he has not given any catechism. He has simply explained one thing: that if you can be natural and ordinary, just like the birds and trees, you will blossom, you will have your wings open in the vast sky. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
736:To teach your child to only be a Muslim in Muslim spaces or only a Christian in Christian spaces means in a way that you're teaching them a religious identity that is relevant to only a very small part of their lives, because the vast majority of their lives in the 21st century are going to be lived in interaction with others. ~ Eboo Patel, #NFDB
737:Equanimity refers to the ability to remain emotionally composed and steady regardless of what’s happening around us. Remember, feelings are like waves on the surface of the ocean. Don’t attach or identify with them but with the vast ocean beneath them. More than once in life I’ve had to say to myself, I am not my feelings. ~ Ian Morgan Cron, #NFDB
738:It is gratifying to know that, whatever the course of events, you are helping others to do good. Many of us can afford to support some part of the vast network of charities that one of our former presidents called “a thousand points of light.” Those points of light are best seen, like stars at dusk, against a darkening sky. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
739:Remember the vast majority of the Democrats as well as all the Republicans in the House of Representatives in Louisiana voted for my signature-piece of legislation in the house which was a bill, actually a bill for true civil rights. That there must be no discrimination against anyone on the basis of race in affirmative-action. ~ David Duke, #NFDB
740:He says the beast comes out of the sea."
The last laugh died away. Ralph turned involuntarily, a black, humped figure against the lagoon. The assembly looked with him, considered the vast stretches of water, the high sea of beyond, unknown indigo of infinite possibility, heard silently the sough and whisper from the reef ~ William Golding,#NFDB
741:It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does. The vast majority of printed works enter a state of suspended animation within a few weeks or years of publication, from which they are occasionally awakened, for equally short periods, by research students. ~ Eric Hobsbawm, #NFDB
742:state and local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war. This dramatic change in policy gave state and local police an enormous stake in the War on Drugs—not in its success, but in its perpetual existence. Law ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
743:Those who have slept with sorry in their hearts
Know all too well how short but sweet
The instant of their coming-to can be:
The heart is strong, as if it ever sorrowed;
The mind's dear clarity intact; and then,
The vast, unhappy stone from yesterday
Rolls down these vital units to the bottom of oneself. ~ Christopher Logue,#NFDB
744:if something happened and he wasn’t present, he didn’t care about it and barely recognized it. His response then was often just a blank stare. It also fed one theory of why hiring in the West Wing and throughout the executive branch was so slow—filling out the vast bureaucracy was out of his view and thus he couldn’t care less. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
745:I will not accept a new wave of fiscal retrenchment, of belt-tightening, without asking people at the top to make their contribution, to make an additional contribution. I don't think you can ask people on middle and low incomes, who, after all, are the vast majority of the British population, to bear the brunt of this adjustment. ~ Nick Clegg, #NFDB
746:The human imagination may be the most elastic thing in the universe, stretching to encompass the millions of dreams that in centuries of relectless struggle built modern civilization, to entertain the endless doubts that hamper every human enterprise, and to conceive the vast menagerie of boogeymen that trouble every human heart. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
747:Those who have slept with sorrow in their hearts
Know all too well how short but sweet
The instant of their coming-to can be:
The heart is strong, as if it never sorrowed;
The mind's dear clarity intact; and then,
The vast, unhappy stone from yesterday
Rolls down these vital units to the bottom of oneself. ~ Christopher Logue,#NFDB
748:All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful of reference books, but a bookcase the size of the earth would not suffice to hold all the rest, quite apart from the vast discussions that are conducted not with the pen but with the sword and chains. ~ Robert Musil, #NFDB
749:Bertrand Russell had given a talk on the then new quantum mechanics, of whose wonders he was most appreciative. He spoke hard and earnestly in the New Lecture Hall. And when he was done, Professor Whitehead, who presided, thanked him for his efforts, and not least for 'leaving the vast darkness of the subject unobscured'. ~ J Robert Oppenheimer, #NFDB
750:I knew there was probably life elsewhere. But given the vast size and age of the universe, I also knew how astronomically unlikely it was we would ever make contact with it, much less within the narrow window of my own lifetime. We were all probably stuck here for the duration, on the third rock from our sun. Boldly going extinct. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
751:There must not be lacking in our leadership something of that spirit of the Austrian corporal who, when all had fallen into ruins around him, and when Germany seemed to have fallen into chaos, did not hesitate to march forth against the vast army of victorious nations and has already turned the tables decisively against them. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
752:No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
753:And he knew that he would never come again, and that lost magic would not come again. Lost now was all of it - the street, the heat, King's Highway, and Tom the Piper's son, all mixed in with the vast and drowsy murmur of the Fair, and with the sense of absence in the afternoon, and the house that waited, and the child that dreamed. ~ Thomas Wolfe, #NFDB
754:Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.… ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
755:Both of my sisters have been teachers and they used to say you get asked between 300 and 600 questions every day which you have to answer. That's exactly what directing is. And the vast majority of those questions are not very interesting really, but they need somebody to make a decision - a good one or a bad one - and they follow it. ~ Danny Boyle, #NFDB
756:Here the vast bed of waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied convulsion-heaving, boiling, hissing-gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
757:It does not require much thinking to know that, under the operation of the brute law of force, the modern world is pressed down with the weight of misery and affliction, in spite of the vast system of organized Government and mechanical contrivances to make man happy. There seems to be no relief, unless we revert to the law of Love ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
758:The vast majority of Americans are employed in service sector industries, and many of those sectors are highly internationalized. The most high-value added sectors, notably the tech sector, is massively globalized. And, for them, it would be a disaster if America's trade policy was to go down a spiraling route towards protectionism. ~ Judy Woodruff, #NFDB
759:But in the outside world, in places (on the rare occasions I visited them) where the vast blankness of the land and sky made even the enormous supermarkets seem tiny, where, to many, words like “Vassar” were just a random sequence of letters, where weather mattered more than most anything else, I often felt lost, irrelevant, fatuous. I ~ Meghan Daum, #NFDB
760:Some of the comments that have been uttered about Islam do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans. Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion, a religion that respects others. Ours is a country based upon tolerance and we welcome people of all faiths in America. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
761:The colors and views of this real paradise on Earth were unbelievable… you know, how can they be real?! Even harder to believe is how the vast majority of our planet’s inhabitants are spending their lives without ever having the opportunity to see all of the absolute beauty of nature that can be discovered in this part of the world. ~ Sahara Sanders, #NFDB
762:For everything man does has significance. An evil act will generally cause some disruption or negative reaction in the vast system of the Sefirot; and a good act, correct or raise things to a higher level. Each of the reactions extends out into all of the worlds and comes back into our own, back upon ourselves, in one form or another. ~ Zachary Lazar, #NFDB
763:Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.… It ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
764:The utility of "structural" racism for demagogues like Jackson is that even while acknowledging that the vast majority of whites are no longer overtly racist, the concept makes all whites guilty nonetheless. No individual white has to be a racist in actual thought or deed to participate in the racist system or to reap its privileges. ~ David Horowitz, #NFDB
765:The vast majority of us are far more capable than we realize. We grow up with parents, teachers, bosses all telling us what we can’t do. Don’t touch it; you’ll break it. They mean well, but they leave us with a sense of our own incapacity. When the day comes, if it comes, that you begin to believe in yourself, the world will be yours. ~ Jack McDevitt, #NFDB
766:In the vast majority of cases (83 percent), landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them.8 ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
767:Plenty of people didn't care for him much, but there is a huge difference between disliking somebody - maybe even disliking them a lot - and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire. It was a difference which kept the vast majority of the population alive from day to day. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
768:A nongrowing company can be tremendously prosperous and deliver the vast majority of that prosperity to its shareholders. It just might not come in the form of a rising share price, which is the only metric most shareholders understand. That’s why shareholders need to be trained to value other metrics or be replaced by people who do. ~ Douglas Rushkoff, #NFDB
769:It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
770:Like wine, Provençal magic had its own distinctive terroir. It was rich and chaotic and romantic. It was a night-magic, confabulated out of moons and silver, wine and blood, knights and fairies, wind and rivers and forests. It concerned itself with good and evil but also with the vast intermediate realm in between, the realm of mischief. ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
771:Shakespeare is God, of course. I have studied his plays for the vast majority of my sentient life. When I was a kid, my parents found an old copy of the LP recording of Richard Burton in John Gielgud's Broadway production of Hamlet and they gave it to me for my birthday. I listened to it till the grooves wore thin and I was off and running. ~ Ken Ludwig, #NFDB
772:Wherever battles are waged there are casualties, and death is a common occurrence. But what is closest to our hearts is the best interest of the people and the suffering of the vast majority, and when we die for the people, it is an honorable death. Nevertheless we should do our best to avoid unnecessary casualties.
Mao Zedong, 1944 ~ Henning Mankell,#NFDB
773:Jan had never seen a really sumptuous establishment like Lancut, but he had worked often at Castle Gorka and could see the vast difference between how a count lived, with his fifty horses and forty servants, and how his peasants lived, with meat once a year, a new suit of clothes once every ten years, little medicine and less education. ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
774:The accursed ship didn't sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavour! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I have been violated; violated by a team of accountants. ~ Paul Murray, #NFDB
775:I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director's work, in a sense. If you're a writer who is also going to direct, you're doing all your preparation: You're already visualizing everything, you're imagining how the lines are going to be read, you see the blocking in your head, and you know the rhythm and the pacing. ~ Harold Ramis, #NFDB
776:In the vast void, her kiss tells me I’m not alone. She touches her tongue to mine, and a groan slips out. I think it comes from me. I’m dizzy and breathless and full of strange emotions that I can’t make sense of and don’t want to. I know the gist. I’m happy. This is a high I’ve never been able to achieve through pills or booze or other people. ~ Erin Watt, #NFDB
777:The traveller gets out, walks up and down the platform, sees the vast slow flare and steaming of the mighty engine, rushes into the station, and looks into the faces of all the people passing with the same sense of instant familiarity, greeting, and farewell,--that lonely, strange, and poignantly wordless feeling that Americans know so well. ~ Thomas Wolfe, #NFDB
778:The vast majority of us are far more capable than we realize. We grow up with parents, teachers, bosses all telling us what we can’t do. Don’t touch it; you’ll break it. They mean well, but they leave us with a sense of our own incapacity. When the day comes, if it comes, that you begin to believe in yourself, the world will be yours. —Mara ~ Jack McDevitt, #NFDB
779:Heroism is not something you occupy day to day. It's a moment, at best. You get something right, almost by accident, and then you go back to your bumbling, myopic default setting. So I think about this-about how the vast majority of our lives are passed in a decidedly unheroic way- and I wonder, is heroism measured then, by account balances? ~ Ron Currie Jr, #NFDB
780:I mean, all this stuff you're involved in, it's all gossip. It's people talking about each other behind their backs. That's the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. And besides that, it's fucking dorky. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
781:Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both. — Rev. Montague Summers ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
782:Yet the economists in Moscow had no reliable index of what was going on in the vast empire they notionally maintained; the false accounting was so endemic that at one point the KGB resorted to turning the cameras of its spy satellites onto Soviet Uzbekistan in an attempt to gather accurate information about the state’s own cotton harvest. ~ Adam Higginbotham, #NFDB
783:The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. ~ Edward Snowden, #NFDB
784:Google offers to its “customers” is free. Internet searches are free. Email is free. The vast resources of the data centers, costing Google an estimated thirty billion dollars to build, are provided essentially for free. Free is not by accident. If your business plan is to have access to the data of the entire world, then free is an imperative. ~ George Gilder, #NFDB
785:If the gathering had included more veterans of that elongated state of low-intensity warfare known as Society, this observation would have been keenly made by those soi-disant sentries who stood upon the battlements, keeping vigil against bounders who would struggle their way up the vast glacis separating wage slaves from Equity Participants. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
786:I had come to believe that her powers, whatever their nature, were greater than mine. But now I was chagrined to realize
that I had failed to grasp how we were in at least one way alike: Some things visible to us were invisible to the vast majority of human beings, even if perhaps each of us saw different things from what the other perceived. ~ Dean Koontz,#NFDB
787:The energy requirements for interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades. If they want to make contact, they would make contact; if not, they would save their energy and go elsewhere. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
788:But first, before anyone else, regular people were on the scene, saving one another. They did incredible things, these regular people. They lifted rubble off survivors with car jacks. They used garden hoses to force air into voids where people were trapped. In fact, as in most disasters, the vast majority of rescues were done by ordinary folks. ~ Amanda Ripley, #NFDB
789:I mean, all this stuff you're involved in, it's all gossip. It's people talking about each other behind their backs. That's the vast majority of all this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. And besides that, it's fucking dorky. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
790:I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
791:A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable. ~ Edward Bernays, #NFDB
792:For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast, shadowless, and unsuggestive blue. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
793:Walter loves the sea, and I need it in some elemental way that I cannot even come close to verbalizing. I become dim and shriveled somehow at my very core if I am away from the sea too long. When I return to it I seem to fill up and overflow with it, soaking in the vast, sighing wetness of it like a parched vine in a long, soft spring rain. ~ Anne Rivers Siddons, #NFDB
794:Contrary to popular accounts, very few scientists in the world - possibly none - have a sufficiently thorough, 'big picture' understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming. To the public, we all might seem like experts, but the vast majority of us work on only a small portion of the problem. ~ Roy Spencer, #NFDB
795:I’m afraid that you’ll never understand me fully, and because of that, sometimes you’ll be frightened, disgusted, annoyed, or pleased. The thing that makes me different from all of you is the vast inner life I have. I just thrive in this, by nature. The bigger and deeper this inner life grows, the less anyone of you will understand me. That’s okay. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
796:There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca, #NFDB
797:As an Asian American, I'm aware of how stereotypes can be very destructive. We've been defined by the drag queens. And yes, they exist. But we've been defined as irresponsible, flamboyant, loud, and garish. I think what we need to do - and what we haven't done as aggressively as we should have - is to depict the vast diversity of the GLBT community. ~ George Takei, #NFDB
798:Conservatives are now largely fighting rearguard actions. They are trying to reassemble a world that never really existed quite as they imagine it (and to the extent that it did, it existed at the expense of all the people—the vast majority of us—forced to disappear, into the closet, the kitchen, segregated space, invisibility and silence). Thanks ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
799:Roosevelt’s agents on the Arabian peninsula, some of them oil prospectors, had begun to glimpse the vast wealth sloshing beneath the sands. They had urged their president to embrace the Saudi royals before the British wheedled in, and Roosevelt did, flattering Abdul Aziz as best he could and winning limited pledges of military and economic cooperation. ~ Steve Coll, #NFDB
800:But first whom shall we send
In search of this new world, whom shall we find
Sufficient? Who shall tempt, with wand'ring feet
The dark unbottomed infinite abyss
And through the palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight
Upborne with indefatigable wings
Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive
The happy isle? ~ John Milton,#NFDB
801:No one has ever called for a ban on an entire religion before. Even after the horror of September 11, George W. Bush made a point of standing on the rubble of Ground Zero and soon after imploring people not to take this out on their Muslim neighbors. He made it clear that terrorism was a perversion of Islam, that the vast majority of Muslims were peaceful. ~ Katy Tur, #NFDB
802:Real sexual conversations are enormously intimate and beautiful because they reveal so much about who we are and what we want. What are the emotional needs we bring to our sexuality and how do we connect to ourselves and connect to a partner? There's such a rich tapestry that can be revealed, but the vast majority of couples have never had those talks. ~ Esther Perel, #NFDB
803:The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things; they haven’t yet realized how much and what they need to organize in order to get the real payoff. They need to gather everything that requires thinking about and then do that thinking if their organizational efforts are to be successful. The ~ David Allen, #NFDB
804:We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such a powerof guessing right that before very many hypotheses shall have been tried, intelligent guessing may be expected to lead us to one which will support all tests, leaving the vast majority of possible hypotheses unexamined. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce, #NFDB
805:I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
806:One of the greatest concerns that I had when I became President was the vast array of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union and a few other countries, and also the great proliferation of conventional weapons, non-nuclear weapons, particularly as a tremendous burden on the economies of developing or very poor countries. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
807:The door was opened for him by an old servant in black, who proposed at once to show him to his room. He looked round the vast hall, which, when he had before known it, was ever filled with signs of life, and felt at once that it was empty and deserted. It struck him as intolerably cold, and he saw that the huge fireplace was without a spark of fire. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
808:The methodological benefits of functional languages are well known [Bac78, Hug89, HJ94], but still the vast majority of programs are written in imperative languages such as C. This apparent contradiction is easily explained by the fact that functional languages have historically been slower than their more traditional cousins, but this gap is narrowing. ~ Chris Okasaki, #NFDB
809:WHEN we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright—the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
810:As of the second decade in the twenty-first century, nearly all acts of terror around the world (as opposed to acts of terror confined to one country, as in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have been committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Of course the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But this frequently noted fact is meaningless. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
811:Neurally speaking, who you are depends on where you’ve been. Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry – and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast, detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
812:So very many silences, and kinds of silence: chapels and churches and confessionals, glades and gorges, pregnant pauses and searing lovemaking; the stifling stifled brooding silence just before a thunderstorm unleashes itself wild on the world; the silence of space, the vast of vista; the crucial silences between notes, without which there could be no music; ~ Brian Doyle, #NFDB
813:For the next ninety years, the vast and profligate Saudi royal family would survive by essentially buying off the doctrinaire Wahhabists who had brought them to power, financially subsidizing their activities so long as their disciples directed their jihadist efforts abroad. The most famous product of this arrangement was to be a man named Osama bin Laden. ~ Scott Anderson, #NFDB
814:Insomniac is an impassioned work-an inspired amalgam of academic and first-hand research, memoir, analysis, and the kind of obsessive brooding we associate with the insomniac state. Much here is fascinating, and much is upsetting; here is a cri de coeur from a lifetime insomniac that is sure to appeal to the vast army of fellow insomniacs the world over. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
815:I suspect that the vast majority of people, not knowing in advance whether they will either end up in a permanently vegetative state or be diagnosed with cancer, would prefer that any resources that would be spent on PVS care be reallocated to cancer research - or some similar enterprise that has the potential to help human beings who might actually recover. ~ Jacob M Appel, #NFDB
816:Learning to read happens once and once only for most of us, and for the vast majority of adults in first-world countries it happened a long time ago. You have to dig deep, deep down into the bog of the almost lost, and then carry what you have found carefully to the surface, and then you have to find the words and images to describe what you see on your spade. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
817:Postmillennialism expects the proclaiming of the Spirit-blessed gospel of Jesus Christ to win the vast majority of human beings to salvation in the present age. Increasing gospel success will gradually produce a time in history prior to Christ’s return in which faith, righteousness, peace, and prosperity will prevail in the affairs of people and of nations. ~ Darrell L Bock, #NFDB
818:These are things that we hear from military families everywhere we go. But it - on PTSD, the thing that I want to make sure people understand is that the vast majority of veterans and military families aren't dealing with any kind of mental health. But there are - these are what are called the invisible wounds of this war. And many times they don't present. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
819:If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us. ~ A A Gill, #NFDB
820:The vast differences in power contributed to faulty social theories of these differences that are still with us today. When a society is economically dominant, it is easy for its members to assume that such dominance reflects a deeper superiority--whether religious, racial, genetic, cultural, or institutional--rather than an accident of timing or geography. ~ Jeffrey D Sachs, #NFDB
821:What could define God, [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God. They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
822:As for those who protest that I am robbing people of the great comfort and consolation they gain from Christianity, I can only say that Christianity includes hell, eternal torture for the vast majority of humanity, for most of your relatives and friends. . . . If I could feel that I had robbed anybody of his faith in hell, I should not be ashamed or regretful. ~ Rupert Hughes, #NFDB
823:In The Jaguar's Children we enter the dangerous borderlands between countries and generations; myth and magic; human community and the vast, infinitely mysterious, wild environment. Here, John Vaillant proves that his heart and imagination are as expansive and fierce as his radiant intellect. Never have I encountered a writer with more energy or compassion. ~ Melanie Rae Thon, #NFDB
824:The hardhearted person never sees people as a people, but rather as mere objects or as impersonal cogs in an ever-turning wheel. In the vast wheel of industry, he sees men as hands. In the massive wheel of big city life, he sees men as digits in a multitude. In the deadly wheel of army life, he sees men as numbers in a regiment. He depersonalizes life. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
825:Trading has taught me not to take the conventional wisdom for granted. What money I made in trading is testimony to the fact that the majority is wrong a lot of the time. The vast majority is wrong even more of the time. I've learned that markets, which are often just mad crowds, are often irrational; when emotionally overwrought, they're almost always wrong. ~ Richard Dennis, #NFDB
826:There can be no doubt that the existing Fauna and Flora is but the last term of a long series of equally numerous contemporary species, which have succeeded one another, by the slow and gradual substitution of species for species, in the vast interval of time which has elapsed between the deposition of the earliest fossiliferous strata and the present day. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
827:Vic smelled the vast vault filled with books before she saw it, because her eyes required time to adjust to the cavernous dark. She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
828:More and more, I have come to realize how thoughts and concepts are all that block us from always being . . . in the absolute. . . . When the view is there, thoughts are seen for what they truly are: fleeting and transparent, and only relative. . . . You do not cling to thoughts and emotions or reject them, but welcome them all within the vast embrace of Rigpa. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
829:My Third-World roots remind me that the vast majority of our fellow human beings live hungry, sick, and uneducated, and that most social scientists, even in that world, ignore that ugly reality. This is why my papers in mathematical sociology deal not with free choice among 30 flavors of ice-cream, but with social structure, social cohesion, and social marginality. ~ Mario Bunge, #NFDB
830:Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid? ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
831:Naheed Nenshi is a friend of mine. We - he - knows how close I am to all of the cultural, ethnic, and religious communities in Canada, particularly his own Ismaili community. By the way, the vast majority of Canadian Muslims, particularly Ismaili Muslims that I know, strongly support our government's reinforcement of the public nature of the public citizenship oath. ~ Jason Kenney, #NFDB
832:recent studies have debunked the oft-repeated assertion that half of all marriages end in divorce. A closer look at the statistics indicates that a majority of marriages actually last a lifetime. Furthermore, surveys show that the vast majority of married people describe themselves as happy, fulfilled, and unwilling to contemplate any other condition of life.1 ~ R Albert Mohler Jr, #NFDB
833:When the news of Prabhakaran’s death had broken, Raghavan had gotten drunk at home and wept complicated tears - for this comrades, for his estranged and cruel friend, for the vast toll of a campaign begun with mere black flags and Solignum graffiti, for the devastation of cause he still believed in, and for a fight that had somewhere gone very horribly wrong. ~ Samanth Subramanian, #NFDB
834:Even today, Hawaii has passed none of the bans and restrictions that other state legislatures have imposed on abortion since the early 2000s—no waiting periods, no parental consent, no counseling rules—and for the vast majority of Hawaiian women living almost anywhere on the islands, abortion is easily available. As far as we were concerned, abortion was a nonissue. ~ Willie Parker, #NFDB
835:The vast majority of you (and democracy is, after all, “majority rule”) don’t actively participate in, protect, fight for or even understand democracy. That’s perfectly natural, mainly because you’ve never really had a democracy. What you have here, technically, is an oligarchy dressed down and slumming around in the hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans of democracy. In ~ Cintra Wilson, #NFDB
836:We are not only slaves of the culture in which we have been brought up; we are also slaves to the vast cloud of misery and sorrow of all humanity, to the vastness of its confusion, violence and brutality. We never seem to pay attention to the accumulated sorrow of man. Nor are we aware of the terrible violence which has been gathering generation after generation. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
837:Yet during a twenty-year period there wasn’t an American alive who wouldn’t have recognized Jimmy Hoffa immediately, the way Tony Soprano is recognized today. The vast majority of Americans would have known him by the sound of his voice alone. From 1955 until 1965 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as Elvis. From 1965 until 1975 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as the Beatles. Jimmy ~ Charles Brandt, #NFDB
838:Life may show us glimpses of justice. But the vast majority of it, you will find, will be unruled, unregulated, and unjust. You must create your own sense of justice and act from it. Not because the world is just—but because you are just. After all, you are a microcosm of the world. You cannot prevent what the world shall give to you. But you can control yourself.” Aidan ~ Morgan Rice, #NFDB
839:... and when it seemed as though the mists were hiding a fathomless abyss, Lipa and her mother who were born in poverty and prepared to live so till the end, giving up to others everything except their frightened, gentle souls, may have fancied for a minute perhaps that in the vast, mysterious world, among the endless series of lives, they, too, counted for something... ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
840:Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
841:But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect—people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us—then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
842:The menu of this kitchen will have more than soup; it will serve as an opportunity to explore the vast untapped power of food as a force for participatory democracy, as a means of empowerment for those who have little and as a lens through which we embrace, and in fact relish, our differences but see and live through our commonalities. If you eat, then you are a part of this. ~ Sam Kass, #NFDB
843:Even when we were together I was filled with a sense of dread, not for the parting that would inevitably occur, but simply because I had a periscope into life, the vast and intimate sadness of it, for the first time, and that this is why I loved you, because even the worst of the world was there to be discovered together, shoulder to shoulder with you, my beloved stranger. ~ Tahmima Anam, #NFDB
844:The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity,” Wittgenstein says. Thus it may take an outside view to show the native users of a language that their own utterances, which appear so simple and transparent to themselves, are, in fact, enormously complex and contain and conceal the vast apparatus of a true language ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
845:The vast majority of local people will neither know all of the initiatives nor have any perception that the individual elements are beginning to contribute to making their home town more environmentally sustainable. It is even less likely that visitors will gain any picture of what is being achieved. It is to solve this problem that the Green Map System has been developed. ~ Paul Burrell, #NFDB
846:The vast majority of the peoples of the world are against war and against aggression. If they make their wishes known and effective, war can be stopped. It all depends on whether they are willing to make the effort necessary for the purpose. For, that it will require an effort, no one who considers the history of the world on these subjects can doubt. ~ Robert Cecil 1st Earl of Salisbury, #NFDB
847:Sadly, at a time when so much sophisticated cultural criticism by hip intellectuals from diverse locations extols a vision of cultural hybridity, border crossing, subjectivity constructed out of plurality, the vast majority of folks in this society still believe in a notion of identity that is rooted in a sense of essential traits and characteristics that are fixed and static. ~ Bell Hooks, #NFDB
848:Sadly, at a time when so much sophisticated cultural criticism by hip intellectuals from diverse locations extols a vision of cultural hybridity, border crossing, subjectivity constructed out of plurality, the vast majority of folks in this society still believe in a notion of identity that is rooted in a sense of essential traits and characteristics that are fixed and static. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
849:The people of Earth are emerging from an amnesiac-like state of collective shock, which has blocked the influx of spiritual knowledge into the human gene pool. And while it is quite obvious to many that “You create your reality”, the vast majority of humans still need to be awakened from the unconsciously controlled trance of powerlessness that they voluntarily took on. ~ Barbara Marciniak, #NFDB
850:We feel surprise when travelers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals. This is a wonder which does not at first strike the eye of the body, but, after reflection, the eye of reason. ~ Steven Johnson, #NFDB
851:Hillary Clinton never had this kind of success with her invention of the vast right-wing conspiracy. She tried, but that bombed out compared to this. Back then, it was her husband that ended up being impeached despite her conspiracy theory. But, sadly, now the chants of "lock her up" are just a distant, bitter memory, and the Donald Trump administration is in the crosshairs. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
852:How far the gentlemen of dark complexion will get with their independence, now that they have declared it, I don’t know. There are serious difficulties in their way. The vast majority of people of their race are but two or three inches removed from gorillas: it will be a sheer impossibility, for a long, long while, to interest them in anything above pork-chops and bootleg gin. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
853:In my small way, I preserved and catalogued, and dipped into the vast ocean of learning that awaited, knowing all the time that the life of one man was insufficient for even the smallest part of the wonders that lay within. It is cruel that we are granted the desire to know, but denied the time to do so properly. We all die frustrated; it is the greatest lesson we have to learn. ~ Iain Pears, #NFDB
854:Standing in the center of the crowd, his solitude was enormous. He felt that in all the vast and frozen space in which he lived his life - every hand needy, every heart wanting something from him - everybody had a reason to be and a place to land. Everybody but him. For him there was nothing. In all the cold and bitter world, there was not a single place for him to sit down. ~ Robert Goolrick, #NFDB
855:We have created a society in which all the nation’s economic gains flow to the top and the vast majority sees income stagnation or decline. We have embraced bankruptcy, debt, long bouts of joblessness, and flat or shrinking paychecks as the new normal. And we have lavished cash, tax cuts, and subtle subsidies on the richest among us, whose prosperity continues to blossom. ~ David Cay Johnston, #NFDB
856:Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced - a catastrophe of our own making. ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
857:Whether various acts of culturally sanctioned cannibalism existed or not (and it seems absurd to consider that they never did), the fact remains that for the vast majority of Westerners, our feelings regarding the practice have resulted (at least in part) from our exposure to a long list of influential writers beginning with the Ancient Greeks and extending into the 21st century. ~ Bill Schutt, #NFDB
858:The way we think may be completely different, but you and I are an ancient, archetypal couple, the original man and woman. We are the model for Adam and Eve. For all couples in love, there comes a moment when a man gazes at a woman with the very same kind of realization. It is an infinite helix, the dance of two souls resonating, like the twist of DNA, like the vast universe. ~ Banana Yoshimoto, #NFDB
859:We need to put limits on how much an individual, group or business can spend on influencing an individual legislator or a whole set of legislators. Look at the vast sums that the NRA spends on getting all legislators to be soft on gun control. Legislators find it hard to refuse the NRA's largess when they need contributions to their political campaign wherever they can get them. ~ Philip Kotler, #NFDB
860:I've learned from my experience that desire is 80% of achievement. That if you really, really want something, if you really, really, really want to do something, that the vast majority of achieving it is wanting it. I mean, really wanting it. Not a preference, and not, "Gee, I hope this." I mean really wanting it. It is the desire that makes you do what you have to do to achieve. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
861:By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture , melody in music , meter and rhyme in poetry , plot and narrative and character in fiction , the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience . They purposely excluded people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification in favour of social one-upmanship and an ever-narrowing, in-crowd elite. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
862:Oh! How good it is to be your age! I remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains of Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is just ending, and out of the vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is... ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
863:The other way is the multiverse way. That says that maybe the universe we are in is one of a very large number of universes. The vast majority will not contain life because they have the wrong gravitational constant or the wrong this constant or that constant. But as the number of universes climbs, the odds mount that a tiny minority of universes will have the right fine-tuning. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
864:We got interested in aesthetics, and then at the end of all of it we fell off the precipice. It's almost like crawling back because so many techniques are lost, and so we're going to have a [small] reserve of teachers who can teach the vast number of interested students. We have these poor, hungry, starving people who want to learn something and no place to get it. It's a tragedy. ~ Nelson Shanks, #NFDB
865:God wants us to relieve suffering, pursue justice, facilitate reconciliation, and free the heart to love, but He desires for us to do so in a way that reveals His Character. It is not enough just to do well for others or to do things well. We must do well in our unique way in order to reveal the vast creativity of a God who loves to bring change through the most unlikely channels. ~ Dan B Allender, #NFDB
866:He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding under the vast caverns of a subterranean country. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
867:Freedom of enterprise was from the beginning not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to work or to starve, it spelled toil, insecurity, and fear for the vast majority of the population. If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
868:It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality. ~ Susan B Anthony, #NFDB
869:Jesus didn’t do it all. Jesus didn’t meet every need. He left people waiting in line to be healed. He left one town to preach to another. He hid away to pray. He got tired. He never interacted with the vast majority of people on the planet. He spent thirty years in training and only three years in ministry. He did not try to do it all. And yet, he did everything God asked him to do. ~ Kevin DeYoung, #NFDB
870:Neither your life nor my life, nor the future of this country, will be affected in the slightest by whether Linda Tripp is naughty or nice. But if any president is able to commit crimes with impunity by using the vast powers and perquisites of his office to cover up, then we will have a danger of corruption and abuse of power that can only grow with the passing years and generations. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
871:Now, if doctors were aware that medicine was not a science and that they were pulling what is undoubtedly the largest and most successful confidence trick ever tried the damage would be fairly minimal. But the problem is compounded by the fact that the vast majority of doctors believe the lie that they are taught; they believe that they are scientists, practising an applied science. ~ Vernon Coleman, #NFDB
872:We each had a hundred arms and on each arm a thousand eyes, so that, with our thoughts connected, not one sight in the vast waters went unseen. There was no need for sound, so there was no way to hear it. We tasted the waters, and, with our sight, that told us all we needed to know. We tasted the suns, so many leagues above the water, and turned their taste into the food we needed. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
873:I know a lot of people have very strong and definite plans that they've worked out on all kinds of things, but we're subject to a tremendous number of outside influences and the vast majority of them cannot be predicted. So my idea is to stay flexible. My only plan is to keep coming to work every day. I like to steer the boat each day rather than plan ahead way into the future. ~ Henry Earl Singleton, #NFDB
874:Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze, A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner: now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
875:This is a man with an old face, always old... There was pathos, in his face, and in his eyes. The early weariness; and sometimes tears in his eyes, Which he let slip unconsciously on his cheek, Or brushed away with an unconcerned hand. There were tears for human suffering, or for a glance Into the vast futility of life, Which he had seen from the first, being old When he was born. ~ Edgar Lee Masters, #NFDB
876:Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, no one can mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
877:I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.
The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world:
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
878:Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
879:They could see below them in the declining light the vast expanse of the forest country, a dark sleeping sea of sombre green undulating as far as the violet and purple range of mountains; the shining sinuosity of the river like an immense letter S of beaten silver; the brown ribbon of houses following the sweep of both banks, overtopped by the twin hills uprising above the nearer tree-tops. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
880:We, the over-class, have taken those basic human drives and advanced our own selves through their exploitation. We have monetized human consumption, manipulated morals and laws to direct the masses by fear or hatred, and, in doing so, have managed to create a system of wealth and remuneration that has concentrated the vast majority of the world’s wealth in the hands of a select few. ~ Guillermo del Toro, #NFDB
881:Art lives on the mental plane (the real painting is not the set of dry pigments on the canvas nor is a symphony the sequence of sound waves that convey it to our ear) but, as the post-modernists insist, is reinterpreted in new contexts by each appreciator. As for gossip, which includes the vast majority of our thoughts, its essence is its relation to a unique local part of time and space. ~ David Mumford, #NFDB
882:For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
883:The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
884:We were all too human then, the vast ocean surrounding us and the tiny island we inhabited. We were two small beating hearts in this world, yet what we sought now seemed enormous. What we wanted and what could be created between us, a spark of life, so small and fragile, was too overwhelming to fully comprehend. My heart beat heavily in my chest with the weight of what we were trying for. ~ Meredith Wild, #NFDB
885:When I looked through the telescope, Dante began explaining what I was looking at. I didn’t hear a word. Something happened inside me as I looked out into the vast universe. Through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than I’d ever imagined. And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and—I don’t know—it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered. ~ Benjamin Alire S enz, #NFDB
886:White hate crimes, white hate speech. I still try to claim I wasn't brought up to hate. But hate isn't the half of it. I grew up in the vast encircling presumption of whiteness - that primary quality of being which knows itself, its passions, only against an otherness that has to be dehumanized. I grew up in white silence that was utterly obsessional. Race was the theme whatever the topic. ~ Adrienne Rich, #NFDB
887:In his laborious efforts to attain mountaintops, where the air is lighter and purer, the climber gains new strength of limb. In the endeavor to over come obstacles of the way, the soul trains itself to conquer difficulties; and the spectacle of the vast horizon, which from the highest crest offers itself on all sides to the eyes, raises his spirit to the Divine Author and Soverign of Nature. ~ Pope Pius XI, #NFDB
888:Recent research, based on matching declared income on tax returns with corporate compensation records, allows me to state that the vast majority (60 to 70 percent, depending on what definitions one chooses) of the top 0.1 percent of the income hierarchy in 2000–2010 consists of top managers. By comparison, athletes, actors, and artists of all kinds make up less than 5 percent of this group. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
889:... there are no chains so galling as the chains of ignorance--no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge. O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now, have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability--no teachings but the teachings of the Holy Spirit. ~ Maria W Stewart, #NFDB
890:To the North-West I looked, and in the wide field of my glass, saw plain the bright glare of the fire from the Red Pit, shine upwards against the underside of the vast chin of the North-West Watcher—The Watching Thing of the North-West…. "That which hath Watched from the Beginning, and until the opening of the Gateway of Eternity" came into my thoughts, as I looked through the glass … ~ William Hope Hodgson, #NFDB
891:How It Seems To Me
In the vast abyss before time, self
is not, and soul commingles
with mist, and rock, and light. In time,
soul brings the misty self to be.
Then slow time hardens self to stone
while ever lightening the soul,
till soul can loose its hold of self
and both are free and can return
to vastness and dissolve in light,
the long light after time. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
892:In the vast majority of movies, everything is done for the audience. We are cued to laugh or cry, be frightened or relieved; Hitchcock called the movies a machine for causing emotions in the audience. Bresson (and Ozu) take a different approach. They regard, and ask us to regard along with them, and to arrive at conclusions about their characters that are our own. This is the cinema of empathy. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
893:Prologue Summer, 1962 MARSH MCKITTRICK’S BUICK WAS passed through the gates of the vast Government complex outside Langley. He eased onto the turnpike, then sped toward Washington, touching his briefcase nervously and looking into the rearview mirror. Two cars filled with heavily armed guards followed closely. Sanderson Hooper beside him and Michael Nordstrom in the rear seat remained speechless. ~ Leon Uris, #NFDB
894:Remember, the nicest guy, the guy with no self-serving agenda whatsoever, the one who wants nothing from you, won’t approach you at all. You are not comparing the man who approaches you to all men, the vast majority of whom have no sinister intent. Instead, you are comparing him to other men who make unsolicited approaches to women alone, or to other men who don’t listen when you say no. In ~ Gavin de Becker, #NFDB
895:To find out how widespread screen apnea was, I observed over two hundred people using computers and smartphones in offices, homes, and cafés. The vast majority of them were holding their breath, or breathing very shallowly, especially when responding to e-mail. What’s more, their posture while seated at a computer was often compromised, which only further contributed to restricted breathing. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
896:Try to find your individuality, your integrity, and make the effort of not compromising. Because the more you compromise, the less you are an individual. You are only a cog in the wheel, just a part in the vast mechanism, just a small part of the mob - not an individual in your own beauty, in your own right. I am absolutely against compromise. Death is far more beautiful than a life of compromise. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
897:Feebleness of will brings about weakness of head, and the abyss, in spite of its horror, comes to fascinate us, as though it were a place of refuge. Terrible danger! For this abyss is within us; this gulf, open like the vast jaws of an infernal serpent bent on devouring us, is in the depth of our own being, and our liberty floats over this void, which is always seeking to swallow it up. ~ Henri Fr d ric Amiel, #NFDB
898:Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, present, and to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance that separates one's own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair. ~ Elizabeth von Arnim, #NFDB
899:All these stupendous objects are daily around us; but because they are constantly exposed to our view, they never affect our minds, so natural is it for us to admire new, rather than grand objects. Therefore the vast multitude of stars which diversify the beauty of this immense body does not call the people together; but when any change happens therein, the eyes of all are fixed upon the heavens. ~ Saint Basil, #NFDB
900:War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only thru annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
901:Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
902:A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic consciousness when his disciple, by meditation, has strengthened his mind to a degree where the vast vistas would not overwhelm him. Mere intellectual willingness or open-mindedness is not enough. Only adequate enlargement of consciousness by yoga practice and devotional bhakti can prepare one to absorb the liberating shock of omnipresence. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
903:I am proud of Russia and I am sure that the vast majority of Russian citizens have great love and respect for their Motherland. We have much to be proud of: Russian culture and Russian history. We have every reason to believe in the future of our country. But we have no obsession that Russia must be a super power in the international arena. The only thing we do is protecting our vital interests. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
904:The dismantling of the vast and wholly parasitic armaments industry had given an unprecedented—sometimes, indeed, unhealthy—boost to the world economy. No longer were vital raw materials and brilliant engineering talents swallowed up in a virtual black hole—or, even worse, turned to destruction. Instead, they could be used to repair the ravages and neglect of centuries, by rebuilding the world. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
905:The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practicedby every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
906:America was the vast kingdom of the Devil, its redemption impossible or doubtful; but the fanatical mission against the natives’ heresy was mixed with the fever that New World treasures stirred in the conquering hosts. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, faithful comrade of Hernán Cortés in the conquest of Mexico, wrote that they had arrived in America “to serve God and His Majesty and also to get riches. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
907:I can tell any liberal why he or she thinks what they think. I can predict to them what their reaction to any event or person is going to be, because I know them, because I have taken the time because I'm curious to study it. I know what liberalism is. I know from where it springs and derives, and I know the vast majority of people who are liberals, what they are going to do, say, and think about. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
908:So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once. ~ Tony Hoagland, #NFDB
909:The advent of computers had turned redistricting into an expensive, cynical, and highly precise science. Hofeller, the foremost practitioner on the Republican side, had professionalized the vast ideological sorting of the country into warring partisan camps. On his laptop was a program called Maptitude that contained the population details of every neighborhood, including the residents’ racial makeup. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
910:Those who manipulate the shadows that dominate our lives are the agents, publicists, marketing departments, promoters, script writers, tel- evision and movie producers, advertisers, video technicians, photogra- phers, bodyguards, wardrobe consultants, fitness trainers, pollsters, public announcers, and television news personalities who create the vast stage for illusion. They are the puppet masters. ~ Chris Hedges, #NFDB
911:The other slaves in the field never let that house slave knew - know what they were really thinking. If the house slave said, well one of these days all of us will live in the plantation, they said, uh huh. They went along with him. But if you came up to them and said, let's go, they would be gone just like that.And in, in America you have the same situation.You have the vast masses who are still slaves. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
912:To the North-West I looked, and in the wide field of my glass, saw plain the bright glare of the fire from the Red Pit, shine upwards against the underside of the vast chin of the North-West Watcher—The Watching Thing of the North-West…. "That which hath Watched from the Beginning, and until the opening of the Gateway of Eternity" came into my thoughts, as I looked through the glass …
. ~ William Hope Hodgson,#NFDB
913:Most violent criminals are impulsive, disorganized, and easily caught. The vast majority of homicides are committed by people known to the victim and, despite game attempts to throw off the police, these offenders are usually identified and arrested. It’s a tiny minority of criminals, maybe 5 percent, who present the biggest challenge—the ones whose crimes reveal preplanning and unremorseful rage. ~ Michelle McNamara, #NFDB
914:The vast majority of people support the idea of an enlightened, modern union of countries demonstrating solidarity. Film director Wim Wenders recently summed up the problem to me very well. He said the idea of Europe has become an administration, and now people think that the administration is the idea. But that doesn't mean we should give up on the idea - it means we should change the administration. ~ Martin Schulz, #NFDB
915:We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
916:As she moved swiftly and noiselessly through the vast palace cellar, odd noises weltered toward her. Voices and echoes of water rippled through the air as if, in some magic chamber, whales and dolphins cavorted among young maidens in great tanks of water. When she reached it, all the fish turned into laundry, stirred and beaten in steaming cauldrons by glum, limp-haired women as wet as mackerels. ~ Patricia A McKillip, #NFDB
917:This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can’t be any other rules. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
918:We must grant our attacker the vast advantage of striking the first blow, or at least attempting to do so. But thereafter we may return the attention with what should optimally be overwhelming violence. "The best defense is a good offense." This is true, and while we cannot apply it strictly to personal defensive conduct, we can propose a corollary: "The best personal defense is an explosive counterattack. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
919:Above we worried about how to think about our initial conditions, and we now have a radical answer: this information isn't fundamentally about our physical reality, but about our place in it. The vast complexity we observe is an illusion in the sense that the underlying reality is quite simple to describe, and what requires close to a googol bits to specify is just our particular address in the multiverse. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
920:Power, in Case's world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the multinationals that shaped the course of human history, had transcended old barriers. Viewed as organisms, they had attained a kind of immortality. You couldn't kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder, assume the vacated position, access the vast banks of corporate memory... ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
921:The earth itself assures us it is a living entity. Deep below surface one can hear its slow pulse, feel its vibrant rhythm. The great breathing mountains expand and contract. The vast sage desert undulates with almost imperceptible tides like the oceans. From the very beginning, throughout all its cataclysmic upthrusts and deep sea submergences, the planet Earth seems to have maintained an ordered rhythm. ~ Frank Waters, #NFDB
922:The real number of the US' obligations, unfunded obligations that we're passing on to our future generates is more like $70 trillion to $75 trillion. The vast majority of that is health entitlements - Medicare, Obamacare, Medicaid. There's also Social Security, interest on the debt. But fundamentally, health entitlements are the thing that will bankrupt our kids. We need to fix that for the long-term. ~ Benjamin E Sasse, #NFDB
923:The vast majority of Huguenots supported the king and the royal family and wished to live in peace, he explained. The problem was that the Protestant movement had been more or less hijacked by extremists who desired political power. This radical element was using the general unhappiness with the Guises’ governance, and especially with their vicious policy of persecution, to forward their own ambitions. ~ Nancy Goldstone, #NFDB
924:Alarmingly, though, on top of the bookcase there is also a family portrait of Bea with two just-as-striking blond-and-blue-eyed sisters and a pair of handsome proud Nordic parents, whose stares make me aware of the vast age difference between Bea and me, and I am profoundly ashamed to be here buying drugs in this girl's apartment. What I'd really like to do, I think, is lie down on this couch and take a nap. ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB
925:I killed it," Athan lamented. "I am a fool." His righteous anger, his arguments, his adoration for the being who claimed Eldaloth's name faded and disintegrated with all the suffering life behind him. A poisonous dread seeped as deep into his soul as the exultant honor and pride he had felt just minutes before. The vast gap between the two emotions a crater into which his very soul plummeted in free-fall. ~ Brian K Fuller, #NFDB
926:I think actually if you take the analogy with other areas of engineering, and increasingly of science and even mathematics, you can see people do not have to learn the vast number of formulae they used to learn. Instead, they have to learn to use the computer effectively. This frees them, I feel, to understand concepts and the foundations while they’re learning the mechanics of the application of the theory. ~ C A R Hoare, #NFDB
927:There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There is must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live. And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
928:He hates me now. She watched the viewscreen, seeing the distant stars rush past as the vast, sleek form of the Mother ship grew closer. He’d rather endure horrible pain than feel anything at all for me. But who could blame him? After all, it wasn’t as though she was some kind of prize. Emotionally damaged, that’s what I am. What happened with Burke, what he did to me, ruined everything. Everything. She ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
929:In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
930:He reaches for her hand and she gives it to him without thinking. For a second he holds it, his thumb moving over her knuckles. Then he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it. She feels pleasurably crushed under the weight of his power over her, the vast ecstatic depth of her will to please him. That’s nice, she says. He nods. She feels a low gratifying ache inside her body, in her pelvic bone, in her back. ~ Sally Rooney, #NFDB
931:Once we got to eating, the idea of happiness returned to me. Not the feeling, the idea. Would a regular girl be happy simply eating a hot meal with a great deal of chew to it? Maybe happiness is a simple thing. Maybe it's as simple as the salty taste of pork, and the vast deal of chewing in it, and how, when the chew is gone, you can still scrape at the bone with your bottom teeth and suck at the marrow. ~ Franny Billingsley, #NFDB
932:The people had registered their dismay with a long litany of unpopular Federalist actions: the Jay Treaty, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the truculent policy toward France, the vast army being formed under Hamilton and the taxes levied to support it. The 1800 elections revealed, for the first time, the powerful centrist pull of American politics—the electorate’s tendency to rein in anything perceived as extreme. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
933:Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What is in me dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the heighth of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
934:What Hillary Clinton is known for is the bimbo eruptions unit. What she is known for - and the reason that she has been nominated - is that she saved her husband and thus saved the Democrat Party by agreeing to defend her husband and go after the women, and not just the women. She went after the entire conservative movement and blamed us for what her husband was doing! It was "the vast right-wing conspiracy." ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
935:The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
936:The vast majority of administrators, at all times and in all societies, are prone to commit grievous errors if left entirely to their own devices. Hence, they should not be left to their own devices, and should be allowed to govern only in consultation with the accredited representatives of the whole community, which is one of the classical lessons of history that no nation may neglect except at its own peril. ~ Muhammad Asad, #NFDB
937:Chance – invisible, furtive, and silent – is the vast canvas upon which all the rest of war is painted. Skill, courage, ruse, character, the elements of nature, technology and all the other components of war all operate against the backdrop of chance. Again and again, chance has raised up and brought down empires, snatched laurels from one hand to throw to another, and destroyed the most finely wrought plans. ~ Peter G Tsouras, #NFDB
938:I’m aware that there is a bigger, far more complicated world out there than I’d ever realized, and just like the students at Beijing University, I’ve glimpsed it only fleetingly, peripherally. I’ve sensed the vast expanse of my own ignorance now. I feel antsy and constricted and a deep, almost sexual yearning for velocity, for some sort of raw, transcendent experience that I cannot even begin to articulate. ~ Susan Jane Gilman, #NFDB
939:The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies—that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.” This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid accepting it. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
940:The vast body of hadith and sirah literature particularly enables this phenomenon. If a Western Muslim wants to paint a peaceful portrait of Muhammad, all they have to do is quote peaceful hadith and verses of the Quran, to the exclusion of the violent ones. If an Islamic extremist wants to mobilize his followers to acts of terrorism, he will quote the violent references, to the exclusion of the peaceful ones. ~ Nabeel Qureshi, #NFDB
941:To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
942:Science’s predictions are more trustworthy, but they are limited to what we can systematically observe and tractably model. Big data and machine learning greatly expand that scope. Some everyday things can be predicted by the unaided mind, from catching a ball to carrying on a conversation. Some things, try as we might, are just unpredictable. For the vast middle ground between the two, there’s machine learning. ~ Pedro Domingos, #NFDB
943:Two factors explain the individual’s predicament. The first problem stems from the investment choices available to individuals. High costs and poor execution doom the vast majority of offerings. The second problem concerns responses by individuals to markets. Research shortcomings, rearview-mirror investing, and investor fickleness (in the face of both adversity and opportunity) cripple most investment programs. ~ David F Swensen, #NFDB
944:Laura Waters Hinson, an award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Washington, D.C., described it to me: If you think about the fact that 95 percent of all movies you see are created through a male lens—that’s a staggering thought. The vast majority of the media that we consume, that is shaping our souls in a lot of ways, is created by men. And I love men! But no wonder so much of it is violent or sexualized. This ~ Katelyn Beaty, #NFDB
945:What is the explanation for the blind eye that has been turned on the flood of medical reports on the causative role of carbohydrates in overweight, ever since the publication in 1864 of William Banting's famous "Letter on Corpulence"? Could it be related, in part, to the vast financial endowments poured into the various departments of nutritional education by the manufacturers of our refined carbohydrate foodstuff? ~ Robert Atkins, #NFDB
946:And one of the things I find most moving is the way people with infirmities manage to embrace Life, and from the cool flowers by the wayside reach conclusions about the vast splendour of its great gardens. They can, if their souls' strings are finely tuned, arrive with much less effort at the feeling of eternity; for everything we do, they may dream. And precisely where our deeds end, theirs begin to bear fruit. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
947:I write my literature as I write my ledger entries-carefully and indifferently. Next to the vast starry sky and the enigma of so many souls, the night of the unknown abyss and the chaos of nothing make sense-next to all this, what I write in the ledger and what I write on this paper that tells my soul are equally confined to the Rua dos Douradores, woefully little in the face of the universe's millionaire expanses. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
948:Just as eagles soar through the vast expanse of the sky without meeting any obstructions, needing only minimal effort to maintain their flight, so advanced meditators concentrating on emptiness can meditate on emptiness for a long time with little effort. Their minds soar through space-like emptiness, undistracted by any other phenomenon. When we meditate on emptiness we should try to emulate these meditators. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #NFDB
949:Not only will the vast majority (96%) of actively managed mutual funds not beat the market, they are going to charge us an arm and leg, and extract up to two-thirds of our potential nest egg in fees. But here is the kicker: they are going to have the nerve to look you in the eye and tell you that they truly have your best interests at heart while simultaneously lobbying Congress to make sure that is never the case. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
950:Oh, do you have A Tale of Two Cities?" "That silly thing? Men going around getting their heads chopped off for love? Ridiculus." Will unpeeled himself from the door and made his way toward Tessa where she stood by the bookshelves. He gestured expansively at the vast number of volumes all around him. "No, here you'll find all sorts of advice about how to chop off someone else's head if you need to; much more useful. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
951:So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night, that if, during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and the conscious satisfaction, that I had done my duty. ~ Charles James Fox, #NFDB
952:The truth is, the vast majority of medical care for lower income people in America is shitty. If you go to a free clinic to receive any form of care, the majority of those will be overcrowded with nurses who are tired because they have to work with so many people. We are not a country that invests public money into taking care of poor people, so we usually rely on clinics with very overburdened and underpaid staff. ~ Molly Crabapple, #NFDB
953:Within a few decades after the conquests of Cortés and Pizarro, the cattle population of Spanish America doubled as rapidly as every fifteen months. From Mexico to the pampas of Argentina, the vast open spaces of the New World swarmed black with livestock. One French observer in Mexico wrote in wonderment at the "great, level plains, stretching endlessly and everywhere covered with an infinite number of cattle. ~ William J Bernstein, #NFDB
954:Just as eagles soar through the vast expanse of the sky without meeting any obstructions, needing only minimal effort to maintain their flight, so advanced meditators concentrating on emptiness can meditate on emptiness for a long time with little effort. Their minds soar through space-like emptiness, undistracted by any other phenomenon. When we meditate on emptiness we should try to emulate these meditators. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #NFDB
955:We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism. ... We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe - and would benefit the vast majority - are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. ~ Naomi Klein, #NFDB
956:Bertrand Russell once lamented “that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling, can preserve a life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins… ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
957:I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning. These past thirty days, I have spent many of my moments lost in that void. And I know that many future moments will be consumed by the vast emptiness as well. But when I can, I want to choose life and meaning. ~ Sheryl Sandberg, #NFDB
958:Look in your local Christian Bookstore. You could take most of the books there, throw them into the sea, and not lose anything valuable. The vast majority of them are just placebos that superficially attack trivial problems. During the eras when the church was most holy, Christians had very few books to read, but the ones they did have told them how to have a relationship with God. Most books today don't do that. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
959:A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens-second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths. ~ Reynolds Price, #NFDB
960:But the nature of our civilized minds is so detached from the senses, even in the vulgar, by abstractions corresponding to all theabstract terms our languages abound in, and so refined by the art of writing, and as it were spiritualized by the use of numbers, because even the vulgar know how to count and reckon, that it is naturally beyond our power to form the vast image of this mistress called "Sympathetic Nature. ~ Giambattista Vico, #NFDB
961:Oh, do you have A Tale of Two Cities?"
