book
Toward the Future
KEYS (10k)
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
3 Thich Nhat Hanh
3 Michel de Montaigne
3 Jeffrey R Holland
2 Seneca
2 Robin S Sharma
2 Rainer Maria Rilke
2 Pope Francis
2 Nicholas Sparks
2 Nhat Hanh
2 Jennifer Senior
2 Colleen Houck
2 Arthur Golden
2 Anonymous
2 Anne McCaffrey
2 Amor Towles
2 Amanda Howells
2 Albert Camus
*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Everything is drawn inexorably toward the future. ~ Kip S Thorne, #NFDB
2:Desire and hope will push us on toward the future. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
3:I could not look toward the future if I lived in the past. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
4:Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
5:Biodiversity starts in the distant past and it points toward the future. ~ Frans Lanting, #NFDB
6:Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
7:Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
8:True generosity toward the future consists