"That silly thing? Men going around getting their heads chopped off for love? Ridiculus." Will unpeeled himself from the door and made his way toward Tessa where she stood by the bookshelves. He gestured expansively at the vast number of volumes all around him. "No, here you'll find all sorts of advice about how to chop off someone else's head if you need to; much more useful. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
962:A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths. ~ Reynolds Price, #NFDB
963:The clever way death cuts us down, but makes it look like just a thinning-out. Generations never fall with one blow - that would be too sad and too obvious. Death prefers to do it piecemeal. The meadow is attacked from several sides at the same time. One of us goes one day; another some time afterwards; you have to stand back and look around you to take in what's missing, to grasp the vast slaughter of your generation. ~ Alphonse Daudet, #NFDB
964:There are countless poor and uneducated people around the world. The vast majority of them, if they think of America at all, don't want to kill us; they simply want to be here. Many, as we know from both legal and illegal immigration, want to come to the United States to partake in the opportunity that is every American's birthright. They have no interest in flying airplanes into buildings or putting on an exploding vest. ~ Oliver North, #NFDB
965:The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity , with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides. ~ William James, #NFDB
966:American foreign policy is not understood by the vast majority of American people. And that this is due to a media that in this country is suppressed by Washington and by the owners of this media, who often tend to be corporate entities close to the [White House] and very often are arms manufacturers with a vested interest in chaos [in] the Middle East. And as a result Americans do not actually get both sides of the story. ~ Denis Halliday, #NFDB
967:Nearly half a century has passed since Watson proclaimed his manifesto. Today, apart from a few minor reservations, the vast majority of psychologists, both in this country and in America, still follow his lead. The result, as a cynical onlooker might be tempted to say, is that psychology, having first bargained away its soul and then gone out of its mind, seems now, as it faces an untimely end, to have lost all consciousness. ~ Cyril Burt, #NFDB
968:You gleefully say, "I just thought of something!", when in fact your brain performed an enormous amount of work before your moment of genius struck. When an idea is served up from behind the scenes, your neural circuitry has been working on it for hours or days or years, consolidating information and trying out new combinations. But you take credit without further wonderment at the vast, hidden machinery behind the scenes. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
969:You gleefully say, “I just thought of something!”, when in fact your brain performed an enormous amount of work before your moment of genius struck. When an idea is served up from behind the scenes, your neural circuitry has been working on it for hours or days or years, consolidating information and trying out new combinations. But you take credit without further wonderment at the vast, hidden machinery behind the scenes. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
970:Armed struggle is a necessary and morally correct form of resistance in the Six Counties against a government whose presence is rejected by the vast majority of the Irish people There are those who tell us that the British government will not be moved by armed struggle. As has been said before, the history of Ireland and of British colonial involvement throughout the world tells us that they will not be moved by anything else. ~ Gerry Adams, #NFDB
971:People who write about issues like poverty or terrorism are a part of the elite, and the distance between the elite and nonelite is growing very fast. You can move around the world but meet only people who speak your language, who share the same ideas, the same beliefs, and in doing so you can lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the world does not think or believe in or speak the everyday discourse of the elite. ~ Pankaj Mishra, #NFDB
972:She wished she were not so aware of the vast gulf between what the men in her life thought she was worth and her actual value. She had, it seemed to her, always asked and expected too much and given too little. She seemed almost to have a perverse impulse to make anyone who cared about her regret it, to find the thing that would most appall those people and then do that until they had to run away as a matter of self-preservation. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
973:We, the over-class, have taken those basic human drives and advanced our own selves through their exploitation. We have monetized human consumption, manipulated morals and laws to direct the masses by fear or hatred, and, in doing so, have managed to create a system of wealth and remuneration that has concentrated the vast majority of the world’s wealth in the hands of a select few. Over the course of two thousand years, ~ Guillermo del Toro, #NFDB
974:Margulis said, because rival organisms and lack of resources prevent the vast majority of P. vulgaris from reproducing. This is natural selection, Darwin’s great insight. All living creatures have the same purpose: to make more of themselves, ensuring their biological future by the only means available. And all living creatures have a maximum reproductive rate: the greatest number of offspring they can generate in a lifetime. ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB
975:If we move even higher up the salary and bonus scale to look at the top 0.1 or 0.01 percent, we find even greater increases, with hikes in purchasing power greater than 50 percent in ten years.22 In a context of very low growth and virtual stagnation of purchasing power for the vast majority of workers, raises of this magnitude for top earners have not failed to attract attention. Furthermore, the phenomenon was radically new, ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
976:Instead of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill? The ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional, and that the cost of it appearing to work is very high. ~ Mark Fisher, #NFDB
977:How it Happens"
The sky said I am watching
to see what you
can make out of nothing
I was looking up and I said
I thought you
were supposed to be doing that
the sky said Many
are clinging to that
I am giving you a chance
I was looking up and I said
I am the only chance I have
then the sky did not answer
and here we are
with our names for the days
the vast days that do not listen to us ~ W S Merwin,#NFDB
978:They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
979:Good is the enemy of great...
We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools.
We don't have great government, principally because we have good government.
Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so
easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become
great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good-and that is
their main problem. ~ James C Collins,#NFDB
980:Wine has been to me a firm friend and a wise counsellor. Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace. Wine has made me bold, but not foolish; has induced me to say silly things, but not do them. If such small indiscretions standing in the debit column of wine's account were added up, they would amount to nothing in comparison with the vast accumulation on the credit side. ~ Duff Cooper, #NFDB
981:You and I are standing this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can’t possibly live in either of those eternities—no, not even for one split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let’s be content to live the only time we can possibly live: from now until bedtime. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
982:For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
983:Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia prohibit inmates from voting while incarcerated for a felony offense. Only two states—Maine and Vermont—permit inmates to vote. The vast majority of states continue to withhold the right to vote when prisoners are released on parole. Even after the term of punishment expires, some states deny the right to vote for a period ranging from a number of years to the rest of one’s life. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
984:I find it amazing how much of the real world most of us can endure. Not only endure, but need, desire, crave. Reality is life. Where we suffocate is in the half-life of unreality, untruth, imitation, fakery, the almost-true that is not true. To be human is to live both within and beyond the narrow band of what-happens-now, in the vast regions of the past and the possible, the known and the imagined: our real world, our true Now. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
985:One of my quests from the beginning has been to inform people, educate people, sort of train people, if you will, to spot liberalism. The belief that liberalism is the source of the vast majority of our problems, clearly not all, but the vast majority, liberals and liberalism, and the more people trained to spot it, I think, have always believed that it would go a long way to go in defeating it. I think it does need to be defeated. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
986:Storm-Wind
I am finished, but you live on.
And the wind, crying and moaning,
rocks the house and the clearing,
not each pine alone,
but all the trees together,
with the vast distance, whole,
like the hulls of vessels,
moored in a bay, storm-blown.
And it shakes them not from mischief,
and not with an aimless tone,
but to find, for you, from its grief,
the words of a cradle-song.
~ Boris Pasternak,#NFDB
987:So let’s recap. Not only will the vast majority (96%) of actively managed mutual funds not beat the market, they are going to charge us an arm and leg, and extract up to two-thirds of our potential nest egg in fees. But here is the kicker: they are going to have the nerve to look you in the eye and tell you that they truly have your best interests at heart while simultaneously lobbying Congress to make sure that is never the case. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
988:The capacity of the mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do, you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad people and good people, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this. ~ Huineng, #NFDB
989:You and I are standing this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can't possible live in either of those eternities - no, not even for a split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let's be content to live the only time we can possible live: from now until bedtime. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
990:A doctrine which advocates indifference to wealth and to the comforts of life, and a contempt for suffering and death [the Stoics'] is quite unintelligible to the vast majority of men, since that majority has never known wealth or the comforts of life; and to despise suffering would mean to despise life itself, since the whole existence of man is made up of the sensations of hunger, cold, injury, loss, and a Hamlet-like dread of death. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
991:For a very long time, white evangelicalism has been simply wrong on the issue of race. Indeed, conservative white Christians have served as a bastion of racial segregation and a bulwark against racial justice efforts for decades, in the South and throughout the country. During the civil rights struggle, the vast majority of white evangelicals and their churches were on the wrong side—the wrong side of the truth, the Bible, and the gospel. ~ Jim Wallis, #NFDB
992:It is almost impossible to open a newspaper without reading something about the London housing market. House prices are rising at such a rate that the vast majority of Londoners can't afford to buy, are being forced out of the boroughs they grew up in, or in the worst cases, are being made homeless. If nothing is done, people will continue to be driven out of the city and London will cease to be a hub for creativity and entrepreneurship. ~ David Lammy, #NFDB
993:It is the modern literature of the educated, not of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively criminal..The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have never doubted and never will doubt that courage is splendid, that fidelity is noble, that distressed ladies should be rescued, and vanquished enemies spared. There are a large number of cultivated persons who doubt these maxims of daily life. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
994:Now all my tales are based on the fundemental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.... To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
995:It is I who instills the seed of all births into the vast womb of nature ( prakriti). Nature in turn gives birth to the infinitely diverse temperaments of all creatures.
“Everything that is born, Arjuna, comes from this subtle union of Spirit and nature. Whatever forms are produced in any of the wombs of the universe, know that My nature (prakriti) is the cosmic mother of all creation, and that I am the seed-giving father. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,#NFDB
996:There is something mystical in the proud man in the sense in which you use the words. You may be right from your point of view, but, if we look at it simple-mindedly, what room is there for pride? Is there any sense in it, when man is so poorly constructed from the physiological point of view, when the vast majority of us are so gross and stupid and profoundly unhappy? We must give up admiring ourselves. The only thing to do is to work. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
997:When we hear about “drug-related violence,” we picture somebody getting high and killing people. We think the violence is the product of the drugs. But in fact, it turns out this is only a tiny sliver of the violence. The vast majority is like Chino’s violence—to establish, protect, and defend drug territory in an illegal market, and to build a name for being consistently terrifying so nobody tries to take your property or turf. Professor ~ Johann Hari, #NFDB
998:You will not be punished for those beliefs in our nation of individual freedoms. But I do think the vast majority of your fellow Americans would appreciate it, kind creationists, if you silly motherfuckers would keep that bullshit out of our schools. Your preferred fairy tales have no place in a children’s classroom or textbook that professes to be teaching our youngsters what is REAL. Jesus Christ, it’s irrefutably un-American, people! ~ Nick Offerman, #NFDB
999:But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. ~ M J Rose, #NFDB
1000:Some are worse off than they were just a few months or years before. But the vast majority of people are much better fed, much better sheltered, much better entertained, much better protected against disease and much more likely to live to old age than their ancestors have ever been. The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going rapidly upwards for 200 years and erratically upwards for 10,000 years before ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
1001:There are so many comics about violence. I'm not entertained or amused by violence, and I'd rather not have it in my life. Sex, on the other hand, is something the vast majority of us enjoy, yet it rarely seems to be the subject of comics. Pornography is usually bland, repetitive and ugly, and, at most, 'does the job.' I always wanted to make a book that is pornographic, but is also, I hope, beautiful, and mysterious, and engages the mind. ~ Dave McKean, #NFDB
1002:When we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright—the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself. When one thought has ended and another has not yet begun, we can rest in that space. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
1003:Memoir is trustworthy and its truth assured when it seeks the relation of self to time, the piecing of the shards of personal experience into the starscape of history's night. The materials of memoir are humble, fugitive, a cottage knitting industry seeking narrative truth across the crevasse of time as autobiography folds itself into the vast, fluid essay that is history. A single voice singing its aria in a corner of the crowded world. ~ Patricia Hampl, #NFDB
1004:We're moving into sudden history now, baby. That life men lead and women disavow, that sure and certain sense that nothing is wrong, that life does not beat or pause, that the universe expands relentlessly. You can feel the source of all the world's light in your beating heart, in the map of your blood, in the vast range and pace of your brain. That's the light, baby. You don't need any other. Just that light beating forever inside you. ~ Scott Bradfield, #NFDB
1005:When were in the prence of another person, there Is always a masks, even if that mask is our face. There is no escaping it. And so the vast majority of what we say to each other, whether it is to our spouses, our family, our confessor, or perfect strangers, amounts to chitchat all the same.
Or at best, a crack audition for that juiciest of all parts were literally dying to play: ourselves..
But alone. Fuckin A- ALONE
were genius. ~ Norah Vincent,#NFDB
1006:And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore, the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is in the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1007:But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1008:Cloud storage in data centers will utilize the latest developments in physical storage virtualization, deduplication and other methods to make the most effective use of physical storage assets. Software defined storage could allow a further level of abstraction and cost effectiveness. The vast bulk of content stored "in the cloud" will reside on large SATA interface HDDs with some on magnetic (mostly LTO) tape (particularly for "archives.") ~ Tom Coughlin, #NFDB
1009:I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast? ~ Douglas Hofstadter, #NFDB
1010:Then I was glad of the presence of Jake near to me at all times, for a horror would come upon me because of the vast solitude of space and the solitary splendor of the regions where we were drifting; even the white stars seemed cold and terribly remote, and we, poor human beings on our little ship, were wretched and pathetic in our attempts to equal their wisdom, nor had we any right to venture upon the imperturbability of these waters. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
1011:The vast majority of abortions are performed between the seventh and tenth week when the baby is already sucking his thumb, recoiling from pricking, responding to sound. All his organs are present, the brain is functioning, the heart is pumping, the liver is making blood cells, the kidneys are cleaning fluids, and there is a fingerprint. His genetic code is uniquely and unquestionably human. And, if we are willing, he can be seen by ultrasound. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1012:The vast majority of psychopaths, like an iceberg, are underwater, and like an iceberg, they are inert. They do nothing. They're just there. They torment their spouse by being unempathic, but they don't beat her or kill her. They bully coworkers, but they don't burn the office. They are not dramatic. They are pernicious. Most psychopaths are subtle. They are more like poison than a knife, and they are more like slow-working poison than cyanide. ~ Sam Vaknin, #NFDB
1013:But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1014:He saw her as she had been when he met her at UCLA. He was going to fight diseases of the body and she, diseases of a society that seemed to her too shortsighted and indifferent to survive. She preached at him about old-fashioned, long-lost causes—human rights, the elderly, the ecology, throwaway children, corporate government, the vast rich-poor gap and the shrinking middle class. …She should have been born twenty or thirty years earlier. ~ Octavia E Butler, #NFDB
1015:For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?
How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
1016:He watched the old man sleep and felt the vast loneliness of the world, the loneliness passed from person to person like a beach ball at a rock concert, kept aloft at all costs, and this was his moment to shoulder it. Or maybe it was his own personal loneliness, a solitary, errant longing no one else could ever know, and the knowledge of this stoked the already existing loneliness, made it widen and blur at the edges until it included everything. ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
1017:The day was warm; but the fact that the sky was covered with a filmy veil of grey clouds gave to the vast plain before him the appearance of a landscape whose dominant characteristic consisted in a patient effacement of all emphatic or outstanding qualities. The green of the meadows was a shy, watery green. The verdure of the elm trees was a sombre, blackish monotony. The yellow of the stubble land was a whitish-yellow, pallid and lustreless. ~ John Cowper Powys, #NFDB
1018:The vast majority of all the ancient Greek literature that has survived comes from this period of imperial rule. To give a sense of scale, the work of just one of these writers – Plutarch, the second-century CE biographer, philosopher, essayist and priest of the famous Greek oracle at Delphi – extends to as many modern pages as all the surviving work of the fifth century BCE put together, from the tragedies of Aeschylus to the history of Thucydides. ~ Mary Beard, #NFDB
1019:After Egypt, Afrocentrists teach children about the glorious West African emperors, the vast lands they ruled, the civilization they achieved; not, however, about the tyrannous authority they exercised, the ferocity of their wars, the tribal massacres, the squalid lot of the common people, the captives sold into slavery, the complicity with the Atlantic salve trade, the persistence of slavery in Africa after it was abolished in the West. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
1020:Our mental health depends on a mechanism for editing the moment-by-moment ocean of sensory data flowing into our consciousness down to a manageable trickle of the noticed and remembered. The cannabinoid network appears to be part of that mechanism, vigilantly sifting the vast chaff of sense impression from the kernels of perception we need to remember if we’re to get through the day and get done what needs to be done.* Much depends on forgetting. ~ Michael Pollan, #NFDB
1021:Here is God's purpose - For God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; is the articulation not the art, objective or subjective; is loving, not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated; is knowledge dynamic, not legislative code, not proclamation law, not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon. Yes, God is a verb, the most active, connoting the vast harmonic reordering of the universe from unleashed chaos of energy. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
1022:Now, I'm as appreciative as the next obsessive-compulsive recovering-academic of the vast riches of material becoming available online, thanks to all those Google scanners crouched in the basements of libraries around the world, madly feeding books through their machines. I download obscure tomes onto my iPad and give thanks to the dual gods Gates and Jobs, singing hymns to all the lesser pantheon of geniuses.
But there's nothing like a book. ~ Laurie R King,#NFDB
1023:Once a photographer is convinced that the camera can lie and that, strictly speaking, the vast majority of photographs are camera lies, inasmuch as they tell only part of a story or tell it in distorted form, half the battle is won. Once he has conceded that photography is not a naturalistic medium of rendition and that striving for naturalism in a photograph is futile, he can turn his attention to using a camera to make more effective pictures. ~ Andreas Feininger, #NFDB
1024:It is only when we are very happy, that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys. CHAPTER ~ Emmuska Orczy, #NFDB
1025:The flare-watch in East Nekhebet had picked up an energy pulse, much brighter than anything seen previously. Briefly, there was the worrying possibility that Delta Pavonis was about to repeat the flare which had wiped out the Amarantin: the vast coronal mass ejection known as the Event. But closer examination revealed that the flare did not originate from the star, but rather from something several light-hours beyond it, on the edge of the system. ~ Alastair Reynolds, #NFDB
1026:He was disappointed in it all. He had developed into an alien. As the steam beer had tasted raw, so their companionship seemed raw to him. He was too far removed. Too many thousands of opened books yawned between them and him. He had exiled himself. He had travelled in the vast realm of intellect until he could no longer return home. On the other hand, he was human, and his gregarious need for companionship remained unsatisfied. He had found no new home. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1027:My single greatest challenge is to remain centered and loving in an overwhelmingly nonvegan world. In today's world, cruelty and exploitation of other beings - human and non-human alike - are accepted, practiced, and profited from by most every institution of society - from commerce and science to education and entertainment. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Homo sapiens are either unaware of the cruelty or accept it as unavoidable and even normal. ~ Michael Klaper, #NFDB
1028:My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
1029:The man who has been to ‘No House’ is as significant as the man who’s been to Morehouse.… The person who picks up our garbage is as significant as the physician.… All labor has worth.… You are reminding not only Memphis but the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.… The vast majority of Negroes in our country are still perishing on a lonely island of poverty in a vast ocean of material prosperity.… ~ Tavis Smiley, #NFDB
1030:The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God's vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. In fact, this may be The most important thing we ever learn about God--the He yearns for relationship with us. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God" (John 17:3). The whole story of the Bible is a love story between God and His people. He yearns for us. He cares. He has a tender heart. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
1031:A builder looks for the rotten hole where the roof caved in. A water carrier picks the empty pot. A carpenter stops at the house with no door. Workers rush toward some hint of emptiness, which they then start to fill. Their hope, though, is for emptiness, so don’t think you must avoid it. It contains what you need! Dear soul, if you were not friends with the vast nothing inside, why would you always be casting your net into it, and waiting so patiently? This ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1032:The rest-the vast majority, tens of thousands of days-are unremarkable, repetitive, even monotonous. We glide through them then instantly forget them. We tend not to think about this arithmetic when we look back on our lives. We remember the handful of Big Days and throw away the rest.
We organize our long, shapeless lives into tidy little stories...But our lives are mostly made up of junk, of ordinary, forgettable days, and 'The End' is never the end. ~ William Landay,#NFDB
1033:But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. And as soon as ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1034:He took a deep drag and looked up into the cold night sky and saw a sea of stars above him. He knew nothing about constellations or astronomy, but he enjoyed the beautiful sight. In Paris, he had never even noticed the night sky, but out in the country it was immense, almost drawing you up into the heavens. One couldn’t help but be awed by the sight. As he smoked, he continued to stare at the sky, marveling at the vast number and configurations of stars. ~ Charles Belfoure, #NFDB
1035:Meditation is the only way to overcome fear. There is no other way. Why does meditation help us overcome fear? In meditation we identify ourselves with the vast, with the Absolute. When we are afraid of someone or something, it is because we do not feel that particular person or thing is a part of us. When we have established conscious oneness with the Absolute, with the Infinite Vast, the everything there is part of us. And how can we be afraid of ourselves? ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1036:Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on Earth! I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Mayhap in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, touch His garments, smile into His eyes - ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself. ~ Jim Elliot, #NFDB
1037:To have a home, a family, a property or a public function, to have a definite means of livelihood and to be a useful cog in the social machine, all these things seem necessary, even indispensable, to the vast majority of men, including intellectuals, and including even those who think of themselves as wholly liberated. And yet such things are only a different form of slavery that comes of contact with others, especially regulated and continued contact. ~ Isabelle Eberhardt, #NFDB
1038:For example, in the United States, the violent-crime rate has been on a downward trend since 1990. Just under 14.5 million crimes were reported in 1990. By 2016 that figure was well under 9.5 million. Each time something horrific or shocking happened, which was pretty much every year, a crisis was reported. The majority of people, the vast majority of the time, believe that violent crime is getting worse. No wonder we get an illusion of constant deterioration. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
1039:In the air corps, 35,946 personnel died in nonbattle situations, the vast majority of them in accidental crashes.*1 Even in combat, airmen appear to have been more likely to die from accidents than combat itself. A report issued by the AAF surgeon general suggests that in the Fifteenth Air Force, between November 1, 1943, and May 25, 1945, 70 percent of men listed as killed in action died in operational aircraft accidents, not as a result of enemy action. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
1040:It occurred to me as I walked up and down those Lisbon streets that we all—the vast majority of drug warriors, and the vast majority of legalizers—have a set of shared values. We all want to protect children from drugs. We all want to keep people from dying as a result of drug use. We all want to reduce addiction. And now the evidence strongly suggests that when we move beyond the drug war, we will be able to achieve those shared goals with much greater success. ~ Johann Hari, #NFDB
1041:The machine which at first blush seems a means of isolating man from the great problems of nature, actually plunges him more deeply into them. As for the peasant so for the pilot, dawn and twilight become events of consequence. His essential problems are set him by the mountain, the sea, the wind. Alone before the vast tribunal of the tempestuous sky, the pilot defends his mails and debates on terms of equality with those three elemental divinities. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
1042:This may hurt,” he whispered. “It does, your first time.”
Kelsea stared up at him, this man who had done nothing for months but guard her from danger, and realized that the vast majority of her books had been misleading. They painted love as an all-or-nothing proposition. What she felt for Pen wasn’t close to what she felt for the Fetch … but it was love, somehow, all the same, and she placed a hand against his cheek.
“You won’t hurt me, Pen. I’m tough. ~ Erika Johansen,#NFDB
1043:Little Dorrit would often ride out in a hired carriage that was left them, and alight alone and wander among the ruins of old Rome. The ruins of the vast old Amphitheatre, of the old Temples, of the old commemorative Arches, of the old trodden highways, of the old tombs, besides being what they were, to her were ruins of the old Marshalsea—ruins of her own old life—ruins of the faces and forms that of old peopled it—ruins of its loves, hopes, cares, and joys. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1044:I think that many citizens understand how our system works, or rather, fails to work, for structural reasons. But who has the capacity and the incentives to bring change? The banks and other corporations love the system because it allows them to buy legislation that serves their own interests even at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. Incumbent politicians love the system because it allows them to raise millions of dollars toward defending their seats. ~ Thomas Pogge, #NFDB
1045:Let man then contemplate nature in full and lofty majesty, and turn his eyes away from the mean objects which surround him. Let him look at the dazzling light hung aloft as an eternal lamp to lighten the universe; let him behold the earth, a mere dot compared with the vast circuit which that orb describes, and stand amazed to find that the vast circuit itself is but a very fine point compared with the orbit traced by the starts as they roll their course on high. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
1046:The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture. ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
1047:When the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also a revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse. The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world. In the homogenous and infinite expanse, in which no point of reference is possible and hence no orientation can be established, the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center. ~ Mircea Eliade, #NFDB
1048:Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1049:Some seasons later, the Princess of the kingdom was riding with her handmaiden on the edge of the dark woods. Though once she had been very ill, the Princess had recovered miraculously and was now married to a fine prince. She lived a full and happy life: walked and danced and sang, and enjoyed all the vast riches of health. They had a dear baby girl who was much loved and ate pure honey and drank the dew from rose petals and had beautiful butterflies for playthings. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
1050:The people that voted for Donald Trump, the vast majority of them really thought that if Hillary Clinton won this election, that was it, that was America, say good-bye to it. She would have had the Supreme Court nominations for all the people retiring and a bunch of the left would have retired, and who knows who else. It would have been the ongoing opening up the country to outsiders and expanding the government to take care of outsiders, who are called immigrants. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1051:I learned the game on the radio. Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons were the Giants broadcasters when I was growing up in the Bay area, and they taught me about the game. They taught me about the subtleties of the game, but they also gave me the game and let me enjoy it. That's the main thing, whether it's TV or radio. You have to give the fans the game, and if it's a Giants broadcast, the vast majority are Giants fans. In terms of story lines, most would be about the Giants. ~ Jon Miller, #NFDB
1052:Illegal immigration is praised only by those who benefit directly from it, whether in the familial sense of inexpensive nannies, cooks, or gardeners; or in the corporate interest of cheap labor in the hospitality industries, agriculture, and construction; or in the political sense of new liberal constituents; or in the tribal sense of expanding the so-called La Raza base. But the vast majority of Americans accept that when federal law is ignored, chaos ensues. ~ Victor Davis Hanson, #NFDB
1053:It is said that a student of sexing must work through at least 250,000 chicks before attaining any degree of proficiency. Even if the sexer calls it “intuition,” it’s been shaped by years of experience. It is the vast memory bank of chick bottoms that allows him or her to recognize patterns in the vents glanced at so quickly. In most cases, the skill is not the result of conscious reasoning, but pattern recognition. It is a feat of perception and memory, not analysis. ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
1054:whale.The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1055:Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation. ~ Lynn Margulis, #NFDB
1056:As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
1057:suffering in the midst of the vast city from solitude so acute that not even the narcotic of late-night television talk shows could distract them from occasional nocturnal forays in search of signs of other life; even other furita, on their way back to their parents’ houses, which, to make their meager ends meet, they still inhabited, who might share a tired cigarette and an unfunny joke before sleeping off the morning, then rising to do it all over again later that day. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1058:The true rain came in a monster wind, and the storm broke in blackness over the hills and the bloody valley; the sky opened along the ridge, and the vast water thundered down, drowning the fires, flooding the red creeks, washing the rocks and the grass and the white bones of the dead, cleansing the earth and soaking it thick and rich with water and wet again with clean cold rainwater, driving the blood deep into the Earth, to grow it again with the roots toward heaven. ~ Michael Shaara, #NFDB
1059:We are one knot in a great web of being, building out of the vast past and (with luck) continuing billions of years into the future, until the sun dies, the last of its energy reaches Earth, and our local light goes out. The most appropriate response to the world is to realize, with awe, the ferocious mystery of being alive in it. And act accordingly. The worst thing anyone should be able to say about their life is also the greatest thing anyone can say: 'I tried my best. ~ Carl Safina, #NFDB
1060:And then, suddenly, an extraordinary question rose in my mind, whether this stupendous globe of green fire might not be the vast Central Sun—the great sun, round which our universe and countless others revolve. I felt confused. I thought of the probable end of the dead sun, and another suggestion came, dumbly—Do the dead stars make the Green Sun their grave? The idea appealed to me with no sense of grotesqueness; but rather as something both possible and probable. ~ William Hope Hodgson, #NFDB
1061:It doesn't matter who the candidates are. It doesn't matter the campaign. You know that's gonna happen. The Washington Post is gonna do it, the New York Times is gonna do it, the three networks gonna do it, CNN's gonna do it, MSNBC gonna do it, all the newspapers are gonna do it. For the vast majority of them. There are some exceptions. That sameness ends up being its own authority. If everywhere you look in the media tells you the same thing, you don't have to research. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1062:What I know is that billions of people have walked this earth, and billions more will. The vast majority are born without talent and with an ordinariness that is astonishing. Then there's a select few who are given a mighty gift, whose talent is breathtaking. And in between there's people like us, who can do something to a slightly impressive degree. We're not the largest group, but we are the most wretched, because we can recognize greatness, but we will never touch it. ~ Sonya Hartnett, #NFDB
1063:As a German philosopher writing in the aftermath of the Nazi regime, Marcuse understood the sleep inducing force of indoctrination, its power to make people forget and forfeit their own real interests. "The fact that the vast majority of the population accepts, and is made to accept, this society does not render it less irrational and less reprehensible," he wrote. "The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful." ~ Daniel Pinchbeck, #NFDB
1064:In terms of size, mammals are an anomaly, as the vast majority of the world's existing species are snail-sized or smaller. It's almost as if, regardless of your kingdom, the smaller your size & the earlier your place on the tree of life, the more critical is your niche on Earth: snails & worms create soil, & blue-green algae create oxygen; mammals seem comparatively dispensable, the result of the random path of evolution over a luxurious amount of time. ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey, #NFDB
1065:Obamacare's not imploding. The main goal of Obamacare was two-fold. One was to cover the uninsured, of which we've covered 20 million, the largest expansion in American history. The other was to fix broken insurance markets where insurers could deny people insurance just because they were sick or they had been sick. Those have been fixed, and for the vast majority of Americans, costs in those markets have come down, thanks to the subsidies made available under Obamacare. ~ Jonathan Gruber, #NFDB
1066:You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens... . And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature's depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe. ~ A D Gordon, #NFDB
1067:A wine-colored welt of scar tissue had bubbled up in the little stab hole; it was interesting to look at, like a small blob of pink glue, and it reminded her in a good way of Lawrence of Arabia, burning himself with matches. Evidently that sort of thing built soldierly character. “The trick,” he’d said in the movie, “is not to mind that it hurts.” In the vast and ingenious scheme of suffering, as Harriet was now beginning to understand it, this was a trick well worth learning. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1068:A three billion year old planet floating in the vast universe with mountains, seventy percent seas and oceans, fertile lands, immense forests, rivers and lakes, sea shores and deserts, this is where we humans have the privilege to live, the latest, most advanced newcomers in evolution. What an immense, incredible responsibility we have to be a right, positive element in the further evolution of that planet. That is the big question before us in the new century and millennium. ~ Robert Muller, #NFDB
1069:He would sit down and consider the situation carefully. Not only did this help to identify the solution to the problem, but it also gave him the opportunity to remind himself that things were not really as bad as they seemed; it was all a question of perspective. Sitting down and looking up at the sky for a few minutes--not at any particular part of the sky, but just at the sky in general--at the vast, dizzying, empty sky of Botswana, cut human problems down to size. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
1070:People sometimes accuse me of knowing a lot. "Stephen," they say, accusingly, "you know a lot." This is a bit like telling a person who has a few grains of sand clinging to him that he owns much sand. When you consider the vast amount of sand there is in the world such a person is, to all intents and purposes, sandless. We are all sandless. We are all ignorant. There are beaches and deserts and dunes of knowledge whose existance we have never even guessed at, let alone visited. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1071:the vast majority hate the struggle required to advance. They complain with great angst that the road to independence and abundance is too hard, too inconvenient, too slow. If there is no straight and speedy line to success, the journey never begins. People don’t go back to school because it will take too long. They don’t exercise because the results come too slowly. They don’t fight for their dreams because it would require long nights stacked on top of already busy days. ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
1072:We all know of the dangers and inequities of the traditional digital divide: People who have good access tocomputer networks have a distinct advantage - in terms of both life opportunities and quality of life, I wouldargue - over the vast majority of the world's population that does not yet have good access to computernetworks. The "other" digital divide points to an increasingly unstable situation that has developed inlibrarianship as digital libraries have evolved and matured. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
1073:But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. —MARCEL PROUST, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST ~ M J Rose, #NFDB
1074:I’m no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race. Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the existence of structural racism and its symptoms. I can no longer engage with the gulf of an emotional disconnect that white people display when a person of colour articulates their experience. You can see their eyes shut down and harden. It’s like treacle is poured into their ears, blocking up their ear canals. It’s like they can no longer hear us. ~ Reni Eddo Lodge, #NFDB
1075:All the experiences in your life- from single conversations to your broader culture- shape the microscopic details of your brain. Neurally speaking, who you are depends on where you've been. Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry- and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
1076:Ireland is so saturated with green that it's the things that not green catch one's eye: the roads, walls, shorelines, even sheep, seem to have been placed as contrast, strategically positioned to organize the vast expansion of green... In Ireland, you can bask in fact that you have been benevolently outnumbered by these first and better life forms. Standing in a peat bog in Dingle, you can not help wondering what Ireland was like before you and other primates scrambled upon its shore. ~ Hope Jahren, #NFDB
1077:Erotic attraction often serves as the catalyst for an intimate connection between two people, but it is not a sign of love. Exciting, pleasurable sex can take place between two people who do not even know each other. Yet the vast majority of males in our society are convinced that their erotic longing indicates who they should, and can, love. Led by their penis, seduced by erotic desire, they often end up in relationships with partners with whom they share no common interests of values. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
1078:Most people lose money because of lack of emotional discipline -the ability to keep their emotions removed from investment decisions. Dieting provides an apt analogy. Most people have the necessary knowledge to lose weight-that is they know that in order to lose weight you have to exercise and cut your intake of fats. However, despite this widespread knowledge, the vast majority of people who attempt to lose weight are unsuccessful. Why? Because they lack the emotional discipline. ~ Victor Sperandeo, #NFDB
1079:Since the legally and morally despicable decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade in 1973, American women have aborted some 56 million children. The vast majority of these children have been aborted for reasons that have nothing to do with rape, incest or the health of the mother. We have destroyed an entire generation of children purely for self-worship. Children are difficult; therefore, they can be done away with. Children are burdensome; therefore, they don’t exist in the womb. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
1080:To be clear, the vast increase in the number of single women is to be celebrated not because singleness is in and of itself a better or more desirable state than coupledom. The revolution is in the expansion of options, the lifting of the imperative that for centuries hustled nearly all (non-enslaved) women, regardless of their individual desires, ambitions, circumstances, or the quality of available matches, down a single highway toward early heterosexual marriage and motherhood. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
1081:Human history started with everyone on Level 1. For more than 100,000 years nobody made it up the levels and most children didn’t survive to become parents. Just 200 years ago, 85 percent of the world population was still on Level 1, in extreme poverty. Today the vast majority of people are spread out in the middle, across Levels 2 and 3, with the same range of standards of living as people had in Western Europe and North America in the 1950s. And this has been the case for many years. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
1082:It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervadedand dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1083:Josef followed the small group of kids through the raised doorway onto the bridge of the St. Louis. The bridge was a narrow, curving room that stretched from one side of the ship to the other. Bright sunlight streamed in through two dozen windows, offering a panoramic view of the vast blue-green Atlantic and wispy white clouds. Throughout the wood-decked room were metal benches with maps and rulers on them, and the walls were dotted with mysterious gauges and meters made of shining brass. ~ Alan Gratz, #NFDB
1084:Our economy has become completely different, on the whole. The size has changed. The economy has almost doubled in size. And the quality is changing, not as fast as we would like it to, but the structure is changing. Our Armed Forces are completely different today from what they were, say 15 years ago or so. All of this, including our great history, great culture, all of this, not just what we see today, is what makes the vast majority of Russia's citizens feel proud for their country. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
1085:–Don’t you think the vast majority of the chaos in the world is caused by a relatively small group of disappointed men?
–
–
–I don’t know. Could be.
–The men who haven’t gotten the work they expected to get. The men who don’t get the promotion they expected. The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals. These men can’t be left to mix with the rest of society. Something bad always happens. ~ Dave Eggers,#NFDB
1086:One thing I want to clarify - that every service member, veteran, wants us to remember - is that the vast majority of people returning from service come back completely healthy. But when we do come across someone who is struggling. We have to develop a culture of open arms and acceptance so that they feel comfortable saying, "I'm a veteran. And by the way, I need little help." This is something we need to do in this country around mental health as a whole - destigmatizing mental health. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
1087:Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society. ~ Cody Lundin, #NFDB
1088:We all have come here from somewhere else, and the vast majority of us are only a few generations removed from another land. Whether that is one generation or ten, it seems rather sanctimonious to claim that there is much of a difference. Not many of us can trace our arrival back a few hundred years, let alone millennia. But even the ancestors of the Native Americans are believed to have come across a land bridge from Asia—a reminder that we are a species of migrations, and always have been. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
1089:The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies – that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as "Your actions actually don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things" and "The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that's okay." This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid accepting it. But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1090:I don’t recommend that average iPad Air owners upgrade to the Air 2. But what about the vast majority of iPad owners who own older models? That’s a different story. If you have an iPad 2, 3 or 4, the new Air 2 will make a big difference. Its thinness and lightness will be a dramatic change, and it will be faster and more fluid. However, here’s the catch: Upgrading to last year’s iPad Air would have pretty much the same effect, and that model is now, suddenly, $100 cheaper, starting at $399. ~ Walt Mossberg, #NFDB
1091:I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligraphy. The lowcountry had its own special ache and sting. ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB
1092:In view of the vast size of the occupied areas in the East the forces available for establishing security in these areas will be sufficient only if all resistance is punished not by legal prosecution of the guilty but by the spreading of such terror by the occupying power as is appropriate to eradicate every inclination to resist among the population. The competent commanders must find the means of keeping order not by demanding more security forces but by applying suitable Draconian methods. ~ Alfred Jodl, #NFDB
1093:What we have in mind for that agency,” McElroy told lawmakers, was an entity that would handle “all satellite and space research and development projects” but also have “a function that extends beyond the immediate foreseeable weapons systems of the current or near future.” McElroy was looking far ahead. America needed an agency that could visualize the nation’s needs before those needs yet existed, he said. An agency that could research and develop “the vast weapons systems of the future. ~ Annie Jacobsen, #NFDB
1094:But there also seems to be in our culture a curious cautiousness—“You’ll get these abundant gratifications only if you don’t feel too much, don’t let on you want too much.” The result is that, instead of conquering the world like Horatio Alger, we should wait passively until the genie of technology—which we don’t push or influence, only await—brings us our appointed gratifications. All of this is a part of the rewards which go with belief in the vast myth of the machine in the twentieth century. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1095:This picture of matter curving space and curvaceous space dictating how matter and light will move has several striking features. It brings the non-Euclidean geometries that we talked about in the last chapter out from the library of pure mathematics into the arena of science. The vast collection of geometries describing spaces that are not simply the flat space of Euclid are the ones that Einstein used to capture the possible structures of space distorted by the presence of mass and energy. ~ John D Barrow, #NFDB
1096:But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1097:For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1098:Some look like us, most look very different. No two worlds are exactly alike. But every world, no matter how alien or strange, is part of a vast mosaic that floats on an ocean of love. Here I’m only talking about the physical worlds. There are dimensions beyond those you can see with your eyes. There are the realms of the gods, the lands of the demons, the vast kingdoms of the angels. All these places are spoken about in ancient scriptures but somehow people have forgotten that they’re true. ~ Christopher Pike, #NFDB
1099:This awareness, free from an inside or an outside, is open like the sky.
It is penetrating Wakefulness free from limitations and partiality.
Within the vast and open space of this all-embracing mind,
All phenomena of samsara and nirvana manifest like rainbows in the sky.
Within this state of unwavering awareness,
All that appears and exists, like a reflection,
Appears but is empty, resounds but is empty.
Its nature is Emptiness from the very beginning.
~ Tsogdruk Rinpoche, The Flight of Garuda,#NFDB
1100:We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. ~ Michael Cunningham, #NFDB
1101:Early morning, the orange sun is slowly rising, shining forth in empty luminous clarity. The mind and the sky are one, the sun is rising in the vast space of primordial awareness, and there is just this. Yasutani Roshi once said, speaking of satori, that it was the most precious realization in the world, because all the great philosophers had tried to understand ultimate reality but had failed to do so, yet with satori or awakening all of your deepest questions are finally answered: it's just this. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
1102:Part of this is related to the vast apparatus created to administer the criminal-justice system; part is related to the new laws that mandate longer sentences and keep the prisons full of older inmates for longer periods; part is due to the rules governing release and reentry—parole policies that lower the threshold for violations and ensure recidivism; and part is the result of lasting damage done to the families and the social fabric of the communities from which most prisoners are drawn. ~ David Cay Johnston, #NFDB
1103:Within an hour Groves’s teletype rattled out a translation. My fellow Germans! I live! Yet another of the countless atrocities that have befallen our lands has stricken Berlin—but not me. I am speaking to you so that you can hear my voice and know that I myself am not injured and well. The vast crime in Berlin has destroyed the entire center. But it cannot destroy the inevitable victory of the National Socialist Reich! My survival is a confirmation of the task imposed upon me by Providence—and ~ Gregory Benford, #NFDB
1104:Thus with continued concentration and the expenditure of enormous amounts of energy he tried to keep himself from slipping into the vast distances of his unhappiness. It was all around him. It was a darkness as impudently close as his brow. It choked him by its closeness. And what was most terrifying was its treachery. He would wake up in the morning and see the sun coming in the window, and sit up in his bed and think it was gone, and then find it there after all, behind his ears or in his heart. ~ E L Doctorow, #NFDB
1105:I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgia O’Keeffe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O’Keeffe ‘Sky Above Clouds’ canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. "Who drew it," she whispered after a while. I told her. "I need to talk to her," she said finally. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
1106:You could almost say that throughout human history there are people who can either foresee consequences or who are capable of looking for information and predicting the consequences will happen, but the vast majority of people won't respond to climate change until their city is underwater, food supply is disrupted or everyone around them is dying of zoonotic disease. It's almost like someone dealing with an addiction, like you hope that the person can overcome the addiction before the addiction kills them. ~ Moby, #NFDB
1107:In the United States at present the 'culture wars' of the last thirty years have now produced a horrid stand-off which compels you all into a binary either/or with all kinds of spin-offs. This is deeply unhealthy. The trouble is that the way the system is set up in order to get in and try to change it you have to be (a) a millionaire, (b) someone who can work inside the system long-term, (c) someone prepared to make deals and compromises... Which does rule out the vast majority of committed Christians. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
1108:I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1109:In this radiant summer, it’s a luxury to inhale the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow shimmers with fire and gold in its flowers. The sky is filled with the songs of birds and the sweet scent of pine. At night, the stars pour forth their ethereal rays. Gazing up at the vast dome of space, we feel like children, with the earth our toy ball. Nature never put on a more glorious display or spread out a more lavish feast. The food and wine are freely given to all creatures ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1110:It is a great and beautiful spectacle to see a man somehow emerging from oblivion by his own efforts, dispelling with the light of his reason the shadows in which nature had enveloped him, rising above himself, soaring in his mind right up to the celestial regions, moving, like the sun, with giant strides through the vast extent of the universe, and, what is even greater and more difficult, returning to himself in order to study man there and learn of his nature, his obligations, and his end. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
1111:Like the vast majority of Americans, I've opposed same-sex marriage, but I've also opposed unjust discrimination against anyone, for racial or religious reasons, or for sexual preference. Americans are a tolerant, generous, and kind people. We all oppose bigotry and disparagement. But the debate over same-sex marriage is not a debate over tolerance. It is a debate about the purpose of the institution of marriage and it is a debate about activist judges who make up the law rather than interpret the law. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
1112:Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming. But it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time in them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1113:With the arrival of the refugees in 2015, it became impossible to ignore that the period of uninterrupted sunshine that Germany had enjoyed had come to an end. The vast problems of the 21st century are knocking on our door. That is also true of the dramatic changes that we can see globally, for example with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. You can't win people over by saying nothing and biding your time, as Angela Merkel has tried to do. People want leadership - in the best sense of the term. ~ Joschka Fischer, #NFDB
1114:They took one look at Zip2’s code and began rewriting the vast majority of the software. Musk bristled at some of their changes, but the computer scientists needed just a fraction of the lines of code that Musk used to get their jobs done. They had a knack for dividing software projects into chunks that could be altered and refined whereas Musk fell into the classic self-taught coder trap of writing what developers call hairballs—big, monolithic hunks of code that could go berserk for mysterious reasons. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
1115:An enormous amount of energy has been expended uselessly in the past, in assaulting positions that are no longer held. For example, the old Protestant position of Justification by Faith only, has been practically relinquished long ago—at any rate in its old bald sense—by the vast majority of non-Catholics. Rather, the pendulum has swung so far that it would be truer to say that the average Protestant nowadays believes rather in Justification by works only. And this is but one example out of many. Or ~ Robert Hugh Benson, #NFDB
1116:It felt like some kind of honor, you know? Being asked to be the head of the Council's son-in-law. Plus, you dad, he, uh, told me a lot about you."
My voice was barely above a whisper. "What did he say?"
"That you were smart, and strong. Funny. That you had trouble using your powers, but you were always trying to use them to help people." He shrugged. "I thought we'd be a good match."
The vast dining room suddenly felt very small, like it consisted only of this table and me and Cal. ~ Rachel Hawkins,#NFDB
1117:We must not only control the weapons that can kill us, we must bridge the great disparities of wealth and opportunity among the peoples of the world, the vast majority of whom live in poverty without hope, opportunity or choices in life. These conditions are a breeding ground for division that can cause a desperate people to resort to nuclear weapons as a last resort. Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding and our commitment to making the world a better place. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
1118:But more important than any of these was the vast, accretive weight of small things, from planes which hadn’t crashed to men and women who had come to the correct place at the perfect time and thus founded generations. He saw kisses exchanged in doorways and wallets returned and men who had come to a splitting of the way and chosen the right fork. He saw a thousand random meetings that weren’t random, ten thousand right decisions, a hundred thousand right answers, a million acts of unacknowledged kindness. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1119:They traveled deep into far-flung regions of their own country and in some cases clear across the continent. Thus the Great Migration had more in common with the vast movements of refugees from famine, war, and genocide in other parts of the world, where oppressed people, whether fleeing twenty-first-century Darfur or nineteenth-century Ireland, go great distances, journey across rivers, desserts, and oceans or as far as it takes to reach safety with the hope that life will be better wherever they land. ~ Isabel Wilkerson, #NFDB
1120:In a changing world, some jobs disappear and new ones are created. That's how it has been for hundreds of years. When jobs disappear, the vast majority is not because of global trade, but because of technical advances, robotization and so on. So, we - and in particular, EU member states - have to invest more in training and education so that people will have new opportunities if their jobs are cut. The EU can also better utilize its investment and social funds to protect its citizens from swift changes. ~ Cecilia Malmstrom, #NFDB
1121:There is always more after the ending. Always the next morning, and the next. Always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other. Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, larges as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else. For the vast majority of the rest of the universe that ending might as well not ever have happened. Every ending is an arbitrary one. Everything ending is from another angle, not really an ending. ~ Ann Leckie, #NFDB
1122:Absolutely. I think, I think the American people, at their core, are a decent people. I think that we still have prejudice in our midst, but I think that the vast majority of Americans are willing, are willing to judge people on the basis of their ideas and their character. And in the case of the presidency, I think what's most important is whether the American people think that you understand their hopes and dreams and struggles and whether they think you can actually help them achieve those hopes and dreams. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1123:but there was another factor that had not come into play when they marched down to Suez in the darkness - by day the vast expanse of desert, perfectly level in every direction, offered no shelter for those who wished to relieve themselves; and as several of the Surprises, including their captain, were as shamefast and bashful in their actions as they were licentious in their speech, this led to a great loss of time as men hurried off so that distance, often very great distance, should preserve their modesty. ~ Patrick O Brian, #NFDB
1124:Here’s a key concept that is completely counterintuitive, but unbelievably powerful: “Say it, then show it,” rather than “Show it, then say it.” The vast majority of presenters put up a slide on the screen, glance at it, and then read it out loud to the audience. This is completely and disastrously wrong. The right way (but difficult until you’ve practiced enough to get comfortable with it) is to start talking about the next point while you are still on the previous slide, and only then bring up the new slide. ~ Garr Reynolds, #NFDB
1125:I was at the South-Eastern wall, and looking out through The Great Embrasure towards the Three Silver-fire Holes, that shone before the Thing That Nods, away down, far in the South-East. Southward of this, but nearer, there rose the vast bulk of the South-East Watcher—The Watching Thing of the South-East. And to the right and to the left of the squat monster burned the Torches; maybe half-a-mile upon each side; yet sufficient light they threw to show the lumbered-forward head of the never-sleeping Brute. ~ William Hope Hodgson, #NFDB
1126:In 1923, ibn- Saud would conquer much of the Arabian Peninsula and, to honor his clan, give it the name Saudi Arabia. For the next ninety years, the vast and profligate Saudi royal family would survive by essentially buying off the doctrinaire Wahhabists who had brought them to power, financially subsidizing their activities so long as their disciples directed their jihadist efforts abroad. The most famous product of this arrangement was to be a man named Osama bin Laden. Far more immediately, however, Lawrence ~ Scott Anderson, #NFDB
1127:Sin is a lonely thing, a worm wrapped around the soul, shielding it from love, from joy, from communion with fellow men and with God. The sense that I am alone, that none can hear me, none can understand, that no one answers my cries, it is a sickness over which, to borrow from Bernanos, “the vast tide of divine love, that sea of living, roaring flame which gave birth to all things, passes vainly.” Your job, it seems, would be to find a crack through which some sort of communication can be made, one soul to another. ~ Phil Klay, #NFDB
1128:The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and life-giving. It is an immense desert place where man is never lonely, for he senses the weaving of Creation on every hand. It is the physical embodiment of a supernatural existence... For the sea is itself nothing but love and emotion. It is the Living Infinite, as one of your poets has said. Nature manifests herself in it, with her three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable, and animal. The ocean is the vast reservoir of Nature. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
1129:Every day at about four o'clock, I would go up to a farmhouse - or whatever kind of house was around - and knock on the door and say, "Hi, I'm biking across Canada, and I'm wondering if I could pitch my tent on your land." And sometimes people slammed the door in my face, but the vast majority of the time they said, "Of course," and then they said, "Come for dinner," and then they packed me food the next day and fed me breakfast and sometimes they got out the bottle of wine they'd been saving for a special occasion. ~ Pam Houston, #NFDB
1130:Then millions of lights came on in the canyons, along the freeways, and through the vast sweep of the Los Angeles basin, and it was almost as if you were looking down upon the end point of the American dream, a geographical poem into which all our highways eventually led, a city of illusion founded by conquistadors and missionaries and consigned to the care of angels, where far below the spinning propellers of our seaplane black kids along palm-tree-lined streets in Watts hunted each other with automatic weapons. ~ James Lee Burke, #NFDB
1131:We find the vast majority of people in every country believing that there will be a time when this world will become perfect, when there will be no disease, nor death, nor unhappiness, nor wickedness. That is a very good idea, a very good motive power to inspire and uplift the ignorant. But if we think for a moment, we shall find on the very face of it that it cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin? How can you have good without evil at the same time? ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1132:The most difficult speculation for a science fiction writer to undertake is to imagine correctly the *secondary* implications of a new factor. Many people correctly anticipated the coming of the horseless carriage, some were bold enough to predict that everyone would use them and the horse would disappear. But I know of no writer, fiction or non-fiction, who saw ahead of time the vast change in the courting and mating habits of Americans which would result primarily from the automobile."
Expanded Universe ~ Robert A Heinlein,#NFDB
1133:Job's was a temperament that swung easily from one extreme to the other and now misery was lost in a joy that seemed lifting him off his feet. At this moment personal wretchedness seemed to him a small thing in comparison with the vast shining outer world that was always there, sustaining and holding him even when he did not remember or notice it, small even in comparison with his own world that he held within himself. The two, echoing and calling to each other, reflected some mystery that was greater than either. ~ Elizabeth Goudge, #NFDB
1134:I really do think for the vast majority of cases, doctors didn't think they were doing anything wrong - they were doing what was being recommended at the time, and many times people were able to take these prescription opioids and not have a problem with it. But what we do know is that if we take these drugs long-term, dependency develops quickly, within as little as a week. What we all have to realize is that these pills are chemical cousins of heroin - one is an illegal opioid and one is legal, but they are relatives. ~ Perri Peltz, #NFDB
1135:SAC created the Headquarters Emergency Relocation Team (HERT), based at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant about 150 miles west of Omaha, a convoy of EMP-hardened command posts mounted on tractor-trailers that would have deployed out into the vast open American West during an attack. Later renamed the Enduring Battle Management Support Center and staffed by the 55th Mobile Command and Control Squadron, the unit’s patch hinted at its Doomsday task: A Grim Reaper sneaking through the night carrying a lightning bolt. ~ Garrett M Graff, #NFDB
1136:The vast majority of unfaithful people are experiencing a conflict between their values and their behavior, and that is the mess of infidelity. It's not an either-or. The idea that you would ask, "How can you say you love your husband and you want to stay married, and you also are having an affair?" Because we are not the same woman, or the same man. Because sexual revolutions don't take place at home. Because for most of us, freedom wasn't something that we experienced in our family, but usually outside of our family. ~ Esther Perel, #NFDB
1137:The most dangerous phases of any cycle are not the extremes, but the point halfway through the cycle: where things are balanced precisely between those two extremes, where matters could tip either way with equal ease. The edges are sharpest, right there where the balance-point lies, and the vast potential energy of either extreme hangs waiting. This is why magic done at dawn and twilight is easier, and more dangerous, than at other times—and why the half-moon, neither crescent nor full, holds the most power of any phase. ~ Vivian Shaw, #NFDB
1138:All of the great leaders down through history have told us we become what we think about. In fact, they have been in complete and unanimous agreement on this point while they disagree on almost every other point. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people rarely think, they simply accept what they see or hear. The next time someone gives you a suggestion, rather than simply accepting and acting on the suggestion - THINK - exercise your reasoning factor. Ask yourself if the suggestion will improve the quality of your life. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
1139:Satan!" "Oh, it's true. I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1140:We thank those Senators, both Republican and Democrat, who stood firm against tremendous pressure from the Bush administration, pro-drilling members of Congress and their allies in the oil industry. They recognize that the budget is an inappropriate place to decide controversial national policy matters like America's energy policy. We urge all members of Congress to remain steadfast in their belief that the vast, unspoiled wilderness of America?s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is more than a line item in the Federal Budget. ~ Carl Pope, #NFDB
1141:For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect - people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us - then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
1142:From Peter Ottawa
COUNT up the dead by fever, shot and shell,
Count up the cripples, count all tears that fell,
Count up the orphan children of the strife,
Count the long-yearning heart of parent, wife,
Count the vast treasure, count the labour's waste
Count all the cost of passion's headlong haste,
And then you'll know what solid nations pay
When common impulse sweeps good sense away,
Flushing the millions madly all at once
With Wisdom down, and up the truculent dunce.
~ Edward William Thomson,#NFDB
1143:In Shakespeare the birds sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot, it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity, the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions, diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnelhouses, the ebb and flow of beings, the steps of comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1144:It was like a vault , this house, but still you got the impression it could, with a great deal of effort, and only if you made it very angry, lift itself off its manicured haunches and chase after you at a terrible pace. That it could overtake you and chase after you at a terrible pace. That it could overtake you and pin you down by the shirttail, and then it could carefully lower itself right back down, all the vast weight of its ancient rock-heaps and stones bearing down on top of you, crushing you - Outside boy pg.306 ~ Jeanine Cummins, #NFDB
1145:The most dangerous phases of any cycle are not the extremes, but the point halfway through the cycle: where things are balanced precisely between those two extremes, where matters could tip either way with equal ease. The edges are sharpest, right there where the balance-point lies, and the vast potential energy of either extreme hangs waiting.....This is why magic done at dawn and twilight is easier, and more dangerous, than at other times - and why the half-moon, neither crescent nor full, holds the most power of any phase. ~ Vivian Shaw, #NFDB
1146:I believe that the vast majority of people that are unfaithful are monogamous in their beliefs. The ones who are not monogamous in their beliefs either live in poly relationships or consensual non-monogamous relationships, or they have divorced. If it's very bad, then people don't stay married these days in the West. They can be married and have their family, but they want something else - they want something that they don't have in their lives, or simply to be someone that isn't who they are in the context of their marriage. ~ Esther Perel, #NFDB
1147:Businesses are, in reality, quasi-religious sects. When you go to work in one you embrace a new faith. And if they are really big businesses, you progress from faith to a kind of mystique. Belief in the product, preaching the product, in the end the product becomes the focus of a transcendental experience. Through “the product” one communes with the vast forces of life, nature, and history that are expressed in business. Why not face it? Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1148:He had never been particularly inclined to philosophical meditation. He had never felt a need to delve into himself. Life was a continual interplay among various practical questions awaiting a solution. Whatever was out there was something inescapable which he could not affect no matter how much he worried about some meaning that probably didn’t even exist. Having a few minutes of solitude was another thing altogether. It was the vast peace that lay hidden in not having to think at all. Just listen, observe, sit motionless. ~ Henning Mankell, #NFDB
1149:I saw the endless steppes, which, although they appeared to be nothing but desert, were, in fact, full of life, full of creatures hidden in the low scrub. I saw the flat horizon, the vast empty space, heard the sound of horses’ hooves, the quiet wind, and then, all around us, nothing, absolutely nothing. It was as if the world had chosen this place to display, at once, its vastness, its simplicity, and its complexity. It was as if we could—and should—become like the steppes—empty, infinite, and, at the same time, full of life. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1150:Antidepressant medications, you still have some depressive thoughts. Antipsychotic medications, you still have some psychotic symptoms for the vast majority of the people taking them. But it gives them a little separation, and it doesn't control his behavior as much when you have a sad feeling, difficult thought, an odd perceptual experience. We can teach people those exact skills in therapy, you get longer-term benefits and without the side effects. So don't be sold just because a commercial interest wants to sell you things. ~ Steven C Hayes, #NFDB
1151:I explain that “poor developing countries” no longer exist as a distinct group. That there is no gap. Today, most people, 75 percent, live in middle-income countries. Not poor, not rich, but somewhere in the middle and starting to live a reasonable life. At one end of the scale there are still countries with a majority living in extreme and unacceptable poverty; at the other is the wealthy world (of North America and Europe and a few others like Japan, South Korea, and Singapore). But the vast majority are already in the middle. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
1152:We did decide that every addict in this film, Warning: This Drug May Kill You, would be someone who started out with a prescription for an opioid from a doctor. The story that hadn't been told is that the vast majority - somewhere around 80 percent - of current heroin users began with an addiction to prescription opioids. So as much as people might want to look at this and say, 'Oh this is really a heroin problem,' yes, it is a heroin problem, and no one is saying differently, but it starts more often than not with a prescription. ~ Perri Peltz, #NFDB
1153:In some ways more painful is the fact that their experience appears to be fading from the collective memory of humankind. Having never experienced an atomic bombing, the vast majority around the world can only vaguely imagine such horror, and these days, John Hersey's Hiroshima and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth are all but forgotten. As predicted by the saying, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,' the probability that nuclear weapons will be used and the danger of nuclear war are increasing. ~ Tadatoshi Akiba, #NFDB
1154:When you look at the Koch brothers, who make three million dollars an hour on their dividends alone, you begin to get a sense of what we're talking about. The estimates now are that the upper 1% control something like 40% of all wealth. Eighty families in the world control as much as half the world's population. These figures are being produced every day. We need to put a human face to these figures. We need to make clear that something is being taken from the vast majority of people, and is causing an enormous amount of suffering. ~ Henry Giroux, #NFDB
1155:In a sense, yes, but I have another concern that is a more imminent threat that is occupying the vast majority of my prefrontal cortex."
"I'm guessing that's part of the brain."
"In rudimentary terms it's the area of the brain where we make decisions."
Brandon scrunched up his face and pressed his finger into his cheek. "What does rudimentary mean?"
"It means--"
"I'm kidding, Professor." Brandon laughed and punched Marcus playfully in the arm. "I did go to school for a few years, you know. ~ James L Rubart,#NFDB
1156:It was between rival economic systems, each of which was aimed at generating its own men of property.”13 In fact, the Federalist ranks had plenty of self-made lawyers like Hamilton, while the Republicans were led by two men of immense inherited wealth: Jefferson and Madison. Moreover, the political culture of the slaveholding south was marked by much more troubling disparities of wealth and status than was that of the north, and the vast majority of abolitionist politicians came from the so-called aristocrats of the Federalist party. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
1157:Nature would be a truer teacher than creeds or homilies. Human life seems so small beside the vast life of great forests. The calm grand silence rebukes our own feverishness. We who fancy that the eyes of all the universe are on us, that we are the sole love and charge of its Creator, feel what ephemera we are in the giant scale of existence; what countless myriads of such as we have been swept from their place out of sight, and not a law of the spheres around been stirred, not a moment’s pause been caused, in the silent march of creation! ~ Ouida, #NFDB
1158:When he finally lifted his head up from the sea to cough, then breathe, he looked out at all the water before him, at the vast expanse of time and space. He could hear Marjorie laughing, and soon, he laughed too. When he finally reached her, she was moving just enough to keep her head above water. The black stone necklace rested just below her collarbone and Marcus watched the glints of gold come off it, shining in the sun. “Here,” Marjorie said. “Have it.” She lifted the stone from her neck, and placed it around Marcus’s. “Welcome home. ~ Yaa Gyasi, #NFDB
1159:The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situations. On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand - but help is, in many cases, to understand the wrong thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions, not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily abstracted. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
1160:Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill? The ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional, and that the cost of it appearing to work is very high. The ~ Mark Fisher, #NFDB
1161:It was not woman's fault, nor even love's fault, nor the fault of sex. The fault lay there, out there, in those evil electric lights and diabolical rattling of engines. There, in the world of the mechanical greedy, greedy mechanism and mechanised greed, sparkling with lights and gushing hot metal and roaring with traffic, there lay the vast evil thing, ready to destroy whatever did not conform. Soon it would destroy the wood, and the bluebells would spring no more. All vulnerable things must perish under the rolling and running of iron. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1162:Out of the vast main aisle there opened here and there smaller caves, exactly, Sir Henry said, as chapels open out of great cathedrals. Some were large, but one or two—and this is a wonderful instance of how nature carries out her handiwork by the same unvarying laws, utterly irrespective of size—were tiny. One little nook, for instance, was no larger than an unusually big doll's house, and yet it might have been a model for the whole place, for the water dropped, tiny icicles hung, and spar columns were forming in just the same way. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
1163:See, see how the sun has moved onward while we talked. Nothing can stop it in its course. Prayers cannot halt the revolving of nature. It is the same with human life. Victory and defeat are one in the vast stream of life. Victory is the beginning of defeat, and who can rest safely in victory? Impermanence is the nature of all things of this world. Even you will find your ill fortunes too will change. It is easy to understand the impatience of the old, whose days are numbered, but why should you young ones fret when the future is yours? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa, #NFDB
1164:It was not woman’s fault, nor even love’s fault, nor the fault of sex. The fault lay there, out there, in those evil electric lights and diabolical rattlings of engines. There, in the world of the mechanical greedy, greedy mechanism and mechanised greed, sparkling with lights and gushing hot metal and roaring with traffic, there lay the vast evil thing, ready to destroy whatever did not conform. Soon it would destroy the wood, and the blue-bells would spring no more. All vulnerable things must perish under the rolling and running of iron. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
1165:Taking care of the elderly comes without the vast literature of advice and encouragement that accompanies other kinds of commitments, notably romantic love and childbearing. It sneaks up on you as something that is not supposed to happen, or rather you crash into this condition that you have not been warned about, a rocky coast not on the map. In the preferred stories the last years of life are golden and the old all ripen into wisdom, not decay into diseases that mimic mental illness and roll backward into chaotic childhood and beyond. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1166:/Farsi There is no place for place! How can a place house the maker of all space, or the vast sky enclose the maker of heaven? He told me: "I am a homeless treasure. The world was made to give you a place to stand and see me." Tell me, if the one you seek is placeless, why put your shoes on? The real road is found by polishing, polishing the mirror of your heart. [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger
~ Hakim Sanai, There is no place for place!
,#NFDB
1167:Every night was a night of limitless possibility expired, of a life forfeited, of a foreclosed opportunity to expand, explore, risk, hope, and live. These were my thoughts as I tried falling back asleep. Inside my head, where I lived, wars were breaking out, valleys flooding, forests catching fire, oceans breaching the land, and storms dragging it all to the bottom of the sea, with only a few days or weeks remaining before the entire world and everything sweet and surprising we'd done with it went against the vast backdrop of the universe. ~ Joshua Ferris, #NFDB
1168:That's what I'm doing here, throw out New York and California, Donald Trump wins the popular vote by nearly three million votes. But you can't throw out New York and California. This is exactly why we have the Electoral College. Had there been no Electoral College and had the election be defined by the popular vote, I guarantee you that the two states where the candidates would have been all the time are New York and California. There would have been some time in Texas and they would have ignored the vast majority of people in the country. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1169:For the moment, however, we appear to be unique in the vast expanse of the cosmos. Scientists now believe that the universe we inhabit is nearly 17 billion light years (1 light year = the 9.46 trillion miles that light travels in one year) from one side to another, while our Milky Way galaxy alone is 100,000 light years across. Within the entire universe, estimates for the number of galaxies are a staggering 200 billion, each galaxy holding somewhere in the same neighborhood of the 200 to 500 billion stars that are believed to be in our own. ~ Gregg Braden, #NFDB
1170:one could see the full-page color pictures for oneself: the blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan settlers who now industriously tilled, culled, plowed, and so forth in the vast grain bowl of the world, the Ukraine. Those fellows certainly looked happy. And their farms and cottages were clean. You didn’t see pictures of drunken dull-wilted Poles any more, slouched on sagging porches or hawking a few sickly turnips at the village market. All a thing of the past, like rutted dirt roads that once turned to slop in the rainy season, bogging down the carts. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1171:Thus the white men and Native Americans were able, through the spirit of goodwill and compromise, to reach the first in what would become a long series of mutually beneficial, breached agreements that enabled the two cultures to coexist peacefully for stretches of twenty and sometimes even thirty days, after which it was usually necessary to negotiate new agreements that would be even more mutual and beneficial, until eventually the Native Americans were able to perceive the vast mutual benefits of living in rock-strewn sectors of South Dakota. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
1172:Come in, O strong and deep love of Jesus, like the sea at the flood in spring tides, cover all my powers, drown all my sins, wash out all my cares, lift up my earth bound soul, and float it right up to my Lord's feet, and there let me lie, a poor broken shell, washed up by his love, having no virtue or value; and only venturing to whisper to him that if he will put his ear to me, he will hear within my heart faint echoes of the vast waves of his own love which have brought me where it is my delight to lie, even at his feet for ever. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1173:THE VAST MAJORITY OF ALL LEGAL IMMIGRANTS—TWO-THIRDS—GET IN ON “family reunification” policies each year. In other words, America has no say about the single largest category of immigrants and we end up with gems like Octomom, the Boston Marathon bombers, and one hundred thousand Somalis in Minnesota. Entire villages from Pakistan are dumped on the country, based not on their expertise in nuclear engineering, but because everyone in the village is related to the first guy who got in. If they’re not, in the strict sense, related, they’ll lie. In ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
1174:I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. ~ John Clare,#NFDB
1175:Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements. He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
1176:[Man] ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1177:Divine Providence has played a great part in our history. I have the feeling that God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose. It is not given to us to know fully what that purpose is, but I think we may be sure of one thing, and that is that our country is intended to do all it can, in cooperating with other nations to help created peace and preserve peace in the world. It is given to defend the spiritual values-the moral code-against the vast forces of evil that seek to destroy them. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
1178:In addition, whereas a narrow (urban, secular, progressive) anti-Trump coalition would reinforce the current axes of partisan division, a broader coalition would crosscut these axes and maybe even help dampen them. A political movement that brings together—even if temporarily—Bernie Sanders supporters and businesspeople, evangelicals and secular feminists, and small-town Republicans and urban Black Lives Matter supporters, will open channels of communication across the vast chasm that has emerged between our country’s two main partisan camps. ~ Steven Levitsky, #NFDB
1179:History reveals that the seeds of the new system of control were planted well before the end of the Civil Rights Movement. A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding "law and order" rather than "segregation forever. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1180:The vast accumulations of knowledge—or at least of information—deposited by the nineteenth century have been responsible for an equally vast ignorance. When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when every one knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not. And when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
1181:forgive.” The creature turned abruptly and headed at high speed back toward his ship. They stared dumbly after the departed alien until the vast craft swallowed the single dark opening in its side. One of the engineers, who had completely forgotten his assignment (which was to observe the details of the alien’s suit), said, “Well!” He repeated it several times. That was the signal for a mild explosion of intersuit communication, mostly inane. Cleve examined the roll of metal, found its function anything but esoteric. It was a simple scroll, in ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
1182:I don't think people realize, when they're just getting started on an eating disorder or even when they're in the grip of one, that it is not something that you just "get over." For the vast majority of eating-disordered people, it is something that will haunt you for the rest of your life. You may change your behavior, change your beliefs about yourself and your body, give up that particular way of coping in the world. You may learn, as I have, that you would rather be a human than a human's thin shell. You may get well. But you never forget. ~ Marya Hornbacher, #NFDB
1183:To trust in spite of the look of being forsaken; to keep crying out into the vast, whence comes no returning voice, and where seems no hearing; to see the machinery of the world pauselessly grinding on as if self-moved, caring for no life, nor shifting a hair-breadth for all entreaty, and yet believe that God is awake and utterly loving; to desire nothing but what comes meant for us from His hand; to wait patiently, ready to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail--such is the victory that overcometh the world, such is faith indeed. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1184:In the same way we find much of the universe, as science discovers it, difficult to understand. Einstein's relativity, quantum uncertainty, black holes, the big bang, the expanding universe, the vast slow movement of geological time – all these are hard to grasp. No wonder science frightens some people. But science can even explain why these things are hard to understand, and why the effort frightens us. We are jumped-up apes, and our brains were only designed to understand the mundane details of how to survive in the stone-age African savannah. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1185:Just suppose that the dead do revisit the living. That something approximately to be described as Jim can return to see how George is making out. Would this be at all satisfactory? Would it even be worthwhile? At best, surely, it would be like the brief visit of an observer from another country who is permitted to peep in for a moment from the vast outdoors of his freedom and see, at a distance, through glass, this figure who sits solitary at the small table in the narrow room, eating his poached eggs humbly and dully, a prisoner for life. ~ Christopher Isherwood, #NFDB
1186:Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibbler is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the worst white-slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1187:He felt very old---centuries older than those careless, care-free young companions of his others [sic] days. He had traveled far, too far to go back. Their mode of life, which had once been his, was now distasteful to him. He was disappointed in it all. He had developed into an alien. As the steam beer had tasted raw, so their companionship seemed raw to him. He was too far removed. Too many thousands of opened books yawned between them and him. He had exiled himself. He had traveled in the vast realm of intellect until he could no longer return home. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1188:History reveals that the seeds of the new system of control were planted well before the end of the Civil Rights Movement. A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating the law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding “law and order” rather than “segregation forever. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1189:When we meditate to expand our consciousness, we perceive reality from an evolved perspective. The yogic mindset is able to create the miraculous magic of each moment at all times. Even when doing mundane chores, a yogi is able to tap into the flow of inspiration. Holding unwavering focus, the mind of consciousness is efficient and effective in dealing with every day realities by being. The vast void mind of awareness is aligned to the world of all enlightened beings of the past as in the moment of now- alight as a Lamp.The magic of Now is consciousness. ~ Nandhiji, #NFDB
1190:Now let's make two things clear: ISIL is not 'Islamic.' No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria's civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1191:Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species. ~ James G Frazer, #NFDB
1192:I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths - which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. ... I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
1193:All day, every day, we are flooded with the truly extraordinary. The best of the best. The worst of the worst. The greatest physical feats. The funniest jokes. The most upsetting news. The scariest threats. Nonstop.
Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that's what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars. That's the bottom line. Yet the vast majority of life resides in the humdrum middle. The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average. ~ Mark Manson,#NFDB
1194:Job’s account of creation tells us that after God “laid the earth’s foundation” he “made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness” (38:4, 9). The pronouns “its” and “it” here refer to the vast sea that covered the entire surface of Earth at the time. Job leaves no room for ambiguity. Darkness initially pervades the surface of the deep (Gen. 1:2) not because the sun and stars hadn’t yet been created, but rather because Earth’s primordial atmosphere was like a thick blanket that prevented light from penetrating to the surface of Earth’s waters. ~ Hugh Ross, #NFDB
1195:The mind is very wild. The human experience is full of unpredictability and paradox, joys and sorrows, successes and failures. We can't escape any of these experiences in the vast terrain of our existence. It is part of what makes life grand-and it is also why our minds take us on such a crazy ride. If we can train ourselves through meditation to be more open and more accepting toward the wild arc of our experience, if we can lean into the difficulties of life and the ride of our minds, we can become more settled and relaxed amid whatever life brings us. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
1196:Al-Hallaj has a special destiny. He came at a time when worldliness, the luxury, were inundating the Islamic world. His function was to act as kind of an antithesis to this, and he paid for it with his life, and he was very happy to do so. He smiled as he went to the executioner. That was done because it shook the conscience of the Islamic peoples of that time. But the vast majority, the vast, vast, vast majority of Sufis, they have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj. They have spoken about reaching "the Truth" and there is nothing dangerous about it. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1197:In this book we’ll argue that the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, not most academics and commentators, have the right idea. In fact, Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people. Political power has been narrowly concentrated, and has been used to create great wealth for those who possess it, such as the $ 70 billion fortune apparently accumulated by ex-president Mubarak. The losers have been the Egyptian people, as they only too well understand. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
1198:Beyond the apartment’s walls, in the night sky of his closed eyes, little lights charted the streets and broad avenues, the apartments and clubs of late revelers, the tall towers, where five or six guys he knew, guys only a few years ahead of him, would be toiling, even at this hour, in their big chairs, the vast windows of their offices overlooking the city, overlooking the planet with its mines and wells, its fields and great waterways, as they steered Earth’s course by the graphs and instruments of their predecessors’ devising into the hidden future. ~ Deborah Eisenberg, #NFDB
1199:Pure truth," I said. "You are my bright penny by the roadside. You are worth more than salt or the moon on a long night of walking. You are sweet wine in my mouth, a song in my throat, and laughter in my heart. [...] "You are too good for me," I said, "You are a luxury I cannot afford. Despite this, I insist you come with me today. I will buy you dinner and spend hours waxing rhapsodic
over the vast landscape of wonder that is you." [...] "I will play you music. I will sing you songs. For the rest of the afternoon, the rest of the world cannot touch us. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,#NFDB
1200:The significance of the vast Islamic scientific tradition for Muslims and especially for young Muslims today is not only that it gives them a sense of pride in their own civilization because of the prestige that science fhas in the present day world. It is furthermore a testament to the way Islam was able to cultivate various sciences extensively without becoming alienated from the Islamic world view and without creating a science whose application would destroy the world of nature and the harmony that must exist between man and the natural environment. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1201:She gave up trying to understand herself, and the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters — the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
1202:how easily a man who has never been in any great distress, may pass through life without knowing, in his own person at least, anything of the possible goodness of the human heart - or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So a thick curtain of manners is drawn over the features and expression of men's natures, that to the ordinary observer, the two extremities, and the infinite field of varieties which lie between them, are all confounded - the vast and multitudinous line of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary sounds. ~ Thomas de Quincey, #NFDB
1203:what would you risk dying for - and for whom - is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss. It is a loss because having to face that question has, for tens of millennia, been one of the ways that we have defined ourselves as people. And it is a blessing because life has gotten far less difficult and traumatic than it was for most people even a century ago. ~ Sebastian Junger, #NFDB
1204:In fact, the vast majority of the world’s population lives somewhere in the middle of the income scale. Perhaps they are not what we think of as middle class, but they are not living in extreme poverty. Their girls go to school, their children get vaccinated, they live in two-child families, and they want to go abroad on holiday, not as refugees. Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving. Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule. Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress. This is the fact-based worldview. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
1205:it’s worth repeating that for most investors, selecting individual stocks is unnecessary—if not inadvisable. The fact that most professionals do a poor job of stock picking does not mean that most amateurs can do better. The vast majority of people who try to pick stocks learn that they are not as good at it as they thought; the luckiest ones discover this early on, while the less fortunate take years to learn it. A small percentage of investors can excel at picking their own stocks. Everyone else would be better off getting help, ideally through an index fund. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
1206:To me, fiction writing at any length, in any form, is a feat of radical compression: take the sprawling chaos of human experience, run it through the sieve of perception, and distill it into something comparatively miniscule that somehow, miraculously, illuminates the vast complexity around it. I don’t think about short stories any differently than I do about novels or novellas or even memoirs. But the smaller scale of a story is important; the distillation must be even more extreme in order to succeed. It also must be purer; there is almost no room for mistakes. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
1207:Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.… It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
1208:Just Because It Works Doesn’t Make It Right The danger of manipulations is that they work. And because manipulations work, they have become the norm, practiced by the vast majority of companies and organizations, regardless of size or industry. That fact alone creates a systemic peer pressure. With perfect irony, we, the manipulators, have been manipulated by our own system. With every price drop, promotion, fear-based or aspirational message, and novelty we use to achieve our goals, we find our companies, our organizations and our systems getting weaker and weaker. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
1209:Oh, captive, bound, and double-chained!” cried the phantom, “who does not understand the toll of a lifetime of incessant labor by man, an immortal creature! For this flesh must pass into eternity before the good of which it is capable can be understood. How tragic not to know that a Christian spirit working kindly in its little realm of influence, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for the vast opportunities it has to be useful. Not to know that no regret can ever make amends for one missed life’s opportunity! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1210:The basis for building a Christian society is evangelism and missions that lead to a widespread Christian revival, so that the great mass of earth's inhabitants will place themselves under Christ's protection, and then voluntarily use his covenantal laws for self-government. Christian reconstruction begins with personal conversion to Christ and self-government under God's law; then it spreads to others through revival; and only later does it bring comprehensive changes in civil law, when the vast majority of voters voluntarily agree to live under biblical blueprints. ~ Gary North, #NFDB
1211:Through concentration we become one-pointed and through meditation we expand our consciousness into the Vast. But in contemplation we grow into the Vast itself. We have seen the Truth. We have felt the Truth. But the most important thing is to grow into the Truth and become totally one with the Truth. If we are concentrating on God, we may feel God right in front of us or besides us. When we are meditating, we are bound to feel Infinity, Eternity, Immortality within us. But when we are contemplating, we will see that we ourselves are Infinity, Eternity, Immortality. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1212:I always take an aspect between the ruling planets (i.e., the rulers of their Ascendants) as a testimony to the fact that the two people are likely to have a relationship of extraordinary intensity and importance… The close interaction of the ruling planets’ energies can be seen as indicative of a particularly specific symbol of how the two people interact with each other… in the vast majority of such cases, all of the other levels of interaction shown in a comparison will be secondary to the intense type of interchange symbolized by the aspect between the rulers. ~ Stephen Arroyo, #NFDB
1213:That still did not invalidate their purity in his eyes, so long as they continued to live the way they lived: sitting on the floor, eating with their fingers, cooking and sleeping first in one room, then in another, or in the vast patio with its fountains, or on the roof, leading the existence of nomads inside the beautiful shell which was the house. If he had felt that they were capable of discarding their utter preoccupation with the present, in order to consider the time not yet arrived, he would straightway have lost interest in them and condemned them as corrupt. ~ Paul Bowles, #NFDB
1214:They call it haunted; you call it sacred.” Grandmother chuckled, placing a cup of tea on a saucer beside me. “When your father took you to the Great Cathedral, how did you feel? Frightened, or full of holy awe?” I thought of the gargoyles, the soaring stained glass and colored light . . . the vast space and dim heights . . . the joyous and fiendish and suffering faces, carved in high places and in low, in brightness and shadow. “Both,” I answered. “There you are, then. Haunted and sacred. Maybe they want to mean the same thing, but neither word is big enough.” I ~ Frederic S Durbin, #NFDB
1215:They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
1216:The greatest miracle is to be alive. We can put an end to our suffering just by realizing that our suffering is not worth suffering for! How many people kill themselves because of rage or despair? In that moment, they do not see the vast happiness that is available. Mindfulness puts an end to such a limited perspective. The Buddha faced his own suffering directly and discovered the path of liberation. Don’t run away from things that are unpleasant in order to embrace things that are pleasant. Put your hands in the earth. Face the difficulties and grow new happiness. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1217:Revolution
West and away the wheels of darkness roll,
Day's beamy banner up the east is borne,
Spectres and fears, the nightmare and her foal,
Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.
But over sea and continent from sight
Safe to the Indies has the earth conveyed
The vast and moon-eclipsing cone of night,
Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.
See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,
The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.
'Tis silent, and the subterranean dark
Has crossed the nadir, and begins to climb.
~ Alfred Edward Housman,#NFDB
1218:Maybe solitude is the key to it all. A galactic isolation imposed by the vast gulfs between the stars, the lightspeed limit. As a species develops you might have a brief phase of individuality, of innovation and technological achievement. But then, when the universe gives you nothing back, you turn in on yourself, and slide into the milky embrace of eusociality - the hive. "But what then? How would it be for a mass mind to emerge, alone? Maybe that's why the Incoming went to war. Because they were outraged to discover, by some chance, they weren't alone in the universe. ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
1219:The Crusades were disgraceful but formative events in Western history; they were devastating for the Muslims of the Near East, but for the vast majority of Muslims in Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, Malaya, Afghanistan and India, they were remote border incidents. It was only in the twentieth century, when the West had become more powerful and threatening, that Muslim historians would become preoccupied by the medieval Crusades, looking back with nostalgia to the victorious Saladin, and longing for a leader who would be able to contain the neo-Crusade of Western imperialism. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1220:for any ruffian of the sky
your kingbird doesn’t give a damn-
his royal warcry is I AM
and he’s the soul of chivalry
in terror of whose furious beak
(as sweetly singing creatures know)
cringes the hugest heartless hawk
and veers the vast most crafty crow
your kingbird doesn’t give a damn
for murderers of high estate
whose mongrel creed is Might Makes Right
-his royal warcry is I AM
true to his mate his chicks his friends
he loves because he cannot fear
(you see it in the way he stand
and looks and leaps upon the air) ~ E E Cummings,#NFDB
1221:She went to the church to sit in the cave of stone, filled with the voices of strangers. Murmurs coming through the air, bowling in the ceiling and sifting down with the speckled greens and blues, the deep dark red of the stained glass at the end of the nave. She sat in the hard wooden pew and waited for the hymns. And when the singing started, she could weep. She went to the church to open her mouth and feel her heart again, constricted, struggling, banging against her throat, the tears there in the place of words, her voice struggling out in the vast air, stopped by grief. ~ Sarah Blake, #NFDB
1222:Hope? Hope is not the absence of tragedy, my friend. It is the conviction that tragedy can be endured. Hope is the spark in you that is not subdued in the face of the vast and callous indifference of the universe. Hope is that which is not shattered by hardship. Hope is the urge to fight what is wrong even when you know it will destroy you. Hope is the decision to love and need someone knowing that they will one day die. For me to promise that there are no obstacles would be the cruelest lie I could possibly tell. That lie is not hope. Hope is the will which needs no lies. ~ Travis Beacham, #NFDB
1223:Suddenly the sun rose – like a burst of hope. The dark autumn water mirrored the sky; it began to breathe and the sun seemed to cry out in the waves. The steep banks had been salted by the night’s frost and the red-brown trees looked very gay. The wind rose, the mist vanished and the world grew cool and glass-like, piercingly transparent. There was no warmth in the sun, nor in the blue sky and water. The earth was vast: even the vast forest had both a beginning and an end, but the earth just stretched on for ever . . . And grief was something equally vast, equally eternal. ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
1224:Then I realized the vital necessity of art. Human life, yes, you nurse people, you clean house, you market, but then comes the moment of solace and flight. i sit and write and summon other friends, other forms of life, other experiences, and the voyage and the exploration, the delving into character, the vast expanse of life's possibilities and potentialities, contemplation of future travels, of dazzling friendships, all this then makes the chores and the sacrifices beautiful because they are diverted toward some beautiful aim, they become part of the structure of a work of art. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1225:The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. ~ Rutherford B Hayes, #NFDB
1226:"True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton's 'Strange Story;' "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria! ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
1227:Huge clouds were already careering in the skies, and distant flashes announced a tempest. About ten o'clock, the storm burst forth; and Milady found some consolation in seeing Nature partake of the commotion within her. The thunder bellowed in the air like the angry passions in her soul; and it seemed to her as if the passing gusts disturbed her brow, as they did the trees of which they bent down the branches and sept off the leaves. She howled like the tempest, but her voice was unheard Amidst the vast voice of Nature, which also appeared to be herself groaning in despair. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
1228:[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
1229:Xxxvi: Revolution
West and away the wheels of darkness roll,
Day's beamy banner up the east is borne,
Spectres and fears, the nightmare and her foal,
Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.
But over sea and continent from sight
Safe to the Indies has the earth conveyed
The vast and moon-eclipsing cone of night,
Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.
See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,
The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.
'Tis silent, and the subterranean dark
Has crossed the nadir, and begins to climb.
~ Alfred Edward Housman,#NFDB
1230:The sound of distant breakers made her heart ache with melancholy. She was in the mood when the sea has a saddening effect upon the nerves. It is only when we are very happy that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys. ~ Emmuska Orczy, #NFDB
1231:Who has not in his great grief felt a longing to look upon the outward features of the universal Mother; to lie on the mountains and watch the clouds drive across the sky and hear the rollers break in thunder on the shore, to let his poor struggling life mingle for a while in her life; to feel the slow beat of her eternal heart, and to forget his woes, and let his identity be swallowed in the vast imperceptibly moving energy of her of whom we are, from whom we came, and with whom we shall again be mingled, who gave us birth, and will in a day to come give us our burial also. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
1232:I think the answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. ~ Naomi Klein, #NFDB
1233:The six elephants stood, roped each by the foreleg side by side in the vast thirty-foot tent put up several days since for their comfort; their trunks peacefully swaying as the cowardie scuttled back and forth with limp forkloads of hay. Small puffs of steam came from their mouths. Their breath was sweet, filling the sun-warmed, crisp air; and their hides, soothed, clean and lustrous from the water, lay calm on their great hips like the skin of the moon. Only at the end of the line the great bull stirred a little, the towering back swathed and padded and the knowing eye blurred. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
1234:All knowledge must stand on perception of certain facts, and upon that we have to build our reasoning. But, curiously enough the vast majority of mankind think, especially at the present time, that no such perception is possible in religion, that religion can only be apprehended by vain arguments. Therefore we are told not to disturb the mind by vain arguments. Religion is a question of fact, not of talk. We have to analyse our own souls and to find what is there. We have to understand it and to realise what is understood. That is religion. No amount of talk will make religion. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1235:History reveals that the seeds of the new system of control were planted well before the end of the Civil Rights Movement. A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating the law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding “law and order” rather than “segregation forever.”
The Birth of Mass Incarcerati ~ Michelle Alexander,#NFDB
1236:There are not many, those who have no secret garden of the mind. For this garden alone can give refreshment when life is barren of peace or sustenance or satisfactory answer. Such sanctuaries may be reached by a certain philosophy or faith, by the guidance of a beloved author or an understanding friend, by way of the temples of music and art, or by groping after truth through the vast kingdoms of knowledge. They encompass almost always truth and beauty, and are radiant with the light that never was on sea or land. - Clare Cameron, Green Fields of England ~ Israel Regardie, A Garden Of Pomegranates, #NFDB
1237:There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my father's face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how he looked on those nights he came home so tired he couldn't even make it through dinner without nodding off, sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling in front of him, a rich pork-and-winter-melon-saturated broth that, moment by moment, was losing - or giving up - its tiny quantum of heat into the vast average temperature of the universe. ~ Charles Yu, #NFDB
1238:It is passing strange that our philosophers of the Revolutionary period should have formed their conception of a free society by reference to societies where everyone was not free - where, in fact, the vast majority were not free. It is no less strange that they never stopped to ask whether perhaps the characters which they so much admired were not made possible by the existence of a class which was not free. Rousseau, in whose philosophy were many things, was fully conscious of this difficulty: "Must we say that liberty is possible only on a basis of slavery? Perhaps we must. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel, #NFDB
1239:Only the neurosurgeon dares to improve upon five billion years of evolution in a few hours.
The human brain. A trillion nerve cells storing electrical patterns more numerous than the water molecules of the world’s oceans. The soul’s tapestry lies woven in the brain’s nerve threads. Delicate, inviolate, the brain floats serenely in a bone vault like the crown jewel of biology. What motivated the vast leap in intellectual horsepower between chimp and man? Between tree dweller and moon walker? Is the brain a gift from God, or simply the jackpot of a trillion rolls of DNA dice? ~ Frank T Vertosick Jr,#NFDB
1240:We need others for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Without others we are nothing. Our sense that we are an island, an independent, self-sufficient individual, bears no relation to reality. It is closer to the truth to picture ourself as a cell in the vast body of life, distinct yet intimately bound up with all living beings. We cannot exist without others, and they in turn are affected by everything we do. The idea that it is possible to secure our own welfare while neglecting the welfare of others, or even at the expense of others, is completely unrealistic. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #NFDB
1241:What to eat? You've crossed a dozen time zones to get here and you want to make every meal count. Do you start at an izakaya, a Japanese pub, and eat raw fish and grilled chicken parts and fried tofu, all washed down with a river of cold sake? Do you seek out the familiar nourishment of noodles- ramen, udon, soba- and let the warmth and beauty of this cuisine slip gloriously past your lips? Or maybe you wade into the vast unknown, throw yourself entirely into the world of unfamiliar flavors: a bowl of salt-roasted eel, a mound of sticky fermented soybeans, a nine-course kaiseki feast. ~ Matt Goulding, #NFDB
1242:When a printed book—whether a recently published scholarly history or a two-hundred-year-old Victorian novel—is transferred to an electronic device connected to the Internet, it turns into something very like a Web site. Its words become wrapped in all the distractions of the networked computer. Its links and other digital enhancements propel the reader hither and yon. It loses what the late John Updike called its “edges” and dissolves into the vast, rolling waters of the Net. The linearity of the printed book is shattered, along with the calm attentiveness it encourages in the reader. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
1243:In the vast archipelago of the east, where Borneo and Java and Sumatra lie, and the Molucca Islands, and the Philippines, the sea is often fanned only by the land and sea breezes, and is like a smooth bed, on which these islands seem to sleep in bliss,--islands in which the spice and perfume gardens of the world are embowered, and where the bird of paradise has its home, and the golden pheasant, and a hundred others of brilliant plumage, whose flight is among thickets so luxuriant, and scenery so picturesque, that European strangers find there the fairy land of their youthful dreams. ~ Frederick Marryat, #NFDB
1244:What frightens you? What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged? Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire? Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside? ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
1245:I sometimes used to ask myself, what on earth did I love her for? Maybe fore the warm hazel iris of her fluffy eyes, or for the natural side-wave of her brown hair, done anyhow, or again for that movement of her plump shoulders. But, probably the truth was that I loved her because she loved me. To her I was the ideal man: brains, pluck. And there was none dressed better. I remember once, when I first put on that new dinner jacket, with the vast trousers, she clapsed her hands, sank down on a chair and murmured: 'Oh, Hermann...." It was ravishment bordering upon something like heavenly woe. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1246:The vast body of literature, in every domain, is composed of hand-me-down ideas. The question — never resolved, alas! — is to what extent it would be efficacious to curtail the overwhelming supply of cheap fodder. One thing is certain today — the illiterate are definitely not the least intelligent among us. If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself — direct experience of life. The same is true for art. Here, too, we can dispense with ‘the masters. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1247:It is of course true that many modern combat sports are extremely demanding in terms of physical force, skill, and endurance. Indeed many athletes are much fitter and better trained than the vast majority of soldiers. However, all those various kinds of sport are based on artificial rules as to what is and is not permitted. Furthermore, and with the exception of fencing, a highly ritualized form of combat to which we shall return, even the most violent ones do not permit the players to use weapons. In their absence, most of those skills are too specialized to be of much military relevance. ~ Martin van Creveld, #NFDB
1248:The Inverted Torch
Threading a darksome passage all alone,
The taper's flame, by envious current blown,
Crouched low, and eddied round, as in affright,
So challenged by the vast and hostile night,
Then down I held the taper; -- swift and fain
Up climbed the lovely flower of light again!
Thou Kindler of the spark of life divine,
Be henceforth the Inverted Torch a sign
That, though the flame beloved thou dost depress,
Thou wilt not speed it into nothingness;
But out of nether gloom wilt reinspire,
And homeward lift the keen empyreal fire!
~ Edith Matilda Thomas,#NFDB
1249:These girls with old gents don't do it despite the age—they're drawn to the age, they do it for the age. Why? In Consuela's case, because the vast difference in age gives her permission to submit, I think. My age and my
status give her, rationally, the license to surrender, and surrendering in bed is a not unpleasant sensation. But simultaneously, to give yourself over intimately to a much, much older man provides this sort of younger woman with authority of a kind she cannot get in a sexual arrangement with a younger man. She gets both the pleasures of submission and the pleasures of mastery. ~ Philip Roth,#NFDB
1250:For the future welfare of the settlement, it was essential that all the colonists—Leideners and Strangers alike—learn to live together as best they could. This nonjudgmental attitude did not come naturally to the Leideners. As Separatists, they considered themselves godly exceptions to the vast, unredeemed majority of humankind. A sense of exclusivity was fundamental to how they perceived themselves in the world. And yet there is evidence that Robinson’s sense of his congregation as an autonomous enclave of righteousness had become considerably less rigid during his twelve years in Holland. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick, #NFDB
1251:THE ACCURSED SHIP didn’t sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavor! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I had been violated; violated by a team of accountants. Laura, prostrated by grief, lay weeping on my lap. Frank stared stolidly at the credits, over which, as a coup de grâce, a cat or cats were being strangled to the effect that “My Heart Will Go On,” which at this moment in time was not a sentiment I could endorse. ~ Paul Murray, #NFDB
1252:Nations fail when they have extractive economic institutions, supported by extractive political institutions that impede and even block economic growth. But this means that the choice of institutions—that is, the politics of institutions—is central to our quest for understanding the reasons for the success and failure of nations. We have to understand why the politics of some societies lead to inclusive institutions that foster economic growth, while the politics of the vast majority of societies throughout history has led, and still leads today, to extractive institutions that hamper economic growth. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1253:In the distance was the celestial drama of summer thunderstorms, clouds assembling in vast arrays that demonstrated how far the sky went and how high, that shifted from the bundled white cumulus into the deep blue of storm clouds, and when we were lucky, poured down rain and lightning and shafts of light and vapor trails like a violent redemption. It was as though the whole world consisted of the tiny close-up realm of these creatures and the vast distances of heaven, as though my own scale had been eliminated along with the middle ground, and this too is one of the austere luxuries of the desert. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1254:Tears filled her eyes. Seeing the mother and her young children brought back images that were both joyous and heartbreaking. The years had flown by too swiftly, slipping away like sand through her fingers. She lifted her chin and wiped away the tear from her cheek. The vast blue ahead stretched out seemingly to infinity. This was no time for tears, she chided herself. She was old enough to know that life, like the sea, didn’t always play fair. Yet she’d always believed that if she played by the rules, if she persevered, one day she’d have time enough to... To do what? she asked herself, shaken. ~ Mary Alice Monroe, #NFDB
1255:What frightens you?
What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged?
Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire?
Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside? ~ Libba Bray,#NFDB
1256:My spirit mirrors the radiance of a clear, blue sky. With closed eyes I lift my face and smile, warmed from the core and from above. All hopes and dreams compete with this endless expanse of heaven, desiring the clock of eternity.
I reach with my hands―frenziedly achieving―attempting to learn and do all. Yet I understand the humble truth; a drop of rain shall amount to my contribution among all the droplets in the vast ocean of human history.
It is a pure and precious tear that seeps from my efforts....my existence.
Taste how sweet!
It is all that I have, given willingly. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
1257:The great chandeliers hang silent. The tables in the vast dining room overlooking the lake are spread with white cloth and silver as if for dinners before the war. At a little after 4, into the green room with the slow walk of aged people, the Nabokovs come. He wears a navy blue cardigan, a blue-checked shirt, gray slacks and a tie. His shoes have crepe soles. He is balding, with a fringe of gray hair. His hazel-green eyes are watering, oysterous, as he says. He is 75, born on the same day as Shakespeare, April 23. He is at the end of a great career, a career half-carved out of a language not his own. ~ James Salter, #NFDB
1258:The almanac cut her and her babies adrift; she and they fell into the vast ocean of ordinary people, whose births and deaths and marriages are, like their loves and fears and breakfast preferences, too insignificant to be worth recording for posterity. Charlie, though, was a male. The almanac could stretch itself—just—to include him, though the dimness of insignificance was already casting its shadow. Information was scant. His name was Charles Angelfield. He had been born. He lived at Angelfield. He was not married. He was not dead. As far as the almanac was concerned, this information was sufficient. ~ Diane Setterfield, #NFDB
1259:The late Jonathan Rowe, one of the visionaries of the new networked Commons, best explained the idea of what a Commons is all about. He wrote: To say “the commons” is to evoke a puzzled pause. . . . Yet the commons is more basic than both government and market. It is the vast realm that is the shared heritage of all of us that we typically use without toll or price. The atmosphere and oceans, languages and cultures, the stores of human knowledge and wisdom, the informal support systems of community, the peace and quiet that we crave, the genetic building blocks of life—these are all aspects of the commons.41 ~ Jeremy Rifkin, #NFDB
1260:Like most people who write collections of humorous personal essays, I was a bookish child. Other boys my age focused most of their time on yelling, trying to fart on each other, and generally not obeying rules. The vast majority of male eight-year-olds love to break rules. It is their greatest passion. Mashing their food together in the cafeteria and pretending it’s barf. Yelling “boobs” during a nice assembly where we learn about Irish step dancing. Maiming beauty. They love it. Their fierce defiance of what moms and teachers want out of them is what fuels their spirits. I have never understood these creatures. ~ Guy Branum, #NFDB
1261:Flying to Monterey I had a sharp apprehension of the many times before when I had, like Lincoln Steffens, "come back," flown west, followed the sun, each time experiencing a lightening of spirit as the land below opened up, the checkerboards of the midwestern plains giving way to the vast empty reach between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada; then home, there, where I was from, me, California. It would be a while before I realized that “me” is what we think when our parents die, even at my age, who will look out for me now, who will remember me as I was, who will know what happens to me now, where will I be from. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
1262:To me, the best, if not the only function of imaginative writing, is to lead the human imagination outward, to take it into the vast external cosmos, and away from all that introversion and introspection, that morbidly exaggerated prying into one's own vitals—and the vitals of others—which Robinson Jeffers has so aptly symbolized as "incest." What we need is less "human interest," in the narrow sense of the term—not more. Physiological—and even psychological analysis—can be largely left to the writers of scientific monographs on such themes. Fiction, as I see it, is not the place for that sort of grubbing. ~ Clark Ashton Smith, #NFDB
1263:At that moment I saw you at the end of the platform. You were wearing trousers. On the long platform beside the stranded train, in the vast white diffused late-afternoon light of the rift valley, you looked very small. With your appearance everything changed. Everything from the passage under the railway tracks to the sun setting, from the Arabic numerals on the board which announced the times of the trains, to the gulls perched on a roof, from the invisible stars to the taste of coffee on my palate. The world of circumstance and contingency, into which, long before, I had been born, became like a room. I was home. ~ John Berger, #NFDB
1264:And he knew that he would never come again, and that lost magic would not come again. Lost now was all of it-the street, the heat, King's Highway, and Tom the Piper's son, all mixed in with the vast and drowsy murmur of the Fair, and with the sense of absence in the afternoon, and the house that waited, and the child that dreamed. And out of the enchanted wood, that thicket of man's memory, Eugene knew that the dark eye and the quiet face of his friend and brother-poor child, life's stranger, and life's exile, lost like all of us, a cipher in blind mazes, long ago-the lost boy was gone forever, and would not return. ~ Thomas Wolfe, #NFDB
1265:If you take the character of any man, it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character. Good and evil have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In studying the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought out their inner fire more than praise. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1266:Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1267:They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount importance. Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of life. They possess the vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and appropriating to themselves the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors. With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man himself. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
1268:Whenever I think of these things, I feel an exquisite pang of longing. I feel oddly depressed; it's almost like I know too much simply to be in the moment anymore, to enjoy what I used to relish so uncritically. I'm aware that there is a bigger, far more complicated world out there than I'd ever realized, and just like the students at Beijing University, I've glimpsed it only fleetingly, peripherally. I've sensed the vast expanse of my own ignorance now. I feel antsy and constricted and a deep, almost sexual yearning for velocity, for some sort of raw, transcendent experience that I cannot even begin to articulate. ~ Susan Jane Gilman, #NFDB
1269:Favourite lines from "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" because of analogies I can form with them or due to the impression they have on my imagination:
- To look at the height of Snäfell it seemed impossible to reach the summit. But after an hours' fatigue and athletic exercise, a sort of staircase suddenly appeared in the midst of the vast carpet of snow lying on the croup of the volcano, and this greatly simplified our ascent. (p. 73)
- As I lay on my back, I chanced to open my eyes and perceived a bright spot at the extremity of the tube, 3,000 feet long, transformed now into a gigantic telescope. (p. 83) ~ Jules Verne,#NFDB
1270:Information on dissociative disorders, trauma, and mind control had been deliberately suppressed from the American psychiatric and psychological associations for so-called “reasons of national security.” The founder of the APA, Dr. Ewen Cameron, had been caught using CIA mind control methods at the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada. The CIA was forced to compensate the victims, yet it took years2. In the meantime, educational institutions for mental health professionals lacked the facts necessary for treating the vast number of victims/survivors who were filling their offices in search of help and understanding. ~ Cathy O Brien, #NFDB
1271:Each generation has shouted behind him, Nigger! as he walked our streets; it is he whom we would rather our sisters did not marry; he is banished into the vast and wailing outer darkness whenever we speak of the “purity” of our women, of the “sanctity” of our homes, of “American” ideals. What is more, he knows it. He is indeed the “native son”: he is the “nigger.” Let us refrain from inquiring at the moment whether or not he actually exists; for we believe that he exists. Whenever we encounter him amongst us in the flesh, our faith is made perfect and his necessary and bloody end is executed with a mystical ferocity of joy. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1272:Had they nothing else to say to one another? More serious communications were, to be sure, passing between their eyes. As they tried to make conversation, they felt the same languor stealing over them both, as if their whispering voices were being drowned by the deep continuous murmur of their souls. Surprised by the strange sweetness of it, they never thought to describe or to explain what they felt. Coming delights, like tropical beaches, send out their native enchantment over the vast spaces that precede them - a perfumed breeze that lulls and drugs you out of all anxiety as to what may yet await you below the horizon. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1273:Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
1274:The Awful Truth
Despite the vast data at hand
pertaining to his belief
in the charm and ease of exposure,
not much is known about Cary
beyond the simple decency
and consular good manners
his roles only occasionally
allowed him to exhibit.
The outbreak of war
had offered him boy scouts
on the docks, followed by a few
last letters to post, about which he was
curious but remained none the wiser.
Still, a pattern began to emerge
as if from the wallpaper
of his bedroom — a patter
too, like roaches. Formidable
omens? Probably not. Probably
just roaches.
~ Chris Edwards,#NFDB
1275:Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
1276:The system of negation is indispensable to it in order to get rid of its own definitions and limited experience; it is obliged to escape through a vague Indefinite into the Infinite. For it lives in a closed prison of constructions and representations that are necessary for its action but are not the self-existent truth either of Matter or Life or Mind or Spirit. But if we can once cross beyond the Minds frontier twilight into the vast plane of supramental Knowledge, these devices cease to be indispensable. supermind has quite another, a positive and direct and living experience of the supreme Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
1277:According to Padilla, remembered Amalfitano, all literature could be classified as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Novels, in general, were heterosexual. Poetry, on the other hand, was completely homosexual. Within the vast ocean of poetry he identified various currents: faggots, queers, sissies, freaks, butches, fairies, nymphs, and philenes. But the two major currents were faggots and queers. Walt Whitman, for example, was a faggot poet. Pablo Neruda, a queer. William Blake was definitely a faggot. Octavio Paz was a queer. Borges was a philene, or in other words he might be a faggot one minute and simply asexual the next. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
1278:Entertainments nearly always end with triumph or disaster—happiness achieved, or total, tragic defeat precluding any hope of it. But there is always more after the ending—always the next morning and the next, always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other. Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, large as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else. For the vast majority of the rest of the universe, that ending might as well not ever have happened. Every ending is an arbitrary one. Every ending is, from another angle, not really an ending. ~ Ann Leckie, #NFDB
1279:Perception of the miraculous requires no faith or assumptions. It is simply a matter of paying full and close attention to the givens of life, i.e., to what is so ever-present that it is usually taken for granted. The true wonder of the world is available everywhere, in the minutest parts of our bodies, in the vast expanses of the cosmos, and in the intimate interconnectedness of these and all things. . . . We are part of a finely balanced ecosystem in which interdependency goes hand-in-hand with individuation. We are all individuals, but we are also parts of a greater whole, united in something vast and beautiful beyond description. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
1280:Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. We all need to take a cold hard look at the evidence and see reasoning for what it is. The French cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber recently reviewed the vast research literature on motivated reasoning (in social psychology) and on the biases and errors of reasoning (in cognitive psychology). They concluded that most of the bizarre and depressing research findings make perfect sense once you see reasoning as having evolved not to help us find truth but to help us engage in arguments, persuasion, and manipulation in the context of discussions with other people. As ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1281:Entertainments nearly always end with triumph or disaster - happiness achieved, or total, tragic defeat precluding any hope of it. But there is always more after the ending - always the next morning and the next, always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other. Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, large as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else. For the vast majority of the rest of the universe, that ending might as well not ever have happened. Every ending is an arbitrary one. Every ending is, from another angle, not really an ending. ~ Ann Leckie, #NFDB
1282:Mr. Moundshroud, who are YOU? And Mr. Moundshroud, way up there on the roof, sent his thoughts back: I think you know, boy, I think you know. Will we meet again, Mr. Moundshroud? Many years from now, yes, I’ll come for you. And a last thought from Tom: O Mr. Moundshroud, will we EVER stop being afraid of nights and death? And the thought returned: When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die. Tom listened, heard, and waved quietly. Mr. Moundshroud, far off, lifted his hand. Click. Tom’s front door went shut. His pumpkin-like-a-skull, on the vast Tree, sneezed and went dark. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1283:The sky
Where'er he be, on water or on land,
Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold;
One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band,
Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold;
Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er
His little brain may be, alive or dead;
Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere,
And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.
The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall;
The lighted ceiling of a music-hall
Where every actor treads a bloody soilThe hermit's hope; the terror of the sot;
The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot
Where the vast human generations boil!
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1284:they argue that belief in a transcendent being conveys a genetic advantage: that couples who follow one of the three religions of the Book and maintain patriarchal values have more children than atheists or agnostics. You see less education among women, less hedonism and individualism. And to a large degree, this belief in transcendence can be passed on genetically. Conversions, or cases where people grow up to reject family values, are statistically insignificant. In the vast majority of cases, people stick with whatever metaphysical system they grow up in. That’s why atheist humanism—the basis of any ‘pluralist society’—is doomed. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
1285:I hear very little from evangelicals about the impact of gun proliferation on violent crime, much less an issue like nuclear disarmament. I hear almost nothing about health care for the poor and protecting widows and orphans, both biblical mandates, and scant mention of the thirteen million children who die worldwide from malnutrition in a year. I hear scornful dismissal of concerns about global warming, an issue viewed seriously by the vast majority of scientists. I hear talk about family values, but when an administration proposed legislation to allow mothers to take unpaid leave after childbirth, conservative religious groups opposed it. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1286:It was hard to imagine the icy water thawed and re-sealing, or the sky returning to a lively blue. She had a sense of contraction, of huddling against the weather. Later, it figured in her mind as Stalinist classicism, the wind tunnel of the vast and inhuman Karl-Marx-Allee, and the shapes of people in padded jackets bending against the cruel air. A scene from Eisenstein, perhaps, with a gelid lens and the special effects of monumental vision, swollen by an aerial view and historical misery. Black outlines on white snow, impersonality, extinguishment. Exaggeration of this kind was irresistible. In that early, fierce cold, Berliners coped better. ~ Gail Jones, #NFDB
1287:Stalin's mental journey, by 1943, proceeded in the opposite direction to that of Hitler. One moved toward reality; the other moved away from it. They crossed paths at Stalingrad. And as the war turned on the hinge of that battle (and on the new psychological opposition), Stalin might have concerned himself with a "counterfactual": if, instead of decapitating his army, he had intelligently prepared it for war, Russia might have defeated Germany in a matter of weeks. Such a course of action, while no doubt entailing grave consequences of its own, would have saved about 40 million lives, including the vast majority of the victims of the Holocaust. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
1288:Even though Pope Urban VIII reversed the pronouncements of his predecessors by declaring slavery unacceptable in the mid-seventeenth century, the vast majority of Protestant Christians in America considered slavery and white supremacy to be absolutely consistent with “biblical” Christianity. It would take American Protestants over a hundred years to make slavery history. Even then, they would find ways to cleverly camouflage the old Doctrine of Discovery and its white supremacist scaffolding under distinctly American terms like Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism, terms still celebrated in many sectors of US society today. Professor ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1289:The abandoned stars were hers for the many rich hours os sparkling winter nights, and, unattended, she took them in like lovers. She felt that she looked out, not up, into the spacious universe, she knew the names of every bright star and all the constellations, and (although she could not see them) she was familiar with the vast billowing nebulae in which one filament of a wild and shaken mane carried in its trail a hundred million worlds. In a delirium of comets, suns, and pulsating stars, she let her eyes fill with the humming, crackling, hissing light of the galaxy's edge, a perpetual twilight, a gray dawn in one of heaven's many galleries. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
1290:And right then it felt like I finally understood where everything was, eternity, the heart , the soul. It was like I was sharing every experience I'd ever had in my past 13 years. And then, the next moment, I became unbearably sad. I didn't know what to do with these feeling. Her warmth, her soul. How was I supposed to treat them? That, I did not know. Then right then, I clearly understood that we would never be together. Our lives not yet fully realized, the vast expanse of time. They lay before us and there was nothing we could do. But then, all my worries, all my doubt, started melting away. All that was left were Akari's soft lips on mine. ~ Makoto Shinkai, #NFDB
1291:And so we've come to a conclusion that's both general and provocative. Reality in an infinite cosmos is not what most of us would expect. At any moment in time, the expanse of space contains an infinite number of separate realms-constituents of what I'll call the Quilted Multiverse-with our observable universe, all we see in the vast night sky, being but one member. Canvassing this infinite collection of separate realms, we find that particle arrangements necessarily repeat infinitely many times. The reality that holds in any given universe, including ours, is thus replicated in an infinite number of other universes across the Quilted Multiverse. ~ Brian Greene, #NFDB
1292:To Maude
Not as two errant spheres together grind
With monstrous ruin in the vast of space,
Destruction born of that malign embrace,
Their hapless peoples all to death consigned
Not so when our intangible worlds of mind,
Even mine and yours, each with its spirit race
Of beings shadowy in form and face,
Shall drift together on some blessed wind.
No, in that marriage of gloom and light
All miracles of beauty shall be wrought,
Attesting a diviner faith than man's;
For all my sad-eyed daughters of the night
Shall smile on your sweet seraphim of thought,
Nor any jealous god forbid the banns.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
1293:Imagine this struggle being repeated in every barracks of the city, the district, the whole front, all Russia. Imagine the sleepless Krylenkos, watching the regiments, hurrying from place to place, arguing, threatening, entreating. And then imaging the same in all the locals of every labour union, in the factories, the villages, on the battle-ships of the far-flung Russian fleets; think of the hundreds of thousands of Russian men staring up at speakers all over the vast country, workmen, peasants, soldiers, sailors, trying so hard to understand and to choose, thinking so intensely-and deciding so unanimously at the end. So was the Russian Revolution…. ~ John Reed, #NFDB
1294:To be clear, the vast increase in the number of single women is to be celebrated not because singleness is in and of itself a better or more desirable state than coupledom. The revolution is in the expansion of options, the lifting of the imperative that for centuries hustled nearly all (non-enslaved) women, regardless of their individual desires, ambitions, circumstances, or the quality of available matches, down a single highway toward early heterosexual marriage and motherhood. There are now an infinite number of alternate routes open; they wind around combinations of love, sex, partnership, parenthood, work, and friendship, at different speeds. ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
1295:I find that a Christian view of history is clarified if one considers reality as more or less like the world portrayed in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. We live in the midst of contests between great and mysterious spiritual forces, which we understand only imperfectly and whose true dimensions we only occasionally glimpse. Yet, frail as we are, we do play a role in this history, on the side either of the powers of light or of the powers of darkness. It is crucially important then, that, by God’s grace, we keep our wits about us and discern the vast difference between the real forces for good and the powers of darkness disguised as angels of light.2 ~ George M Marsden, #NFDB
1296:To trust in spite of the look of being forgotten; to keep crying out into the vast whence comes no voice, and where seems no hearing; to struggle after light, where is no glimmer to guide; at every turn to find a door-less wall, yet ever seek a door; to see the machinery of the world pauseless grinding on as if self-moved, caring for no life, nor shifting a hair's-breadth for all entreaty, and yet believe that God is awake and utterly loving; to desire nothing but what comes meant for us from his hand; to wait patiently, willing to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail—such is the victory that overcometh the world, such is faith indeed. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1297:As long ago as 1795, in an essay titled Perpetual Peace, Immanuel Kant worked out what such deterrence ultimately leads to: “A war, therefore, which might cause the destruction of both parties at once … would permit the conclusion of a perpetual peace only upon the vast burial-ground of the human species.”22 (Kant’s book title came from an innkeeper’s sign featuring a cemetery—not the type of perpetual peace most of us strive for.) Deterrence acts as only a temporary solution to the Hobbesian temptation to strike first, allowing both Leviathans to go about their business in relative peace, settling for small proxy wars in swampy Third World countries. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
1298:Professor Ramachandran believes this synesthetic connection between our hearing and seeing senses was an important first step towards the creation of words in early humans. According to this theory, our ancestors would have begun to talk by using sounds that evoked the object they wanted to describe. For example, words referring to something small often involve making a synesthetic small i sound with the lips and a narrowing of the vocal tracts: Little, teeny, petite, whereas the opposite is true of words denoting something large or enormous. If the theory is right, then language emerged from the vast array of synesthetic connections in the human brain. ~ Daniel Tammet, #NFDB
1299:In white neighborhoods, only 1 in 41 properties that could have received a nuisance citation actually did receive one. In black neighborhoods, 1 in 16 eligible properties received a citation. A woman reporting domestic violence was far more likely to land her landlord a nuisance citation if she lived in the inner city.
In the vast majority of cases (83 percent), landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them. ~ Matthew Desmond,#NFDB
1300:America must welcome all---Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not---all, all, without exceptions: become an asylum for all who choose to come. We may have drifted away from this principle temporarily but time will bring us back. … America is not for special types, for the caste, but for the great mass of people---the vast, surging, hopeful, army of workers. Dare we deny them a home---close the doors in their face----take possession of all and fence it in and then sit down satisfied with our system---convinced that we have solved our problem? I for my part refuse to connect America with such a failure---such a tragedy, for tragedy it would be. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
1301:Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways in a Cartesian grid, sketched in sepia, mile on mile. "The Great Bovine City of the World," breathed Lindsey in wonder. Indeed, the backs of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human hats. From this height it was as if the Chums, who, out on adventures past, had often witnessed the vast herds of cattle adrift in everchanging cloudlike patterns across the Western plains, here saw that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killingfloor. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
1302:God.'
I always say that name when I think of it.
'God.'
Twice, I speak it.
I say His name in a futile attempt to understand. 'But it's not your job to understand.' That's me who replies. God never says anything. You think you're the only one he never answers? 'Your job is to...' and I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me. When I start thinking like that, I become so exhausted, and I don't have the luxury of indulging fatigue. I'm compelled to continue on, because although it's not true for every person on earth, it's true for the vast majority - that death waits for no man - and if he does, he doesn't usually wait very long. ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
1303:Nothing lasts forever though. The twin stars aged and slowly converged upon each other until one day they merged in a cataclysm that ended the dance, ruined entire worlds, and scattered the planets and their moons in every direction. Lifebringer, once the third planet from the larger of the twin stars, survived the cataclysm, but an enormous force pushed it out from its home and into the vast reaches of space. It was alone, and although it didn’t know it, such planets would later become known as rogue planets, orphans in the eternity of space. Light dimmed and, over the years, disappeared completely. The surface got colder, and in time no life remained ~ Andreas Christensen, #NFDB
1304:Our minds are all that defend us from the horror of the void. The majority of the time we simply think about something—anything—else, and that itself is an act of defiance against the vast nothing of the universe. But minds break down and stop thinking sometimes. They feel instead: A looping, gnawing monster eats away confidence and goals and even a sense of duty until we are in a dry bleak place of ennui, unable to focus on the minutiae that used to keep us moving. Tongues taste chalk and ashes, and eyes see only gray washes occasionally penetrated by bright stabs of panic. Depression is a prison to which you have the key except you never think to look for it. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
1305:Scenarios where humans can survive and defeat AIs have been popularized by unrealistic Hollywood movies such as the Terminator series, where the AIs aren’t significantly smarter than humans. When the intelligence differential is large enough, you get not a battle but a slaughter. So far, we humans have driven eight out of eleven elephant species extinct, and killed off the vast majority of the remaining three. If all world governments made a coordinated effort to exterminate the remaining elephants, it would be relatively quick and easy. I think we can confidently rest assured that if a superintelligent AI decides to exterminate humanity, it will be even quicker. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
1306:Almost all the scientific studies Irving had looked at up to now, the e-mail explained, had a catch. The vast majority of research into whether drugs work or not is funded by big pharmaceutical companies, and they do this research for a specific reason: they want to be able to market those drugs so they can make a profit out of them. That’s why the drug companies conduct their scientific studies in secret, and afterward, they only publish the results that make their drugs look good, or that make their rivals’ drugs look worse. They do this for exactly the same reasons that (say) KFC would never release information telling you that fried chicken isn’t good for you. ~ Johann Hari, #NFDB
1307:If you were not very close to Dumbledore, how do you account for the fact that he remembered you in his will? He made exceptionally few personal bequests. The vast majority of his possessions--his private library, his magical instruments, and other personal effects--were left to Hogwarts. Why do you think you were singled out?”
“I…dunno,” said Ron. “I…when I say we weren’t close…I mean, I think he liked me…”
“You’re being modest, Ron,” said Hermione. “Dumbledore was very fond of you.”
This was stretching the truth to breaking point; as far as Harry knew, Ron and Dumbledore had never been alone together, and direct contact between them had been negligible. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
1308:Computer cores made if liquid crystal that can re-form itself into any configuration, creating the ultimate efficiency for any particular piece of cybernetic business that needs doing, shifting from storage of data to moving it to analyzing it and the altering to a form most efficient for acting on the analysis.Hearts that can make minds, from little bits if brightness in Cowboy's skull that let him move his panzer, to large models that create working analogs of the human brain, the vast artificial intelligences that keep things moving smoothly for the Orbitals and the governments of the planet.
All in miniature potential, here in the cardboard box. ~ Walter Jon Williams,#NFDB
1309:Computer cores made of liquid crystal that can re-form itself into any configuration, creating the ultimate efficiency for any particular piece of cybernetic business that needs doing, shifting from storage of data to moving it to analyzing it and the altering to a form most efficient for acting on the analysis. Hearts that can make minds, from little bits if brightness in Cowboy's skull that let him move his panzer, to large models that create working analogs of the human brain, the vast artificial intelligences that keep things moving smoothly for the Orbitals and the governments of the planet.
All in miniature potential, here in the cardboard box. ~ Walter Jon Williams,#NFDB
1310:My Heart Was Wandering In The Sands
MY heart was wandering in the sands,
a restless thing, a scorn apart;
Love set his fire in my hands,
I clasp’d the flame unto my heart.
Surely, I said, my heart shall turn
one fierce delight of pointed flame;
and in that holocaust shall burn
its old unrest and scorn and shame:
surely my heart the heavens at last
shall storm with fiery orisons,
and know, enthroned in the vast,
the fervid peace of molten suns.
The flame that feeds upon my heart
fades or flares, by wild winds controll’d;
my heart still walks a thing apart,
my heart is restless as of old.
~ Christopher John Brennan,#NFDB
1311:Reacher looked at the books on the tables. He read when he could, mostly through the vast national library of lost and forgotten volumes. Battered paperbacks mostly, all curled and furry, found in waiting rooms or on buses, or on the porches of out-of-the-way motels, read and enjoyed and left somewhere else for the next guy. He liked fiction better than fact, because fact often wasn’t. Like most people he knew a couple of things for sure, up close and eyeballed, and when he saw them in books they were wrong. So he liked made-up stories better, because everyone knew where they were from the get-go. He wasn’t strict about genre. Either shit happened, or it didn’t. Chang ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1312:The product of causes ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms, that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand ... ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1313:I listened to the static echoing in my ear and thought of those herds of horses you get in the vast wild spaces of America and Australia, the ones running free, fighting off bobcats or dingoes and living lean on what they find, gold and tangled in the fierce sun. My friend Alan from when I was a kid, he worked on a ranch in Wyoming one summer, on a J1 visa. He watched guys breaking those horses. He told me that every now and then there was one that couldn't be broken, one wild to the bone. Those horses fought the bridle and the fence till they were ripped up and streaming blood, till they smashed their legs or their necks to splinters, till they died of fighting to run. ~ Tana French, #NFDB
1314:"Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carried by the Eternal Will of the Father, and not for your sake alone. Dismiss from your mind the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of Necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake. The wide aerial flight of birds gives no true knowledge, nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud: flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled." ~ Zoroaster, #NFDB
1315:Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often—will it be for always?—how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realized my loss till this moment’? The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again. They ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1316:The vast emotional distances between the individual members of a Scandinavian family are forged early and reinforced daily. Can you imagine growing up in a culture where you can never ask anyone anything about themselves? Where "How are you?" is considered a personal question that one is not obligated to answer? Where you are trained to always wait for others to first mention what is troubling them, even as you are trained to never mention what is troubling you? It must be a survival skill left over from the old Viking days, when long silences were required to prevent unnecessary homicides during the long, dark winters when quarters were close and supplies were dwindling. ~ Hope Jahren, #NFDB
1317:The winter sunset, flaming beyond spires
And chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,
Opens great gates to some forgotten year
Of elder splendours and divine desires.
Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,
Adventure-fraught, and not untinged with fear;
A row of sphinxes where the way leads clear
Toward walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.
It is the land where beauty's meaning flowers,
Where every unplaced memory has a source,
Where the great river Time begins its course
Down the vast void in starlit streams of hours.
Dreams bring us close - but ancient lore repeats
That human tread has never soiled these streets. ~ H P Lovecraft,#NFDB
1318:He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watchers, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
1319:Between 1999 and 2002, the Yankees paid over three times what the A’s paid for the average player on their roster. The Yankee payroll was $130 million in 2002; that of the A’s, just $40 million. Yet the difference in performance between the two teams was surprisingly small considering the vast difference in salaries. The Yankees made the championship playoffs in 2000, 2001, and 2002, but so did the A’s. The Yankees did go all the way to the World Series in 2000 and 2001, and won it in 2000. But during the 2002 regular season, the A’s and the Yankees each won 103 games. Just think what the A’s might have accomplished with the combination of evidence and unlimited budget. ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer, #NFDB
1320:The Empty Bowl
I held the golden vessel of my soul
And prayed that God would fill it from on high.
Day after day the importuning cry
Grew stronger-grew, a heaven-accusing dole
Because no sacred waters laved my bowl.
'So full the fountain, Lord, wouldst Thou deny
The little needed for a soul's supply?
I ask but this small portion of Thy whole.'
Then from the vast invisible Somewhere,
A voice, as one love-authorized by Him,
Spake, and the tumult of my heart was stilled.
'Who wants the waters must the bowl prepare;
Pour out the self, that chokes it to the brim,
But emptied vessels, from the Source are filled.'
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
1321:Western Europe was better placed than any other region to profit from the vast flows of goods and ideas within the emerging global system of exchange. The European scientific revolution was, in part, a response to the torrent of new ideas pouring into Europe as a result of its expanded contacts with the rest of the world. Awareness of new ideas, crops, religions, and commodities undermined traditional behaviors, cosmologies, and beliefs and posed sharply the question of how to distinguish between false and true knowledge of the world. The reinvention and spread of printing with movable type ensured that new information would circulate more easily in Europe than elsewhere. ~ David Christian, #NFDB
1322:If the only thing I did for the rest of my life was treat others kindly, file manila folders, and sit on the porch watching the grass grow it would be enough. It had to be. I did the math. The number of people who actually achieve a significant legacy is trifling compared to the vast number who go from birth to death living relatively unremarkable lives (at least on the surface). And maybe that wasn't the failure I'd been conditioned to believe. Maybe there was something to be said in praise of an outwardly unremarkable life. Maybe there were deep everyday forms of magic that had nothing to do with profound acomplishments or a Twitter feed that resonated down through the ages. ~ Clara Bensen, #NFDB
1323:I am going to take you every imaginable way,' he promised on a whisper, tugging her bodice lower.
'Excellent,' she murmured. She tugged his shirt from his trousers.
'Right side up, upside down, sideways, sitting, standing. You on top. Then me on top.'
'A brilliant plan.' His shirt fell from his shoulders. Oh, his shoulders. The vast glorious curve of them. She couldn't wait to lick one.
'Backward, forward. On the bed, on the table, on the settee.'
He paused, and lifted her dress off over her head with all the ceremony of an unveiling. It fell to the floor.
'And then?' she whispered.
'And then we'll do it all over again.'
It was the never-ending story! ~ Julie Anne Long,#NFDB
1324:Bleak as the scene was, though, there was growing joy in Inman's heart. He was nearing home; he could feel it in the touch of thin air on skin, in his longing to see the lead of hearth smoke from the houses of people he had known all his life. People he would not be called upon to hate or fear. He rose and took a wide stance on the rock and stood and pinched down his eyes to sharpen the view across the vast propect to one far mountain. It stood apart from the sky only as the stroke of a poorly inked pen, a line thin and quick and gestural. But the shape slowly grew plain and unmistakable. It was to Cold Mountain he looked. He had achieved a vista of what for him was homeland. ~ Charles Frazier, #NFDB
1325:My Name
Once when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass,
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become and where I would find myself,
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go. ~ Mark Strand,#NFDB
1326:The Mongols who inherited Genghis Khan’s empire exercised a determined drive to move products and commodities around and to combine them in ways that produced entirely novel products and unprecedented invention. When their highly skilled engineers from China, Persia, and Europe combined Chinese gunpowder with Muslim flamethrowers and applied European bell-casting technology, they produced the cannon, an entirely new order of technological innovation, from which sprang the vast modern arsenal of weapons from pistols to missiles. While each item had some significance, the larger impact came in the way the Mongols selected and combined technologies to create unusual hybrids. The ~ Jack Weatherford, #NFDB
1327:We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. ~ Michael Cunningham, #NFDB
1328:The Big House Brought to you by Pete the Palikos This four-storey sky-blue Victorian is a bona fide gem. The vast veranda offers ample space for pinochle players and convalescents alike. The basement is currently set up for strawberry-jam storage, but can also be used to hide the occasional demigod driven insane by the Labyrinth. The ground-floor living quarters, camp infirmary and combination rec room / meeting room are wheelchair accessible, as is a specially designed bronze-lined office. The rooms of the top floors stand ready to welcome overnight guests, while the attic, now free of its resident desiccated mummy, provides the perfect catch-all for camper discards and memorabilia. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1329:Paradoxically, many Western-oriented Islamic countries that are praised in the West for having “secularist” governments do not allow Western-style democratic practices; if they did in the sense of allowing people to really express their preferences, the result would be a much more Islamic government as far as the rule of the Sharī‘ah is concerned. This is because the vast majority of all Muslims, even in the most Westernized and modernized countries, would like to live according to the Sharī‘ah and to have their own freedom and democracy on the basis of their own understanding of these concepts and ideals rather than on how they are understood in the modern and postmodern West. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1330:You can’t manage what you can’t measure” is a maxim that is taught and believed by many in both the business and education sectors. But in fact, the phrase is ridiculous—something said by people who are unaware of how much is hidden. A large portion of what we manage can’t be measured, and not realizing this has unintended consequences. The problem comes when people think that data paints a full picture, leading them to ignore what they can’t see. Here’s my approach: Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think about what you are doing. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1331:Last night I learned how to be a lover of God,
To live in this world and call nothing my own.
I looked inward
And the beauty of my own emptiness
filled me till dawn.
It enveloped me like a mine of rubies.
Its hue clothed me in red silk.
Within the cavern of my soul
I heard the voice of a lover crying,
“Drink now! Drink now!”—
I took a sip and saw the vast ocean—
Wave upon wave caressed my soul.
The lovers of God dance around
And the circle of their steps
becomes a ring of fire round my neck.
Heaven calls me with its rain and thunder—
a hundred thousand cries
yet I cannot hear.....
All I hear is the call of my Beloved. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1332:Chaplin gave us a genuine reverse image of modern times: its image seen through a living man, through his sufferings, his tribulations, his victories. We are now entering the vast domain of the illusory reverse image. What we find is a false world: firstly because it is not a world, and because it presents itself as true, and because it mimics real life closely in order to replace the real by its opposite; by replacing real unhappiness by fictions of happiness, for example—by offering a fiction in response to the real need for happiness—and so on. This is the 'world' of most films, most of the press, the theatre, the music hall: of a large sector of leisure activities. (57) ~ Henri Lefebvre, #NFDB
1333:The last glow of sundown dims away. Stars appear in the east. Night encloses us. The ocean seems to enlarge. When you’re adrift at night, imagination and perception merge. They have to. You can’t see as well, as far, as deep. You tie knots by muscle memory, and you operate your reel mostly by feel. Your boat drifts, your thoughts drift. You sense the sweep of tide and water, and the boat gets rocked in turbulence just past each undersea ridgeline and boulder field. You, too, are looking up, searching constellations, dreaming. You fell again how flexible and expansive your mind can be when it’s working right. And you slip your leash to explore the vast vault of sky and great interior spaces. ~ Carl Safina, #NFDB
1334:It takes no more research than a trip to almost any public library or college to show the incredibly lopsided coverage of slavery in the United States or in the Western Hemisphere, as compared to the meager writings on even larger number of Africans enslaved in the Islamic countries of the Middle East and North Africa, not to mention the vast numbers of Europeans also enslaved in centuries past in the Islamic world and within Europe itself. At least a million Europeans were enslaved by North African pirates alone from 1500 to 1800, and some Europeans slaves were still being sold on the auction blocks in the Egypt, years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed blacks in the United States. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
1335:The vast majority of workers had no such representation; in countries where benefits like pensions were tied to regular jobs, they entered the informal sector. Such individuals had few legally defined rights and often did not possess legal title to the land or houses they occupied. Throughout Latin America and many other parts of the developing world, the informal sector constitutes perhaps 60 to 70 percent of the entire labor force. Unlike the industrial working class, this group of “new poor” has been notoriously hard to organize for political action. Rather than living in large barracks in factory towns, they live scattered across the country and are often self-employed entrepreneurs. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1336:As I lay there, listening to the soft slap of the sea, and thinking these sad and strange thoughts, more and more and more stars had gathered, obliterating the separateness of the Milky Way and filling up the whole sky. And far far away in that ocean of gold, stars were silently shooting and falling and finding their fates, among these billions and billions of merging golden lights. And curtain after curtain of gauze was quietly removed, and I saw stars behind stars behind stars, as in the magical Odeons of my youth. And I saw into the vast soft interior of the universe which was slowly and gently turning itself inside out. I went to sleep, and in my sleep I seemed to hear a sound of singing. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
1337:The vast majority of arrests carried out by the military appear to be entirely arbitrary, often based solely on the dubious word of a paid informant. Military sources repeatedly told Amnesty International that the informants are unreliable and often provide false information in order to get paid.
One officer said: "The military uses civilian informants to get information and arrest suspects. Most of these informants are liars. They give false information to the soldiers who are desperate to simply shoot and kill. Many of the soldiers don't know about investigations. The soldiers take these rash actions mainly out of frustration, especially after seeing their colleagues killed. ~ Amnesty International,#NFDB
1338:As of the second decade in the twenty-first century, nearly all acts of terror around the world (as opposed to acts of terror confined to one country, as in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have been committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Of course the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But this frequently noted fact is meaningless. The vast majority of Germans were not members of the Gestapo, nor were the vast majority of Russians members of the Communist Party, let alone the KGB. Not only is international terror overwhelmingly Muslim, but there are virtually no terrorists committing terror in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
1339:There are no butterfly experts among the caterpillars, despite innumerable claims to the contrary, and I encourage my students to at least consider the possibility that the world is up to its poles in caterpillars who quite successfully convince themselves and others that they are actually butterflies. Or, to say it plainly, the vast majority of the world’s authorities on enlightenment are themselves not enlightened. They may be something, but they’re not awake. An easy way to distinguish between caterpillars and butterflies is to remember that the enlightened don’t attach importance to anything, and that enlightenment doesn’t require knowledge. It’s not about love or compassion or consciousness. ~ Jed McKenna, #NFDB
1340:So what are you supposed to do? My friends, what I need you to do—just for starters—is not act. Not yet. Not first. First I need you to see. I need you to see the pains and possibilities of black life, its virtues and vices, its strengths and weaknesses, its yeses and nos. I need you to see how the cantankerous varieties of black identity have been distorted by seeing black folk collectively as the nigger. It is not a question of simply not saying nigger; you have to stop believing, no matter what, that black folk are niggers and all the term represents. Instead you must swim in the vast ocean of blackness and then realize you have been buoyed all along on its sustaining views of democracy. ~ Michael Eric Dyson, #NFDB
1341:To me, the view that Buddhist teachings are somehow religious, requiring some form of blind belief, and that you would have to relinquish other spiritual practices in order to pursue them fully, is neither accurate nor helpful. It’s not accurate because the Buddha’s central thesis was humanistic; he focused clearly on human suffering and the causes of that suffering. At the same time, viewing Buddhism as a religion is not helpful. People from all walks of life become interested in the vast array of Buddhist ethical, philosophical, and psychological teachings, and to declare that they cannot fully participate because they are also exploring another spirituality is severely confining and unnecessary. ~ Ethan Nichtern, #NFDB
1342:But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not
present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation
prepared to receive us the instant we are born —a world furnished to
our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour
down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or
wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things,
and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross
feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is
the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it
but a sacrifice of the Creator? ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1343:I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those soufflés, all that crème caramel, all those daubes and albóndigas and gumbos. Clean sheets, stacks of clean towels, hurricane lamps for storms, enough water and food to see us through whatever geological event came our way. These fragments I have shored against my ruins, were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them. That I could find meaning in the intensely personal nature of life as a wife and mother did not seem inconsistent with finding meaning in the vast indifference of geology and the test shots. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
1344:But this is what ... people are so often and disastrously wrong in doing: they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment ...
And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half broken things that they would like to call their happiness, and their futures?
And so each of them loses himself to the other for the sake of the other person, and loses the other. And loses the vast possibilities ... in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothing more can come, nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment and poverty. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
1345:As if the free military equipment, training, and cash grants were not enough, the Reagan administration provided law enforcement with yet another financial incentive to devote extraordinary resources to drug law enforcement, rather than more serious crimes: state and local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war. This dramatic change in policy gave state and local police an enormous stake in the War on Drugs - not in its success, but in its perpetual existence. Law enforcement gained a pecuniary interest not only in the forfeited property, but in the profitability of the drug market itself. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1346:Both the fanatical believers and the fixed attitude people are loud in their scorn of what they call “woolly minds.”… [But it] is the woolly mind that combines scepticism about everything with credulity about everything. Being woolly it has no hard edges. It is easy, pliant, yet it has its own toughness. Because it bends, it does not break. … The woolly mind realizes that we live in an unimaginable gigantic, complicated, mysterious universe. To try to stuff the vast bewildering creation into a few neat pigeon-holes is absurd. We don’t know enough, and to pretend we do is mere intellectual conceit. … The best we can do is keep looking out for clues, for anything that will light us a step or two in the dark. ~ J B Priestley, #NFDB
1347:There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it indeed seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven? Where the devil was heaven? Was it up? Down? There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the earth too. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
1348:The Torah is the world’s great protest against empires and imperialism. There are many dimensions to this protest. One dimension is the protest against the attempt to justify social hierarchy and the absolute power of rulers in the name of religion. Another is the subordination of the masses to the state – epitomized by the vast building projects, first of Babel, then of Egypt, and the enslavement they entailed. A third is the brutality of nations in the course of war (the subject of Amos’ oracles against the nations). Undoubtedly, though, the most serious offence – for the prophets as well as the Mosaic books – was the use of power against the powerless: the widow, the orphan and, above all, the stranger. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
1349:Such [communistic] legislation may have a specious appearance of benevolence; men readily listen to it, and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states, suits about contracts, convictions for perjury, flatteries of rich men and the like, which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, are due to a very different cause - the wickedness of human nature. Indeed, we see that there is much more quarrelling among those who have all things in common, though there are not many of them when compared with the vast numbers who have private property. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1350:How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster'; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1351: The Godhead
I sat behind the dance of Danger's hooves
In the shouting street that seemed a futurist's whim,
And suddenly felt, exceeding Nature's grooves,
In me, enveloping me the body of Him.
Above my head a mighty head was seen,
A face with the calm of immortality
And an omnipotent gaze that held the scene
In the vast circle of its sovereignty.
His hair was mingled with the sun and breeze;
The world was in His heart and He was I:
I housed in me the Everlasting's peace,
The strength of One whose substance cannot die.
The moment passed and all was as before;
Only that deathless memory I bore.
608
Pondicherry, c. 1927 - 1947
~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Godhead
,#NFDB
1352:At one end of the vast C bitten from the castle a single great bastion-tower stood, almost intact, five kilometres high, and casting a kilometre-wide shadow across the rumpled ground in front of the convoy. The walls had tumbled down around the tower, vanishing completely on one side and leaving only a ridge of fractured material barely five hundred metres high on the other. The plant-mass babilia, unique to the fastness and ubiquitous within it, coated all but the smoothest of vertical surfaces with tumescent hanging forests of lime-green, royal blue and pale, rusty orange; only the heights of scarred wall closest to the more actively venting fissures and fumaroles remained untouched by the tenacious vegetation. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
1353:The United States exclusively among all other nations has committed herself to the vast distribution of academic & scientific books in the international markets for all readers worldwide. The United States has been blessed by God for preserving the written word of Science in contrast to the vernacular tongues of Europe that cannot transcend the temporally paralyzed and ensnaring intellect of that spatially inanimate and socialist continent. And dubbing English movies is a practice that is obviously not going to free the individuals from the social noise of Europe to structure their own intellect onto paper - taking into consideration the massive market and social-locking effects of cinematography in the west. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1354:To give up a marriage - someone unmarried might imagine it's like giving up a seat in a theater, or sacrificing a trick in bridge for the possibility of better, later. But it is harsher than anyone could realize: a hot invisible fire, burning pieces of hope and fantasy, and charred bits of the past. It had to go, however, if something were to be built in its place. So I stood there and gave Buzz advice, and all I could think of were the automatons we had seen at Playland, moving beautifully in the wind, and the children who were taken behind the scenes on a tour and shown, to their surprise, the vast tangle of wires and switches that would be so hard to undo, and even worse, once undone, to bring to life again. ~ Andrew Sean Greer, #NFDB
1355:A whole new way of thinking seemed to ray out from Zeki’s work, and it set me thinking of the possible neural basis for consciousness in a way I had never considered before—and to realize that with our new powers of imaging the brain and our newly developed abilities to record the activity of individual neurons in living and conscious brains, we might be able to plot how and where all sorts of experiences are “constructed.” This was an exhilarating thought. I realized the vast leap which neurophysiology had made since my own student days in the early 1950s, when it was beyond our power, almost beyond imagination, to record from individual nerve cells in the brain while an animal was conscious, perceiving, and acting. — ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
1356:This country is founded on some very noble ideals but also some very big lies. One is that everyone has a fair chance at success. Another is that rich people have to be smart and hardworking or else they would´t be rich. Another is that if you´re not rich, don´t worry about it, because rich people aren´t really happy. I am the white male living proof that all of that is garbage. The vast degree to which my mental health improved once I had the smallest measure of economic security immediately unmasked this shameful fiction to me. Money cannot buy happiness, but it buys the conditions for happiness: time, occasional freedom from constantly worry, a moment of breath to plan for the future, and the ability to be generous. ~ John Hodgman, #NFDB
1357:From The Shore
A lone gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.
Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.
Out into the deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.
~ Carl Sandburg,#NFDB
1358:other words, as soon as we find the right energy balance and start losing weight, our bodies try to knock us off balance again. “The vast majority of individuals who attempt to lose weight are not able to achieve and maintain [even] a 10% reduction over a year,” according to a 2015 study in the journal Obesity Reviews. The researchers found that even when we do succeed in losing weight, more than a third of that weight returns within a year, and almost all of it is gained back within three to five years. That’s because losing weight, and keeping it off, isn’t just about controlling our food intake. It’s about controlling the hormones that fall out of balance, telling us to overeat and preventing us from dropping pounds. ~ David Zinczenko, #NFDB
1359:Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing, cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions of men. Moreover it must be fed, not only with flesh but with oil. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1360:Raleigh’s Cell In The Tower
HERE writ was the World's History by his hand
Whose steps knew all the earth; albeit his world
In these few piteous paces then was furl'd.
Here daily, hourly, have his proud feet spann'd
This smaller speck than the receding land
Had ever shown his ships; what time he hurl'd
Abroad o'er new-found regions spiced and pearl'd
His country's high dominion and command.
Here dwelt two spheres. The vast terrestrial zone
His spirit traversed; and that spirit was
Itself the zone celestial, round whose birth
The planets played within the zodiac's girth;
Till hence, through unjust death unfeared, did pass
His spirit to the only land unknown.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti,#NFDB
1361:But more important than any of these was the vast, accretive weight of small things, from planes which hadn't crashed to men and women who had come to the correct place at the perfect time and thus founded generations. He saw kisses exchanged in doorways and wallets returned and men who had come to a splitting of the way and had chosen the right fork. He saw a thousand random meetings that weren't random, ten thousand right decisions, a hundred thousand right answers, a million acts of unacknowledged kindness. ... For every brick that landed on the ground instead of some little kid's head, for every tornado that missed the trailer park, for every missile that didn't fly, for every hand stayed from violence, there was the Tower. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1362:She gave up trying to understand herself, and the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters—the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athene, and not by any heavenly intervention, but by the ordinary course of nature, those allied deities will be avenged. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
1363:Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
1364:The global nature of the religious knowledge of a learned Muslim sitting in Isfahan in the fourteenth century was very different from that of a scholastic thinker in Paris or Bologna of the same period. On the basis of the Quranic doctrine of religious universality and the vast historical experiences of a global nature, Islamic civilization developed a cosmopolitan and worldwide religious perspective unmatched before the modern period in any other religion. This global vision is still part and parcel of the worldview of traditional Muslims, of those who have not abandoned their universal vision as a result of the onslaught of modernism or reactions to this onslaught in the form of what has come to be called “fundamentalism. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1365:Karl Marx’s early (1844) essay On the Jewish Question is a fascinating example of an intellectual form of Jewish self-hatred. He argues that Judaism is neither religion nor people-hood but the desire for gain; totally ignoring the vast Jewish proletariat of Central and Eastern Europe, he equates Jews, and the Christians whose religion derives from them, with the ‘enemy’ – namely, bourgeois capitalism. Clearly, he is fleeing his own Jewish identity (he was baptized at the age of 6, but was descended from rabbis on both sides of the family), ‘assimilating’ to the cultural milieu of the anti-Semitic Feuerbach, whose perverse definition of Judaism he has adopted, and finding refuge from Jewish particularism in socialist universalism. ~ Norman Solomon, #NFDB
1366:Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious -- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the ‘light ineffable’. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
1367:The Christian God’s power comes through his powerlessness and humility. Our God is much more properly called all-vulnerable than almighty, which we should have understood by the constant metaphor of “Lamb of God” found throughout the New Testament. But unfortunately, for the vast majority, he is still “the man upstairs,” a substantive noun more than an active verb. In my opinion, this failure is at the basis of the vast expansion of atheism, agnosticism, and practical atheism we see in the West today. “If God is almighty, then I do not like the way this almighty God is running the world,” most modern people seem to be saying. They do not know that the Trinitarian revolution never took root! We still have a largely pagan image of God. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1368:Epilogue
With quiet heart, I climbed the hill,
from which one can see, the city, complete,
hospitals, brothels, purgatory, hell,
prison, where every sin flowers, at our feet.
You know well, Satan, patron of my distress,
I did not trudge up there to vainly weep,
but like an old man with an old mistress,
I longed to intoxicate myself, with the infernal delight
of the vast procuress, who can always make things fresh.
Whether you still sleep in the morning light,
heavy, dark, rheumatic, or whether your hands
flutter, in your pure, gold-edged veils of night,
I love you, infamous capital! Courtesans
and pimps, you often offer pleasures
the vulgar mob will never understand.
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1369:Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.
Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing.
Climb praising as you return to connection.
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.
Be. And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.
The emptiness inside you allows you to vibrate
in full resonance with your world. Use it for once.
To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
1370:Starshine’s greatest challenge is deciding whether a woman is too young to soothe or too old to shame. Handling the men is much easier. They may feign interest in figures and photos, but their underlying interest is for breasts and thighs. A generous smile often adds an extra zero to a check; an additional inch of exposed cleavage can clothe five Laotian children. The vast majority of these men do not expect to purchase Starshine’s favors. They are husbands, fathers, pillars of the community, the sort of upstanding middle-aged patriarchs who would rather castrate their libidos than compromise their reputations, and even if their three-digit donations could earn them a quickie with the canvasser, they would deny themselves the pleasure. ~ Jacob M Appel, #NFDB
1371:There obviously is a different feel to a wave of intense emotion versus an abstract thought, but each conscious form is an experience that gives us a unique perception of reality. The pattern in which these various conscious forms come in and out of awareness gives us our own personal life story. The vast variety of conscious forms and the ubiquity of consciousness in the brain are best explained by a modular architecture of the brain. The conceptual challenge now is to understand how hundreds, if not thousands, of modules, embedded in a layered architecture—each layer of which can produce a form of consciousness—give us a single, unified life experience at any given moment that seems to flow flawlessly into the next across time. ~ Michael S Gazzaniga, #NFDB
1372:Merrick moved away from the guests and toward the terrace doors, where Cassius had made his escape, hoping it was only a dream and he would see his love waiting for him.
But as the cool air hit his skin, he only saw the vast forest before him and heard the whistling wind through the trees. He felt hollow once again.
A rectangular object on the stairs caught his attention, and he bent to pick it up. It was Cassius’s notebook, flipped open to the very last page. His gaze greedily drank in the sentences written by his lover’s hand.
Once upon a time there was an exquisite prince
Who filled my wintry soul with all the colors of spring
He became my day, my night, my sun, my moon
My heart, my soul, my very bones
My Ever After ~ Riley Hart,#NFDB
1373:We live in incredibly violent times. The domestic terrorism rate, international terrorism acts and violent crime rates are at historical highs. When a police situation gets exceptionally violent, a tactical team is called in. If there is going to be a shooting, it is usually done by them, although in the vast majority of cases they do not have to shoot. When they do, there is a tendency to blame the killing on the tactical team, though blaming them for having to use deadly force is like blaming a headache on the aspirin. The tactical team is the solution, not the problem. The NTOA has powerful data demonstrating that if not for these highly trained teams, the number of people killed in the line of duty would be vastly higher than it is. ~ Dave Grossman, #NFDB
1374:Barred by law from invoking race explicitly, those committed to racial hierarchy were forced to search for new means of achieving their goals according to the new rules of American democracy. History reveals that the seeds of the new system of control were planted well before the end of the Civil Rights Movement. A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of blacks back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating the law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding “law and order” rather than “segregation forever. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1375:roadway, got trapped under an overpass. FEMA created its own mobile command center effort, known as Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS) units—eventually building some 300 special vehicles and stationing them across the country at regional command centers. The convoys, the thinking went, would be able to range across the nation, one step ahead of any Soviet attacks, hiding in the vast portions of the country that would be unscathed by nuclear attack. The convoys were meant to be entirely self-sufficient for a month, carrying massive generators and specially equipped fuel tankers that could draw diesel fuel from abandoned gas stations across the country. Meanwhile, a network of as many as 500 radio towers known as GWEN, the Ground Wave ~ Garrett M Graff, #NFDB
1376:All day, every day, we are flooded with the truly extraordinary. The best of the best. The worst of the worst. The greatest physical feats. The funniest jokes. The most upsetting news. Nonstop. Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that's what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars. That's the bottom line. Yet the vast majority of life resides in the humdrum middle. The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average. The deluge of exceptional information drives us to feel pretty damn insecure and desperate, because clearly we are somehow not good enough. So more and more we feel the need to compensate through entitlement and addiction. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1377:We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred? ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1378:Men, she thought, were one of the world’s few sure comforts, like a fire on a cold October night, like cocoa, like broken-in slippers. Their clumsy affections, their bristly faces, and their willingness to do what needed to be done—cook an omelet, change lightbulbs, make with hugging—sometimes almost made being a woman fun. She wished she were not so aware of the vast gulf between what the men in her life thought she was worth and her actual value. She had, it seemed to her, always asked and expected too much and given too little. She seemed almost to have a perverse impulse to make anyone who cared about her regret it, to find the thing that would most appall those people and then do that until they had to run away as a matter of self-preservation. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
1379:After midday, the rain eased, and the Land Rover rode into Pokhara on a shaft of storm light. Next day there was humid sun and shifting southern skies, but to the north a deep tumult of swirling grays was all that could be seen of the Himalaya. At dusk, white egrets flapped across the sunken clouds, now black with rain; on earth, the dark had come. Then four miles above these mud streets of the lowlands, at a point so high as to seem overhead, a luminous whiteness shone- the light of snows. Glaciers loomed and vanished in the grays, and the sky parted, and the snow cone of Machhapuchare glistened like a spire of a higher kingdom. In the night, the stars convened, and the vast ghost of Machhapuchare radiated light, although there was no moon. ~ Peter Matthiessen, #NFDB
1380:That question became even more salient to me as I began my clinical work with troubled children. I soon found that the vast majority of my patients had lives filled with chaos, neglect and/or violence. Clearly, these children weren’t “bouncing back”—otherwise they wouldn’t have been taken to a child psychiatry clinic! They’d suffered trauma—such as being raped or witnessing murder—that would have had most psychiatrists considering the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), had they been adults with psychiatric problems. And yet these children were being treated as though their histories of trauma were irrelevant, and they’d “coincidentally” developed symptoms, such as depression or attention problems, that often required medication. ~ Bruce D Perry, #NFDB
1381:The basic premise of collective security was that all nations would view every threat to security in the same way and be prepared to run the same risks in resisting it. Not only had nothing like it ever actually occurred, nothing like it was destined to occur in the entire history of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Only when a threat is truly overwhelming and genuinely affects all, or most, societies is such a consensus possible—as it was during the two world wars and, on a regional basis, in the Cold War. But in the vast majority of cases—and in nearly all of the difficult ones—the nations of the world tend to disagree either about the nature of the threat or about the type of sacrifice they are prepared to make to meet it. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
1382:We’re all, for the most part, pretty average people. But it’s the extremes that get all of the publicity. We kind of know this already, but we rarely think and/or talk about it, and we certainly never discuss why this could be a problem[...] Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that’s what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars[...] Yet the vast majority of life resides in the humdrum middle. The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average[...] And because we’re all quite average most of the time, the deluge of exceptional information drives us to feel pretty damn insecure and desperate, because clearly we are somehow not good enough. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1383:All human beings have a share of the logos, and all have roles to play in the vast design that is the world. But this is not to say that all humans are equal or that the roles they are assigned are interchangeable. Marcus, like most of his contemporaries, took it for granted that human society was hierarchical, and this is borne out by the images he uses to describe it. Human society is a single organism, like an individual human body or a tree. But the trunk of the tree is not to be confused with the leaves, or the hands and feet with the head. Our duty to act justly does not mean that we must treat others as our equals; it means that we must treat them as they deserve. And their deserts are determined in part by their position in the hierarchy. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1384:The interior was dim like a cave. The ceiling, pressed tin, was stalactited with hooks from the days when the shopkeeper would hang it with buckets, watering cans, coils of rope and paired boots. Refrigerator cases lined a side wall, shallow crates of withered fruit and vegetables the back, and in the vast middle ground were aisles of rickety shelving, stacked with anything from tinned peaches to tampons. The sole cash register was adjacent to the entrance, next to ranks of daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines and a little bookcase thumbtacked with a sign, Library. If you were a farmer in need of an axe or some some sheep dip you headed for the far back corner. If you wanted to buy a stamp, you headed a couple of paces past the library. ~ Garry Disher, #NFDB
1385:The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with That Which Is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place. This wanting and rewanting is an endless cycle for which, turns out, there is already a name: samsara. Samsara is at the heart of the vast human carnival: greed, neurosis, mad ambition, adultery, crimes of passion, the hacking to death of a terrified man on a hillside in the name of A More Pure And Thus Perfect Nation--and all of this takes place because we believe we will be made happy once our desires have been satisfied.
I know this. But still I'm full of desire... --"Buddha Boy ~ George Saunders,#NFDB
1386:It was there that I wanted, out there somewhere, when I sat elbow-to-elbow with my giggling friends and let my thoughts swirl up and away from the three-mile radius of our small town lives. In my head, I careened out of town and across state lines, until the landscape became strange and unfamiliar. I wanted to see all of it. Everything. The vast expanses of the flat Midwest, miles of horizontal earth with the curving horizon at its end. Strange, stunted trees and driftwood skeletons on the lonely windswept beaches of the farthest coasts. Towering oaks hung thick with the gray lace of Spanish moss, looming like hovering parents over shaded southern dirt. The California sun, dipping and disappearing into the ocean, tipping the waves with orange light. ~ Kat Rosenfield, #NFDB
1387:Thou living light that in thy rainbow hues
Clothest this naked world; and over Sea
And Earth and air, and all the shapes that be
In peopled darkness of this wondrous world
The Spirit of thy glory dost diffuse
... truth ... thou Vital Flame
Mysterious thought that in this mortal frame
Of things, with unextinguished lustre burnest
Now pale and faint now high to Heaven upcurled
That eer as thou dost languish still returnest
And ever
Before the ... before the Pyramids
So soon as from the Earth formless and rude
One living step had chased drear Solitude
Thou wert, Thought; thy brightness charmed the lids
Of the vast snake Eternity, who kept
The tree of good and evil.--
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, To The Mind Of Man
,#NFDB
1388:beneath. Our hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, comic instincts, great ideas, fetishes, senses of humor, and desires all emerge from this strange organ—and when the brain changes, so do we. So although it’s easy to intuit that thoughts don’t have a physical basis, that they are something like feathers on the wind, they in fact depend directly on the integrity of the enigmatic, three-pound mission control center. The first thing we learn from studying our own circuitry is a simple lesson: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control. The vast jungles of neurons operate their own programs. The conscious you—the I that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning—is the smallest bit of what’s transpiring in your brain. Although ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
1389:A Mystic And A Drunk
The Universe turns on an axis.
Let my soul circle around a table
like a beggar, like a planet
rolling in the vast, totally helpless and free.
The knight and the castle move jaggedly
about the chessboard, but they're actually
centered on the king. They circle.
If love is your center, a ring
gets put on your finger.
Something inside the moth
is made of fire.
A mystic touches the annihilating tip
of pure nothing.
A drunkard thinks peeing is absolution.
Lord, take these impurities from me.
The lord replies, First, understand
the nature of impurity. If your key is bent,
the lock will not open.
I fall silent.
King Shams has come.
Always when I close, he opens. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1390:It was in Las Vegas that Eisman and his associates’ attitude toward the U.S. bond market hardened into something like its final shape. As Vinny put it, “That was the moment when we said, ‘Holy shit, this isn’t just credit. This is a fictitious Ponzi scheme.’” In Vegas the question lingering at the back of their minds ceased to be, Do these bond market people know something we do not? It was replaced by, Do they deserve merely to be fired, or should they be put in jail? Are they delusional, or do they know what they’re doing? Danny thought that the vast majority of the people in the industry were blinded by their interests and failed to see the risks they had created. Vinny, always darker, said, “There were more morons than crooks, but the crooks were higher up. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1391:Time was minutely calculated everywhere in the vast plant so that top managers knew precisely what everyone was supposed to be doing at a given moment. Bell was struck, for instance, by how General Motors “divides the hour into ten six-minute periods…the worker is paid by the numbers of tenths of an hour he works.”27 This minute engineering of work time was connected to very long measures of time in the corporation as well. Seniority pay was finely tuned to the total number of hours a man or woman had worked for General Motors; a laborer could minutely calculate benefits of vacation time and sick leave. The micrometrics of time governed the lower echelons of white-collar offices as well as manual labor on the assembly line, in terms of promotion and benefits. ~ Richard Sennett, #NFDB
1392:An affair that might have seemed a mere trifle - and might seem so still under different circumstances - was shown to be 'something immense in the sight of God'. 'A'isha could not have understood the vast dimensions of the stage upon which she had been summoned to play her part, but everything that happened upon this stage took place in so brilliant a light - and had such tremendous consequences - that we should not think it strange if God chose to intervene in the matter; nor is it difficult in hindsight, aware of the significance of this incident in the development of Islam, to realize that the loss of a necklace by a fifteen-year-old girl travelling through an earthly desert might be of greater significance than galactic catastrophes or the death of stars. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton, #NFDB
1393:Strike, with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid the vine-clad hills. But know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh—the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy. O rippling river of laughter, thou art the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men; and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of Joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
1394:In contrast to almost every major army in history, the Mongols traveled lightly, without a supply train. By waiting until the coldest months to make the desert crossing, men and horses required less water. Dew also formed during this season, thereby stimulating the growth of some grass that provided grazing for horses and attracted game that the men eagerly hunted for their own sustenance. Instead of transporting slow-moving siege engines and heavy equipment with them, the Mongols carried a faster-moving engineer corps that could build whatever was needed on the spot from available materials. When the Mongols came to the first trees after crossing the vast desert, they cut them down and made them into ladders, siege engines, and other instruments for their attack. ~ Jack Weatherford, #NFDB
1395:The elaboration of culture depends upon long-term memory, and in this capacity humans rank far above all animals. The vast quantity stored in our immensely enlarged forebrains makes us consummate storytellers. We summon dreams and recollections of experience from across a lifetime and use them to create scenarios, past and future. We live in our conscious mind with the consequence of our actions, whether real or imagined. Placed out in alternative versions, our inner stories allow us to override immediate desires in favor of delayed pleasure. By long-range planning we defeat, for a while at least, the urging of our emotions. This inner life is why each person is unique and precious. When one dies, an entire library of both experience and imaginings is extinguished. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
1396:Indeed, the vast majority of unwed mothers younger than eighteen are indigent, and a substantial minority of their babies’ fathers are men who are at least six years their senior—which in most states legally defines the mothers as child sex-abuse victims.1 Yet teenage mothers usually call these men their boyfriends. And although their attempts to find fulfillment with older partners may in the long run fail, few would call themselves victims of sexual abuse. The lack of better words to describe their problematic experience with older men, and the young women’s own refusal to adopt victim identities, make them easy scapegoats for conservatives anxious to cast them not as innocent children but as sluts—and to justify cuts in welfare spending for them and their offspring. ~ Debbie Nathan, #NFDB
1397:Negativity is totally unnatural. It is a psychic pollutant, and there is a deep link between the poisoning and destruction of nature and the vast negativity that has accumulated in the collective human psyche. No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it. Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed oak tree? Have you some across a depressed dolphin, a frog that has a problem with self-esteem, a cat that cannot relax, or a bird that carries hatred and resentment? The only animals that may occasionally experience something akin to negativity or show signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in close contact with humans and so link into the humans mind and its insanity. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1398:In Jesus’ Passion, all the filth of the world touches the infinitely pure one, the soul of Jesus Christ and, hence, the Son of God himself. While it is usually the case that anything unclean touching something clean renders it unclean, here it is the other way around: when the world, with all the injustice and cruelty that make it unclean, comes into contact with the infinitely pure one—then he, the pure one, is the stronger. Through this contact, the filth of the world is truly absorbed, wiped out, and transformed in the pain of infinite love. Because infinite good is now at hand in the man Jesus, the counterweight to all wickedness is present and active within world history, and the good is always infinitely greater than the vast mass of evil, however terrible it may be. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1399:half-century before, at Stalin’s direct order, NKVD executioners slaughtered fifteen thousand Polish military officers and threw the bodies into rows of mass graves. The month-long operation in Kalinin, Katyn, and Starobelsk was part of Stalin’s attempt to begin the domination of Poland. The young officers had been among the best-educated men in Poland, and Stalin saw them as a potential danger, as enemies-in-advance. For decades after, Moscow put the blame for the killings on the Nazis, saying the Germans had carried out the massacres in 1941, not the NKVD in 1940. The Kremlin propaganda machine sustained the fiction in speeches, diplomatic negotiations, and textbooks, weaving it into the vast fabric of ideology and official history that sustained the regime and its empire. ~ David Remnick, #NFDB
1400:[Dostoevsky] soon began to notice that the life of freedom came more and more to resemble the life in the convict settlement, and that “the vast dome of the sky” which had seemed to him limitless when he was in prison now began to crush and to press on him as much as the barrack vaults had used to do; that the ideals which had sustained his fainting soul when he lived amongst the lowest dregs of humanity and shared their fate had not made a better man of him, nor liberated him, but on the contrary weighed him down and humiliated him as grievously as the chains of his prison. . . . Dostoevsky suddenly “saw” that the sky and the prison walls, ideals and chains are not contradictory to one another, as he had wished and thought formerly, when he still wished and thought like normal men. ~ Lev Shestov, #NFDB
1401:Examining the new assailants, the predator inferred something of vital importance: These creatures had been crafted specifically to attack it. The predator had no concept of a bloodhound, but there was no mistaking the scraps of its own code that the phages used to identify their prey. To identify it.
It could learn. It could react.
If even a quiet existence without offense could not convince its curiously slow-acting Opponent to leave it alone, its course was clear.
The predator would attack, and attack, and attack again. It would devastate and destroy for as long as it took to flush out its Adversary from wherever it hid in the vast network.
Whatever resources the unseen Foe most valued, most closely guarded--these were what the predator would attack. ~ Edward M Lerner,#NFDB
1402:The most important thing we’ve done,” he said to an audience at Andiquar University, “was to get off-world. That was the single act that opened the universe to us. We owe all that to the men and women who made the Apollo flights possible and especially to those who put their lives at risk, and who sometimes paid the price, to actually ride the vehicles. They got us started. Once we’d set foot on the Moon, it was inevitable that we’d go on to Rimway and Dellaconda and the edge of the galaxy. We knew it would take a while. That we’d get in our own way. That we’d be discouraged by the vast distances involved simply in going to Mars. We understood that we were probably facing an empty and cold universe. But it was the beginning, and in our hearts we must have known we would not be stopped. ~ Jack McDevitt, #NFDB
1403:It did not do to think, nor, for the matter of that to feel. She gave up trying to understand herself, and joined the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters—the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go. They have sinned against Eros and against Pallas Athene, and not by any heavenly intervention, but by the ordinary course of nature, those allied deities will be avenged. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
1404:My Earlier Life
I've been home a long time among the vast porticos,
Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires,
Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold
Render them the same, this evening, as caves with basalt spires.
The swells' overwhelming accords of rich music,
Heaving images of heaven to the skies,
Mingle in a way solemn and mystic
With the colors of the horizon reflected by my eyes.
It was here I was true to the voluptuous calm,
The milieu of azure, the waves, the splendors,
And the nude slaves, all impregnated with odors,
Who refreshed my brow with waving palms
My only care to bring to meaning from anguish
The sad secret in which I languish.
Translated by William A. Sigler
Submitted by Ryan McGuire
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1405:A survey was conducted in 1995 asking the following question: “Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?” The startling results were published in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education. Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a black drug user, while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups.39 These results contrast sharply with the reality of drug crime in America. African Americans constituted only 15 percent of current drug users in 1995, and they constitute roughly the same percentage today. Whites constituted the vast majority of drug users then (and now), but almost no one pictured a white person when asked to imagine what a drug user looks like. The same group of respondents also perceived the typical drug trafficker as black. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1406:A few Grik lunged at them, but the vast majority only wanted to get out of their way. These they left alone, conserving ammunition. It was a little disconcerting. They’d never seen so many “civilian” Grik before, and it was stunning how little fight they had in them.
“What a buncha pansies!” Silva panted, still having trouble with the heavy, wretched air. Three Grik had nearly fallen over themselves trying to clear his path when he menaced them with the Thompson. Its barrel was still smoking after a long burst he fired down a congested alley where another column of warriors was struggling to get at them. Those that followed fired into the writhing mass as well, the heavy booming of their rifles much louder than the stutter of the Thompson.
“Pansies!” Petey cawed. “Pansies! Ack! Goddamn! ~ Taylor Anderson,#NFDB
1407:Banks have been a frequent target for hackers in recent years, with the vast majority of attacks motivated by financial theft. But not all of them. In the past two years, U.S. banks have been targets of a series of politically motivated attacks from Iran, in which a group of Iranian hackers flooded bank websites with so much online traffic - a method called a distributed denial of service attack - that the sites slowed or intermittently collapsed. Hackers who took credit for those attacks said they went after the banks in retaliation for an anti-Islam video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad. U.S. intelligence officials said the group was actually a cover for the Iranian government. Officials claimed Iran was waging the attacks in retaliation for Western economic sanctions and for attacks on its own systems. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1408:Nature is pitiless; she will not consent to withdraw her flowers, her music, her perfumes and her sunbeams from before the face of human abomination; she overwhelms man with the contrast between divine beauty and the ugliness of society; she spares him neither the wing of a butterfly, nor the song of a bird; in the midst of murder, in the midst of vengeance, in the midst of barbarity he must submit to the sight of holy things; he cannot get away from the vast reproach of the universal sweetness and the implacable serenity of the blue sky. The deformity of human laws must be exposed in their nakedness, in the midst of the dazzling beauty of the eternal. Man breaks and crushes, man destroys, man kills; the summer is summer still, the lily is the lily still, the stars of heaven are the stars of heaven still. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1409:At the collective level, pride is expressed in the conviction of being superior to others as a nation or a race, of being the guardian of the true values of civilization, and of the need to impose this dominant “model” on “ignorant” peoples by any means available. This attitude often serves as a pretext for “developing” the resources of underdeveloped countries. The conquistadors and their bishops burned the vast Mayan and Aztec libraries of Mexico, of which barely a dozen volumes survive. Chinese textbooks and media continue to describe Tibetans as backward barbarians and the Dalai Lama as a monster. It was pride, above all, that allowed the Chinese to ignore the hundreds of thousands of volumes of philosophy housed in Tibetan monasteries before they demolished six thousand of those centers of learning. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
1410:Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that’s what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars. That’s the bottom line. Yet the vast majority of life resides in the humdrum middle. The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average.
This flood of extreme information has conditioned us to believe that exceptionalism is the new normal. And because we’re all quite average most of the time, the deluge of exceptional information drives us to feel pretty damn insecure and desperate, because clearly we are somehow not good enough. So more and more we feel the need to compensate through entitlement and addiction. We cope the only way we know how: either through self-aggrandizing or through other-aggrandizing. ~ Mark Manson,#NFDB
1411:Archaic myths from many parts of Europe (and around the world) refer to this event by mention of bright new stars which fell to Earth as seven flaming mountains, of how the oceans rose up in vast waves and totally engulfed the lands, and how summer was driven away with a cold darkness that lasted several years. In support of the mythological accounts of the vast waves covering the lands it is important to mention that many of the highest mountains in England, Scotland, and Ireland are littered with beds of sand and gravel containing sea shells deposited in the very recent geological past. Geology also gives irrefutable evidence that at two times in the recent past, around 7640 BC and 3100 BC, there have been complete reversals of the Earth's magnetic field caused by an outside influence, most probably a comet. ~ Brien Foerster, #NFDB
1412:Being helpful did make us more popular, and I got a lot more smiles and nods around the Camp, which made me a little less shy. After almost four months in prison I was still cautious, supercautious, and kept most people at arm’s length. Many times I fielded the sly question, ‘What is the All-American Girl doing in a place like this?’ Everyone assumed I was doing time on a financial crime, but actually I was like the vast majority of the women there: a nonviolent drug offender. I did not make any secret of it, as I knew I had lots of company; in the federal system alone (a fraction of the U.S. prison population), there were over 90,000 prisoners locked up for drug offenses, compared with about 40,000 for violent crimes. A federal prisoner costs at least $30,000 a year to incarcerate, and females actually cost more. ~ Piper Kerman, #NFDB
1413:The point at which someone goes into REM is a fantastic indicator of depressive tendencies,” said Britton. “We’ve gotten very good at this kind of research. If you took 100 people and did a sleep study, we can look at the data and know, by looking at the time they entered REM, who’s going to become depressed in the next year and who isn’t.” Normal people enter REM at 90 minutes. Depressed people enter at 60 minutes or sooner. It works the same in the other direction. Happy people go into REM around 100 minutes. Britton found that the vast majority of her near-death group entered REM sleep at 110 minutes — a rating that is nearly off-the-charts for overall life-satisfaction and a neurophysiological correlate that supports the anecdotal evidence that these strange states are literally and completely transformative. ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
1414:Amongst so many strange things: the predictable sun, the countless stars, the trees that resolutely put on the same green splendor each time their season mysteriously comes round, the river that ebbs and flows, the shimmering yellow sand and summer air, the pulsating body which is born, grows old and dies, all the vast distances and the passing days, enigmas which we all in our innocence believe to be familiar, amongst all these presences that seem oblivious to ours, it is understandable that one day, in the face of the inexplicable, we experience the unpleasant feeling that we are just voyagers through a phantasmagoria... But, despite its intensity, that feeling, which we all have sometimes, does not last and does not go deep enough to unsettle our lives. One day, when we least expect it, it suddenly overwhelms us. ~ Juan Jos Saer, #NFDB
1415:I sensed that this was a small part of what contributed to the passivity with regard to the Three Gorges Project in Fuling. The vast majority of the people would not be directly affected by the coming changes, and so they weren’t concerned. Despite having large sections of the city scheduled to be flooded within the next decade, it wasn’t really a community issue, because there wasn’t a community as one would generally define it. There were lots of small groups, and there was a great deal of patriotism, but like most patriotism anywhere in the world, this was spurred as much by fear and ignorance as by any true sense of a connection to the Motherland. And you could manipulate this fear and ignorance by telling people that the dam, even though it might destroy the river and the town, was of great importance to China. ~ Peter Hessler, #NFDB
1416:Her true heart, however, was buried so far inside her, so gone beneath the vast blanket of her lies and deceptions and whims. Like her jewels now beneath the snow, it lay hidden until some thaw might some to it. She had no way of knowing, of course, whether this heart she imagined herself to have was, in fact, real in any way. Perhaps it was like the soldier's severed arm that keeps throbbing for years, or like a broken bone that aches at the approach of a storm. Perhaps the heart she imagined was one she had never really had at all. But how did they do it, those women she saw on the street, laughing with their charming or their ill-tempered children in restaurants, in train stations, everywhere around her? Any why was she left out of the whole sentimental panorama she felt eddying around her every day of her life? ~ Robert Goolrick, #NFDB
1417:What irritates me most of all about these morning people is their horribly good temper, as if they have been up for three hours and already conquered France. Particularly since the vast majority of them, in spite of rising so appallingly early, have performed anything but great deeds. In Berlin I have time and again met people who make no secret of the fact that their only reason for stirring at such an ungodly hour of the morning is so that they can leave the office earlier in the afternoon. I have suggested to several of these eight-hour logicians that they ought to start work at ten o'clock at night, thereby allowing them to leave at six in the morning and perhaps even arrive home before it is time to get up. Some even took this for a serious suggestion. In my opinion, only bakers need to work early in the morning. ~ Timur Vermes, #NFDB
1418:Another Way
To swing yourself
from moment to moment,
to weave a clause
that leaves room
for reminiscence and surprise,
that breathes,
welcomes commas,
dips and soars
through air-pockets of vowel,
lingers over the granularity of consonant,
never racing to the full-stop,
content sometimes
with the question mark,
even if it’s the oldest one in the book.
To stand
in the vast howling, rain-gouged
openness of a page,
asking the question
that has been asked before,
knowing the gale of a thousand libraries
will whip it into the dark.
To leave no footprints
in the warm alluvium,
no Dolby echoes
to reverberate through prayer halls,
no epitaphs,
no saffron flags.
This was also a way
of keeping the faith.
~ Arundhathi Subramaniam,#NFDB
1419:Oh, I know, I know that heart, that wild but grateful heart, gentlemen of the jury! It will bow before your mercy; it thirsts for a great and loving action, it will melt and mount upwards. There are souls which, in their limitation, blame the whole world. But subdue such a soul with mercy, show it love, and it will curse its past, for there are many good impulses in it. Such a heart will expand and see that God is merciful and that men are good and just. He will be horror-stricken; he will be crushed by remorse and the vast obligation laid upon him henceforth. And he will not say then, 'I am quits,' but will say, 'I am guilty in the sight of all men and am more unworthy than all.' With tears of penitence and poignant, tender anguish, he will exclaim: 'Others are better than I, they wanted to save me, not to ruin me! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1420:The last time Americans protested anything the government did was that Tea Party nonsense before the Republican Party collapsed a few years ago. The vast majority of Americans will meekly accept anything you tell them now, so don’t expect anyone to complain. At least not publicly and not online, but there are a few nut jobs out there, I’m sure. Your department will issue a correction in a few days, and it will be under-reported by the media. Your people will send out flyers informing the people about needing travel permits. With a few more actions, the United States of America and its people will be compliant completely to whatever I and the government want. Then, we can have the United Nations do whatever it wants without any resistance from this country. Overall, you’re doing a heck-of-a-job, Foster, keep up the good work. ~ Cliff Ball, #NFDB
1421:The Moors
NOT in rich glebe and ripe green garden only
Does Summer weave her sweet resistless spells,
But in high hills, and moorlands waste and lonely,
The vast enchantment of her presence dwells.
Wide sky, and sky-wide waste of thyme and heather,
Perpetual sleepy hum of golden bees-If you and I were only there together,
Free from the weight of all your garden's trees!
The north is mine; though bred by elm and meadow,
Pines, torrents, rocks, and moors my heart loves best;
I love the plover's wail, the cleft hill's shadow,
The sun-browned grass that is the skylark's nest.
Ah, yes! you too I love, dear wistful pleader,
You most I love, dear southern rose, half-blown,
And rather lounge with you beneath your cedar,
Than greet the moor's wide heaven-on-earth alone.
~ Edith Nesbit,#NFDB
1422:Utopias travel about underground, in the pipes. There they branch out in every direction. They sometimes meet, and fraternize there. Jean-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there. Calvin seizes Socinius by the hair. But nothing arrests nor interrupts the tension of all these energies toward the goal, and the vast, simultaneous activity, which goes and comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities, and which immense unknown swarming slowly transforms the top and the bottom and the inside and the outside. Society hardly even suspects this digging which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. There are as many different subterranean stages as there are varying works, as there are extractions. What emerges from these deep excavations? The future. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1423:When I look up at Heaven,
I see the souls of those who died
Beaming down at me,
Wanting to scream: “I'm still alive!”,
Wishing to scribble across the sapphire sky -
Letters to their loved ones,
But a million dark oceans stand between us,
Between those who passed and the living,
Between those of us still stuck below,
And those who have crossed over the threshold of time -
Where what seems like eternity to us,
Is really only a few minutes to them.
So you see, there is no reason to weep over the shining ones -
For even though the space that separates us is limitless,
The wall of time that divides us is only paper-thin.
And one day, we shall all reunite with them,
When our souls are released like fish
Back into the vast shimmering sea
To shine together like
Glittering diamonds. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1424:I Am!
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky. ~ John Clare,#NFDB
1425:Science-Fiction Cradlesong
By and by Man will try
To get out into the sky,
Sailing far beyond the air
From Down and Here to Up and There.
Stars and sky, sky and stars
Make us feel the prison bars.
Suppose it done. Now we ride
Closed in steel, up there, outside
Through our port-holes see the vast
Heaven-scape go rushing past.
Shall we? All that meets the eye
Is sky and stars, stars and sky.
Points of light with black between
Hang like a painted scene
Motionless, no nearer there
Than on Earth, everywhere
Equidistant from our ship.
Heaven has given us the slip.
Hush, be still. Outer space
Is a concept, not a place.
Try no more. Where we are
Never can be sky or star.
From prison, in a prison, we fly;
There's no way into the sky.
~ Clive Staples Lewis,#NFDB
1426:War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only thru annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife. No league or parliamentary act of any kind will ever prevent such a calamity. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
1427:When we have traversed it, and look back from Albano, its dark, undulating surface lies below us like a stagnant lake, or like a broad, dull Lethe flowing round the walls of Rome, and separating it from all the world! How often have the Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering across that purple waste, so silent and unpeopled now! How often has the train of captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distant city, and beheld its population pouring out, to hail the return of their conqueror! What riot, sensuality and murder, have run mad in the vast palaces now heaps of brick and shattered marble! What glare of fires, and roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence and famine, have come sweeping over the wild plain where nothing is now heard but the wind, and where the solitary lizards gambol unmolested in the sun! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1428:The beauty and the tragedy of the modern world is that it eliminates many situations that require people to demonstrate a commitment to the collective good. Protected by police and fire departments and relieved of most of the challenges of survival, an urban man might go through his entire life without having to come to the aid of someone in danger—or even give up his dinner. Likewise, a woman in a society that has codified its moral behavior into a set of laws and penalties might never have to make a choice that puts her very life at risk. What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss. ~ Sebastian Junger, #NFDB
1429:For years, we have spent trillions on waging wars against ‘terror’ and ‘extremism’ that would have been much better spent protecting Muslim dissidents and giving the necessary platforms and resources to counter the vast network of Islamic centers, madrassas, and mosques which has been largely responsible for spreading the most noxious forms of Islamic fundamentalism. For years, we have treated the people financing the vast network – the Saudis, the Qataris, and the now repentant Emiratis – as our allies. In the midst of all our efforts at policing, surveillance, and even military action, we in the West have not bothered to develop an effective counternarrative because from the outset we have denied that Islamic extremism is in any way related to Islam. We persist in focusing on the violence and not on the ideas that give rise to it. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
1430:Once, when Adam had still lived in the trailer park, he had been pushing the lawn mower around the scraggly side yard when he realized that it was raining a mile away. He could smell it, the earthy scent of rain on dirt, but also the electric, restless smell of ozone. And he could see it: a hazy gray sheet of water blocking his view of the mountains. He could track the line of rain travelling across the vast dry field towards him. It was heavy and dark, and he knew he would get drenched if he stayed outside. It was coming from so far away that he had plenty of time to put the mower away and get under cover. Instead, though, he just stood there and watched it approach. Even at the last minute, as he heard the rain pounding the grass flat, he just stood there. He closed his eyes and let the storm soak him.
That was this kiss. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB
1431:Their view; it is cosmic. Not a man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honourable men but of Ehre itself, honour; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Güte, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And these – these madmen – respond to the granite, the dust, the longing of the inanimate; they want to aid Natur. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1432:Consider the roots of a simple and mundane action, for instance, buying bread for your breakfast. A farmer has grown the grain in a field carved from wilderness by his ancestors; in the ancient city a miller has ground the flour and a baker prepared the loaf; the vendor has transported it to your house in a cart built by a cartwright and his apprentices. Even the donkey that draws the cart, what stories could she not tell if you could decipher her braying? And then you yourself hand over a coin of copper dug from the very heart of the earth, you who have risen from a bed of dreams and darkness to stand in the light of the vast and terrifying sun. Are there not a thousand strands woven together into this tapestry of a morning meal? How then can you expect that the omens of great events should be easy to unravel? The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll ~ Katharine Kerr, #NFDB
1433:Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence—whether much that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from disease of thought—from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their grey visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awaking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the 'light ineffable' and again, like the adventurers of the Nubian geographer, 'agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
1434:SAPPHIRE AND DIAMONDS
When I look up at Heaven,
I see the souls of those who died
Beaming down at me,
Wanting to scream: “I'm still alive!”,
Wishing to scribble across the sapphire sky -
Letters to their loved ones,
But a million dark oceans stand between us,
Between those who passed and the living,
Between those of us still stuck below,
And those who have crossed over the threshold of time -
Where what seems like eternity
Is really only a few minutes.
So you see, there is no reason to weep over the shining ones -
For even though the space that separates us is limitless,
The wall of time that divides us is only paper-thin.
And one day, we shall all reunite with them,
When our souls are released like fish
Back into the vast shimmering sea
To shine together like
Glittering diamonds. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1435:She had never before met a man who spoke of the world—of what it was, and how it came to be, or what he thought would become of it—in the way in which other men she knew discussed their jobs, their friends or their weekends at the beach.
Being with Chacko made Margaret feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them—as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined.
In the year she knew them, before they were married, she discovered a little magic in herself, and for a while felt like a blithe genie released from her lamp. She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for Chacko was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself. ~ Arundhati Roy,#NFDB
1436:Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning. ~ T S Eliot,#NFDB
1437:The tunnel pulled at her. How many hands had it required to make this place? And the tunnels beyond, wherever and how far they led? She thought of the picking, how it raced down the furrows at harvest, the African bodies working as one, as fast as their strength permitted. The vast fields burst with hundreds of thousands of white bolls, strung like stars in the sky on the clearest of clear nights. When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables - this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
1438:This is the critical point of this book: if you are that zebra running for your life, or that lion sprinting for your meal, your body’s physiological response mechanisms are superbly adapted for dealing with such short-term physical emergencies. For the vast majority of beasts on this planet, stress is about a short-term crisis, after which it’s either over with or you’re over with. When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses—but they are potentially a disaster when provoked chronically. A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
1439:HEED THE 20-SECOND RULE: Dr. Mark Goulston, author of Just Listen, recommends obeying the Traffic Light Rule when deciding when to talk and when to listen: “In the first 20 seconds of talking, your light is green: your listener is liking you, as long as your statement is relevant to the conversation and hopefully in service of the other person. But unless you are an extremely gifted raconteur, people who talk for more than roughly a half minute at a time are boring and often perceived as too chatty. So the light turns yellow for the next 20 seconds—now the risk is increasing that the other person is beginning to lose interest or think you’re long-winded. At the 40-second mark, your light is red. Yes, there’s an occasional time you want to run that red light and keep talking, but the vast majority of the time, you’d better stop or you’re in danger. ~ Ivanka Trump, #NFDB
1440:It is no exaggeration to say that the vast business of calculus made possible most of the practical triumphs of post-medieval science; nor to say that it stands as one of the most ingenious creations of humans trying to model the changeable world around them. So by the time a scientist masters this way of thinking about nature, becoming comfortable with the theory and the hard, hard practice, he is likely to have lost sight of one fact. Most differential equations cannot be solved at all. “If you could write down the solution to a differential equation,” Yorke said, “then necessarily it’s not chaotic, because to write it down, you must find regular invariants, things that are conserved, like angular momentum. You find enough of these things, and that lets you write down a solution. But this is exactly the way to eliminate the possibility of chaos. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
1441:The vast majority of protesters were men, and it made perfect sense to Louie—the male of the species felt threatened by the biology of women. Even in the Bible, normal female biological functions were made pathological: You were unclean when you had your menses. Childbirth had to occur in pain. And there was the questionable nature of those who bled regularly—but did not die. There was, of course, the history, too. Women had been property. Their chastity had always belonged to a man, until abortion and contraception put control of women’s sexuality in the women’s hands. If women could have sex without the fear of unwanted pregnancy, then suddenly the man’s role had shrunk to a level somewhere between unnecessary and vestigial. So instead, men vilified women who had abortions. They created the stigma: good women want to be mothers, bad women don’t. ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
1442:We are told of the time when, with the same beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy: why complain of these beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods, the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and slay and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of the ages. ~ Pierre Joseph Proudhon, #NFDB
1443:So, when the heart is stricken, and the head is humbled in the dust, civilization fails us utterly. Back, back, we creep, and lay us like little children on the great breast of Nature, she that perchance may soothe us and make us forget, or at least rid remembrance of its sting. Who has not in his great grief felt a longing to look upon the outward features of the universal Mother; to lie on the mountains and watch the clouds drive across the sky and hear the rollers break in thunder on the shore, to let his poor struggling life mingle for a while in her life; to feel the slow beat of her eternal heart, and to forget his woes, and let his identity be swallowed in the vast imperceptibly moving energy of her of whom we are, from whom we came, and with whom we shall again be mingled, who gave us birth, and will in a day to come give us our burial also. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
1444:There are many who predict that China is the next challenger to the United States, not Russia. I don’t agree with that view for three reasons. First, when you look at a map of China closely, you see that it is really a very isolated country physically. With Siberia in the north, the Himalayas and jungles to the south, and most of China’s population in the eastern part of the country, the Chinese aren’t going to easily expand. Second, China has not been a major naval power for centuries, and building a navy requires a long time not only to build ships but to create well-trained and experienced sailors. Third, there is a deeper reason for not worrying about China. China is inherently unstable. Whenever it opens its borders to the outside world, the coastal region becomes prosperous, but the vast majority of Chinese in the interior remain impoverished. ~ George Friedman, #NFDB
1445:Hawaii is our Gibraltar, and almost our Channel Coast. Planes, their eyes sharpened by the year-round clearness of blue Pacific days, can keep easy watch over an immense sea-circle, of which Hawaii is the centre. With Hawaii on guard, a surprise attack on us from Asia, the experts believe, would be quite impossible. So long as the great Pearl Harbor Naval Base, just down the road from Honolulu, is ours, American warships and submarines can run their un-Pacific errands with a maximum of ease. Pearl Harbor is one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, maritime fortresses in the world. Pearl Harbor has immense reserves of fuel and food, and huge and clanging hospitals for the healing of any wounds which steel can suffer. It is the one sure sanctuary in the whole of the vast Pacific both for ships and men. John W. Vandercook, in
Vogue, January 1, 1941 ~ Joan Didion,#NFDB
1446:Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it, there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the shadow. John C. Calhoun said: "A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks." And that great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1447:If you visit London, you’ll occasionally cross paths with young men (and less often women) on motor scooters, blithely darting in and out of traffic while studying maps affixed to their handlebars. These studious cyclists are training to become London cabdrivers. Before they can receive accreditation from London’s Public Carriage Office, cabbies-in-training must spend two to four years memorizing the locations and traffic patterns of all 25,000 streets in the vast and vastly confusing city, as well as the locations of 1,400 landmarks. Their training culminates in an infamously daunting exam called “the Knowledge,” in which they not only have to plot the shortest route between any two points in the metropolitan area, but also name important places of interest along the way. Only about three out of ten people who train for the Knowledge obtain certification. ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
1448:nerve currents: one they call the Ida, the other the Pingala, and the middle one the Sushumna, and all these are inside the spinal column. The Ida and the Pingala, the left and the right, are clusters of nerves, while the middle one, the Sushumna, is hollow and is not a cluster of nerves. This Sushumna is closed, and for the ordinary man is of no use, for he works through the Ida and the Pingala only. Currents are continually going down and coming up through these nerves, carrying orders all over the body through other nerves running to the different organs of the body. The task before us is vast; and first and foremost, we must seek to control the vast mass of sunken thoughts which have become automatic with us. The evil deed is, no doubt, on the conscious plane; but the cause which produced the evil deed was far beyond in the realms of the unconscious, ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1449:But his friend and colleague the Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdu (1849–1905) was a deeper and more measured thinker. He believed that education and not revolution was the answer. Abdu had been devastated by the British occupation of Egypt, but he loved Europe, felt quite at ease with Europeans and was widely read in Western science and philosophy. He greatly respected the political, legal and educational institutions of the modern West, but did not believe that they could be transplanted wholesale in a deeply religious country, such as Egypt, where modernization had been too rapid and had perforce excluded the vast mass of the people. It was essential to graft modern legal and constitutional innovations on to traditional Islamic ideas that the people could understand; a society in which people cannot understand the law becomes in effect a country without law. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1450:After seeing the various fantastic sights, a visitor to Panorama Island would have had to gasp in amazement at this unsurpassable view. He would have had the impression that the entire island was a rose floating on the vast ocean and that the giant scarlet flower of an opium dream was conversing on an equal footing with the sun in the sky, just the two of them. What kind of strange beauty had that incomparable simplicity and grandeur created? Some travelers might have recalled the world of myth that their distant ancestors had seen. . . .
How can the author describe the madness and debauchery, the pleasures of revelry and drunkenness, the numberless games of life and death that were played day and night on that magnificent stage? You readers might find something that resembled it, in part, in your most fantastic, bloodiest, and most beautiful nightmares. ~ Edogawa Rampo,#NFDB
1451:I can't bear it that some man, even with a lofty heart and the highest mind, should start from the ideal of the Madonna and end with the ideal of Sodom. It's even more fearful when someone who already has the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not deny the ideal of the Madonna either, and his hear burns with it, verily, verily burns, as in his young, blameless years. No, man is broad, even too broad, I would narrow him down. Devil knows even what to make of him, that's the thing! What's shame for the mind is beauty all over for the heart. Can there be beauty in Sodom? Believe me, for the vast majority of people, that's just where beauty lies--did you know that secret? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart. But, anyway, why kick against the pricks? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1452:In the Thriving Season
In memory of my mother
Now as she catches fistfuls of sun
riding down dust and air to her crib,
my first child in her first spring
stretches bare hands back to your darkness
and heals your silence, the vast hurt
of your deaf ear and mute tongue
with doves hatched in her young throat.
Now ghost-begotten infancies
are the marrow of trees and pools
and blue uprisings in the woods
spread revolution to the mind,
I can believe birth is fathered
by death, believe that she was quick
when you forgave pain and terror
and shook the fever from your blood
Now in the thriving season of love
when the bud relents into flower,
your love turned absence has turned once more,
and if my comforts fall soft as rain
on her flutters, it is because
love grows by what it remembers of love. ~ Lisel Mueller,#NFDB
1453:This Dog
Every morning this dog, very attached to me,
Quietly keeps sitting near my seat
Till touching its head
I recognize its company.
This recognition gives it so much joy
Pure delight ripples through its entire body.
Among all dumb creatures
It is the only living being
That has seen the whole man
Beyond what is good or bad in him
It has seen
For his love it can sacrifice its life
It can love him too for the sake of love alone
For it is he who shows the way
To the vast world pulsating with life.
When I see its deep devotion
The offer of its whole being
I fail to understand
By its sheer instinct
What truth it has discovered in man.
By its silent anxious piteous looks
It cannot communicate what it understands
But it has succeeded in conveying to me
Among the whole creation
What is the true status of man.
~ Rabindranath Tagore,#NFDB
1454:Their view; it is cosmic. Not of a man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honorable men but of Ehre itself, honor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Güte, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And they—these madmen—respond to the granite, the dust, the longing of the inanimate; they want to aid Natur. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1455:Whether white, black, Asian, or Latino, American students rarely arrive at college as habitual readers, which means that few of them have more than a nominal connection to the past. It is absurd to speak, as does the academic left, of classic Western texts dominating and silencing everyone but a ruling elite or white males. The vast majority of white students do not know the intellectual tradition that is allegedly theirs any better than black or brown ones do. They have not read its books, and when they do read them, they may respond well, but they will not respond in the way that the academic left supposes. For there is only one ‘hegemonic discourse’ in the lives of American undergraduates, and that is the mass media. Most high schools can't begin to compete against a torrent of imagery and sound that makes every moment but the present seem quaint, bloodless, or dead. ~ David Denby, #NFDB
1456:Writing … is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the world — it happens to everybody. In the morning light one can write breezily, without the slight acceleration of one’s pulse, about what one cannot contemplate in the dark without turning in panic to God. In the dark one truly feels that immense sliding, that turning of the vast earth into darkness and eternal cold, taking with it all the furniture and scenery, and the bright distractions and warm touches, of our lives. Even the barest earthly facts are unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy. ~ John Updike, #NFDB
1457:Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis is commonly regarded as one of the classics of cinema, and at the time it was probably the most expensive film ever made. Only in light of recent restoration work, though, can we see how explicitly it draws on apocalyptic themes in its prophetic depiction of modern society. Partly, Metropolis reflects the ideas of Oswald Spengler, whose sensationally popular book The Decline of the West appeared in 1918. Spengler presented nightmare forecasts of the vast megalopolis, ruled by the superrich, with politics reduced to demagoguery and Caesarism, and religion marked by strange oriental cults. Lang borrowed that model but added explicit references to the Bible, and particularly Revelation. In the future world of Metropolis, the ruling classes dwell in their own Tower of Babel, while the industrial working class is literally enslaved to Moloch. ~ Philip Jenkins, #NFDB
1458:He found the vast Thought with seven heads that is born of the Truth; he created some fourth world and became universal. . . .
The Sons of Heaven, the Heroes of the Omnipotent, thinking the straight thought, giving voice to the Truth, founded the plane of illumination and conceived the first abode of the Sacrifice. . . . The Master of Wisdom cast down the stone defences and called to the Herds of Light, . . . the herds that stand in the secrecy on the bridge over the Falsehood between two worlds below and one above; desiring Light in the darkness, he brought upward the Ray-Herds and uncovered from the veil the three worlds; he shattered the city that lies hidden in ambush, and cut the three out of the Ocean, and discovered the Dawn and the Sun and the Light and the Word of Light. Rig Veda.2 ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge,#NFDB
1459:To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have gelded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savor the "pleasures of the flesh" only on condition that they be insipid.
But as of then, no doubt existed for me: I did not care for what is known as "pleasures of the flesh" because they really are insipid; I cared only for what is classified as "dirty." On the other hand, I was not even satisfied with the usual debauchery, because the only thing it dirties is debauchery itself, while, in some way or other, anything sublime and perfectly pure is left intact by it. My kind of debauchery soils not only my body and my thoughts, but also anything I may conceive in its course, that is to say, the vast starry universe, which merely serves as a backdrop. ~ Georges Bataille,#NFDB
1460:We respect your learning, Dr Einstein; but there is one thing you do not seem to have learned: that God is a spirit and cannot be found through the telescope or microscope, no more than human thought or emotion can be found by analyzing the brain. As everyone knows, religion is based on Faith, not knowledge. Every thinking person, perhaps, is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons: (1) I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow being; (2) because I agree with the writer who said, ‘There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another’s faith.’ . . . I hope, Dr Einstein, that you were misquoted and that you will yet say something more pleasing to the vast number of the American people who delight to do you honor. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1461:Yuppieville. The fourteenth floor of Lock-Horne Investments & Securities reminded Myron of a medieval fortress. There was the vast space in the middle, and a thick, formidable wall—the big producers’ offices—safeguarding the perimeter. The open area housed hundreds of mostly men, young men, combat soldiers easily sacrificed and replaced, a seemingly endless sea of them, bobbing and blending into the corporate-gray carpet, the identical desks, the identical rolling chairs, the computer terminals, the telephones, the fax machines. Like soldiers they wore uniforms—white button-down shirts, suspenders, bright ties strangling carotid arteries, suit jackets draped across the backs of the identical rolling chairs. There were loud noises, screams, rings, even something that sounded like death cries. Everyone was in motion. Everyone was scattering, panicked, under constant attack. Yes, ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1462:In terms of innovation in ideas, our nonstate foes leveraged the vast body of literature on guerrilla warfare (in particular Lind et al.’s 4GW) that was developed in the United States. It isn’t unusual that the people who develop these new theories of warfare live in the countries that don’t benefit from them. Advanced Western military theory has historically provided sustenance to our revisionist foes. For example, the British military theorists J. F. C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart provided the theoretical basis of armored warfare that Heinz Guderian and others, in the nascent German military before World War II, used to formulate the blitzkrieg. So while the image of al-Qaeda strategists squatting in Afghan caves reading Lind et al.’s 4GW theory may be hard to imagine, it shouldn’t be any more fantastic than Guderian practicing Fuller’s theories with cardboard tanks. Both happened. ~ John Robb, #NFDB
1463:I tried to remember my own passionate spiritual feelings as a child, when I had no religion and no language to understand them. There had been one early spring afternoon, raw and chilly, when I lay by myself in the muddy backyard in my snow-suit examining a fallen log, looking and looking and looking. There were patches of snow on the wet wood and, around it, spears of onion grass just beginning to poke up, and I sat up after half an hour contemplating the log. The cloudy sky above me was so huge, and I was so small. The phrase “the whole universe” occurred to me. I must have been in third grade, and no amount of papier-mâché solar system models had prepared me for the vast, heart-beating calm I felt, or for the inarticulate desire to just stay there, suspended, looking and breathing my tiny puffs of the whole universe's air, until I had to pee and went inside, shedding my wet mittens. ~ Sara Miles, #NFDB
1464:The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies—that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as “Your actions actually don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things” and “The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that’s okay.” This vegetable course will taste bad at first. Very bad. You will avoid accepting it. But once ingested, your body will wake up feeling more potent and more alive. After all, that constant pressure to be something amazing, to be the next big thing, will be lifted off your back. The stress and anxiety of always feeling inadequate and constantly needing to prove yourself will dissipate. And the knowledge and acceptance of your own mundane existence will actually free you to accomplish what you truly wish to accomplish, without judgment or lofty expectations. You ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1465:Or, obversely, he might kill a man himself. It would be a question of throwing up his rifle, pressing the trigger, and a particular envelope of lusts and anxieties and perhaps some goodness would be quite dead. All as easy as stepping on an insect, perhaps easier…Everything was completely out of whack, none of the joints fitted. The men had been singing in the motor pool, and there had been something nice about it, something childish and brave. And they were here on this road, a point moving along in a line in the vast neutral spaces of the jungle. And somewhere else a battle might be going on. The artillery, the small-arms fire they had been hearing constantly, might be nothing, something scattered along the front, or it might be all concentrated now in the minuscule inferno of combat. None of it matched. The night had broken them into all the isolated units that actually they were. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1466:The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and, far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere. Flowers were sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland. Birds flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Insects shocked the air with electric clearness. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. The million pores on his body opened.
I'm really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don't remember! ~ Ray Bradbury,#NFDB
1467:Now journeys were not simple matters for Grace; nothing is simple if your mind is a fetch-and-carry wanderer from sliced perilous outer world to secret safe inner world; if when night comes your thought creeps out like a furred animal concealed in the dark, to fine, seize, and kill its food and drag it back to the secret house in the secret world, only to discover that the secret world has disappeared or has so enlarged that it's a public nightmare; if then strange beasts walk upside down like flies on the ceiling; crimson wings flap, the curtains fly; a sad man wearing a blue waistcoat with green buttons sits in the centre of the room, crying because he has swallowed the mirror and it hurts and he burps in flashes of glass and light; if crakes move and cry; the world is flipped, unrolled down in the vast marble stair; a stained threadbare carpet; the hollow silver dancing shoes, hunting-horns... ~ Janet Frame, #NFDB
1468:The sun was warm on my face. I knew we were safe at last.
The vast bottle of Champagne, that had sat like some Buddha at base camp for three months, was ceremoniously produced. It took four of us almost ten minutes, hacking away with ice axes, finally to get the cork out.
The party had begun.
I felt like drinking a gallon of this beautiful bubbly stuff, but my body just couldn’t. Sipping slowly was all I could manage without sneezing, and even like that I was soon feeling decidedly wobbly.
I closed my eyes and flopped against the rock wall of the mess tent--a huge smile plastered across my face.
Later on in my tent, I put on the fresh socks and thermal underwear that I had kept especially for this moment.
First change in ninety days. Heaven.
I sealed the underpants in a plastic Ziploc bag and reminded myself to be very cautious when it came to opening the bag again back home. ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB
1469:Where there were once several competing approaches to medicine, there is now only one that matters to most hospitals, insurers, and the vast majority of the public. One that has been shaped to a great degree by the successful development of potent cures that followed the discovery of sulfa drugs. Aspiring caregivers today are chosen as much (or more) for their scientific abilities, their talent for mastering these manifold technological and pharmaceutical advances as for their interpersonal skills. A century ago most physicians were careful, conservative observers who provided comfort to patients and their families. Today they act: They prescribe, they treat, they cure. They routinely perform what were once considered miracles. The result, in the view of some, has been a shift in the profession from caregiver to technician. The powerful new drugs changed how care was given as well as who gave it. ~ Thomas Hager, #NFDB
1470:It would indeed seem more expedient to treat the history of thought in terms borrowed from biology..(, with) "evolution" .. a wasteful, fumbling process characterized by sudden mutations of unknown cause, by the slow grinding of selection, and by the dead-ends of overspecialization and rigid inadaptability.. New ideas are thrown up spontaneously like mutations; the vast majority of them are useless crank theories, the equivalent of biological freaks without survival-value. There is a constant struggle for survival between competing theories in every branch of the history of thought. The process of "natural selection", too, has its equivalent in mental evolution: among the multitude of new concepts which emerge only those survive which are well adapted to the period's intellectual milieu. A new theoretical concept will live or die according to whether it can come to terms with this environment.. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1471:Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income—as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977—the nation as a whole grew faster, and median wages surged. The basic bargain ensured that the pay of American workers coincided with their output. In effect, the vast middle class received an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth. We created that virtuous cycle in which an ever-growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats. On the other hand, during periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion—as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day—growth slowed, median wages stagnated, and we suffered giant downturns. ~ Robert B Reich, #NFDB
1472:Picture her then: Daphne Manners, a big girl (to borrow a none too definite image from Lady Chatterjee) leaning on the balcony outside her bedroom window, gazing with concentration (as one might gaze for two people, one being absent, once deprived, since dead, and now regretted) at a landscape calculated to inspire in the most sympathetic western heart a degree of cultural shock. There is (even from this vantage point above a garden whose blooms will pleasurably convey scent if you bend close enough to them) a pervading redolence, wafting in from the silent, heat-stricken trembling plains; from the vast panorama of fields, from the river, from the complex of human dwellings (with here and there, spiky or bulbous, a church, a mosque, a temple), from the streets and lanes and the sequestered white bungalows, the private houses, the public buildings, the station, from the rear quarters of the MacGregor House. ~ Paul Scott, #NFDB
1473:
There is no darkness, we only close our eyes
and shut out the Light;
There is no pain, it is only our shrinking
from an intense and unwelcome Delight;
There is no death, it is only our dread of the Life Eternal
that comes back upon us and smites us.
Our senses are tremulous and fearsome
and cling to the empty littlenesses of the surface moment,
they heed not the vast surges of Infinitude
that sweep and pass by.
Calm, calm, my soul! Sink down and deep:
Fashion the crystal bowl of thy heart
with all the serene profundity of the unknown spaces -
And drop by drop will gather there
a bliss immortals only can taste,
And ray by ray will dawn the Light supernal....
Or - be prepared for this too, soul, my soul -
the down-rush of a myriad undyked cataracts,
the sudden bursting of a whole stellar conflagration
March 17, 1935 ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, , To the Heights,#NFDB
1474:That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1475:According to the Yogis, there are three principal nerve currents: one they call the Ida, the other the Pingala, and the middle one the Sushumna, and all these are inside the spinal column. The Ida and the Pingala, the left and the right, are clusters of nerves, while the middle one, the Sushumna, is hollow and is not a cluster of nerves. This Sushumna is closed, and for the ordinary man is of no use, for he works through the Ida and the Pingala only. Currents are continually going down and coming up through these nerves, carrying orders all over the body through other nerves running to the different organs of the body. The task before us is vast; and first and foremost, we must seek to control the vast mass of sunken thoughts which have become automatic with us. The evil deed is, no doubt, on the conscious plane; but the cause which produced the evil deed was far beyond in the realms of the unconscious, ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1476:There are many worlds. Yet we constantly separate ourselves, by degrees, from the others. We create arbitrary distinctions to set ourselves apart. But let me speak first of the two main worlds that orbit each other. There are those who live in estates and cities that have mastered the clouds and sit on their perch of air to overlook the vast landscapes below. That is the upper world. The world of the wealthy. The world of the gifted. The world where the Mysteries hold sway. The other world is darker. There are neighborhoods of extreme poverty. Winding alleys and street urchins and gangs. This is a world of fog. It is a world of coughing, sickness, and pestilence. It is a world where industry beckons the ambitious to risk their all—and where the mighty and rich descend in shame after their fortunes have been ruined by games of chance and power. These are very different worlds. And yet, they are much the same. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
1477:But Mercer, you run a business. You need to participate online. These are your customers, and this is how they express themselves, and how you know if you’re succeeding.” Mae’s mind churned through a half-dozen Circle tools she knew would help his business, but Mercer was an underachiever. An underachiever who somehow managed to be smug about it. “See, that’s not true, Mae. It’s not true. I know I’m successful if I sell chandeliers. If people order them, then I make them, and they pay me money for them. If they have something to say afterward, they can call me or write me. I mean, all this stuff you’re involved in, it’s all gossip. It’s people talking about each other behind their backs. That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication. And besides that, it’s fucking dorky. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
1478:In his nightly prayers Samuel asked only that he be made to understand why he was here. What to do. He had no doubt that there was some greater design, but he fell into a deep sadness as he knew he could not understand this design. It made him feel shallow. A ship holed in some vital strakes and sunk to the gunnels and adrift. He was lonely and from time to time he felt the intensity of this loneliness, the strange questing feeling that comes from abandonment, that were he to keep on searching about in his mind and memory he would find someone or something to comfort him. The Holy Spirit was hidden in the vast plains and would not come to him even though he asked and asked again. It was because he was no longer a servant to his fellow men but an authority. A man with authority who must apply that power.
Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightning: A Novel (pp. 287-288). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. ~ Paulette Jiles,#NFDB
1479:The focus on the market has made most economists neglect vast areas of our economic life, with significant negative consequences for our well-being. The neglect of production at the expense of exchange has made policy-makers in some countries overly complacent about the decline of their manufacturing industries. The view of individuals as consumers, rather than producers, has led to the neglect of issues such as the quality of work (e.g., how interesting it is, how safe it is, how stressful it is and even how oppressive it is) and work-life balance. The disregard of these aspects of economic life partly explains why most people in the rich countries don’t feel more fulfilled despite consuming the greatest ever quantities of material goods and services.
The economy is much bigger than the market. We will not be able to build a good economy — or a good society — unless we look at the vast expanse beyond the market. ~ Ha Joon Chang,#NFDB
1480:/Farsi & Turkish Love's way is humility and intoxication, The torrent floods down. How can it run up? You'll be a cabuchon in the ring of lovers, If you're a red ruby's slave, dear friend ; Even as Earth is a serf of the sapphire sky And your monkey body's a slave to your spirit. What did Earth ever lose by this relationship? What mercy has the Self showed to weary limbs? One shouldn't beat the snare drum of awakening Beneath a cosy sofa's, comfy counterpane. Hoist, like a hero, your flag in the desert. Listen with your soul's ear to the song, In that hollow of the vast turquoise dome, Rising from the lover's passionate moan . When your tight gown-strings are loosened By the tipsy inebriation of perfect love, The victorious heavens shout, triumphantly! And the constellations gaze down ashamed. This world is in deep trouble, from top to bottom, But it can be swiftly healed by the balm of love.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, On Love
,#NFDB
1481:It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But that—in slow motion—is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century. Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. Instead, automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields. Those who once farmed were now manning the legions of factories that churned out farm equipment, cars, and other industrial products. Since then, wave upon wave of new occupations have arrived—appliance repair person, offset printer, food chemist, photographer, web designer—each building on previous automation. Today, the vast majority of us are doing jobs that no farmer from the 1800s could have imagined. ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
1482:I would not choose to live in any age but my own; advances in medicine alone, and the consequent survival of children with access to these benefits, should preclude any temptation to trade for the past. But we cannot understand history if we saddle the past with pejorative categories based on our bad habits for dividing continua into compartments of increasing worth towards the present. These errors apply to the vast paleontological history of life, as much as to the temporally trivial chronicle of human beings. I cringe every time I read that this failed business, or that defeated team, has become a dinosaur is succumbing to progress. Dinosaur should be a term of praise, not opprobrium. Dinosaurs reigned for more than 100 million years and died through no fault of their own; Homo sapiens is nowhere near a million years old, and has limited prospects, entirely self-imposed, for extended geological longevity. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
1483:Lastly, the vast number of existing animal species (about one million) and the small number of major classes (about fifty) and of major phyla or divisions (about ten), could be compared with the vast number of works of literature and the small number of basic themes or plots. All works of literature are variations on a limited number of leitmotivs, derived from man's archetypal experiences and conflicts, but adapted each time to a new environment-the costumes, conventions and language of the period. Not even Shakespeare could invent an original plot. Goethe quoted with approval the Italian dramatist Carlo Gozzi, according to whom there are only thirty-six tragic situations. Goethe himself thought that there were probably even less; but their exact number is a well-kept secret among writers of fiction. A work of literature is constructed out of thematic holons-which, like homologue organs, need not even have a common ancestor. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1484:I wish I were a poet. I've never confessed that to anyone, and I'm confessing it to you, because you've given me reason to feel that I can trust you. I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers. But I wish I were a poet.
Albert Einstein, a hero of mine, once wrote, 'Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open.'
I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we'll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What's real? What isn't real? Maybe those aren't the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on?
I wish I had made things for life to depend on. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer,#NFDB
1485:At the same time, it is important to remember that nostalgia for lower-tech times is based on fake memories. This is as true in the small scale of centuries as it is in the vast scale of life. Every genetic feature of you, from the crook of the corner of your eye to much of the way your body moves when you listen to music, was framed and formed by the negative spaces carved out by the pre-reproductive deaths of your would-be ancestors over hundreds of millions years. You are the reverse image of inconceivable epochs of heartbreak and cruelty. Your would-be ancestors in their many species, reaching back into the phylogenetic tree, were eaten, often by diseases, or sexually rejected before they could contribute genes to your legacy. The genetic, natural part of you is the sum of the leftovers of billions of years of extreme violence and poverty. Modernity is precisely the way individuals arose out of the ravages of evolutionary selection. ~ Jaron Lanier, #NFDB
1486:Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that brilliant light, set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe; let the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle described by the sun; and let him wonder at the fact that this vast circle is itself but a very fine point in comparison with that described by the stars in their revolution round the firmament. But if our view be arrested there, let our imagination pass beyond; it will sooner exhaust the power of conception than nature that of supplying material for conception. The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, that imagination loses itself in that thought. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
1487:That solar hue, that variegation of gleam and shade, made Don Fabrizio's heart ache as he stood black and stiff in a doorway: this eminently patrician room reminded him of country things; the chromatic scale was the same as that of the vast wheat fields around Donnafugata, rapt, begging pity from the tyrannous sun; in this room, too, as on his estates in mid-August, the harvest had been gathered long before, stacked elsewhere, leaving, as here, a sole reminder in the color of the stubble burned and useless now. The notes of the waltz in the warm air seemed to him but a stylization of the incessant winds harping their own sorrows on the parched surfaces, today, yesterday, tomorrow, forever and forever. The crowd of dancers, among whom he could count so many near to him in blood if not in heart, began to seem unreal, made up of that material from which are woven lapsed memories, more elusive even than the stuff of disturbing dreams. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, #NFDB
1488:Like so many other things in the previous year, my politics had also been retooled by maternity. I began to suspect that modern feminism had gotten it at least partly wrong. . . . In devaluing the home and the vast range of domestic work--childrearing included--and in fighting a fight largely for the right to work outside the home, the modern feminist movement ignored a singular power already available to women and, maybe more important, to the collective imagination. Rather than fighting to re-invent the home, or to effect a real transformation of values, or to legitimize and legalize the domestic and childrearing work that so many women engage in--which is necessary to support any mother's work outside the home--we have found it easier to map power where it already existed. Is this really my only choice? Between the intense demands of an academic career (supported by full-time childcare) and the mind-deadening contemplation of Cheerios? ~ Lisa Catherine Harper, #NFDB
1489:To Edward Lear: On His Travels In Greece
Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Peneian pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,
Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there:
And trust me while I turn'd the page,
And track'd you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.
For me the torrent ever pour'd
And glisten'd -- here and there alone
The broad-limb'd gods at random thrown
By fountain urns; -- and Naiads oar'd
A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell;
And many a slope was rich in bloom
From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks,
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
1490:Before we begin our tour of the drug war, it is worthwhile to get a couple of myths out of the way. The first is that the war is aimed at ridding the nation of drug 'kingpins' or big-time dealers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of those arrested are not charged with serious offenses. In 2005, for example, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, and one one out of five was for sales. Moreover, most people in state prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or significant selling activity.
The second myth is that the drug war is principally concerned with dangerous drugs. Quite to the contrary, arrests for marijuana possession - a drug less harmful than tobacco or alcohol - accounted for nearly 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s. Despite the fact that most drug arrests are for nonviolent minor offenses, the War on Drugs has ushered in an era of unprecedented punitiveness. ~ Michelle Alexander,#NFDB
1491:I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious--whether all that is profound--does not spring from disease of thought--from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi".
We will say then, that I am mad. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,#NFDB
1492:I’ve said before that every craftsman searches for what’s not there to practice his craft. A builder looks for the rotten hole where the roof caved in. A water carrier picks the empty pot. A carpenter stops at the house with no door. Workers rush toward some hint of emptiness, which they then start to fill. Their hope, though, is for emptiness, so don’t think you must avoid it. It contains what you need! Dear soul, if you were not friends with the vast nothing inside, why would you always be casting your net into it, and waiting so patiently? This invisible ocean has given you such abundance, but still you call it “death,” that which provides you sustenance and work. God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scorpion pit as an object of desire, and all the beautiful expanse around it as dangerous and swarming with snakes. This is how strange your fear of death and emptiness is, and how perverse the attachment to what you want. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1493:It would be easy, however, to exaggerate the havoc wrought by such artificial conditions. The monotony we observe in mankind must not be charged to the oppressive influence of circumstances crushing the individual soul. It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation; and society, in imposing on them some chance language, some chance religion, and some chance career, first plants an ideal in their bosoms and insinuates into them a sort of racial or professional soul. Their only character is composed of the habits they have been led to acquire. Some little propensities betrayed in childhood may very probably survive; one man may prove by his dying words that he was congenitally witty, another tender, another brave.But these native qualities will simply have added an ineffectual tint to some typical existence or other; and the vast majority will remain, as Schopenhauer said, Fabrikwaaren der Natur. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
1494:So long as you believe yourself to be 'only human' you have accepted life in a prison cell whose door remains locked only by your own mind.
By saying, 'well, I'm only human', you have blindly submitted to all the limitations, fears, pettiness, greed and hatreds which make the common person weak and fragile.
Most never become aware that another way is possible.
You are human, but much more, too.
The much-moreness is the vast, brilliant freedom and power which has confined itself in your humanity.
If you are willing (and not everyone is, which is also a perfectly valid choice), you can begin to explore your native powers and experience freedom within limitation. When you do this, you live fully while you are here and you are no longer afraid to die.
When you are not afraid of death but seek to live in a state of always-discovering, this is when life is transformed and you accept your birthright to choose and create in extraordinary fashion. ~ Jacob Nordby,#NFDB
1495:There, at a depth to which divers would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are devoured in their turn. Hideous shapes of living things, not created to be seen by human eyes wander in this twilight. Vague forms of antennae, tentacles, fins, open jaws, scales, and claws, float about there, quivering, growing larger, or decomposing and perishing in the gloom, while horrible swarms of swimming things prowl about seeking their prey.
To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
1496:When no one listens To the quiet trees When no one notices The sun in the pool. Where no one feels The first drop of rain Or sees the last star Or hails the first morning Of a giant world Where peace begins And rages end: One bird sits still Watching the work of God: One turning leaf, Two falling blossoms, Ten circles upon the pond. One cloud upon the hillside, Two shadows in the valley And the light strikes home. Now dawn commands the capture Of the tallest fortune, The surrender Of no less marvelous prize! Closer and clearer Than any wordy master, Thou inward Stranger Whom I have never seen, Deeper and cleaner Than the clamorous ocean, Seize up my silence Hold me in Thy Hand! Now act is waste And suffering undone Laws become prodigals Limits are torn down For envy has no property And passion is none. Look, the vast Light stands still Our cleanest Light is One! [1962.jpg] -- from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton
~ Thomas Merton, Stranger
,#NFDB
1497:Why should a change of paradigm be called a revolution? In the face of the vast and essential differences between political and scientific development, what parallelism can justify the metaphor that finds revolutions in both?
One aspect of the parallelism must already be apparent. Political revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, often restricted to a segment of the political community, that existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an environment that they have in part created. In much the same way, scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. In both political and scientific development the sense of malfunction that can lead to crisis is prerequisite to revolution. ~ Thomas S Kuhn,#NFDB
1498:As the virtual world of electronic communication becomes the world many of us inhabit all the time, in turning to imaginative literature we may not be seeking mere reassurance nor be impelled by mere nostalgia. To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world. In one of T. S. Eliot’s poems a bird sings, “Mankind cannot bear very much reality.” I’ve always thought that bird was mistaken, or was talking only about some people. I find it amazing how much of the real world most of us can endure. Not only endure, but need, desire, crave. Reality is life. Where we suffocate is in the half-life of unreality, untruth, imitation, fakery, the almost-true that is not true. To be human is to live both within and beyond the narrow band of what-happens-now, in the vast regions of the past and the possible, the known and the imagined: our real world, our true Now. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1499:The greatest barrier preventing us from fully challenging sexism is the pervasive antifeminine sentiment that runs wild in both the straight and queer communities, targeting people of all genders and sexualities. The only realistic way to address this issue is to work toward empowering femininity itself. We must rightly recognize that feminine expression is strong, daring, and brave - that it is powerful - and not in an enchanting, enticing, or supernatural sort of way, but in a tangible, practical way that facilitates openness, creativity, and honest expression. We must move beyond seeing femininity as helpless and dependent, or merely as masculinity's sidekick, and instead acknowledge that feminine expression exists of its own accord and brings its own rewards to those who naturally gravitate toward it. By embracing femininity, feminism will finally be able to reach out to the vast majority of feminine women who have felt alienated by the movement in the past. ~ Julia Serano, #NFDB
1500:That longing in the heart of a woman to share life together as a great adventure-that comes straight from the heart of God, who also longs for this. He does not want to be an option in our lives. He does not want to be an appendage, a tagalong. Neither does any woman. God is essential. He wants us to need him-desperately. Eve is essential. She has an irreplaceable role to play. And so you'll see that women are endowed with fierce devotion, an ability to suffer great hardships, a vision to make the world a better place.The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God's vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. In fact, this may be The most important thing we ever learn about God--the He yearns for relationship with us. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God" (John 17:3). The whole story of the Bible is a love story between God and His people. He yearns for us. He cares. He has a tender heart. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
180 Integral Yoga
86 Poetry
47 Fiction
21 Christianity
18 Philosophy
18 Occultism
16 Yoga
9 Science
7 Psychology
7 Mythology
5 Mysticism
5 Integral Theory
4 Hinduism
2 Philsophy
2 Cybernetics
1 Zen
1 Theosophy
1 Thelema
1 Baha i Faith
1 Alchemy
144 Sri Aurobindo
75 Nolini Kanta Gupta
66 The Mother
43 H P Lovecraft
40 Satprem
16 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
10 Walt Whitman
10 James George Frazer
8 William Wordsworth
8 Percy Bysshe Shelley
8 Jorge Luis Borges
7 Swami Vivekananda
6 Swami Krishnananda
6 Ovid
6 Lucretius
5 Carl Jung
5 Aleister Crowley
4 Saint Augustine of Hippo
4 Robert Browning
4 Rabindranath Tagore
4 Plato
4 Nirodbaran
4 A B Purani
3 John Keats
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 Rainer Maria Rilke
2 Patanjali
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Jordan Peterson
2 George Van Vrekhem
2 Aldous Huxley
43 Lovecraft - Poems
23 Savitri
19 The Synthesis Of Yoga
17 The Life Divine
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
13 The Secret Of The Veda
12 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
10 Whitman - Poems
10 The Golden Bough
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
9 Agenda Vol 10
8 Wordsworth - Poems
8 The Future of Man
8 Shelley - Poems
8 Labyrinths
8 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
8 Essays On The Gita
8 Collected Poems
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
6 The Study and Practice of Yoga
6 Of The Nature Of Things
6 Metamorphoses
6 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
5 The Secret Doctrine
5 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
5 Questions And Answers 1956
5 Agenda Vol 08
5 Agenda Vol 01
4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
4 The Phenomenon of Man
4 Tagore - Poems
4 Some Answers From The Mother
4 Record of Yoga
4 Prayers And Meditations
4 Liber ABA
4 Isha Upanishad
4 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
4 Essays Divine And Human
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
4 Browning - Poems
4 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
3 Words Of Long Ago
3 Vedic and Philological Studies
3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
3 The Human Cycle
3 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
3 Raja-Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
3 On the Way to Supermanhood
3 Letters On Yoga II
3 Keats - Poems
3 Hymn of the Universe
3 City of God
2 The Perennial Philosophy
2 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
2 The Divine Comedy
2 Talks
2 Symposium
2 Selected Fictions
2 Rilke - Poems
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Questions And Answers 1953
2 Preparing for the Miraculous
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Letters On Yoga IV
2 Letters On Yoga III
2 Emerson - Poems
2 Cybernetics
2 Borges - Poems
2 Bhakti-Yoga
2 Agenda Vol 13
2 Agenda Vol 07
2 Agenda Vol 06
2 Agenda Vol 04
2 Agenda Vol 03
2 Agenda Vol 02
2 5.1.01 - Ilion
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon The Vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, as regards the interpretation of the story cited, should not a suspicion arise naturally at the very outset that the dog of the story is not a dog but represents something else? First, a significant epithet is given to itwhite; secondly, although it asks for food, it says that Om is its food and Om is its drink. In the Vedas we have some references to dogs. Yama has twin dogs that "guard the path and have powerful vision." They are his messengers, "they move widely and delight in power and possess The Vast strength." The Vedic Rishis pray to them for Power and Bliss and for the vision of the Sun1. There is also the Hound of Heaven, Sarama, who comes down and discovers the luminous cows stolen and hidden by the Panis in their dark caves; she is the path-finder for Indra, the deliverer.
My suggestion is that the dog is a symbol of the keen sight of Intuition, the unfailing perception of direct knowledge. With this clue the Upanishadic story becomes quite sensible and clear and not mere abracadabra. To the aspirant for Knowledge came first a purified power of direct understanding, an Intuition of fundamental value, and this brought others of the same species in its train. They were all linked together organically that is the significance of the circle, and formed a rhythmic utterance and expression of the supreme truth (Om). It is also to be noted that they came and met at dawn to chant, the Truth. Dawn is the opening and awakening of the consciousness to truths that come from above and beyond.
--
Now, this is the All, the Universal. One has to realise it and possess in one's consciousness. And that can be done only in one way: one has to identify oneself with it, be one with it, become it. Thus by losing one's individuality one lives the life universal; the small lean separate life is enlarged and moulded in the rhythm of the Rich and The Vast. It is thus that man shares in the consciousness and energy that inspire and move and sustain the cosmos. The Upanishad most emphatically enjoins that one must not decry this cosmic godhead or deny any of its elements, not even such as are a taboo to the puritan mind. It is in and through an unimpaired global consciousness that one attains the All-Life and lives uninterruptedly and perennially: Sarvamanveti jyok jvati.
Still the Upanishad says this is not the final end. There is yet a higher status of reality and consciousness to which one has to rise. For beyond the Cosmos lies the Transcendent. The Upanishad expresses this truth and experience in various symbols. The cosmic reality, we have seen, is often conceived as a septenary, a unity of seven elements, principles and worlds. Further to give it its full complex value, it is considered not as a simple septet, but a threefold heptad the whole gamut, as it were, consisting of 21 notes or syllables. The Upanishad says, this number does not exhaust the entire range; I for there is yet a 22nd place. This is the world beyond the Sun, griefless and deathless, the supreme Selfhood. The Veda I also sometimes speaks of the integral reality as being represented by the number 100 which is 99 + I; in other words, 99 represents the cosmic or universal, the unity being the reality beyond, the Transcendent.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the Little there lies no happiness, The Vast alone is the Happiness. The Vast is the Immortality, the Little is the Mortality.
The rich and sensuous beauty luxuriating in high colour and ample decoration that one meets often in the creation of the earlier Vedic seers returned again, in a more chiselled and polished and stylised manner, in the classical poets. The Upanishads in this respect have a certain kinship with the early poets of the intervening ageVyasa and Valmiki. Upam KlidsasyaKalidasa revels in figures and images; they are profusely heaped on one another and usually possess a complex and composite texture. Valmiki's images are simple and elemental, brief and instinct with a vast resonance, spare and full of power. The same brevity and simplicity, vibrant with an extraordinary power of evocation, are also characteristic of the Upanishadic mantra With Valmiki's
00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
On this Earth they hold everywhere in themselves all the secrets. They make Earth and Heaven move together, so that they may realise their heroic strength. They measure them with their rhythmic measurings, they hold in their controlled grasp The Vast and great twins, and unite them and establish between them the mid-world of Delight for the perfect poise.30
All the gods are poetstheir forms are perfect, surpa, suda, their Names full of beauty,cru devasya nma.31 This means also that the gods embody the different powers that constitute the poetic consciousness. Agni is the Seer-Will, the creative vision of the Poet the luminous energy born of an experience by identity with the Truth. Indra is the Idea-Form, the architectonic conception of the work or achievement. Mitra and Varuna are the large harmony, The Vast cadence and sweep of movement. The Aswins, the Divine Riders, represent the intense zest of well-yoked Life-Energy. Soma is Rasa, Ananda, the Supreme Bliss and Delight.
The Vedic Poet is doubtless the poet of Life, the architect of Divinity in man, of Heaven upon earth. But what is true of Life is fundamentally true of Art tooat least true of the Art as it was conceived by the ancient seers and as it found expression at their hands.32
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
What Jung calls archetypal images constantly rise to the surface of man's awareness from The Vast unconscious that is the common heritage of all mankind.
The tragedy of civilized man is that he is cut off from awareness of his own instincts. The Qabalah can help him achieve the necessary understanding to effect a reunion with them, so that rather than being driven by forces he does not understand, he can harness for his conscious use the same power that guides the homing pigeon, teaches the beaver to build a dam and keeps the planets revolving in their appointed orbits about the sun.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
In 1878 a schism divided Keshab's Samaj. Some of his influential followers accused him of infringing the Brahmo principles by marrying his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. This group seceded and established the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Keshab remaining the leader of the Navavidhan. Keshab now began to be drawn more and more toward the Christ ideal, though under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna his devotion to the Divine Mother also deepened. His mental oscillation between Christ and the Divine Mother of Hinduism found no position of rest. In Bengal and some other parts of India the Brahmo movement took the form of unitarian Christianity, scoffed at Hindu rituals, and preached a crusade against image worship. Influenced by Western culture, it declared the supremacy of reason, advocated the ideals of the French Revolution, abolished the caste-system among its own members, stood for the emancipation of women, agitated for the abolition of early marriage, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, and encouraged various educational and social-reform movements. The immediate effect of the Brahmo movement in Bengal was the checking of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries. It also raised Indian culture in the estimation of its English masters. But it was an intellectual and eclectic religious ferment born of the necessity of the time. Unlike Hinduism, it was not founded on the deep inner experiences of sages and prophets. Its influence was confined to a comparatively few educated men and women of the country, and The Vast masses of the Hindus remained outside it. It sounded monotonously only one of the notes in the rich gamut of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus.
--- ARYA SAMAJ
--
The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with The Vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to man in a spirit of worship.
--- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
ear, identifying The Vastness of the Most Holy with the obscene worm that
gnaws the bowels of the damned.
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. For the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and therefore limited, not by ratiocination which is an indirect and doubtful process, but by direct vision, an inner communion, a soul revelation. The new knowledge will be vast and profound and creative, based as it will be upon the reality of things and not upon their shadows. Truth will shine through every experience and every utterance"a truth shall have its seat on our speech and mind and hearing", so have the Vedas said. The mind and intellect will not be active and constructive agents but the luminous channel of a self-luminous knowledge. And the heart too which is now the field of passion and egoism will be cleared of its noise and obscurity; a serener sky will shed its pure warmth and translucent glow. The knot will be rent asunderbhidyate hridaya granthih and The Vast and mighty streams of another ocean will flow through. We will love not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will love not with the yearning and hunger of a mortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.
And the new society will be based not upon competition, nor even upon co-operation. It will not be an open conflict, neither will it be a convenient compromise of rival individual interests. It will be the organic expression of the collective soul of humanity, working and achieving through each and every individual soul its most wide-winging freedom, manifesting the godhead that is, proper to each and every one. It will be an organisation, most delicate and subtle and supple, the members of which will have no need to live upon one another but in and through one another. It will be, if you like, a henotheistic hierarchy in which everyone will be the greatest, since everyone is all and all everyone simultaneously.
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Truth, The Vast,
From which we came and which we are; I heard
--
It is the bare truth, "truth in its own home", as I have said already using a phrase of the ancient sages, that is formulated here without the prop of any external symbolism. There is no veil, no mist, no uncertainty or ambiguity. It is clarity itself, an almost scientific exactness and precision. In all this there is something of the straightness and fullness of vision that characterised the Vedic Rishis, something of their supernal genius which could mould speech into the very expression of what is beyond speech, which could sublimate the small and the finite into forms of The Vast and the Infinite. Mark how in these aphoristic lines embodying a deep spiritual experience, the inexpressible has been expressed with a luminous felicity:
Delight that labours in its opposite,
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He kept the vision of The Vasts behind:
A power was in him from the Unknowable.
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Reason is insufficient and unsatisfactory because, as Bergson explains, it does not and cannot embrace life as a whole, seize man and the world in an integral realisation. The greater part of The Vast mystery of existence escapes its envergure. Reason is that faculty which is for analysing, defining, classifying and fixing things. It is a power that has grown in man in order that he may best manipulate the things of the world. It is utilitarian, practical in its nature and outlook. And as practical dealing requires that things should be stable and separate entities, therefore Reason cannot but see things in solid and in the fragments of a solid. It cuts up existence into distinct parts and diverse elements; and these again it seeks to relate and aggregate, in accordance with what it calls "laws". Such a process has been necessary for man in conducting life and action successfully. Originally a bye-product of active life, Reason gradually separated itself and came finally to have an independent status and function, became or sought to become the instrument of knowledge, of Truth.
But although Reason has been and is useful for the practical, we may say almost, the manual aspect of life, life itself it leaves unexplained and uncomprehended. For life is mobility, a continuous flow that has nowhere any gap or stop and things have in reality no isolated or separate existence, they merge and mingle into one another and form an indissoluble whole. Therefore the forms and categories that Reason imposes upon existence are more or less arbitrary; they are shackles that seek to bind up and limit life, but are often rent asunder in the very effort. So the civilisation that has its origin in Reason and progresses with discoveries and inventionsdevices for artfully manipulating naturehas been essentially and pre-eminently mechanical in its structure and outlook. It has become more and more efficient perhaps, but less and less soul-inspired, less and less-endowed with the free-flowing sap of organic growth and vitality.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Pacing The Vast cathedral of his thoughts
Under its arches dim with infinity
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
fact (not a prediction). The incapacity of The Vast majority of
human beings to become conscious of it is a fact which can in
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The wave cry, the wind cry, The Vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning. 8
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, Roerich considers the Himalayas as the very abode, the tabernacle itself thesanctum sanctorumof the Spirit, the Light Divine. Many of Roerich's paintings have mountain ranges, especially snow-bound mountain ranges, as their theme. There is a strange kinship between this yearning artistic soul, which seems solitary in spite of its ardent humanism, and the silent heights, rising white tier upon tier reflecting prism like the fiery glowing colours, The Vast horizons, the wide vistas vanishing beyond.
Roerich is one of the prophets and seers who have ever been acclaiming and preparing the Golden Age, the dream that humanity has been dreaming continuously since its very childhood, that is to say, when there will be peace and harmony on earth, when racial, cultural or ideological egoism will no longer divide man and mana thing that seems today a chimera and a hallucinationwhen there will be one culture, one civilisation, one spiritual life welding all humanity into a single unit of life luminous and beautiful. Roerich believes that such a consummation can arrive only or chiefly through the growth of the sense of beauty, of the aesthetic temperament, of creative labour leading to a wider and higher consciousness. Beauty, Harmony, Light, Knowledge, Culture, Love, Delight are cardinal terms in his vision of the deeper and higher life of the future.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In theory, it applies to everyone. But The Vast majority of human beings fall into unconsciousness, and if there is a contact
with pure Being it is quite unconscious. Very few persons are
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
others remain half conscious like The Vast majority of human
beings.
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
in relation to themselves and act accordingly. The Vast majority
of men are like this.
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The Vastness beyond the creation or the cosmic manifestation, the solid base upon which all the rest can unfold.
***
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother added: 'The most beautiful part of the experience is missing... When I try to formulate something in too precise a way, all The Vastness of the experience evaporates. The entire world is being revealed in all its organization down to the minutest details but everything simultaneouslyhow can that be explained? It's not possible.'
***
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And this almighty spring is the perfect image of what is happeningwhat must happen, what will happenFOR EVERYONE: suddenly, one is cast forth into The Vast.
***
0 1958-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Basically, The Vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate (which is quite natural), but they have with them the key that opens the doors and the windows, and they dont use it Certainly, there is a period when they dont know that they have the key, but even long after they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and doubt that it has the power to open the doors and windows, or even that it may be advisable to open them. And even once they feel that After all, it might be a good thing, a fear pursues them: What is going to happen once all these doors and these windows open? They become afraidafraid of losing themselves in this light and in this freedom. They want to remain what they call themselves. They love their falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist.
That is why the journey is so long, so difficult. For if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyousthough perhaps not in the way men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of obscurity: Without shadow, there would be no painting. Without struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering, there would be no joy. That is what they think, and as long as they think like that, they are not yet born to the spirit.
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Shortly before the 15th of August I had a unique experience that exemplifies all this.1 For the first time the supramental light entered directly into my body, without passing through the inner beings. It entered through the feet (a red and gold colormarvelous, warm, intense), and it climbed up and up. And as it climbed, the fever also climbed because the body was not accustomed to this intensity. As all this light neared the head, I thought I would burst and that the experience would have to be stopped. But then, I very clearly received the indication to make the Calm and Peace descend, to widen all this body-consciousness and all these cells, so that they could contain the supramental light. So I widened, and as the light was ascending, I brought down The Vastness and an unshakable peace. And suddenly, there was a second of fainting.
I found myself in another world, but not far away (I was not in a total trance). This world was almost as substantial as the physical world. There were roomsSri Aurobindos room with the bed he rests on and he was living there, he was there all the time: it was his abode. Even my room was there, with a large mirror like the one I have here, combs, all kinds of things. And the substance of these objects was almost as dense as in the physical world, but they shone with their own light. It was not translucent, not transparent, not radiant, but self-luminous. The various objects and the material of the rooms did not have this same opacity as the physical objects here, they were not dry and hard as in the physical world we know.
0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If I could receive the Light: if I could SEE this Light; if I could see The Vastness opening before my eyes.
Then its in the realm of visions, of conscious perception.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yet beyond the lower triple world, the Rishis had discovered a certain fourth, touryam svid; they found The Vast dwelling place, the solar world, Swar: I have arisen from earth to the mid-world [life], I have arisen from the mid-world to heaven [mind], from the level of the firmament of heaven I have gone to the Sun-world, the Light (Yajur-veda 17.67). And it is said, Mortals, they achieved immortality (Rig-veda I.110.4). What then was their secret? How did they pass from a heaven of mind to the great heaven without leaving the body, without, as it were, going off into ecstasies?
The secret lies in matter. Because Agni is imprisoned in matter and we ourselves are imprisoned there. It is said that Agni is without head or feet, that it conceals its two extremities: above, it disappears into the great heaven of the supraconscient (which the Rishis also called the great ocean), and below, it sinks into the formless ocean of the inconscient (which they also called the rock). We are truncated. But the Rishis were men of a solid realism, a true realism resting upon the Spirit; and since the summits of mind opened out upon a lacuna of lightecstatic, to be sure, but with no hold over the worldthey set upon the downward way.6 Thus begins the quest for the lost sun, the long pilgrimage of descent into the inconscient and the merciless fight against the dark forces, the thieves of the sun, the panis and vritras, pythons and giants, hidden in the dark lair with the whole cohort of usurpers: the dualizers, the confiners, the tearers, the COVERERS. But the divine worker, Agni, is helped by the gods, and in his quest he is led by the intuitive ray, Sarama, the heavenly hound with the subtle sense of smell who sets Agni on the track of the stolen herds (strange, shining herds). Now and again there comes the sudden glimmer of a fugitive dawn then all grows dim. One must advance step by step, digging, digging, fighting every inch of the way against the wolves whose savage fury increases the nearer one draws to their denAgni is a warrior. Agni grows through his difficulties, his flame burns more brilliantly with each blow from the Adversary; for, as the Rishis said, Night and Day both suckled the divine Child; they even said that Night and Day are the two sisters, Immortal, with a common lover [the sun] common they, though different their forms (I.113.2,3). These alternations of night and brightness accelerate until Day breaks at last and the herds of Dawn7 surge upward awakening someone who was dead (I.113.8). The infinite rock of the inconscient is shattered, the seeker uncovers the Sun dwelling in the darkness (III.39.5), the divine consciousness in the heart of Matter. In the very depths of Matter, that is to say, in the body, on earth, the Rishis found themselves cast up into Light that same Light which others sought on the heights, without their bodies and without the earth, in ecstasy. And this is what the Rishis would call the Great Passage. Without abandoning the earth they found The Vast dwelling place, that dwelling place of the gods, Swar, the original Sun-world that Sri Aurobindo calls the Supramental World: Human beings [the Rishis emphasize that they are indeed men] slaying the Coverer have crossed beyond both earth and heaven [matter and mind] and made the wide world their dwelling place (I.36.8). They have entered the True, the Right, The Vast, Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the unbroken light, the fearless light, where there is no longer suffering nor falsehood nor death: it is immortality, amritam.
***
0 1962-07-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like an image. You see, the body is stretched out here on the chaise longue. You know how it is when experiments are done on animals? Its something like that the body is there as the subject of an experiment. Then theres my consciousness, the part focused on the earthly experience and the present transformation (its what I mean when I say I). And then the Lord. I say the Lord Ive adopted that because its the best way of putting it and the easiest for me, but I never, NEVER think of a being. For me, its a simultaneous contact with the Eternal, the Infinite, The Vast, the Totality of everything the totality of everything: all that is, all that has been, all that will be, everything. Words spoil it, but its like thatautomaticallywith consciousness, sweetness and SOLICITUDE. With all the qualities a perfect Personality can offer (I dont know if you follow me, but thats the way it is). And That (I use all these words to say it, and three-fourths is left out) is a spontaneous, constant, immediate experience. So the I I spoke of asks that the body may have the experience, or at least an initial taste, even a shadow of the experience of this Love. And each time its asked for, it comes INSTANTLY. Then I see the three together1in my consciousness and perception the three are together and I see that this Love is dosed out and maintained in exact proportion to what the body can bear.
The body is aware of this and is a little sad about it. But immediately comes something soothing, calming, making it vast. The body instantly senses the immensity and regains its calm.
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo preached the integral yoga which includes everything, so one can have all the experiences. Indeed, the universe was clearly created as a field of experience. Some people prefer the short, straight and narrow paths thats their business. Others like to dawdle along the wayand thats their business! And some are drawn to have all the experiences, and thus they often wander for a long time through the overmental world. And of course, The Vast majority of those who have RELIGIOUS aspirations are thus put in touch with various deities, where they stopits enough for them.
But everything Ive just said is only one tiny part of the whole story.
0 1963-04-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am waiting for X to make certain changes in my japa, as he said he would, and will then come back without further delay. These last two days my health has been better. I am no longer constantly tired as I was before. In the evening I take a walk alone in The Vast dunes near Rameshwaram, it feels like Arabia, and no loudspeakers! You rest in a sort of tranquil infinity.
The monkeys stole my mirror while I was taking my bath, and after marveling at themselves in it at length, they broke it. Then they threw my toothpaste into the well. They were kind enough, however, to leave me my razor, for fear I would end up looking like them, probably!
0 1963-09-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Abandoned in The Vast she slumbered on:
An evil transmutation overtook
0 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was the whole humanity that isnt quite animal anymore, that has benefited from mental development and created a certain harmony in its lifea vital, artistic, literary harmony and The Vast majority of which live satisfied with life. They have caught a sort of harmony and live in it a life as it exists in a civilized milieu, that is to say, somewhat cultured, with refinement in taste, refinement in habits. And this whole life has a sort of harmony in which they find themselves at ease, and unless something catastrophic happens to them, they live happy and content, satisfied with life. Those may be attracted (because they have taste, they are intellectually developed), they may be attracted to the new forces, the new things, the future life; for instance, they may mentally, intellectually become disciples of Sri Aurobindo. But they dont at all feel the need to change materially, and if they were to be forced to, it would be first of all premature and unjust, and it would quite simply create a great disorder and would upset their lives quite unnecessarily.
It was very clear.
0 1965-12-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All these feelings (what can we call them?) have a vibratory mode, with something very essential at their core and kinds of layers covering it; so the most central vibration is identical, and its as it inflates to express itself that it gets distorted. For love its perfectly obvious; in The Vast majority of cases it becomes outwardly something with a wholly different nature from the inner vibration, because its something turning in on itself, shriveling up and trying to pull to itself in an egoistic movement of possession. You WANT to be loved. You say, I love this person, but at the same time there is what you want, and the lived feeling is, I want to be loved. And so thats almost as great a distortion as the distortion of hatred, which consists in wanting to destroy what you love in order not to be tied down. Because you cannot obtain what you want from the object of your love, you want to destroy it in order to be freed; and in the other case, you shrivel up almost in an inner fury because you cannot obtain, you cannot gobble up what you love. (Laughing) In actual fact, from the standpoint of the deeper truth, there isnt much difference!
Its only when the central vibration remains pure and is expressed in its original purity, which is a spreading out (what can I call it? Its something radiating out, a vibration spreading out in a glory, a vibration blossoming out, yes, a radiant blossoming out), then it remains true. And materially its expressed by self-giving, self-forgetfulness, the generosity of the soul. And thats the only true movement. But what people are used to calling love is as removed from the central vibration of true Love as hatred; only, the one turns in on itself, shrivels up and hardens, while the other strikes thats what makes the whole difference.
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And if you look at it from the wrong side, it1 is a tension, its like something that doesnt leave you a seconds respite. And its true, it doesnt allow you to fall asleep one minute; because in the ordinary consciousness, in the general ordinary life, rest means tamas. Rest means falling back into Inertia. So then, instead of a rest that benefits you, its a rest that stupefies you and then you have to make effort once more to recapture the consciousness you have lost. Thats how The Vast majority of people sleep. But now, the lesson is different: when I lie down to rest my body and work without moving (work with an activity that doesnt force the body to move), as soon as there is the slightest not exactly fall, but the slightest descent towards the Inconscient, something in the body immediately gives a startinstantly. It has been like that for a long time, two years, but now its instantaneous, and it very rarely happens there is true rest, which is an expansion and immensity of the being in full Light. Its magnificent.
But during the day, there are perpetual lessons, all the time, all the time, for everything, all the time. The lesson is least pronounced when I have to write something or see people; but there, too, the exact quality of peoples vibration (not their permanent vibration but the vibration in them at that minute), the quality of their consciousness is immediately made known to me through certain reactions in my body (gesture on different levels of the body). The nerves began only a few months ago their work of transfer of power. (What I call transfer of power is that instead of the nerves being moved by and obeying complex and organized forces of Nature, of the character, of the material consciousness in the body, they attune themselves to and directly obey the divine Will.) Its the transfer from one to the other thats difficult: there is the entire old habit, and then the new habit to be formed. It was a rather difficult moment. But now there remain enough old vibrations to be able to gauge exactly (and this has nothing to do with thought, it isnt expressed in words or thoughts or anything like all that: just vibrations), to know exactly the state people near me are in. From that point of view the lesson is going on, its very interesting. And whats wonderful is that more often than not the most receptive vibration, conforming the most to what it should be, is in children, but the very small ones, the tiny tots. I see lots of people, but now I understand why: I learn enormously that way, through that contact (with people whom I dont know, sometimes whom I see for the first time, or whom I havent seen for years). Its very interesting.
0 1966-06-11, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Soon afterwards, the question comes up of the publication of the previous conversation, of June 8, 1966, in the appendix to the Playground Talk of April 19, 1951 fifteen years earlier. Satprem voices certain doubts, emphasizing The Vast difference between the two texts.)
We must put it in [the conversation of June 8], its very important. Very useful. People must know it.
0 1967-02-08, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, sometime yesterday morning, something very interesting occurred: a clear perception that The Vast majority of the cells (in THIS CASE: Im not talking about the whole body, I am talking about this particular spotthroat, nose, etc.), The Vast majority of the cells still have a sort of feelingwhich seems to be the result of innumerable experiences or of habits (its both; not clearly one or the other, but both)that Natures force, that is to say, the nature governing the body, knows what needs to be done better than the divine Power: its used to it, it knows better. Thats how it is. And then, when this new consciousness which is being worked out in the physical being (the mind of the cells) has caught hold of that, oh, it was as if it had caught hold of an extraordinary revelation; it said, Ah, Ive got you, you culprit! You are the one who is preventing the transformation.
It was tremendously interesting. Tremendously interesting!
0 1967-03-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Vast majority of human beings have a collective destiny. For them, the question does not arise.
One who has an individualized psychic being can survive even in the midst of collective catastrophes, if such is the choice of his soul.
0 1967-05-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For them, I mean The Vast intellectual majority, they cannot conceive of doing or being something without knowing what it is.
We could also say this, if we enjoyed a joke: It is when you dont know it, that you are the most Divine.
0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, it came to me as a discovery. The whole religion, instead of being seen like this (gesture from below), was seen like that (gesture from above). Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use their language), the son of God came to give his message (a message of love, unity, fraternity and charity) to the earth; and the earth, that is, those who govern, who werent ready, sacrificed him, and his Father, the supreme Lord, let him be sacrificed in order that his sacrifice would have the power to save the world. That is how they see Christianity, in its most comprehensive idea The Vast majority of Christians dont understand anything whatsoever, but I mean that among them there may be (perhaps, its possible), among the cardinals for instance who have studied occultism and the deeper symbols of things, some who understand a little better anyway. But according to my vision (Mother points to her note on Christianity), what happened was that in the history of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, began to question and rebel against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia (its very clear in animals, it has become very clear already: suffering was the means to make them emerge from inertia), but man, on the other hand, went beyond that stage and began to rebel against suffering, naturally also to revolt against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity. There was already before it a fairly long earth historywe shouldnt forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, are part of the one Divine, the one God (its the image of the Gita, the God who swallows the world and its creatures). There is that, here in India. There was the Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation. Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity arrived. So there had been a whole period before it, and a great number of people beginning to rebel against suffering and wanting to escape from it like that. Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the necessity to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine beatitude, but notnot by refusing to collaborate with life, but IN life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.
That gives a place to all religions in the development from the Inconscient to the divine Consciousness.
0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But even at this moment in time, The Vast majority The Vast majorityof human intellectuality is perfectly satisfied being busy with itself, satisfied with its little progress like this (Mother draws a microscopic circle). It doesnt even, doesnt even have a desire for something else!
Which means the advent of the superhuman being may well it may very well go unnoticed, or not be understood. We cant say, because there is no analogy; its obvious that if one of the apes, the large apes, had met the first man, he would simply have felt he was a somewhat strange being, thats all. But now its different because man thinks, reasons.
0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first thing, to begin with (this is elementary), is to have no sense of possession Its mine, what does that mean? What does it mean? I cant really understand it now. Why do people want it to be theirs?To be able to use it as they wish, do with it what they wish and handle it according to their own idea. Thats how it is. Otherwise, yes, there are people who love to keep it in a pile somewhere But thats a disease. To be sure of always having money, they heap it up. But if people understood that one must be like a receiver-transmitter set; that The Vaster the set (just the contrary of personal), the more impersonal and generous and vast the set is, and the more forces it can contain (forces, that is, to translate materially, banknotes or money). And that power to contain is in proportion to the best capacity of utilization the best, that is, from the standpoint of general progress: the broadest vision, the broadest understanding and the most enlightened, exact, true utilization, not according to the egos falsified needs, but according to the earths general need in its evolution and development. In other words, the broadest vision should have the broadest capacity.
Behind all false movements, there is a true one: there is a joy in being able to direct, utilize, organize things so as to keep wastage to a minimum while having a maximum of results. (Thats a very interesting vision to have.) And that must be the true side in those who want to amass: a capacity of utilization on a very large scale.
--
And its not something you can pretend to have; a being cant pretend to have it: either he has it or he doesnt, because (laughing) if its a pretense, life will use the slightest opportunity to make it obvious! And moreover, it wont give you any material powerhere also, Thon said something in this regard, he said, Those who are all the way up (he was referring to the TRUE hierarchy, the hierarchy based precisely on each ones power of consciousness), one who is all the way up (one or those) necessarily has the least amount of needs; his material needs decrease as his capacity of material vision increases. And its perfectly true. Its automatic and spontaneous; its not the result of an effort: The Vaster the consciousness and the more things and realities it embraces, the smaller the material needs becomeautomatically sobecause they lose all their importance and value. Its reduced to a minimal need of material necessities, which will itself change with the progressive development of Matter.
And thats easily recognizable, of course. Its difficult to feign.
0 1969-01-01, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Certainly, according to the present experience, the majority The Vast majorityof illnesses and bodily disorganizations come from the vital and the mind, from their influence.
(silence)
0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Vast majority of humanity is unconscious (what I call unconscious, that is, without contact with the Consciousness, not CONSCIOUSLY in contact with Consciousness), The Vast majority; but for one who is capable of being above circumstances with a clear and precise vision of the why and the how its wonderful.
There.
0 1969-05-21, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Most people The Vast majority of peoplego into a sort of assimilative sleep: all the experiences they had in their lives, all they learned, the consciousness seems to ruminate over that. In the beginning (Thon knew a lot of things I dont know how he came to know them, but I verified them and found them to be correct), in the beginning, the span of time between two lives is very long, and its a sort of assimilative sleep in which the consequences of what one has learned develop inwardly. Then, as the psychic being is formed and as one grows more conscious, rebirths take place more and more closely, until the time when rebirth becomes the result of a choice: at a precise place, for a specific length of time. And then, depending on what the psychic being wants to do, depending on the action it has to do, the new birth may be near or distant. There, we have all possible differences. But in the formative stage, thats how it is: very distant rebirths. So then, Ive often wondered You see, Thon says there is a psychic STATE in which those beings rest (its true, there is such a place, I know it), but many people, especially at the beginning of their evolution, are quite tied down to the earth; I have seen quite a few people in trees, for instance. Very often I saw them in trees; often, while following someone [with the inner vision], I saw him enter into a tree; and often, while looking at a tree, I saw someone in it. I saw others who were oh, people clinging to a place they were interested in: for instance, I saw a man who was interested in nothing but his money, which he had hidden somewhere, and as soon as he left his body, he went there, settled there, and refused to budge from there! Incidentally (laughing), it had a curious result: it led people to discover the place! You see, it caused movements of forces, and some people felt it and thought, Oh, there must be something here.
There was a time when I concerned myself with that a good deal, and I made a good number of discoveries (following Thons indications); later on, it no longer interested me. And now, quite lately, I have been reviewing all kinds of things, all kinds of things.
0 1969-05-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body has reached a state of consciousness in which it knows that death can bring about a change, but isntisnt a disappearance (disappearance of the consciousness). And then, that idea The Vast majority of human beings have: the repose of death (Mother puts her hand on her mouth, as if before an extraordinary piece of nonsense). Not even that consolation. For most people, its the opposite of a repose. So then, there too, but even more acutely and intensely: The only, the SOLE hope is You, Lord, to be You. Let there be nothing but You. Let this separation, this difference disappear, it is MONSTROUS! Let it disappear. Then, let it be as You will: You in full activity, or You in complete reposeit doesnt matter in the least; whether it is this way or that way, either way its completely, completely unimportant; the important thing is that it should be You.
Theres the absolute CERTITUDE (Mother clenches her two fists) that theres only ONE way out of all that, only ONEonly one, not two, theres no choice, there arent a few possibilities, theres only one: its the supreme Door. The Marvel of Marvels. All the rest all the rest is an impossibility.
--
I see, you know, because peoples consciousness is an open book for me (theres no difference, its an open book), and so I see: in The Vast majority of people, when things become really difficult, there is that idea (that sort of idea is always there): Oh, one day, all that will be over.What a joke!
(silence)
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to what others say or write or experience, I have seen that what The Vast majority of humanity fears the most is this perception of the Falsehood of it all, and all that leads to it. I know people (theyve written to me) who just these last few days have had terrible frights, because all of a sudden they were forcibly seized, something was beginning to touch them: the perception of the unreality of life. So that shows the immensity of the path still ahead. Which means that any hope of a solution near at hand seems childishness. Unless things take place differently.
If things must follow the movement theyve followed till now How many centuries and centuries and centuries there have been. So the superman would only be one more stage, and after him there would be many other more things.
0 1969-08-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actively, outwardly, I would never have been able to say, Choose this man. I only said, The best for the country. I dont know why or how, because because, mon petit, our human consciousness is SO SMALL! Even when we identify with the general Consciousness, we feel so small, so microscopic in comparison with the true, all-containing Consciousness. We cant contain all! Even, even when we identify with this Consciousness, we become like this (gesture showing emptiness at the forehead level), absolutely silent and still, with only a luminous Vibration, IMMENSE, you know, infinite, and an infinite power, too, but (same gesture to the forehead) no translation of any sort, nothing like a thought. So then, if we want to intervene between That and circumstances, we are OBLIGED to make mistakes, we cant do otherwise! So the only way is to stay like this (still gesture, turned upward). Thats why I am like this, silent. You told me, I dont understand your way of acting in Auroville: its nothing but that. Its because our thought limits, opposeseven, even The Vastest consciousness, you understand, is only a TERRESTRIAL consciousness, a terrestrial consciousness, and its very small. Very small. And very small especially from the point of view of consequences, of the sequence of circumstances (Mother draws a curve), of how this will bring about thatwe dont see. So one must be like this (gesture turned upward), and simply let this Consciousness act. And there was the result: it is the third man who made it. I found it quite amusing. Quite amusing. I thought, There you are!
In my vision (I cant swear its supramental, but at any rate it was much above a mental vision), I chose one man [Deshmukh], and everyone giggled, telling me it was an impossibilityit was the one thing that could make India immediately great. Immediately it gave India a place in the world, which was her true place. Everyone found it profoundly ridiculous. So then, I was asked to choose from among three candidates, and the most obviously incapable of the three was chosen as as the man who would help the most in Indias development and blossoming. There.
0 1969-10-11, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A beast like a tiger or a lion kills only when its hungry. But to make moneythis is to make money With the women, its unconsciousness; I am sure The Vast majority of those who wear that, if they were told, Youre wearing on you the skin torn from a living and shrieking animal, it would give them nightmares The Vast majority. Very few would say, Why should I care! Very few.
But the brutes are the ones whore getting rich.
0 1969-11-22, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Very far ahead, one does see the possibility (as you yourself said) of a materialization, but between now and then, there is something. Lately Ive discovered a great deal of things while looking in that direction. I saw (I dont know if I noted that, I think I forgot to write it), I saw that with most people who have children almost without wanting it, just like that, for them its a sort of (naturally, many women desire to have children, but without even knowing what it means), for The Vast majority of educated people, that is to say, whose heads have been stuffed full of ideas about the faults one mustnt have, the qualities one must have and so on, all that they repressed in their beings, all the bad, pernicious instincts, it all comes out [in the child]. I remembered (I observed and saw), I remembered something I read very, very long ago; I think it was by Renan, he wrote somewhere that one should beware of parents who are good and very respectable, because (laughing) birth is a purge! And he also said: observe carefully the children of bad people, because those often are a reaction! So then, after that, after my experience, when I saw, I said to myself, But that man was right! For people, its a way of purging themselves. They throw out of themselves all that they dont want. There are some children here horrid! And thats it, you wonder, How come? Their parents are very good people. Its very interesting, because it gives the KEY of what should be doneby showing you what shouldnt be done, it gives you the key of what should be done.
In that case, this prenatal education Y speaks of isnt a falsehood after all. Its something that may be true.
0 1969-12-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It can be used, but not everywhere . The rishis said, The Vast [Brihat].
(after a silence)
0 1970-07-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother, one last thing, a question asked by the person who wrote the letter: he. asks whether The Vast Grace-Light or Truth-Light the Swami mentions is the supramental light?
Which light?
The Vast Grace-Light.
Grace-Light. Oh, I liked that very much in his letter. Grace-Light, thats what is working, you know: the work being done through this [Mothers body] is exactly like that, its exactly like a Grace-Light. I liked that a lot. Its exactly that.
--
"The Swami dematerialized his body in January or February 1874, leaving a promise that he would return at the time of the God of The Vast Grace-Light."
Sri Aurobindo writes this about the chakra at the base of the spine: "The Muladhar is the centre of the physical consciousness proper, and all below in the body is the sheer physical, which as it goes downward becomes increasingly subconscient, but the real seat of the subconscient is below the body, as the real seat of the higher consciousness (superconscient) is above the body."
0 1971-04-11, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The book cover took the forefront in the affair. What seems to have been conveniently forgotten is the sales methods of that Press: someone had dared to put his finger on The Vast network of financial manipulations in foreign currencies. This is far from being the end of the story.
***
0 1972-06-23, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Jesus is one of the many forms the Divine has assumed to come in contact with the earth. But there are and will be many others. Aurovilles children must replace the exclusivism of one religion by The Vast faith of Knowledge.
***
0 1972-08-30, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, my body is beginningjust beginningto know that the divine side means a life thats (Mother stretches out both arms in The Vastness) progressive and luminous; but theres an accumulation of past experiences which says, Oh, thats impossible!just like that. Well, that stupid impossible is what delays and spoils everything.
The basis of the fact is that as soon as the body steps out of the right attitude things get painful: everything aches and is laboriousyou feel death and dissolution everywhere. And thats what reinforces Matters stupidity.
02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Fire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart of things. It is that which moves the creation upward, produces the unfolding evolution that is history, both individual and collective. It is kindled, it increases in volume and strength and purity and effectiveness, as and when a lower element is offered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon the lower one (which is what the rubbing of the arai or the pressing of the soma symbolises); the limitation is broken, the small enters into and becomes The Vast, the crooked is straightened and leng thened out, what was hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the progression of the sacrifice (adhvaraadvanceon the path). That is also the victorious battle waged against the dark forces of Ignorance. The goal, the purpose is the descent and manifestation of the gods here upon earth in human vehicles.
But this Fire is not normally available. It is lost, imbedded in the thick petrified folds of unconsciousness and inconscience. Man's soul is not an apparent reality. It has to be found out, called forth, brought to the front. Even so, in the normal consciousness, the soul, the divine fire is a flickering, twinkling, hesitating spark; it is not sure of itself, not certain of its destiny. Yet when the time is ripe and the call comes, the gods, the luminous forces from above descend with all their insistence and meet the hidden godhead: Agni is reminded of his work and destiny which nothing can frustrate or cancel. He has to consent and undertake his sacrificial labour.
--
One interesting point in the story is the choice of the gods who formed the search party. They were Mitra, Varuna and Yama. Varuna is the god of The Vast consciousness (Brihat), the wide universal, the Infinite. His eye naturally penetrates everywhere and nothing can escape his notice. Mitra is harmony and rhythm of the infinity. Every individual element he embraces and he holds them all together in loving unionhis is the friendly tie of comradeship with all. Finally Yama is the master of the lower regions, the underworld of physical and material consciousness, where precisely Agni has taken refuge. Agni is within the jurisdiction of this trinity and it devolves upon them to tackle the truant god.
There is another point which requires clarification. As a reason for his nervousness and flight he alleges that greater people who preceded him had attempted the work, but evidently failed in the attempt; so how can he, a younger novice, dare to go the same way? Putting the imagery back to its psychological bearing, one play explain that the predecessors refer to the deities of the physical, vital and mental consciousness who ruled the earth before the emergence of the psychic or soul consciousness. It is precisely because of the failure or insufficiency of these anteriorin the evolutionary movementand inferior gods that Agni's service is being requisitioned. Mythologically also a parallelism is found in the Greek legends where it is said that the Olympian godsZeus and his companywere a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, the Titans. Titans were the Asuras and Rakshasas who reigned upon earth before the advent of the mentalsattwichuman being, Manu, as referred here.
02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is a brief compendium of The Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
--
Who lives for ever in The Vasts of God.
A slow reversal's movement then took place:
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is thus inherent in The Vast inalienable equality of the absolute Reality, a Force which can bring out centres of pressure, nuclei of dynamism, nodes of modulation. It is precisely round these centres of precipitation that the original and basic unity crystallises itself and weaves a pattern of harmonious multiplicity. Consciousness, by self-pressure,tapas taptv turns its even and undifferentiated pristine equanimity into ripples and swirls, eddies and vortices of delight, matrices of creative activity. Thus the One becomes Many by a process of self-concentration and self-limitation.
At the very outset when and where the Many has come out into manifestation in the Onehere also it must be remembered that we are using a temporal figure in respect of an extra-temporal factthere and then is formed a characteristic range of reality which is a perfect equation of the one and the many: that is to say, the one in becoming many still remains the same immaculate one in and through the many, and likewise the many in spite of its manifoldnessand because of the special quality of the manifoldnessstill continues to be the one in the uttermost degree. It is the world of fundamental realities. Sri Aurobindo names it the Supermind or Gnosis. It is something higher than but distantly akin to Plato's world of Ideas or Noumena (ideai, nooumena) or to what Plotinus calls the first divine emanation (nous). These archetypal realities are realities of the Spirit, Idea-forces, truth-energies, the root consciousness-forms, ta cit, in Vedic terminology. They are seed-truths, the original mother-truths in the Divine Consciousness. They comprise the fundamental essential many aspects and formulations of an infinite Infinity. At this stage these do not come into clash or conflict, for here each contains all and the All contains each one in absolute unity and essential identity. Each individual formation is united with and partakes of the nature of the one supreme Reality. Although difference is born here, separation is not yet come. Variety is there, but not discord, individuality is there, not egoism. This is the first step of Descent, the earliest one-not, we must remind ourselves again, historically but psychologically and logically the descent of the Transcendent into the Cosmic as The Vast and varied Supermindcitra praketo ajania vibhw of the Absolute into the relational manifestation as Vidysakti (Gnosis).
The next steps, farther down or away, arrive when the drive towards differentiation and multiplication gathers momentum becomes accentuated, and separation and isolation increase in degree and emphasis. The lines of individuation fall more and more apart from each other, tending to form closed circles, each confining more and more exclusively to itself, stressing its own particular and special value and function, in contradistinction to or even against other lines. Thus the descent or fall from the Supermind leads, in the first instance, to the creation or appearance of the Overmind. It is the level of consciousness where the perfect balance of the One and the Many is disturbed and the emphasis begins to be laid on the many. The source of incompatibility between the two just starts here as if Many is notOne and One is not Many. It is the beginning of Ignorance, Avidya, Maya. Still in the higher hemisphere of the Overmind, the sense of unity is yet maintained, although there is no longer the sense of absolute identity of the two; they are experienced as complementaries, both form a harmony, a harmony as of different and distinct but conjoint notes. The Many has come forward, yet the unity is also there supporting it-the unity is an immanent godhead, controlling the patent reality of the Many. It is in the lower hemisphere of the Overmind that unity is thrown into the background half-submerged, flickering, and the principle of multiplicity comes forward with all insistence. Division and rivalry are the characteristic marks of its organisation. Yet the unity does not disappear altogether, only it remains very much inactive, like a sleeping partner. It is not directly perceived and envisaged, not immediately felt but is evoked as reminiscence. The Supermind, then, is the first crystallisation of the Infinite into individual centres, in the Overmind these centres at the outset become more exclusively individualised and then jealously self-centred.
--
Mind is the birth-place of absolute division and exclusivismit is the own home of egoism. Egoism is that ignorant modea twist or knot of consciousness which cuts up the universal unity into disparate and antagonistic units: it creates isolated, mutually exclusive whorls in the harmonious rhythm and vast commonalty of the one consciousness or conscious existence. The Sankhya speaks of the principle of ego coming or appearing after the principle of vastness (mahat). The Vast is the region above the Mind, where the unitary consciousness is still intact; with the appearance of the Mind has also appeared an intolerant self-engrossed individualism that culminates, as its extreme and violent expression, in the asuraAsura, the mentalised vital being.
The Asura or the Titan stands where consciousness descends from the Mind into the Vital or Life-Force. He is the personification of ambition and authority and arrogance, he is the intolerant and absolute self-seekerhe is Daitya, the son of division. The Asura belongs to what we call the Higher Vital; but lower down in the Mid Vital, made wholly of unmixed life impulses, appear beings that are still less luminous, less controlled, more passionate, vehement and violent in their self-regarding appetite. They are the Rakshasas. If the Asura is perverse power, the Rakshasa is insatiate hunger.
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Absolved from boundaries in The Vasts of dream;
The cry of the Birds of Wonder called from the skies
02.03 - The Shakespearean Word, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Lone in the silence and to The Vastness bared,
Against midnight's dumb abysses piled in front
02.04 - The Kingdoms of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Perturbing with her dreams The Vast routine
And dead roll of a slumbering universe
--
Isolated, cramped in The Vast unknown,
To save their small lives from surrounding Death
02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Is The Vast plan of which we are a part;
Its harmonies are discords to our view
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On The Vast clavichord of Nature-Force.
Only a mighty murmur here and there
02.09 - Two Mystic Poems in Modern French, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Various figures and images depict the nature and relation of the two. The lower is darkness and the night, the higher is light and the day. Sometimes it is the opposite: the lower is the day (ordinary common light), the higher is dark night (because unknown and unfamiliar or because of the very dazzle of its light). The lower is imaged at times as a woodland, a shelter for wild growths and roving animals. The higher is the hunter, with his hounds chasing the creatures of the lower domain. Also the higher is the serene infinite sky, the lower the raging sea below. Otherwise, again, the higher is The Vast sea, tranquil or quietly rippling above and the lower is the solid material universe. The higher is the delightful sun, the lower is the muddy slimy earth of the bed of stones and rocks. The consummation, the dnouement is the interlocking between the two and a final coalescence in which the higher penetrates into the lower and the lower is sublimated into the higher and the two form one integral undivided reality.
Poetry, Volume 104, No 5, August 1964.
02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On countless roads across The Vasts of Time
Through circuits of unending difference.
02.11 - Hymn to Darkness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
(II) The Immortal Goddess fills up The Vast, above and below. She compels the darkness with her light.
(III) The Goddess comes and veils her sister, the Dawn and glows through the blackness.
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Imposing schemes of knowledge on The Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought
--
Which cannot bear the nakedness of The Vast,
They made a cipher of a multitude,
02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The question now is to devise ways and means of materialising this ideal. Circumstanced as man is, in doubt and darkness with regard to his inner nature, one most often does not know one's true vocation; those who do know their minds and are sure of their "mission in life" are the fortunate few, and very few indeed they are. Of The Vast majority, some discover themselves only at the fag-end of their life or when they are already far too committed and in harness in alien fields and among alien faces; others do not discover themselves at all, they need no such revelation: these form the general mass in which the individuals have not developed so far as to come out into any bold relief, they are cast into the stereotype mould, moved more or less by the same general forces of nature and are indistinguishable from each other. It is upon this mass of uniformity that the totalitarian regimentation bases itself easily and naturally.
Still even if human nature in the mass is like this, what the totalitarian system does is to fix and eternise the mould. To admit Nature as it is and leave it at that, to arrange and organize things within that given framework, is, to say the least, only another form of the old laissez-faire system. Take Nature as it is, but go farther and beyond. That is the problem of all human endeavour.
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Virtues are not indications of the fire of the inner soul, nor are vices irremediable obstacles to its growth. The inner soul, we have said, feeds upon allit is indeed fire, the omnivorous, sarvabhuk,virtues and vices and everything else and gather strength from everywhere. The mystery of miracles, of a sudden change or reversal or revolution in consciousness and way of life lies in the omnipotency of the psychic being. The psychic being has the power of making the apparently impossible, for this reason that it is a portion of the almighty Divine, it is the supreme Conscious-Power crystallised and canalised in a centre for the sake of manifestation. It is a particle from the Being, a spark of the Consciousness, a ripple from the Delight cast into the fastnesses of Matter and the, material body. Now, it is the irresistible urge of this particle, this spark, this ripple to grow and expand, to become in the end The Vast the Ocean and the Sun and the sphere of Infinityto become that not merely in an essential status but in a dynamic and apparent becoming also. The little soul, originally no bigger than a thumb, goes forward through one life after another enlarging and intensifying itself till it recovers and establishes its parent reality in this material body here below, till it unveils what is latent within itself, what is its own, what is itself,its integral self-fulfilment, the Divine integrality.
Here in his inner being, as part and parcel of the Divine, man is absolutely free, has infinite capacity and unbounded aptitude; for here he is master, not slave of Nature, and it is slavery to Nature, that limits and baulks and stultifies man. So does the Upanishad declare in a magnificent and supreme utterance:
03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Back from mind's foaming surface to The Vasts
Voiceless within us in omniscient sleep.
--
His life a field of The Vast cosmic stir.
He felt the footsteps of a million wills
03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nothing now moved in The Vast brooding space:
A stillness came upon the listening world,
--
A cry amid the silence of The Vasts:
"How shall I rest content with mortal days
--
Of The Vast business of created things.
A chariot of the marvels of the heavens
03.05 - Some Conceptions and Misconceptions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The exclusive concentration was the logical and inevitable final term of a movement of separativity and exteriorisation. It had its necessity and utility. Its special function was utilised by Nature for precision and perfection in details of execution in the most material order of reality. Indeed, what can be more exact and accurate than the laws of physics, the mathematical laws that govern the movements of the material particles? Furthermore, if we look at the scientist himself, do we not find in him an apt image of the same phenomenon? A scientist means a specialist the more specialised and restricted his view, the surer he is likely to be in his particular domain. And specialised knowledge means a withdrawal from other fields and viewpoints of knowledge, an ignorance of them. Likewise, a workman who moulds the head of a pin is all concentrated upon that single point of existencehe forgets the whole world and himself in that act whose perfect execution seems to depend upon the measure of his self-oblivion. But evidently this is not bound to be so. A one-pointed self-absorption that is Ignoranceis certainly an effective way of dealing with material objectsthings of Ignorance; but it is not the only way. It is a way or mechanism adopted by Nature in a certain status under certain conditions. One need not always forget oneself in the act in order to do the act perfectly. An unconscious instinctive act is not always best doneit can be done best consciously, intuitively. A wider knowledge, a greater acquaintance with objects and facts and truths of other domains too is being more and more insisted upon as a surer basis of specialisation. The pinpointed (one might almost say geometrically pointed) consciousness in Matter that resolves itself into unconsciousness acts perfectly but blindly; The Vast consciousness also acts there with absolute perfection but consciouslyconscious in the highest degree.
As we have said, super-consciousness does not confine itself to the supreme status alone, to the domain of pure infinity, but it comes down and embraces the most inferior status too, the status of the finite. Precisely because it is infinity, it is not bound to its infinity but can express its infinity in and through infinite limits.
03.08 - The Democracy of Tomorrow, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In India the spiritual life, it is true, was more or less the individual's free venture to the unknown. The Buddha said, Be thy own light; and the Gita too said, Raise thy self by thy own self. Yet here too, in the end, the individual did not stand, it rose but to get merged in the non-individual the universal, The Vast and the Infinite. The highest spiritual injunction is that God only existed and man has to annul his existence in Him.
The great mantra of individual liberty, in the social and political domain, was given by Rousseau in that famous opening line of his famous book,The Social Contract, almost the Bible of an age; Man is born free. And the first considerable mass rising seeking to vindicate and realise that ideal came with the toxin of the mighty French Revolution. It was really an awakening or rebirth of the individual that was the true source and sense of that miraculous movement. It meant the advent of democracy in politics and romanticism in art. The century that followed was a period of great experiment: for the central theme of that experiment was the search for the individual. In honouring the individual and giving it full and free scope the movement went far and even too far: liberty threatened to lead towards licence, democracy towards anarchy and disintegration; the final consequence of romanticism was surrealism, the deification of individual reason culminated in solipsism or ego-centricism. Naturally there came a reaction and we are in this century, still, on the high tide of this movement of reaction. Totalitarianism in one form or another continues to be the watchword and although neither Hitler nor Mussolini is there, a very living ghost of theirs stalks the human stage. The liberty of the individual, it is said and is found to be so by experience, is another name of the individual's erraticism and can produce only division and mutual clash and strife, and, in the end, social disintegration. A strong centralised power is necessary to hold together the warring elements of a group. Indeed, it is asserted, the group is the true reality and to maintain it and make it great the component individuals must be steamrollered into a compact mass. Evidently this is a poise that cannot stand long: the repressed individual rises in revolt and again we are on the move the other way round. Thus a never-ending see-saw, a cyclic recurrence of the same sequence of movements appears to be an inevitable law governing human society: it seems to have almost the absolutism of a law of Nature.1
04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Not yet The Vast direct immediate touch,
Nor yet the art and wisdom of the Gods.
04.15 - To the Heights-XV (God the Supreme Mystery), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Vast and fathomless Peace and Silence of Uncreation is He,
He the vehement Energy that swirls out in the aeons and the worlds.
04.23 - To the Heights-XXIII, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
they heed not The Vast surges of Infinitude
that sweep and pass by.
04.39 - To the Heights-XXXIX, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Vastnesses that lie bare under the glare of the noon.
The torrid heat and the scalding sands and the steaming air
05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And if we cannot correct and mould as we wish the little world within which is our own, how can we expect to correct or change The Vaster outer world? To leave oneself to be as one is and to try to make others change is evidently an absurd and self-contradictory proposition. On the other hand, if the first thing that one does is to correct oneself, then one will find, much to one's surprise and satisfaction, that there is very little to correct in the world, everything has been already corrected automatically.
Each man is given his little domain within him and he is master of that domain. Nobody is given more (or less even) than what he can successfully manage: the charge is accurately measured according to capacity. One can be indeed a roi fainant, if one chooses to be so; but that is not man's inevitable destiny; he can truly be the ruling king and exercise, to the full, his authority. It is a simple truth that man has a will and can wield it. This will he can consciously develop, increase and enlarge, make it an extremely powerful, if not invincible, instrument for action.
05.03 - Bypaths of Souls Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let us repeat here what we have often said elsewhere. The creation and development of souls is a twofold process. First, there is the process of growth from below, and secondly there is the process of manifestation or expression from above, the movements of ascent and descent, as spoken of by Sri Aurobindo. The souls start on their evolutionary journey on the material plane as infinitesimal specks of consciousness imbedded in The Vast expanse of the Inconscient; but they are parts and parcels of a homogeneous mass: in fact they are not distinguishable from each other at that level. There is as it were a secret vibration of consciousness with which the material infinity all around is shot through. With evolution, that is to say, with the growth and coming forward of the consciousness, there arise sparks, glowing centres here and there, forms shape and isolate themselves in the bosom of the original formless mass; they rise and they subside, others rise, coalesce, separatesome grow, others disappear. These sparks or centres, as they develop or evolve, slowly assume definiteness,of form and function,attain an individuality and finally a personality. Looked at from below there is no counting of these sparks or rudimentary souls; they are innumerable and infinitely variable. It is something like the nebula out of which the galaxies are supposed to be formed. The line of descent, however, presents a different aspect. Looked from above, at the summit there is the infinite supreme Being and Consciousness and Bliss (Sachchidananda) and in it too there cannot be a limit to the number of Jivatmas that are its formulations, like the waves in the bosom of the sea, according to the familiar figure. This is the counterpart of the infinity at the other end, where also the rudimentary souls or potential individualities are infinite. Moving down along the line of descent at a certain stage, under a certain modality of the creative process, certain types or fundamental formations are put forward that give the ground-plan, embody the matrix of the subsequent creation or manifestation. The Four Great Personalities (Chaturvyuha), the Seven Seers, the Fourteen Manus or Human Ancestors point to the truth of a fixed number of archetypes that are the source and origin of emanations forming in the end the texture of earthly lives and existences. The number and scheme depends upon a given purpose in view and is not an eternal constant. The types and archetypes with which we, human beings, are concerned in the present cycle of evolution belong to the supramental and overmental planes of consciousness; they are the beings known familiarly as gods and presiding deities. They too have emanations, each one of them, and these emanations multiply as they come down the scale of manifestation to lower and lower levels, the mental, the vital and the physical, for example. And they enter into human embodiments, the souls evolving and ascending from the lower end; they may even take upon themselves human character and shape.
There are thus chains linking the typal beings in the world above with their human embodiments in the physical world; an archetype in the series of emanations branches out, as it were, into its commensurables and cognates in human bodies. Hence it is quite natural that many persons, human embodiments, may have so to say one common ancestor in the typal being (that gives their spiritual gotra); they all belong to the same geneological tree. Souls aspiring and ascending to the higher and fuller consciousness, because of their affinity, because together they have to fulfil a special role, serve a particular purpose in the cosmic plan, because of their spiritual consanguinity, call on the same godhead as their Master-soul or Over-soul, the Soul of their souls. Their growth and development are along similar or parallel lines, they are moulded and shaped in the pattern set by the original being. This must not be understood to mean that a soul is bound exclusively to its own family and cannot step out of its geneological system. As I have said in the beginning, souls are not material particles hard and rigid and shut out from each other, they are not obliged to obey the law of impenetrability that two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time. They meet, touch, interchange, interpenetrate, even coalesce, although they may not belong to the same family but follow different lines of, evolution. Apart from the fact that in the ultimate reality each is in all and all is in each, not only so, each is all and all is eachthus beings on no account can be kept in water-tight compartmentsapart from this spiritual truth, there is also a more normal and apparent give and take between souls. The phenomenon known as "possession", for example, is a case in point. "Possession", however, need not be always a ghostly possession in the modern sense of the possession by evil spirits, it may be also in a good sense, the sense that the word carried among mediaeval mystics, viz.,spiritual.
05.03 - Satyavan and Savitri, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nursed by The Vastness, pupil of solitude.
Great Nature came to her recovered child;
05.22 - Success and its Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
That, however, is the case with the normal man with the normal nature. But precisely because of the growth of self-consciousness, man has developed the power to increase his powers: he can extend the boundaries of his capacities and possibilities. He need not confine himself within the dimensions that he naturally possesses or acquires in the normal course of his growth. He can follow an abnormal or extraordinary course of growth, break through his limits and establish contact with The Vast and the illimitable and the incalculable, even the very fount and origin- of all power. That is the gift of Yoga, spiritual discipline.
Yoga brings in a different line and scheme of life. For it is built upon soul-consciousness, upon Divine Nature which means another history of individual destiny. Even then tranquillity and self-confidence are at the basis of a Yogic life also and a new degree of modesty and humility.
05.26 - The Soul in Anguish, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The solution, the issue out is, of course, to go ahead. Instead of making the intermediary poise, however necessary it may be, a permanent character of the being and its destiny, as these philosophers tend to do, one should take another bold step, a jump upward. For the next stage, the stage when the true equilibrium, the inherent reconciliation is realised between oneself and others, between the inner soul and its outer nature is what the Upanishad describes as Vijnana, The Vast Knowledge.
Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt [Aeneid, 1. 462]
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
His moments centre The Vast universe.
He sees his little self as very God.
06.08 - The Individual and the Collective, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
An integral sadhana cannot be confined to the individual alone; an element of collectivity must enter into it. An individual is not an isolated being in any way. There are, of course, schools of Yoga and philosophy that seek to isolate the individual, consider him as an entity hemmed in by his own consciousness; indeed they view the individuals as all distinct and separate, each a closed circle or sphere, they may barely touch each other but never interpenetrate or inter-communicate. Each stands as a solitary island, all together forming The Vast archipelago of the universe. This is a position; no doubt, that can be acquired by a kind of discipline of the consciousness, though not to a great perfection; but it is not a natural or necessary poise. Normally, individuals do merge into each other and form one weft of give and take. A desire, an impulse, even a thought that rises in you, goes out of you, overflows you and spreads around even to the extreme limit of the earth, like a Hertzian wave. Again, any movement in any person anywhere in the world would come to you, penetrate you, raise a similar vibration in you, even though you may not so recognise it but consider it as something exclusively personal to you. You send out vibrations into the world and the world sends out vibrations into you. Individual life is the meeting-ground of these outgoing and incoming forces. It is precisely to avoid this circle or cycle of world-vibrations that the older Yogis used to leave the world, away from society, retire to mountain-tops, into the virgin forest where they hoped to find themselves alone and aloof, to be single with the Single Self. This is a way out, but it is not the only or the best solution. It is not the best solution, for although apparent-ly one is alone on the hill-top, in the desert crypt, or the forest womb, one always carries with oneself a whole world within, the normal nature with all its instincts and impulses, reactions, memories and hopes: you cut away the outside, run away from it, but what about the outside that is within you? The taste for a tasty thing does not drop with the removal of the object. Secondly, such an individual solution, even if it were possible, would still be a purely personal matter and, in the ultimate analysis, egoistic. It is why the Buddha refused to enter definitely into Nirvana and withdrew from the brink to work among men. Indeed, the real solution is else-where. It is not to withdraw or go away but to find within the orbit here a centre, a focus of consciousness which is not controlled by the outside forces but can control them, which is not coloured by them but can lend them its own luminosity. That is the soul or the psychic centre.
And this centre is not an isolated entity in its nature: it is, as it were, a universal centre, that is to say, it links itself indissolubly in a secret sense of identity with all other centres. For this self is only one of the selves through which the One Self has multiplied itself for a varied self-objectification. The light that shines here, the fire that burns here and the delight that flows here illumine, purify and revitalise not only the individual in which it dwells, but move abroad and extend into the other individuals with which it lives in spiritual identity.
06.15 - Ever Green, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Whenever you go inside and seek your poise, do not look for your old acquaintances, the familiar experiences, do not carry upon your back the load of the past, but go ahead, as if through a virgin tract, making quite new discoveries, and opening unexpected vistas at each step. You can make an experiment even on your physical body, i.e. take the physical consciousness too to share in your adventure of ever new discovery. Thus you may, for example, forget your habit of eating or even walking, truly forget and try to learn over again, even as you did for the first time as a child. You have to acquire consciously a capacity of the body that has become an almost unconscious reflex action. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience. Naturally you cannot repeat too often or carry too far an experiment of this kind on the physical plane. But you can freely deal with your inner life and consciousness. You can make your mind and your vital a clean slate, as much as you like: not once in your life, but every moment of your life. And then see how the world impinges upon your consciousness, what fresh discoveries and awakenings come to you endlessly! You can always rid yourself of the accustomed vibrations on the normal levels of your existence, the physical, vital and mental; and even you can go beyond your psychic formation and be the wide, The Vast, the limitless, the Infinite itself, void of all name and form. And then with that virgin consciousness drop straight into the world of material life and form, into your body and bodily reactions. The world will give itself up to you in its pristine purity, its original beauty and truth, always luminous and glorious. This experience has to be the normal mode of your living, not simply the culmination or acme of your being, a fixed and stagnant status, even if considered the highest, the summum bonum. That is how you can keep yourself and the world around you ever fresh and young and new.
The preacher who speaks of the truth and delivers it to his hearers is usually effective for the first time or for a first few occasions only, when he feels the truth of his truth and is sincere while delivering. But as time wears on, his truth too wears out, for it becomes stereotyped, a matter of mere habit. The experience is no longer lived, but mechanically doled out. You are sincere only when the experience is new and fresh and living, it should be made so every moment, otherwise it is dead letter, letter that killeth.
07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Looking into The Vast vistas of his mind
On a small globe dotting infinity.
07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Out of The Vastness of the silent self
Life's clamour fled; her spirit was mute and free.
07.06 - Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If thou wouldst a little loosen The Vast chain,
Draw back from the world that the Idea has made,
--
Bringing their personal passion into The Vast,
The Force omnipotent in quietude,
07.07 - The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And source and sum of The Vast world's events,
The womb and grave of thought, a cipher of God,
--
Life was his drama and The Vast a stage,
The universe was his body, God its soul.
--
She inhabited The Vastness of the world,
Its distances were her nature's boundaries,
07.14 - The Divine Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine's compassion, translated in the individual physical consciousness, becomes a sorrow that is not egoistic, a sorrow that is an expression of one's identification with the universal sorrow through sympathy. I have described the experience at some length in one of the Prayers and Meditations. I spoke there of the sweetest tears that I shed in life; for those tears were not for my sake, I was not weeping for myself. In almost every case man grieves for egoistic reasons, in the human way. Whenever anyone loses a person he loves, he suffers and weeps, not over the condition of the person: in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred or even more, people do not know in what condition the person gone may be, do not and cannot know if the person is happy or unhappy, if he is suffering or is in peace. It is the sense of separation that causes the grief, the feeling that he will not be with them anymore which they so much wish. At the root of all human sorrow, there lies this return upon one's own self, more or less conscious, more or less admitted. But when you feel unhappy for the unhappiness of others, there comes in a mixture. That is to say, to your personal grief is added a psychic element which I described as the reversed image of the Divine Compassion. Now, if you can distinguish between the two, the personal anguish and the disinterested sorrow, come out of what is egoistic and concentrate upon the divine element, make yourself one with it, then you can in that way come in contact with the great universal compassion, which is something immense, vast, calm, mighty, pro-found, which is perfect peace and infinite Bliss. If you know then how to enter into your suffering, go down to the very bottom of it, pass beyond the portion that is egoistic and personal, go farther on, then you arrive at the door of a wonderful revelation. Not that you should seek suffering for the sake of the suffering and in order to have the experience; but when it is there, when it has come upon you, then try what I have suggested, cross the border, the barrier of egoism in your suffering: note first where is the egoistic part, what is it that makes you suffer, what is the egoistic reason of your suffering, then step across and beyond, towards something universal, towards a greater principle. You enter then into The Vast, the infinite compassion, the door of the Psychic opens for you. If, in that domain, you see me in tears, as you say you did in your dream, then you can identify yourself with me at the moment, enter into those tears as it were, melt into them. That will open the door and it will bring you an experience, a very unique experience that leaves always a deep mark upon the consciousness. It is never blotted out altogether even if the door closes again and you become once more what you are in your ordinary movements. That experience, that mark remains behind and you can recall it, go back to it, refer to it in your moments of concentration. You feel then the immensity of an infinite sweetness, a great peace, pervading all your being, it is not in your thought only; it goes out and sympathises with everything and can cure everything.
Only you must sincerely wish, you must have the will, to be cured. Everything lies there. Now I always come back to the same theme. You must be sincere. If you want an experience for the sake of the experience and, once you have it, to go back to your ordinary ways, that will not do. You must sincerely will to be curedcured precisely of the ordinary waysyou must have the aspiration, the true aspiration to overcome the obstacle, to mount up and up, above and beyond yourself, so that you may drop all that pulls you back, drags you down, to break all limits, clarify and purify yourself, rid yourself of all that lies in your way. If you have this will, the true intense will not to fall back into past errors, to rise out of obscurity and ignorance towards the light, shorn of all that is human, too humantoo small, too ignorant then that will and that aspiration shall act, act gradually, strongly and effectively bringing you a complete and definitive result. But beware, there must be nothing that clings to the old movements, that does not declare itself but hides its head and when the occasion is opportune puts up its snout.
08.03 - Death in the Forest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Here on the emerald edge of The Vast woods
In the iron ring of the enormous peaks
09.02 - The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Against The Vast refusal of the world.
I stoop not with the subject mob of minds
09.07 - How to Become Indifferent to Criticism?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are other procedures. A Chinese sage, I read out to you once, advises you to lie down on the flow of events as on a plank in the ocean, and imagine yourself to be on The Vast immensity, drifting upon the waves, contemplating the sky above. In Chinese they call it Wu Wei. When you can do that all trouble disappears.
I knew one Irishman who used to lie on his back and look up to the sky in the night when there were stars. He looked, contemplated upon the sky, imagined as if he were floating in this immensity studded with countless luminous points and immediately he felt all his troubles were' gone. There are many such ways. What you have to do is to get the sense of relativity, your little person and the importance you attach to things concerning you as against the boundless infinity of the universe. Naturally, there is the other way of separating yourself from the earthly consciousness and rising into a higher consciousness, there earthly things take their true place, that is to say, they become small things.
10.02 - The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And Time and its aeons crawled across The Vasts
And souls emerged into mortality."
10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And sees The Vast descending might of God.
"O Death, thou lookst on an unfinished world
--
Abandoned in The Vast she slumbered on:
An evil transmutation overtook
--
In The Vast golden laughter of Truth's sun
Like a great heaven-bird on a motionless sea
10.04 - Transfiguration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Agni is the energy of consciousness, Varuna is The Vastness of consciousness, Mitra is the harmony. Ila is the revelation, Saraswati inspiration, Bharati is the Goddess of the Divine Word.
In the mental world we meet abstractions, lifeless ideas, forms without a soul. In reality, however, all movements in man, all forces in nature are more than mere movements and forces, they are personalities, embodiments of conscious beings. Indeed the Puranic tradition has elaborated this conception almost to its extreme limit. Those people crowded the world with an infinite number of Gods and Goddesses. They speak of 33 crores of Gods. The earth is the playfield of all godlings.
1.008 - The Principle of Self-Affirmation, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The practice of yoga is very cautious about all these internal structural devices, which have been manufactured by nature to keep the individual under subjugation by brainwashing him from birth until death and never allowing him to think of what these devices are. If we want to subordinate a person and keep that person under subjection always, we have to brainwash that person every day by telling him something contrary to what he is, repeating it every day every moment in every thought, every speech and every action so that there is a false personality grown around that person and he becomes our servant. This has happened to everyone, and this trick seems to be played by The Vast diversified nature itself, so that everyone is a servant of nature rather than a master. This is the source of sorrow.
Human suffering is due to a kind of subjection exerted on it by forces about which one cannot have any knowledge, truly speaking; also, one would not be allowed to have any kind of knowledge of it. This is what we call an iron curtain hanging in front of us so that we will not know what is ahead of us, or behind us, or even by the side of us. Let anyone find a little time to brood over this subject and weep silently if the truth comes out. They say that when a person is drowning and has lost everything that can be regarded as worthwhile in life, or when a person's life is in danger death is yawning before him and is imminent in such conditions, the mind reveals its true nature. It is said that when there is asphyxiation caused by drowning, all the memories of the past, sometimes even of past lives, will be unrolled before the mind for a flash of a moment due to the horror of impending death and the nervous pressure felt at that moment. Similar experiences are known to have happened in situations when a person has lost everything.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The first period is by far the longest, and covers The Vast progression of the centuries wherein the activity aspect of the threefold self is being developed. Life after life slips away during which the aspect of manas or mind is being slowly wrought out, and the human being comes more and more under the control of his intellect, operating through his physical brain. This might be looked upon as corresponding to the period of the first solar system, wherein the third aspect logoic, that of Brahma, Mind, or Intelligence, was being brought to the point of achievement. [lxxvi]74 Then the second aspect began in [175] this present solar system to be blended with, and wrought out through it. Centuries go by and the man becomes ever more actively intelligent, and the field of his life more suitable for the coming in of this second aspect. The correspondence lies in similitude and not in detail as seen in time and space. It covers the period of the first three triangles dealt with earlier. We must not forget that, for the sake of clarity, we are here differentiating between the different aspects, and considering their separated development, a thing only permissible in time and space or during the evolutionary process, but not permissible from the standpoint of the Eternal Now, and from the Unity of the All-Self. The Vishnu or the Love-Wisdom aspect is latent in the Self, and is part of the monadic content, but the Brahma aspect, the Activity-Intelligence aspect precedes its manifestation in time. The Tabernacle in the Wilderness preceded the building of the Temple of Solomon; the kernel of wheat has to lie in the darkness of mother Earth before the golden perfected ear can be seen, and the Lotus has to cast its roots down into the mud before the beauty of the blossom can be produced.
The second period, wherein the egoic ray holds sway, is not so long comparatively; it covers the period wherein the fourth and fifth triangles are being vivified, and marks the lives wherein the man throws his forces on the side of evolution, disciplines his life, steps upon the Probationary Path, and continues up to the third Initiation. Under the regime of the Personality Ray, the man proceeds upon the five Rays to work consciously with Mind, the sixth sense, passing first upon the four minor Rays and eventually upon the third. He works [176] upon the third Ray, or that of active Intelligence, and from thence proceeds to one of the subrays of the two other major Rays, if the third is not his egoic Ray.
--
The consideration of this subject awakens the realisation of The Vastness of the region of thought concerned the region of the whole evolutionary development of the human being. Yet all that is possible here, as elsewhere, is to indicate lines of thought for careful pondering, and to emphasise certain ideas which may serve as the foundation thoughts for the future mental activity of the immediate generation. The following facts must also be borne in mind when considering the matter:
a. That the senses have been dealt with in this division of our Treatise on Cosmic Fire because they concern the material form. Strictly speaking the five senses, as we know them, are the means of contact built up by the Thinker (polarised in his etheric body) and find their expression in the physical form in those nerve centres, brain cells, ganglia and plexus which exoteric science recognises.
1.00 - Preface, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
"There are not many, those who have no secret garden of the mind. For this garden alone can give refreshment when life is barren of peace or sustenance or satisfactory answer. Such sanctuaries may be reached by a certain philosophy or faith, by the guidance of a beloved author or an understanding friend, by way of the temples of music and art, or by groping after truth through The Vast kingdoms of knowledge. They encompass almost always truth and beauty, and are radiant with the light that never was on sea or land."
(Clare Cameron, Green Fields of England.)
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Truth, the Right, The Vast, satyam r.tam br.hat,10 where all is
Truth-conscious, r.tacit.11 There are many worlds between up
1.01 - Introduction, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
And even that which is visible may dwell beyond the range of our perceptions if it exceeds our proportions. The Vaster it is in its totality, the less ephemeral in its duration, the less is it perceptible to us. Thus the earth which we inhabit is visible to our eyes solely in its details and we can compass the knowledge of it in its totality only by a method of abstraction and by an appeal to means that belong to the order of mathematical or geometrical perceptions and are borrowed, therefore, from faculties of consciousness which are supersensuous. The same law holds good with greater reason for that which we call, without knowing where it commences or ends, the universe.
And towards what does our Science tend, if not towards the indirect discovery, surpassing the means of observation with which our senses provide us, of realities more and more essential and permanent, less and less incidental and, because incidental, therefore visible?
--
To produce our conscious perceptions it was necessary that all the diffused clarities which the intelligence and the sense-faculty in our rudimentary being could assemble or could produce, should converge towards certain points in The Vastness of infinity destined to form the field of our experiences and of our progress, and each of our possible conquests in that field, always obtained by a greater concentration of light, has circumscribed around us, by the very act of giving it precision, the province of the visible.
In the beginning there was the immense penumbra of the uniform Inconscient and when the Spirit said, "Let there be light," the lightning broke forth from it and the Night settled with a greater weight of darkness over all that the flashes did not illumine. Thus the day was born out of the shadows and night had the day for its cause.
1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
10 In the inner sense of the Veda Surya, the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda "Sight". His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, The Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man's dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and leads him to the highest Sight.
He is Yama, Controller or Ordainer, for he governs man's action and manifested being by the direct Law of the Truth, satyadharma, and therefore by the right principle of our nature, ya thatathyatah.. A luminous power proceeding from the Father of all existence, he reveals in himself the divine Purusha of whom all beings are the manifestations.
His rays are the thoughts that proceed luminously from the Truth, The Vast, but become deflected and distorted, broken up and disordered in the reflecting and dividing principle,
Mind. They form there the golden lid which covers the face of the Truth. The Seer prays to Surya to cast them into right order and relation and then draw them together into the unity of revealed truth. The result of this inner process is the perception of the oneness of all beings in the divine Soul of the Universe.
1.01 - Proem, #Of The Nature Of Things, #Lucretius, #Poetry
Or visit the shadows and The Vasty caves
Of Orcus, or by some divine decree
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
the religious aspiration of The Vast majority of human beings.
Take, for instance, the English word God. It conveys only a
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Undoubtedly, wherever we can seize human society in what to us seems its primitive beginnings or early stages,no matter whether the race is comparatively cultured or savage or economically advanced or backward,we do find a strongly symbolic mentality that governs or at least pervades its thought, customs and institutions. Symbolic, but of what? We find that this social stage is always religious and actively imaginative in its religion; for symbolism and a widespread imaginative or intuitive religious feeling have a natural kinship and especially in earlier or primitive formations they have gone always together. When man begins to be predominantly intellectual, sceptical, ratiocinative he is already preparing for an individualist society and the age of symbols and the age of conventions have passed or are losing their virtue. The symbol then is of something which man feels to be present behind himself and his life and his activities,the Divine, the Gods, The Vast and deep unnameable, a hidden, living and mysterious nature of things. All his religious and social institutions, all the moments and phases of his life are to him symbols in which he seeks to express what he knows or guesses of the mystic influences that are behind his life and shape and govern or at the least intervene in its movements.
If we look at the beginnings of Indian society, the far-off Vedic age which we no longer understand, for we have lost that mentality, we see that everything is symbolic. The religious institution of sacrifice governs the whole society and all its hours and moments, and the ritual of the sacrifice is at every turn and in every detail, as even a cursory study of the Brahmanas and Upanishads ought to show us, mystically symbolic. The theory that there was nothing in the sacrifice except a propitiation of Nature-gods for the gaining of worldly prosperity and of Paradise, is a misunderstanding by a later humanity which had already become profoundly affected by an intellectual and practical bent of mind, practical even in its religion and even in its own mysticism and symbolism, and therefore could no longer enter into the ancient spirit. Not only the actual religious worship but also the social institutions of the time were penetrated through and through with the symbolic spirit. Take the hymn of the Rig Veda which is supposed to be a marriage hymn for the union of a human couple and was certainly used as such in the later Vedic ages. Yet the whole sense of the hymn turns about the successive marriages of Sury, daughter of the Sun, with different gods and the human marriage is quite a subordinate matter overshadowed and governed entirely by the divine and mystic figure and is spoken of in the terms of that figure. Mark, however, that the divine marriage here is not, as it would be in later ancient poetry, a decorative image or poetical ornamentation used to set off and embellish the human union; on the contrary, the human is an inferior figure and image of the divine. The distinction marks off the entire contrast between that more ancient mentality and our modern regard upon things. This symbolism influenced for a long time Indian ideas of marriage and is even now conventionally remembered though no longer understood or effective.
1.02.2.1 - Brahman - Oneness of God and the World, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
perfect knowledge and prevision; The Vast, because it is of the
nature of an infinite cosmic Intelligence comprehensive of all
1.02.2.2 - Self-Realisation, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
True, the Right, The Vast), Atman becomes the ideal being or
great Soul, vijnanamaya purus.a or mahat atman.3
10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I am Thy puissant arms of mercy. I am The Vast bosom of Thy limitless love. The arms have enfolded the sorrowful earth and tenderly press it to the generous heart; slowly a kiss of supreme benediction settles on this atom in conflict: the kiss of the Mother that consoles and heals.
All the earth is in our arms like a sick child who must be cured and for whom one has a special affection because of his very weakness.
1.024 - Affiliation With Larger Wholes, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is the conclusion arrived at by certain faculties of prehension which are operating in the subtle layers of the mind, invisible even to the mind itself in its conscious level. In our own six-foot bodily individuality, we have possibilities of the whole cosmic experience in a minute, microscopic form. The seeds of universal powers and achievements are hiddenly present in the cells of our own individual body. The Vast tree of cosmic experience, the blossoming of universal realisation, is latent as a seed in the very fibre of our present individual existence. It is this that occasionally makes us brood over the possibilities of higher achievements in life and never allows us to rest contented with what we are at present. So, by these methods of self-analysis and study of scriptures, etc., we should be able to bring the mind back from its concentration on diverse realities of the sense-world and fix it upon a higher reality so that its distractions get lessened as much as possible.
A distraction is the attention of the mind on diversity. Concentration is the withdrawal of the mind from diversity, and its attention bestowed upon a more unifying system of values. As we go higher and higher, the diversities become less and less. They all get included in a more comprehensive system, which includes all of the diversities which the mind originally perceived as independent existences. This is how the mind can be brought from its usual meanderings in the world of sense and made to concentrate itself on higher realities. By educative methods it has to be told, again and again, that a higher plane does exist and is implicit in one's own experience. It is not outside; it is hidden, latent potential, and it can be manifest by proper methods.
10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Where once The Vast embodied Void had stood.||149.4||
Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face.||149.5||
1.02 - BOOK THE SECOND, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
All The Vast region that beneath him lay.
'Twas now the feast, when each Athenian maid
1.02 - Groups and Statistical Mechanics, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
which link force and acceleration. In The Vast majority of practi-
cal cases, however, we are far from knowing all the initial veloci-
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
capable of encompassing The Vast unknown; embodies the divine masculine essence, which has as its
most significant feature the capacity to transform chaos into order. The killing of an all-embracing monster,
1.02 - Meeting the Master - Authors second meeting, March 1921, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The second time I met Sri Aurobindo was in March 1921, when there was a greater familiarity. Having come for a short stay, I remained eleven days on Sri Aurobindo's asking me to prolong my stay. During my journey from Madras to Pondicherry I was enchanted by the natural scenery The Vast stretches of green paddy fields. But Pondicherry as a city was lethargic, with a colonial atmosphere an exhibition of the worst elements of European and Indian culture. The market was dirty and stinking and the people had no idea of sanitation. The sea-beach was made filthy by them. Smuggling was the main business.
But the greatest surprise of my visit in 1921 was the 'darshan' of Sri Aurobindo. During the interval of two years his body had undergone a transformation which could only be described as miraculous. In 1918 the colour of the body was like that of an ordinary Bengali rather dark though there was a lustre on the face and the gaze was penetrating. This time on going upstairs to see him (in the same house) I found his cheeks wore an apple-pink colour and the whole body glowed with a soft creamy white light. So great and unexpected was the change that I could not help exclaiming: "What has happened to you?"
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
With The Vast majority of mankind the fine states of these
passions are not even known, the state when they are slowly
1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
As an interdependent person, I have the opportunity to share myself deeply, meaningfully, with others, and I have access to The Vast resources and potential of other human beings.
Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don't have the character to do it; they don't own enough of themselves.
1.02 - The Descent. Dante's Protest and Virgil's Appeal. The Intercession of the Three Ladies Benedight., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
From The Vast place thou burnest to return to.'
'Since thou wouldst fain so inwardly discern,
1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE PECULIARITY of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to its inexorable completion. It matters little whether or no, as modern criticism supposes, the Gita is a later composition inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author in order to invest its teaching with the authority and popularity of the great national epic. There seem to me to be strong grounds against this supposition for which, besides, the evidence, extrinsic or internal, is in the last degree scanty and insufficient. But even if it be sound, there remains the fact that the author has not only taken pains to interweave his work inextricably into The Vast web of the larger poem, but is careful again and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has arisen; he returns to it prominently, not only at the end, but in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We must accept the insistence of the author and give its full importance to this recurrent preoccupation of the Teacher and the disciple.
The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life. For what that crisis stands, what is the significance of the battle of Kurukshetra and its effect on
1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
THE IMAGE of this sacrifice is sometimes that of a journey or voyage; for it travels, it ascends; it has a goal - The Vastness, the true existence, the light, the felicity - and it is called upon to discover and keep to the good, the straight and the happy path to the goal, the arduous yet joyful road of the Truth. It has to climb, led by the flaming strength of the divine will, from plateau to plateau as of a mountain, it has to cross as in a ship the waters of existence, traverse its rivers, overcome their deep pits and rapid currents; its aim is to arrive at the far-off ocean of light and infinity.
And this is no easy or peaceful march; it is for long seasons a fierce and relentless battle. Constantly the Aryan man has to labour and to fight and conquer; he must be a tireless toiler and traveller and a stern warrior, he must force open and storm and sack city after city, win kingdom after kingdom, overthrow and tread down ruthlessly enemy after enemy. His whole progress is a warring of Gods and Titans, Gods and Giants, Indra and the Python, Aryan and Dasyu. Aryan adversaries even he has to face in the open field; for old friends and helpers turn into enemies; the kings of Aryan states whom he would conquer and overpass join themselves to the Dasyus and are leagued against him in supreme battle to prevent his free and utter passing on.
--
There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, The Vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.
--
Brahmanaspati is the Creator; by the word, by his cry he creates - that is to say he expresses, he brings out all existence and conscious knowledge and movement of life and eventual forms from the darkness of the Inconscient. Rudra, the Violent and Merciful, the Mighty One, presides over the struggle of life to affirm itself; he is the armed, wrathful and beneficent Power of God who lifts forcibly the creation upward, smites all that opposes, scourges all that errs and resists, heals all that is wounded and suffers and complains and submits. Vishnu of The Vast pervading motion holds in his triple stride all these worlds; it is he that makes a wide room for the action of Indra in our limited mortality; it is by him and with him that we rise into his highest seats where we find waiting for us the Friend, the Beloved, the Beatific Godhead.
Our earth shaped out of the dark inconscient ocean of existence lifts its high formations and ascending peaks heavenward; heaven of mind has its own formations, clouds that give out their lightnings and their waters of life; the streams of the clarity and the honey ascend out of the subconscient ocean below and seek the superconscient ocean above; and from above that ocean sends downward its rivers of the light and truth and bliss even into our physical being. Thus in images of physical Nature the Vedic poets sing the hymn of our spiritual ascension.
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Although India was also able to appreciate that God is the Eternal Iconoclast in his cosmic march, she did not always have the strength to withstand her own wisdom. The Vast invisible that pervades this country was to extract from it a double ransom, both human and spiritual; human, because these people, saturated with the Beyond,
conscious of the Great Cosmic Game and the inner dimensions in which our little surface lives are just points, periodically flowering and soon re-engulfed, came to neglect the material world inertia,
1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Incidentally, one of the greatest difficulties experienced by the philosopher-s-a difficulty almost insurmountable by the student; one which continually tends to increase rather than diminish with the advance in knowledge-is this: it is practically impossible to gain any clear intellectual comprehension of the meaning of philosophical terms employed. Every thinker has his own private conception of, and meaning for, even such common and universally used terms as " soul" and " mind"; and in The Vast majority of cases he does not so much as suspect that other writers may employ the same term under a different connotation. Even technical writers, those who sometimes take the trouble of defining their terms before using them, are too often at variance with each other. The diversity is very great, as stated above, in the case of the word
" soul". We find one writer predicating of the soul that it is a, b, and c, while his fellow-students protest vehemently that it is nothing of the sort, but d, e, andf. However, let us suppose for a moment that by some miracle we obtain a clear idea of the meaning of the word. The trouble has merely begun. For there immediately arises the question of the relation of one term to the others.
1.032 - Our Concept of God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
But wholly dedicating ourself for the sake of God these feelings for God, in a whole-souled fashion, though in a rarefied form of the ordinary loves in the world, are called the bhavas in bhakti yoga. A bhava is a feeling. Our feeling for God is called a bhava. Here, the basic difference that seems to be there between man and God is taken for granted, and it is not solved, because it cannot be solved so easily. If we go on trying to solve this question, our whole life will be spent in only answering this question. Therefore, the teachers of the path of devotion emphasised the necessity to love God, somehow or other, even if it be a magnified form of human love; and the answer to the difficulty as to whether human love is really divine love was that when human love gets magnified into infinity, it becomes divine love. There is a great point in this answer, because when the finite is lifted up into an unconditioned expanse to the extent possible for the mind, it loses the sting of finitude. The doctrine here is that when this human affection is expanded into The Vastness of creation, though it may be true that in quality it has not changed, because of the fact that it has transformed itself into an utterly inconceivable magnitude of quantity, it will be free from the stigma of finitude of affection, and will be able to achieve certain miraculous results which finite love cannot.
These bhavas or feelings of love for God are, therefore, human affections diverted to God in an all-absorbing manner, so that the conditioning factors of human affection are removed as far as possible, and God is taken for granted as a permanent Being - not like an ordinary object in the world which can die one day or the other, but as a perpetually existent Being and the necessity for loving that permanent Being is emphasised. Here, the feeling for God is similar to the feeling we have towards human relationships. These bhavas of bhakti are the central features of one path of yoga, called bhakti yoga, where God can be loved as a father, for instance. This is called shanta bhava, where emotions are least present.
10.36 - Cling to Truth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If you say you are a small creature and yours a smaller light: your consciousness has not the dimensions of a heroic being, your light will be engulfed, swallowed up and lost in The Vast and overwhelming gloom around. Yet small as you are, do what you can, the utmost possible for you; do not let your little flame be tarnished by any contrary or unworthy movement in you: be firm, keep it bright and trimmed. The surrounding darkness may engulf it but cannot smother it; for it is the everlasting, the Divine in you. The body, the flesh may not continue but the holy light remains. The outward frame may have to yield or dissolve in a material surrounding that was unreadynot that the inner consciousness was unready. Indeed the passing body releases the light and it adds to the growing light in the earth's atmosphere. That is the central creed of the Christian martyr. The blood of the martyr is the cement of the Church. This truth of martyrdom, the sacrifice of the faithful was perhaps a necessity at a time when humanity had not risen high enough in consciousness and the earth's atmosphere was more opaque and dull than it is now. The one thing necessary at that stage was an uncompromising living faith, the pure light, the unvacillating flame, a spirit even though small standing against insurmountable odds that was the way, the martyr's way to stand against the adversary. That is why in the process the God-Man sacrificed himself.
We are in a somewhat different age under different circumstances. At least our aim is different. We stand firm full square against all temptations, all leaning towards compromise, in the faith and certainty that we shall conquer, we shall not go down but the odds against us shall be pushed back and eliminated. This is the age of Victory.
--
Today, more than ever, only a little of this pure consciousness will bring you victory, not merely safety from a great perdition. Against The Vast, what appears as the all-swallowing gloom of the external space, the inner space is now luminous, doubly luminous and powerful.
[The Mother] (https://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-april-1951#p16)
1.03 - BOOK THE THIRD, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Of all The Vast increase were left alive.
Echion one, at Pallas's command,
1.03 - Hymns of Gritsamada, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
16. When to those who chant thee, the luminous Wise Ones set free thy gift, O Fire, the wealth in whose front the Ray-Cow walks and its form is the Horse, thou leadest us on and leadest them to a world of greater riches. Strong with the strength of the heroes, may we voice The Vast in the coming of knowledge.
SUKTA 2
--
7. O Fire, give us The Vast possessions, the thousandfold riches; open to inspiration like gates the plenitude; make Earth and Heaven turned to the Beyond by the Word. The Dawns have broken into splendour as if there shone the brilliant world of the Sun.
6 Or, like a thing of delight in his shining beauty,
--
13. When to those who hymn thee the luminous Wise set free, O Fire, the gift in whose front the Ray-Cow walks and whose form is the Horse, thou leadest us on and leadest them to a world of greater riches. Strong with the strength of the Heroes, may we voice The Vast in the coming of the knowledge.
SUKTA 3
--
7. He starts on his journey to burn through all wide earth and moves like a beast that wanders at will and has no keeper; Fire with his blazing light and his black affliction assails the dry trunks with his heat as if he tasted The Vastness.
8. Now in our mind's return on thy former safeguarding, our thought has been spoken in the third session of the knowledge. O Fire, give us the treasure with its children; give us a vast and opulent plenitude where the heroes assemble.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the West, the mystics went some way towards liberating Christianity from its unfortunate servitude to historic fact. (or, to be more accurate, to those various mixtures of contemporary record with subsequent inference and phantasy, which have, at different epochs, been accepted as historic fact). From the writings of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroeck, of Boehme, William Law and the Quakers, it would be possible to extract a spiritualized and universalized Christianity, whose narratives should refer, not to history as it was, or as someone afterwards thought it ought to be, but to processes forever unfolded in the heart of man. But unfortunately the influence of the mystics was never powerful enough to bring about a radical Mahayanist revolution in the West. In spite of them, Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in timeevents and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine. Moreover such improvements on history as were made in the course of centuries were, most imprudently, treated as though they themselves were a part of historya procedure which put a powerful weapon into the hands of Protestant and, later, of Rationalist controversialists. How much wiser it would have been to admit the perfectly avowable fact that, when the sternness of Christ the Judge had been unduly emphasized, men and women felt the need of personifying the divine compassion in a new form, with the result that the figure of the Virgin, mediatrix to the mediator, came into increased prominence. And when, in course of time, the Queen of Heaven was felt to be too awe-inspiring, compassion was re-personified in the homely figure of St. Joseph, who thus became me thator to the me thatrix to the me thator. In exactly the same way Buddhist worshippers felt that the historic Sakyamuni, with his insistence on recollectedness, discrimination and a total dying to self as the principal means of liberation, was too stern and too intellectual. The result was that the love and compassion which Sakyamuni had also inculcated came to be personified in Buddhas such as Amida and Maitreyadivine characters completely removed from history, inasmuch as their temporal career was situated somewhere in the distant past or distant future. Here it may be remarked that The Vast numbers of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of whom the Mahayanist theologians speak, are commensurate with The Vastness of their cosmology. Time, for them, is beginningless, and the innumerable universes, every one of them supporting sentient beings of every possible variety, are born, evolve, decay and the, only to repeat the same cycleagain and again, until the final inconceivably remote consummation, when every sentient being in all the worlds shall have won to deliverance out of time into eternal Suchness or Buddhahood This cosmological background to Buddhism has affinities with the world picture of modern astronomyespecially with that version of it offered in the recently published theory of Dr. Weiszcker regarding the formation of planets. If the Weiszcker hypothesis is correct, the production of a planetary system would be a normal episode in the life of every star. There are forty thousand million stars in our own galactic system alone, and beyond our galaxy other galaxies, indefinitely. If, as we have no choice but to believe, spiritual laws governing consciousness are uniform throughout the whole planet-bearing and presumably life-supporting universe, then certainly there is plenty of room, and at the same time, no doubt, the most agonizing and desperate need, for those innumerable redemptive incarnations of Suchness, upon whose shining multitudes the Mahayanists love to dwell.
For my part, I think the chief reason which prompted the invisible God to become visible in the flesh and to hold converse with men was to lead carnal men, who are only able to love carnally, to the healthful love of his flesh, and afterwards, little by little, to spiritual love.
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
him, as with The Vast majority of men, logic is implicit, not
explicit: he reasons just as he digests his food in complete
1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
How did we serve him? The best way to give a clear idea about it would be to present a picture of Sri Aurobindo's daily life, now that it had fallen into a definite pattern and woven our activities into it. However, I fear that in depicting his external life, some misconception may be created in the minds of the readers about his real Self. Since man is usually led by surface appearance and expressions, we are likely to be taken up by his outward gestures or words and have not the least idea of The Vast consciousness from which these movements flowed. For instance, when he talked to us as a friend, could we ever have imagined that he was the Divine talking to us as divine beings? When he saw Dr. Manilal, could Manilal have perceived that "it was no longer Dr. Manilal but the Divine living in the Divine" that he saw? How could we guess that living confined within the body and the small room, he saw "Paris, Tokyo and New York"? He could say, "My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight." Referring to a certain context I once told him, "I am satisfied with you as Sri Aurobindo pure and simple." He replied, "No objection, I only suggested that I don't know who this Sri Aurobindo pure and simple is. If you do, I congratulate you."
Far be it from me to read his inner consciousness from his outer activities. Once I asked him to tell me the names of those who were enjoying the Brahmic consciousness so that I could have a practical knowledge of it! He replied, "How can you have a practical knowledge of it by knowing who has it? You might just as well expect to have a practical knowledge of high mathematics by knowing that Einstein is a great mathematician." His written works leave us in no doubt about the heights of consciousness to which he soared, the depths he has explored and his constant status of consciousness. But how they would influence, affect his daily human activities is a question of perennial interest. Did not Arjuna pose that question to Sri Krishna? The activities themselves may not shed any light on his inner divinity, especially to a superficial gaze. Still, the truly great touch everything they do and say with a sense of greatness. Hence, my attempt to make a selective sketch of Sri Aurobindo's outer life for the world-eye to have a glimpse of the riddle that he was throughout his earthly existence.
--
There were occasions, though rare, when we had to intrude upon his strict privacy. An urgent call from the Ashram Press about some proof corrections of his book demanded his immediate attention. I cautiously approached from behind and stood near him. He asked without turning my way, in an impersonal tone, "What is it?" A moment's ripple in The Vast even ocean of silence. The Mother always felt that pervasive silence whenever she entered the room. I informed him of the queries from the Press. There were some proof-readers who had the Johnsonian mind; they could not accept Sri Aurobindo's flexible use of prepositions or some new turns of phrases. Either they thought these were due to oversight or was it their grammarian pedantry that made them wiser than he? At last he had to remark, "Let them not interfere with my English!" His admonitions were always gentle. When the Mother heard about it, she observed, "How do they dare correct his English? Sri Aurobindo is a gentleman; he won't say anything that might hurt I am not a gentleman." We understood very well what the Mother meant. A few anecdotes to illustrate the point. When Sri Aurobindo was living with his family in Calcutta, Sarojini, his younger sister, made frequent complaints about the rudeness and impertinence of their cook. Sri Aurobindo simply listened and forgot all about it. Sarojini at last lost her patience and urged upon him a drastic step. Sri Aurobindo called the cook in a grave voice and asked, "I hear you have behaved rudely. Don't do it again!" Everybody was disappointed at this anticlimax and realised that no further strictness could be expected of him. So too when the Mother once brought a complaint to him against a sadhak who, in a fit of temper, had beaten somebody, "This is the third time! What should be done? I want your sanction, Lord," she said. Sri Aurobindo calmly replied, "Let him be given a final warning." We knew very well that this "final warning" could not be really final.
The long stretch of silence ceased only with the arrival of his first and principal meal of the day. Still we hardly ever heard him express that his "stomach was getting unsteady". The day's second meal, supper, had to be quite light. Let me stress one thing at the very outset: in his whole tenor of life, he followed the rule laid down by the Gita, moderation in everything. This was his teaching as well as his practice. To look at the outward commonplaceness of his life, eating, sleeping, joking, etc., and to make a leaping statement that here was another man like oneself, would be logical, but not true. Similarly in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, even a high experience must not disturb the normal rhythm of life. Naturally, I was extremely curious, and so were the others, I believe, to see what kind of food he took; had he any preference for a particular dish and how much had he in common with our taste? We had to wait a long time before he regained his health, and could sit up and "enjoy" a proper meal. As soon as people learnt about it, dishes from various sadhikas began to pour in as for the Deity in the temple. And just as the Deity does, so did he, or rather the Mother did on his behalf: only a little from a dish was offered to him and all the rest was sent back as prasd. For his regular meal, there were a few devotees like Amiya, Nolina and Mridu selected by the Mother for their good cooking, which Sri Aurobindo specially liked. Mridu was a simple Bengali village widow. She, like other ladies here, called Sri Aurobindo her father, and took great pride in cooking for him. Her "father" liked her luchis very much, she would boast, and these creations of hers have been immortalised by him in one of his letters to her. She was given to maniacal fits of threatening suicide, and Sri Aurobindo would console her with, "If you commit suicide, who will cook luchis for me?" Her cooking got such wide publicity that the house she lived in was named Prasd. Food from the devotees, though tasty, was sometimes too greasy or spicy, and once it did not agree with him. So a separate kitchen, known as the Mother's Kitchen, was started for preparing only the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's food. It was done under the most perfect hygienic conditions following the Mother's own special instructions. Her insistence is always on cleanliness. (She said in a recent message: Cleanliness is the first indispensable step towards the supramental manifestation...) I questioned Sri Aurobindo about this: "I wonder why the Divine is so particular about contagion, infection, etc. Is he vulnerable to the virus and the microbe?" He replied, "And why on earth should you expect the Divine to feed himself on germs and bacilli and poisons of all kinds? Singular theology, yours!"
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To such a disciple the Teacher of the Gita gives his divine teaching. He seizes him at a moment of his psychological development by egoistic action when all the mental, moral, emotional values of the ordinary egoistic and social life of man have collapsed in a sudden bankruptcy, and he has to lift him up out of this lower life into a higher consciousness, out of ignorant attachment to action into that which transcends, yet originates and orders action, out of ego into Self, out of life in mind, vitality and body into that higher nature beyond mind which is the status of the Divine. He has at the same time to give him that for which he asks and for which he is inspired to seek by the guidance within him, a new Law of life and action high above the insufficient rule of the ordinary human existence with its endless conflicts and oppositions, perplexities and illusory certainties, a higher Law by which the soul shall be free from this bondage of works and yet powerful to act and conquer in The Vast liberty of its divine being. For the action must be performed, the world must fulfil its cycles and the soul of the human being must not turn back in ignorance from the work it is here to do. The whole course of the teaching of the Gita is determined and directed, even in its widest wheelings, towards the fulfilment of these three objects.
1.03 - The Psychic Prana, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Now the centre where all these residual sensations are, as it were, stored up, is called the Muladhara, the root receptacle, and the coiled-up energy of action is Kundalini, "the coiled up". It is very probable that the residual motor energy is also stored up in the same centre, as, after deep study or meditation on external objects, the part of the body where the Muladhara centre is situated (probably the sacral plexus) gets heated. Now, if this coiled-up energy be roused and made active, and then consciously made to travel up the Sushumna canal, as it acts upon centre after centre, a tremendous reaction will set in. When a minute portion of energy travels along a nerve fibre and causes reaction from centres, the perception is either dream or imagination. But when by the power of long internal meditation The Vast mass of energy stored up travels along the Sushumna, and strikes the centres, the reaction is tremendous, immensely superior to the reaction of dream or imagination, immensely more intense than the reaction of sense-perception. It is super-sensuous perception. And when it reaches the metropolis of all sensations, the brain, the whole brain, as it were, reacts, and the result is the full blaze of illumination, the perception of the Self. As this Kundalini force travels from centre to centre, layer after layer of the mind, as it were, opens up, and this universe is perceived by the Yogi in its fine, or causal form. Then alone the causes of this universe, both as sensation and reaction, are known as they are, and hence comes all knowledge. The causes being known, the knowledge of the effects is sure to follow.
Thus the rousing of the Kundalini is the one and only way to attaining Divine Wisdom, superconscious perception, realisation of the spirit. The rousing may come in various ways, through love for God, through the mercy of perfected sages, or through the power of the analytic will of the philosopher. Wherever there was any manifestation of what is ordinarily called supernatural power or wisdom, there a little current of Kundalini must have found its way into the Sushumna. Only, in The Vast majority of such cases, people had ignorantly stumbled on some practice which set free a minute portion of the coiled-up Kundalini. All worship, consciously or unconsciously, leads to this end. The man who thinks that he is receiving response to his prayers does not know that the fulfilment comes from his own nature, that he has succeeded by the mental attitude of prayer in waking up a bit of this infinite power which is coiled up within himself. What, thus, men ignorantly worship under various names, through fear and tribulation, the Yogi declares to the world to be the real power coiled up in every being, the mother of eternal happiness, if we but know how to approach her. And Rja-Yoga is the science of religion, the rationale of all worship, all prayers, forms, ceremonies, and miracles.
1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
would be staggered by The Vast number of commonplaces, mis-
applied truisms, cliches from newspapers and novels, shop-
1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And at his pleasure The Vast monster gores.
Full in his back, swift stooping from above,
1.04 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
in the wake of The Vast glowing visioned embodied Fire that
casts its light always and for ever.
--
through The Vast luminous world of heaven.
EvfA\ kEv\ Ev
1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
that set in motion The Vast and intricate mechanism of the world.
Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have
--
the superstitious, who constitute, unfortunately, The Vast majority
of mankind. One of the great achievements of the nineteenth century
--
who have breadth of view enough to comprehend The Vastness of the
universe and the littleness of man. Small minds cannot grasp great
1.04 - SOME REFLECTIONS ON PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
majestic process of movement. We know now that The Vast system
of stars in our own sky is composed of a single nebula, the Milky
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We get our first mention of Varuna at the end of the second hymn in the Rigveda, the hymn of Madhuchchhandas in which he calls, as in the third, on several gods, first to Vayu, then to Vayu and Indra together, last, Varuna and Mitra. Arrive, he says, O Vayu, O beautiful one, lo these Soma-powers in their array (is it not a battle-array?), protect them, hear their call! O Vayu, strongly thy lovers woo thee with prayers (or, desires), they have distilled the nectar, they have found their strength (or, they know the day?). O Vayu, thy abounding stream moves for the giver, it is wide for the drinking of the Soma-juice. O Indra & Vayu, here are the outpourings, come to them with outputtings of strength, the powers of delight desire you both. Thou, O Vayu, awake, and Indra, to the outpourings of the Soma, you who are rich in power of your plenty; so (that is, rich in power) come to me, for the foe has attacked. Come O Vayu, and Indra, to the distiller of the nectar, expel the foe, swiftly hither strong by the understanding. And then comes the closing call to Mitra & Varuna. I call Mitra of purified discernment and Varuna who destroys the foe, they who effect a bright and gracious understanding. By Law of Truth, Mitra and Varuna, who by the Truth increase and to the Truth attain, enjoy a mighty strength. Mitra and Varuna, the seers, born in Force, dwellers in The Vast, uphold Daksha (the discerning intelligence) at his work.
There are here a number of words whose exact meaning is exceedingly important for any fruitful enquiry into the religious significance of the Vedas. The most important, the decisive & capital word in the passage is Ritam. Whatever it may be held to mean, it will decide for us the essential character of Varuna & his constant comradeMitra. I have already suggested in my first chapter the sense in which I understand Ritam. It is its ordinary sense in Sanscrit. Ritam is Truth, Law, that which is straight, upright, direct, rectum; it is that which gives everything its place & its motion (ritu), that which constitutes reason (ratio) in mind and rectitude in morals,it is the rightness or righteousness which makes the stars move in their orbits, the seasons occur in their order, thought & speech move towards truth, trees grow according to their seed, animals act according to their species & nature, & man walk in the paths which God has prescribed for him. It is that in the Akasha the Akasha where Varuna is lordwhich develops arrangement & order, it is the element of law in Nature. But not only in material Nature, not only in the moral akasha even,the akasha of the heart of which the Rishis spoke, but on higher levels also. I have pointed out that Ritam is the law of the Truth, of vijnana. It is this ideal Truth, the Truth of being, by which everything animate or inanimate knows in its fibres of being & serves in action & feeling the truth of itself, in which Law is born. This Law which belongs to Satyam, to the Mahas, is Ritam. Neither of the English words,Law & Truth, gives the idea; they have to be combined in order to be equivalent to ritam. Well, then Varuna is represented to us as increasing in his nature by this Truth & Law, attaining to it or possessing it; Law & Truth are the source of his strength, the means by which he has arrived at his present force & mightiness.
But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, The Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in The Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in The Vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means The Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchidananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit-shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma the Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purposeya thatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.
Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek . We may also compare the Greek , meaning judgment, opinion etc & , I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,by virtue of his purified discernment.
1.04 - The Need of Guru, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Whatever we are now is the result of our acts and thoughts in the past; and whatever we shall be in the future will be the result of what we think end do now. But this, the shaping of our own destinies, does not preclude our receiving help from outside; nay, in The Vast majority of cases such help is absolutely necessary. When it comes, the higher powers and possibilities of the soul are quickened, spiritual life is awakened, growth is animated, and man becomes holy and perfect in the end.
This quickening impulse cannot be derived from books. The soul can only receive impulses from another soul, and from nothing else. We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we find that we have not developed at all spiritually. It is not true that a high order of intellectual development always goes hand in hand with a proportionate development of the spiritual side in Man. In studying books we are sometimes deluded into thinking that thereby we are being spiritually helped; but if we analyse the effect of the study of books on ourselves, we shall find that at the utmost it is only our intellect that derives profit from such studies, and not our inner spirit.
--
There are, however, certain great dangers in the way. There is, for instance, the danger to the receiving soul of its mistaking momentary emotions for real religious yearning. We may study that in ourselves. Many a time in our lives, somebody dies whom we loved; we receive a blow; we feel that the world is slipping between our fingers, that we want something surer and higher, and that we must become religious. In a few days that wave of feeling has passed away, and we are left stranded just where we were before. We are all of us often mistaking such impulses for real thirst after religion; but as long as these momentary emotions are thus mistaken, that continuous, real craving of the soul for religion will not come, and we shall not find the true transmitter of spirituality into our nature. So whenever we are tempted to complain of our search after the truth that we desire so much, proving vain, instead of so complaining, our first duty ought to be to look into our own souls and find whether the craving in the heart is real. Then in The Vast majority of cases it would be discovered that we were not fit for receiving the truth, that there was no real thirst for spirituality.
There are still greater dangers in regard to the transmitter, the Guru. There are many who, though immersed in ignorance, yet, in the pride of their hearts, fancy they know everything, and not only do not stop there, but offer to take others on their shoulders; and thus the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch.
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But, most often, the sacrifice is done unconsciously, egoistically and without knowledge or acceptance of the true meaning of the great world-rite. It is so that The Vast majority of earth-creatures do it; and, when it is so done, the individual derives only a mechanical minimum of natural inevitable profit, achieves by it only a slow painful progress limited and tortured by the smallness and suffering of the ego. Only when the heart, the will and the mind of knowledge associate themselves with the law and gladly follow it, can there come the deep joy and the happy fruitfulness of divine sacrifice. The minds knowledge of the law and the hearts gladness in it culminate in the perception that it is to our own Self and Spirit and the one Self and Spirit of all that we give. And this is true even when our self-offering is still to our fellow-creatures or to lesser Powers and Principles and not yet to the Supreme. Not for the sake of the wife, says Yajnavalkya in the Upanishad, but for the sake of the Self is the wife dear to us. This in the lower sense of the individual self is the hard fact behind the coloured and passionate professions of egoistic love; but in a higher sense it is the inner significance of that love too which is not egoistic but divine. All true love and all sacrifice are in their essence Natures contradiction of the primary egoism and its separative error; it is her attempt to turn from a necessary first fragmentation towards a recovered oneness. All unity between creatures is in its essence a self-finding, a fusion with that from which we have separated, a discovery of ones self in others.
But it is only a divine love and unity that can possess in the light what the human forms of these things seek for in the darkness. For the true unity is not merely an association and agglomeration like that of physical cells joined by a life of common interests; it is not even an emotional understanding, sympathy, solidarity or close drawing together. Only then are we really unified with those separated from us by the divisions of Nature, when we annul the division and find ourselves in that which seemed to us not ourselves. Association is a vital and physical unity; its sacrifice is that of mutual aid and concessions. Nearness, sympathy, solidarity create a mental, moral and emotional unity; theirs is a sacrifice of mutual support and mutual gratifications. But the true unity is spiritual; its sacrifice is a mutual self-giving, an interfusion of our inner substance. The law of sacrifice travels in Nature towards its culmination in this complete and unreserved self-giving; it awakens the consciousness of one common self in the giver and the object of the sacrifice. This culmination of sacrifice is the height even of human love and devotion when it tries to become divine; for there too the highest peak of love points into a heaven of complete mutual self-giving, its summit is the rapturous fusing of two souls into one.
--
These are the three fundamental realisations, so fundamental that to the Yogin of the way of Knowledge they seem ultimate, sufficient in themselves, destined to overtop and replace all others. And yet for the integral seeker, whether accorded to him at an early stage suddenly and easily by a miraculous grace or achieved with difficulty after a long progress and endeavour, they are neither the sole truth nor the full and only clues to the integral truth of the Eternal, but rather the unfilled beginning, The Vast foundation of a greater divine Knowledge. Other realisations there are that are imperatively needed and must be explored to the full limit of their possibilities; and if some of them appear to a first sight to cover only Divine Aspects that are instrumental to the activity of existence but not inherent in its essence, yet, when followed to their end through that activity to its everlasting Source, it is found that they lead to a disclosure of the Divine without which our knowledge of the Truth behind things would be left bare and incomplete. These seeming Instrumentals are the key to a secret without which the Fundamentals themselves would not unveil all their mystery. All the revelatory aspects of the Divine must be caught in the wide net of the integral Yoga.
***
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
are alone. In all the galaxy, in all The Vast trillions of cubic
light years of emptiness, ours is the very first planet to har-
1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3. In thee awake, they followed after the Treasure as in the wake of one who walks on a path with many possessions, in the wake of The Vast glowing visioned embodied Fire that casts its light always and for ever.
4. Travellers with surrender to the plane of the godhead, seek-ers of inspired knowledge, they won an inviolate inspiration, they held the sacrificial Names and had delight in thy happy vision.
--
7. O Fire, we desire thee, the god to whom must rise our cry, we the right thinkers, the seekers of bliss, the builders of the godheads. O Fire, shining with light thou leadest men through The Vast luminous world of heaven.
8. To the seer, the Master of creatures who rules over the eternal generations of peoples, the Smiter, the Bull of those that see, the mover to the journey beyond who drives us, the purifying Flame, the Power in the sacrifice, Fire the Regent of the Treasures!
--
4. The mortal should grow in riches who achieves the work by the Thought for thee, the great giver; he is in the keeping of The Vast Heaven and crosses beyond the hostile powers and their evil.
5. O Fire, when mortal man arrives by the fuel of thy flame to the way of the oblation and the sharpening of thy intensities, he increases his branching house, his house of the hundred of life.
--
7. O rich in thy brilliances, Fire with thy manifold luminous mights, rivet to us the rich and various treasure, most richly diverse, that awakens us to knowledge and founds our expanding growth. O delightful God, to him who voices thee with delightful words The Vast delightful wealth and its many hero keepers!
SUKTA 7
--
2. Thou art Bhaga of the felicities and thou pourest on us the ecstasy and takest up thy house in us, a pervading presence and a potent splendour. O divine Fire, like Mitra thou art a feeder on The Vast Truth and the much joy and beauty.
3. O Fire born of the Truth, O thinker and knower, when consenting with the Child of the Waters thou takest pleasure in a man and speedest him with the Treasure, he becomes a master over beings and in his might slays the Python adversary and becomes a seer and carries out with him the riches of the Dweller in the Cave.
--
6. O Son of Force, become The Vast speaker within us; give us the Son of our begetting, give us all that is packed with the plenitudes; let me enjoy by my every word satisfaction of fullness. May we revel in the rapture, strong with the strength of the Heroes, living a hundred winters.
SUKTA 14
--
inspired knowledge and The Vastness of a perfect force.
86
--
thou hast stretched out The Vast with thy light.18
v, sKAyo a`ny
--
18 Or, built The Vast with thy light.
88
1.05 - Ritam, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Ritam is connected by Kanwa with Mitra, Varuna & Aryama in the forty-first hymn written in praise of these three deities; but this hymn is of so great an importance to our enquiry that I prefer to consider it separately in another chapter and to pass on to Kanwas last mention of the Ritam in the forty-third hymn of the Mandala. We may note, however, already the expression ritam yate, journeying to the Truth, in which the Ritam is regarded as a sort of place, seat or goal, a dhma or pada, in the common Vedic phrase, towards which humanity journeys & in which it seeks to dwell, & we may remember at the same time the description of Varuna, ritasya jyotishas pati, as dwelling in The Vast, the uru or brihat, urukshaya, which we have supposed to be the Mahas or home of the Ritam,satyam ritam brihat. In the forty-third hymn we find indeed the actual expression, parasmin dhmann ritasya, the most high seat of the Truth.
The forty-third hymn is addressed to Rudra & Soma,Mitra & Varuna are mentioned casually only in a single verse along with Rudra. It is in the last of the three closing riks devoted to Soma that we come across this great & illuminating expression and it meets us in a passage where the vivid psychological purport is too convincingly clear, too immediately patent for any ritualistic interpretation to interfere with our understanding or obscure the truth from our eyes.
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
[paragraph continues] On the other hand, he sets himself aims that have to do with the ideals and the great duties of a human being. He does not mechanically regard himself as a wheel in The Vast machinery of mankind but seeks to comprehend the tasks of his life, and to look out beyond the limit of the daily and trivial. He endeavors to fulfill his obligations ever better and more perfectly.
The seventh deals with the effort to learn as much from life as possible. Nothing passes before the student without giving him occasion to accumulate experience which is of value to him for life. If he has performed anything wrongly or imperfectly, he lets this be an incentive for meeting the same contingency later on rightly and perfectly. When others act he observes them with the same end in view. He tries to gather a rich store of experience, ever returning to it for counsel; nor indeed will he ever do anything without looking back on experiences from which he can derive help in his decisions and affairs.
1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
holds the secret essence of The Vastnesses that it fringes : the
highest note reached by the vibration of worlds.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
But what is it that compels the individual human being to fear his neighbor, to think and act herdfashion, and not to be glad of himself? A sense of shame, perhaps, in a few rare cases. In The Vast
majority it is the desire for comfort, inertia in short, that inclination to laziness of which the traveler
--
complex process of conceptualization which accounts for The Vast symbolic production of alchemy is
presented schematically in Figure 63: The Alchemical Opus as Revolutionary Story.
1.05 - True and False Subjectivism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Thirdly, since the survival of the best is the highest good of mankind and the survival of the best is secured by the elimination of the unfit and the assimilation of the less fit, the conquest of the world by German culture is the straight path of human progress. But culture is not, in this view, merely a state of knowledge or a system or cast of ideas and moral and aesthetic tendencies; culture is life governed by ideas, but by ideas based on the truths of life and so organised as to bring it to its highest efficiency. Therefore all life not capable of this culture and this efficiency must be eliminated or trodden down, all life capable of it but not actually reaching to it must be taken up and assimilated. But capacity is always a matter of genus and species and in humanity a matter of race. Logically, then, the Teutonic5 race is alone entirely capable, and therefore all Teutonic races must be taken into Germany and become part of the German collectivity; races less capable but not wholly unfit must be Germanised; others, hopelessly decadent like the Latins of Europe and America or naturally inferior like The Vast majority of the Africans and Asiatics, must be replaced where possible, like the Hereros, or, where not possible, dominated, exploited and treated according to their inferiority. So evolution would advance, so the human race grow towards its perfection.6
We need not suppose that all Germany thought in this strenuous fashion, as it was too long represented, or that the majority thought thus consciously; but it is sufficient that an energetic minority of thinkers and strong personalities should seize upon the national life and impress certain tendencies upon it for these to prevail practically or at the least to give a general trend subconsciously even where the thought itself is not actually proposed in the conscious mind. And the actual events of the present hour seem to show that it was this gospel that partly consciously, partly subconsciously or half articulately had taken possession of the collective German mind. It is easy to deride the rigidity of this terrible logic or riddle it with the ideas and truths it has ignored, and it is still easier to abhor, fear, hate and spew at it while practically following its principles in our own action with less openness, thoroughness and courage. But it is more profitable to begin by seeing that behind it there was and is a tremendous sincerity which is the secret of its force, and a sort of perverse honesty in its errors; the sincerity which tries to look straight at ones own conduct and the facts of life and the honesty to proclaim the real principles of that conduct and notexcept as an occasional diplomacyprofess others with the lips while disregarding them in the practice. And if this ideal is to be defeated not merely for a time in the battle-field and in the collective person of the nation or nations professing it, as happened abortively in the War, but in the mind of man and in the life of the human race, an equal sincerity and a less perverse honesty has to be practised by those who have arrived at a better law.
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
An account of what was said and done in Sri Aurobindo's room during this period will be revelatory in many respects. First of all, it will dispel the prevailing universal misconception that Sri Aurobindo was a world-shunning Yogi immersed in his own sadhana. It will show, on the contrary, how much he was concerned with the "good of humanity". Far from taking only a passive interest in The Vast conflict, the modern Kurukshetra, where the fate of the entire world was being decided, he actively participated in it with his spiritual Force and directed that very fate to a victorious consummation. The account will also bring to light Sri Aurobindo's acute political insight and wide knowledge of military affairs. Although he had left public life in 1910 and lived thereafter in seclusion for nearly half a century, he always kept in touch with all world-movements through outer and inner means. Perhaps people will find it difficult to believe and many will flatly deny that such a spiritual force exists; and it will be hard for them to swallow that, if at all it exists, a man acquiring and possessing it can apply it to an individual or cosmic purpose. But fortunately we have Sri Aurobindo's own word for it and our personal experience in its support. In fact his integral Yoga aims at nothing less than bringing down the supramental consciousness and changing the present terrestrial consciousness by its dynamic power and light. We shall also witness Sri Aurobindo's vital interest in India's struggle for freedom, for which he had himself launched the first movement, awakening the country to her birthright and aiding her later by his decisive spiritual force towards its achievement.
Though we in the Ashram are not supposed to take part in politics, we are not at all indifferent to world affairs. In fact, Sri Aurobindo has said that we are immensely interested in them. The journal Mother India which was a semi-political fortnightly, and came out two years after India's Independence, was edited by one of the sadhaks who was living in Bombay and the editorials were sent to Sri Aurobindo for approval before publication. Sri Aurobindo gave many long and regular interviews to a political leader of Bengal and gave him advice and directions regarding the contemporary situation. The Mother too has said that the Supermind cannot but include in its ultimate work for world-change the political administration, since all secular well-being rests in the hands of the governing power of the country. Besides, the War was not a simple political issue among the big nations. The Nazi aggression meant "the peril of black servitude and a revived barbarism threatening India and the world". It was a life-and-death question for the spiritual evolution of the new man, for the emergence of a new race which the Mother and Sri Aurobindo had come to initiate and establish on the earth. And the victory of Hitler's Germany would mean not only the end of civilisation, but also the death of that great possibility. It is in this sense I have called this War a modern Kurukshetra.
1.06 - Agni and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the early Vedantic teaching of the Upanishads we come across a conception of the Truth which is often expressed by formulas taken from the hymns of the Veda, such as the expression already quoted, satyam r.tam br.hat, - the truth, the right, The Vast. This Truth is spoken of in the Veda as a path leading to felicity, leading to immortality. In the Upanishads also it is by the path of the Truth that the sage or seer, Rishi or Kavi, passes beyond. He passes out of the falsehood, out of the mortal
Agni and the Truth
--
Mahas which also means the great, The Vast. And as for the facts of sensation and appearance which are full of falsehoods
(anr.tam, not-truth or wrong application of the satyam in mental and bodily activity), we have for instruments the senses, the sense-mind (manas) and the intellect working upon their evidence, so for the truth-consciousness there are corresponding faculties, - dr.s.t.i, sruti, viveka, the direct vision of the truth, the direct hearing of its word, the direct discrimination of the right.
--
"Sacrifice for us to Mitra and Varuna, sacrifice to the gods, to the Truth, The Vast; O Agni, sacrifice to thy own home."
Here r.tam br.hat and svam damam seem to express the goal of the sacrifice and this is perfectly in consonance with the imagery of the Veda which frequently describes the sacrifice as travelling towards the gods and man himself as a traveller moving towards the truth, the light or the felicity. It is evident, therefore, that the Truth, The Vast and Agni's own home are identical. Agni and other gods are frequently spoken of as being born in the truth, dwelling in the wide or vast. The sense, then, will be in our passage that Agni the divine will and power in man increases in the truth-consciousness, its proper sphere, where false limitations are broken down, urav anibadhe, in the wide and the limitless.
Thus in these four verses of the opening hymn of the Veda we get the first indications of the principal ideas of the Vedic
1.06 - Hymns of Parashara, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
might bore The Vast Earth and Heaven, then the mortal
knew them and by his holding of the upper hemisphere26
1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
With this in mind let us look again at The Vast sidereal units
(galaxies and suns) and this time try to assess their importance not
--
disproportionately small in relation to The Vastness of what it is des-
tined to bring forth?
1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
20:To do this we must dare to go below the clear surfaces of things on which the mind loves to dwell, to tempt The Vast and obscure, to penetrate the unfathomable depths of consciousness and identify ourselves with states of being that are not our own. Human language is a poor help in such a search, but at least we may find in it some symbols and figures, return with some just expressible hints which will help the light of the soul and throw upon the mind some reflection of the ineffable design.
1.06 - On Thought, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thought. It is a very vast subject, The Vastest of all, perhaps. Therefore I do not intend to tell you exactly and completely what it is. But by a process of analysis, we shall try to form as precise an idea of it as it is possible for us to do.
It seems to me that we must first of all distinguish two very different kinds, or I might say qualities, of thought: thoughts in us which are the result, the fruit, as it were, of our sensations, and thoughts which, like living beings, come to usfrom where? most often we do not knowthoughts that we perceive mentally before they express themselves in our outer being as sensations.
--
Then the great and magnificent King left the chamber of the Great Collection and, entering the golden chamber, sat upon a seat of silver. He beheld the world in a thought of love and his love went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of love, with a love growing without end or limit, he enfolded The Vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
He beheld the world in a thought of pity and his pity went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of pity, with pity growing without end or limit, he enfolded The Vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
He beheld the world in a thought of sympathy and his sympathy went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of sympathy, with a sympathy growing without end or limit, he enfolded The Vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
He beheld the world in a thought of serenity and his serenity went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of serenity, with a serenity growing without end or limit, he enfolded The Vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.1
One who strives in sincere quest for truth, who is ready, if necessary, to sacrifice all he had thought until then to be true, in order to draw ever nearer to the integral truth that can be no other than the progressive knowledge of the whole universe in its infinite progression, enters gradually into relation with great masses of deeper, completer and more luminous thoughts.
1.06 - Psycho therapy and a Philosophy of Life, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
could also call it religion in statu nascendi, for in The Vast confusion that
reigns at the roots of life there is no line of division between philosophy
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over The Vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces,
184
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Amanchu! -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy School Shounen -- Amanchu! Amanchu! -- Originally from a big city, Futaba Ooki spends most days cataloguing her life through pictures on her phone. Upon moving to a seaside town, she gazes out over the vast expanse of sea and quickly becomes captivated by its endless possibilities. Unbeknownst to Futaba, her quiet contemplation catches the attention of local diving enthusiast Hikari Kohinata. Finding herself in the same class as Futaba the next day, Hikari is drawn to her quiet and shy demeanor and affectionately nicknames her Teko, sparking a tender friendship. -- -- Struggling to adapt to the change of pace in her life, Futaba finds herself strung along by Hikari's vast energy and passion for diving. Together, they join the school diving club, led by their homeroom teacher Mato Katori. With Hikari by her side, Futaba works to earn her diving certification while experiencing new friendships and possibilities. -- -- 81,930 7.26
Bakuman. -- -- J.C.Staff -- 25 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Drama Romance Shounen -- Bakuman. Bakuman. -- As a child, Moritaka Mashiro dreamt of becoming a mangaka, just like his childhood hero and uncle, Tarou Kawaguchi, creator of a popular gag manga. But when tragedy strikes, he gives up on his dream and spends his middle school days studying, aiming to become a salaryman instead. -- -- One day, his classmate Akito Takagi, the school's top student and aspiring writer, notices the detailed drawings in Moritaka's notebook. Seeing the vast potential of his artistic talent, Akito approaches Moritaka, proposing that they become mangaka together. After much convincing, Moritaka realizes that if he is able to create a popular manga series, he may be able to get the girl he has a crush on, Miho Azuki, to take part in the anime adaptation as a voice actor. Thus the pair begins creating manga under the pen name Muto Ashirogi, hoping to become the greatest mangaka in Japan, the likes of which no one has ever seen. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters -- TV - Oct 2, 2010 -- 505,328 8.22
B-Legend! Battle B-Daman Fire Spirits! -- -- - -- 51 eps -- - -- Adventure Fantasy Game Kids -- B-Legend! Battle B-Daman Fire Spirits! B-Legend! Battle B-Daman Fire Spirits! -- It is not uncommon to wish upon shooting stars. But for B-DaPlayers all around the world, what they seek is not for their wishes to be granted. Gazing upon what many would assume are just rocks shrunk to the size of a pebble by atmospheric entry and fallen to the earth, the fated ones see instead what are known as Strike Shots—powerful marbles originating from the vast and mystical outer space. -- -- After achieving triumph in the war against his ultimate foes, Yamato Daiwa continues his journey as a rising B-DaPlayer, looking to obtain a new power worthy of his improved battle gear. -- -- 4,239 6.37
Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch -- -- Sunrise -- 25 eps -- Original -- Action Military Sci-Fi Super Power Drama Mecha School -- Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch -- In the year 2010, the Holy Empire of Britannia is establishing itself as a dominant military nation, starting with the conquest of Japan. Renamed to Area 11 after its swift defeat, Japan has seen significant resistance against these tyrants in an attempt to regain independence. -- -- Lelouch Lamperouge, a Britannian student, unfortunately finds himself caught in a crossfire between the Britannian and the Area 11 rebel armed forces. He is able to escape, however, thanks to the timely appearance of a mysterious girl named C.C., who bestows upon him Geass, the "Power of Kings." Realizing the vast potential of his newfound "power of absolute obedience," Lelouch embarks upon a perilous journey as the masked vigilante known as Zero, leading a merciless onslaught against Britannia in order to get revenge once and for all. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Funimation -- 1,666,592 8.71
Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters -- -- Toei Animation -- 52 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Adventure Comedy Kids Fantasy -- Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters -- Everyone in the world uses smartphone apps. But inside them lurks unknown creatures called "Appli Monsters," or "Appmon." The Appmon are AI lifeforms with the ability to think and act, and exist in the boundary between the human world and digital space. In the vast sea of the internet, the "last boss AI" Leviathan takes control of the Appmon with a virus and begins hacking every system, thus starting to control the human world from the world of the net. Haru Shinkai is led to acquire the Appli Drive, and uses it to materialize Gatchmon, a search app monster. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 11,498 6.58
Fune wo Amu -- -- Zexcs -- 11 eps -- Novel -- Slice of Life Drama Romance -- Fune wo Amu Fune wo Amu -- Kouhei Araki, a veteran editor of the dictionary editorial division at Genbu Publishing, plans to retire in order to better care for his ailing wife. However, before retiring, he must find a replacement to complete his latest project: a new dictionary called "The Great Passage." But no matter where he looks, he cannot find anyone suitable, as making a dictionary requires a wealth of patience, time, and dedication. -- -- Mitsuya Majime works in Genbu Publishing's sales division, yet he has poor social skills and an inability to read the mood in most situations. In spite of this, he excels at having an enthusiasm for words thanks to his love of reading and careful personality. It is these skills that draw Araki to him and prompt him to offer Majime a position in the dictionary editorial department. As Majime accepts his new position, he finds himself unsure of his abilities and questioning whether he will fit in with his new co-workers. Yet amid the vast sea of words, The Great Passage will bring them together. -- -- 91,862 7.64
Fune wo Amu -- -- Zexcs -- 11 eps -- Novel -- Slice of Life Drama Romance -- Fune wo Amu Fune wo Amu -- Kouhei Araki, a veteran editor of the dictionary editorial division at Genbu Publishing, plans to retire in order to better care for his ailing wife. However, before retiring, he must find a replacement to complete his latest project: a new dictionary called "The Great Passage." But no matter where he looks, he cannot find anyone suitable, as making a dictionary requires a wealth of patience, time, and dedication. -- -- Mitsuya Majime works in Genbu Publishing's sales division, yet he has poor social skills and an inability to read the mood in most situations. In spite of this, he excels at having an enthusiasm for words thanks to his love of reading and careful personality. It is these skills that draw Araki to him and prompt him to offer Majime a position in the dictionary editorial department. As Majime accepts his new position, he finds himself unsure of his abilities and questioning whether he will fit in with his new co-workers. Yet amid the vast sea of words, The Great Passage will bring them together. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- 91,862 7.64
Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri 2nd Season -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Military Adventure Fantasy -- Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri 2nd Season Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri 2nd Season -- Several months have passed since the infamous Ginza Incident, with tensions between the Empire and JSDF escalating in the vast and mysterious "Special Region" over peace negotiations. The greed and curiosity of the global powers have also begun to grow, as reports about the technological limitations of the magical realm's archaic civilizations come to light. -- -- Meanwhile, Lieutenant Youji Itami and his merry band of female admirers struggle to navigate the complex political intrigue that plagues the Empire's court. Despite her best efforts, Princess Piña Co Lada faces difficulties attempting to convince her father that the JSDF has no intention of conquering their kingdom. Pressured from both sides of the Gate, Itami must consider even more drastic measures to fulfill his mission. -- -- 428,999 7.76
Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri 2nd Season -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Military Adventure Fantasy -- Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri 2nd Season Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri 2nd Season -- Several months have passed since the infamous Ginza Incident, with tensions between the Empire and JSDF escalating in the vast and mysterious "Special Region" over peace negotiations. The greed and curiosity of the global powers have also begun to grow, as reports about the technological limitations of the magical realm's archaic civilizations come to light. -- -- Meanwhile, Lieutenant Youji Itami and his merry band of female admirers struggle to navigate the complex political intrigue that plagues the Empire's court. Despite her best efforts, Princess Piña Co Lada faces difficulties attempting to convince her father that the JSDF has no intention of conquering their kingdom. Pressured from both sides of the Gate, Itami must consider even more drastic measures to fulfill his mission. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 428,999 7.76
Granblue Fantasy The Animation -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 13 eps -- Game -- Adventure Fantasy -- Granblue Fantasy The Animation Granblue Fantasy The Animation -- This is a world of the skies, where many islands drift in the sky. A boy named Gran and a talking winged lizard named Vyrn lived in Zinkenstill, an island which yields mysteries. One day, they come across a girl named Lyria. Lyria had escaped from the Erste Empire, a military government that is trying to rule over this world using powerful military prowess. In order to escape from the Empire, Gran and Lyria head out into the vast skies, holding the letter Gran's father left behind—which said, "I will be waiting at Estalucia, Island of Stars." -- -- (Source: Aniplex of America) -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 150,110 6.68
Grimms Notes The Animation -- -- Brain's Base -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Adventure Magic Fantasy -- Grimms Notes The Animation Grimms Notes The Animation -- Within one's Book of Fate is their destiny. Written by the mysterious Story Tellers, these books decide every small detail of one's life. Some Story Tellers, however, choose to interfere with the stories of others rather than write their own. These malevolent beings are known as Chaos Tellers, who seek to ruin stories by overwriting the Books of Fate. -- -- Ex, Reina, Tao, and Shane were born with blank books. Ostracized by society due to this abnormality, they abandon their respective stories in search of better lives. In the vast unknown, they encounter famous fairy tale characters such as Cinderella, Momotarou, and Snow White. All the while, they work to subdue the Chaos Tellers and return peace and order to the stories. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 35,540 5.98
Groove Adventure Rave -- -- Studio Deen -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Fantasy Romance Shounen -- Groove Adventure Rave Groove Adventure Rave -- Fifty years ago, malevolent stones known as Dark Brings brought about the "Overdrive," a calamitous event that destroyed one-tenth of the world. In the present day, the nefarious organization Demon Card seeks the Dark Brings' power for their all but innocent intentions. -- -- Haru Glory, a sword-wielding silver-haired teenager, inherits the title of Rave Master: the person who wields the power of the legendary Rave Stones, artifacts capable of destroying the Dark Brings. However, the many Rave Stones were scattered across the globe as a result of the Overdrive, allowing Demon Card to continue their malpractices. -- -- Groove Adventure Rave follows Haru, his strange dog Plue, the fiery blonde Ellie, and the infamous thief Musica, as they embark on a great journey that will take them around the vast world, searching for the Rave Stones that will finally end Demon Card's injustice. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Tokyopop -- TV - Oct 13, 2001 -- 85,990 7.26
Groove Adventure Rave -- -- Studio Deen -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Fantasy Romance Shounen -- Groove Adventure Rave Groove Adventure Rave -- Fifty years ago, malevolent stones known as Dark Brings brought about the "Overdrive," a calamitous event that destroyed one-tenth of the world. In the present day, the nefarious organization Demon Card seeks the Dark Brings' power for their all but innocent intentions. -- -- Haru Glory, a sword-wielding silver-haired teenager, inherits the title of Rave Master: the person who wields the power of the legendary Rave Stones, artifacts capable of destroying the Dark Brings. However, the many Rave Stones were scattered across the globe as a result of the Overdrive, allowing Demon Card to continue their malpractices. -- -- Groove Adventure Rave follows Haru, his strange dog Plue, the fiery blonde Ellie, and the infamous thief Musica, as they embark on a great journey that will take them around the vast world, searching for the Rave Stones that will finally end Demon Card's injustice. -- -- TV - Oct 13, 2001 -- 85,990 7.26
Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko -- -- Maho Film -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Slice of Life Magic Fantasy -- Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko -- Deep in the forest, far from any human contact, there lives a child named Ryouma Takebayashi. He engages in the rather strange hobby of keeping various types of slimes as pets. Furthermore, despite his young age, he has a sturdy physique and good compatibility for magic. All of this is because, having endured much hardship in his previous life, three gods grace Ryouma with a second chance to pursue one goal: savor the wonders of life. -- -- After three years of comfortable solitude pass by, Ryouma meets people that will change his current life forever. When he encounters and helps some soldiers tend to their wounded comrade, the group convinces him to accompany them to visit the nearby town's ducal family. Ryouma agrees and soon embarks on a journey to explore the vast world beyond his home. -- -- 97,612 6.88
Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko -- -- Maho Film -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Slice of Life Magic Fantasy -- Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko -- Deep in the forest, far from any human contact, there lives a child named Ryouma Takebayashi. He engages in the rather strange hobby of keeping various types of slimes as pets. Furthermore, despite his young age, he has a sturdy physique and good compatibility for magic. All of this is because, having endured much hardship in his previous life, three gods grace Ryouma with a second chance to pursue one goal: savor the wonders of life. -- -- After three years of comfortable solitude pass by, Ryouma meets people that will change his current life forever. When he encounters and helps some soldiers tend to their wounded comrade, the group convinces him to accompany them to visit the nearby town's ducal family. Ryouma agrees and soon embarks on a journey to explore the vast world beyond his home. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 97,612 6.88
Kanata no Astra -- -- Lerche -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Space Shounen -- Kanata no Astra Kanata no Astra -- In the year 2063, space travel is feasible and commercially available. As the cheerful Aries Spring arrives at the spaceport to attend a camp on the distant planet McPa, her purse is suddenly snatched by a reckless thief. Luckily, the athletic Kanata Hoshijima is able to retrieve it for her, and Aries soon discovers that he is among the group of teenagers who will be travelling with her on the excursion as team B-5. -- -- Upon arriving at their campsite, the group's trip takes a turn for the worse when a strange sphere of black light sucks them into the vast reaches of outer space. Stranded with seemingly no hope, they find an abandoned ship nearby that provides them with the means to return home. However, they soon discover that they are not as close to their campsite as they initially thought, but are in fact thousands of light-years away from home. -- -- With this realization, the nine members must cautiously manage their resources, maintain their strength, and unite as one to conquer the darkness of space together. While the reason behind their trip's sudden obstruction remains unknown, they nevertheless embark on the treacherous voyage back home aboard their new ship, the Astra. -- -- 208,590 8.14
Kanata no Astra -- -- Lerche -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Space Shounen -- Kanata no Astra Kanata no Astra -- In the year 2063, space travel is feasible and commercially available. As the cheerful Aries Spring arrives at the spaceport to attend a camp on the distant planet McPa, her purse is suddenly snatched by a reckless thief. Luckily, the athletic Kanata Hoshijima is able to retrieve it for her, and Aries soon discovers that he is among the group of teenagers who will be travelling with her on the excursion as team B-5. -- -- Upon arriving at their campsite, the group's trip takes a turn for the worse when a strange sphere of black light sucks them into the vast reaches of outer space. Stranded with seemingly no hope, they find an abandoned ship nearby that provides them with the means to return home. However, they soon discover that they are not as close to their campsite as they initially thought, but are in fact thousands of light-years away from home. -- -- With this realization, the nine members must cautiously manage their resources, maintain their strength, and unite as one to conquer the darkness of space together. While the reason behind their trip's sudden obstruction remains unknown, they nevertheless embark on the treacherous voyage back home aboard their new ship, the Astra. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 208,590 8.14
Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series -- -- Lerche -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Slice of Life -- Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series -- When 15-year-old Kino is feeling weighed down by heavy thoughts, one thing always manages to cheer her up: traveling. Nothing fills her heart with joy like exploring the beautiful, wonderful world around her and the fascinating ways people find to live. However, Kino is not as helpless as her cute appearance and courteous demeanor suggest. Armed with "Cannon" and "Woodsman," her trusted handguns, Kino isn’t afraid to kill anyone who would dare to get in her way. Always by her side is her best friend and loyal companion Hermes, a sentient motorcycle, who supports Kino through the sorrows and hardships of their journey. Together, they travel the vast countryside with the shared goal of always moving forward, and a single rule: never stay in one country for more than three days. -- -- As Kino and Hermes encounter new people and learn the rules of their civilizations, they grow and find out more about their own values and virtues. But as Kino slowly discovers the world around her, she also finds herself facing dangers that linger within the vast unknown. -- -- 149,872 7.59
Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series -- -- Lerche -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Slice of Life -- Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World - The Animated Series -- When 15-year-old Kino is feeling weighed down by heavy thoughts, one thing always manages to cheer her up: traveling. Nothing fills her heart with joy like exploring the beautiful, wonderful world around her and the fascinating ways people find to live. However, Kino is not as helpless as her cute appearance and courteous demeanor suggest. Armed with "Cannon" and "Woodsman," her trusted handguns, Kino isn’t afraid to kill anyone who would dare to get in her way. Always by her side is her best friend and loyal companion Hermes, a sentient motorcycle, who supports Kino through the sorrows and hardships of their journey. Together, they travel the vast countryside with the shared goal of always moving forward, and a single rule: never stay in one country for more than three days. -- -- As Kino and Hermes encounter new people and learn the rules of their civilizations, they grow and find out more about their own values and virtues. But as Kino slowly discovers the world around her, she also finds herself facing dangers that linger within the vast unknown. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 149,872 7.59
Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho -- -- CoMix Wave Films -- 1 ep -- Original -- Drama Military Romance Sci-Fi -- Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho -- Hiroki Fujisawa and Takuya Shirakawa harbor admiration for two things in their life: their classmate Sayuri Sawatari and the vast Ezo Tower that stands boundlessly across the Tsugaru Strait. Fascinated by the limitless structure beyond their reach, Hiroki and Takuya begin constructing an aeroplane from a fallen drone they discovered—naming it the Bella Ciela—to fulfill their dream of one day reaching the sky-scraping top of the tower. Later joined by the girl they love, Hiroki and Takuya promise Sayuri to fly with her to the seemingly otherworldly top together. However, Japan has suffered a North-South partitioning that has fueled conflict near the base of the tower, which marks the border between the America-controlled Southern islands and the Northern lands occupied by the Soviet Union. -- -- Further along, Sayuri suddenly disappears, and Hiroki and Takuya never see her again. Unbeknownst to them, she fell victim to a sleeping disorder that left her comatose for the past three years. Although Hiroki and Takuya later learn about Sayuri's condition, they also discover that the girl's unconscious state is oddly linked to the same tower the trio had promised to conquer together. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- Movie - Nov 20, 2004 -- 181,371 7.54
Kuroko no Basket Movie 4: Last Game -- -- Production I.G -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Sports School Shounen -- Kuroko no Basket Movie 4: Last Game Kuroko no Basket Movie 4: Last Game -- Hailing from America, Jabberwock—a street basketball team with skills comparable to those of the NBA—has come to Japan to play an exhibition match against Strky, a team of former third-year students who once played in the Interhigh and Winter Cup. However, due to the vast difference in skill, Jabberwock easily wins. Their captain, Nash Gold Jr., mocks the basketball style of all players in Japan by comparing them to monkeys. -- -- Infuriated by the nasty comment, Kagetora Aida challenges them to a revenge match. Because of pride and the belief that the results will be no different, Nash accepts the challenge. Kagetora then assembles Vorpal Swords, a team composed of the Generation of Miracles, including Kuroko Tetsuya and Kagami Taiga, for they are the only ones who stand a chance against a foe that seems unbeatable from every angle. -- -- Movie - Mar 18, 2017 -- 183,918 8.07
Log Horizon 2nd Season -- -- Studio Deen -- 25 eps -- Light novel -- Action Game Adventure Magic Fantasy -- Log Horizon 2nd Season Log Horizon 2nd Season -- After being trapped in the world of Elder Tale for six months, Shiroe and the other Adventurers have begun to get the hang of things in their new environment. The Adventurers are starting to gain the trust of the People of the Land, and Akiba has flourished thanks to the law and order established by Shiroe's Round Table Alliance, regaining its everyday liveliness. Despite this success, however, the Alliance faces a new crisis: they are running out of funds to govern Akiba, and spies from the Minami district have infiltrated the city. -- -- As formidable forces rise in other districts, there is also a need to discover more about the vast new world they are trapped in—leading Shiroe to decide that the time has come to venture outside the city. Accompanied by his friend Naotsugu and the Sage of Mirror Lake Regan, the calculative Shiroe makes his move, hoping to unravel new possibilities and eventually find a way home. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 503,514 7.61
Moonrise -- -- Wit Studio -- ? eps -- Original -- Sci-Fi Space -- Moonrise Moonrise -- "Moonrise" will portray the lives of two men, Jack and Al, as they confront various hardships in the vast world of outer space. -- -- (Source: Amazon) -- - - ??? ??, ???? -- 1,147 N/A -- -- Mugen Kouro -- -- Gonzo, Production I.G -- 4 eps -- Game -- Action Sci-Fi Space -- Mugen Kouro Mugen Kouro -- The software developers Platinum Games and Sega have scheduled their Mugen Kōro - Infinite Space science-fiction roleplaying game for the Nintendo DS portable console next spring and announced the October launch of animated short films for the project. The game centers around Yūrī, a young man who journeys across lawless space and becomes a spaceship captain. The animation studios GONZO and Production I.G are producing short movies to promote the game and develop its world and storyline. The first of the movies will premiere at the Tokyo Game Show on October 9 and then will run on the game's official website on October 17. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- ONA - Oct 9, 2008 -- 1,139 5.14
One Outs -- -- Madhouse -- 25 eps -- Manga -- Sports Psychological Seinen -- One Outs One Outs -- Toua Tokuchi is an athlete by profession, but a reckless gambler at heart. On the streets of Okinawa, he uses nothing but his wits and a "fastball" peaking at a mere 134 kmph to somehow achieve 499 wins in the game of "One Outs," a simplified version of baseball between the pitcher and one batter. Amazed by Toua's unique prowess on the mound, veteran slugger Hiromichi Kojima artfully scouts the pitcher for his long unsuccessful team, the Saikyou Saitama Lycaons. Kojima desperately hopes Toua will lead them to the championship; however, Tsuneo Saikawa, the mercenary owner of the Lycaons, sees the vastly talented pitcher as a threat to the income generated by the team. Rising to the challenge of swaying the owner, Toua suggests a one-of-a-kind "One Outs" contract: every out Toua pitches will earn him five million yen, but with every run he gives up, he will lose fifty million yen. -- -- Adapted from the manga by Shinobu Kaitani of Liar Game fame, One Outs documents the intense psychological battles between Toua and those around him. With millions of yen at stake, can a pitcher who has done nothing but gamble in a head-to-head imitation of baseball finally lead a real baseball team to victory? -- -- TV - Oct 8, 2008 -- 188,651 8.35
Planetes -- -- Sunrise -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Drama Romance Sci-Fi Seinen Space -- Planetes Planetes -- In 2075, space travel is no longer just a dream, but an everyday reality for mankind. Advancements in science and technology have led to the colonization of the moon, the commercialization of outer space, and the formation of large space corporations. Ai Tanabe, an upbeat woman whose interests lie in the cosmos, joins Technora Corporation as a member of their Debris Section, a department dedicated to the removal of dangerous space junk between the orbits of the Earth and Moon. -- -- However, Ai soon discovers how unappreciated her job is. As the laughingstock of Technora, the Debris Section is severely understaffed, poorly funded, and is forced to use a dilapidated spaceship nicknamed the "Toy Box" for debris retrieval. Undeterred, Ai perseveres and gradually becomes acquainted with the strange personalities that make up the Debris Section's staff, such as the bumbling but good-natured chief clerk Philippe Myers; the mysterious and tight-lipped temp worker Edelgard Rivera; and the hotheaded and passionate Hachirouta Hoshino, who longs for a spaceship to call his own. -- -- Planetes is an unconventional sci-fi series that portrays the vastness of space as a backdrop for the personal lives of ordinary people—people who may have been born on Earth, but whose hopes and dreams lie amongst the stars. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment -- 200,479 8.30
Seihou Bukyou Outlaw Star -- -- Sunrise -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Action Sci-Fi Adventure Space Comedy -- Seihou Bukyou Outlaw Star Seihou Bukyou Outlaw Star -- Gene Starwind has always dreamed of piloting his own ship out into the vast sea of stars. Unfortunately, not all dreams come true, as he spends his days working odd jobs alongside his partner, James Hawking, on the small planet Sentinel III instead. However, this all takes a turn when the duo takes on a job from Rachel Sweet who, unbeknownst to them, is actually a treasure-hunting outlaw. Tasked with protecting a mysterious girl known as Melfina, the meeting irrevocably changes the pair's lives as they are sent out into the great unknown aboard the highly advanced ship, Outlaw Star. -- -- Seihou Bukyou Outlaw Star follows Gene and his ragtag crew as they brave the final frontier, navigating the stars in search of answers to the mysteries surrounding Melfina. Encountering dangerous bounty hunters, space pirates, Taoist mages, and even catgirls, there is sure to be an exhilarating adventure around every corner. -- -- 127,821 7.86
Seihou Bukyou Outlaw Star -- -- Sunrise -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Action Sci-Fi Adventure Space Comedy -- Seihou Bukyou Outlaw Star Seihou Bukyou Outlaw Star -- Gene Starwind has always dreamed of piloting his own ship out into the vast sea of stars. Unfortunately, not all dreams come true, as he spends his days working odd jobs alongside his partner, James Hawking, on the small planet Sentinel III instead. However, this all takes a turn when the duo takes on a job from Rachel Sweet who, unbeknownst to them, is actually a treasure-hunting outlaw. Tasked with protecting a mysterious girl known as Melfina, the meeting irrevocably changes the pair's lives as they are sent out into the great unknown aboard the highly advanced ship, Outlaw Star. -- -- Seihou Bukyou Outlaw Star follows Gene and his ragtag crew as they brave the final frontier, navigating the stars in search of answers to the mysteries surrounding Melfina. Encountering dangerous bounty hunters, space pirates, Taoist mages, and even catgirls, there is sure to be an exhilarating adventure around every corner. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Funimation -- 127,821 7.86
Uchuu Senkan Tiramisù -- -- Gonzo -- 13 eps -- Web manga -- Comedy Mecha Sci-Fi Slice of Life Space -- Uchuu Senkan Tiramisù Uchuu Senkan Tiramisù -- Subaru Ichinose loves his cockpit as, to him, it's like being in his mother's womb. Whenever he struggles to converse with his fellow pilots, his cockpit is the one place he can be alone. As the ace pilot aboard the Tiramisu, Earth Union's most important battleship, it is his job to defend Mother Earth from the threats that emerge from humanity's extended dominion spreading throughout the vast reaches of the universe. -- -- Armed with his personal mecha Durandal, Subaru must fend off encroaching foreign colonies as he struggles to protect his personal sanctuary from rogue fried pork skewers, suffocating backwards shirts, and unsolicited redecorations. In the year Space Age 0156, the fate of humanity rests entirely in his hands. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 24,169 6.37
Yao Shen Ji -- -- Ruo Hong Culture -- 40 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Demons Romance Martial Arts Fantasy -- Yao Shen Ji Yao Shen Ji -- In his past life, although too weak to protect his home when it counted, out of grave determination Nie Li became the strongest Demon Spiritist and stood at the pinnacle of the martial world. However, he lost his life during the battle with the Sage Emperor and six deity-ranked beasts. -- -- His soul was then brought back to when he was still 13 years old. Although he's the weakest in his class with the lowest talent, having only a red soul realm and a weak one at that, with the aid of the vast knowledge which he accumulated from his previous life, he decided to train faster than anyone could expect. He also decided to help those who died nobly in his previous life to train faster as well. -- -- He aims to protect the city from the coming future of being devastated by demon beasts and the previous fate of ending up destroyed. He aims to protect his lover, friends, family and fellow citizens who died in the beast assault or its aftermath. And he aims to destroy the so-called Sacred family who arrogantly abandoned their duty and betrayed the city in his past life. -- -- (Source: Goodreads) -- ONA - May 9, 2017 -- 11,207 7.42
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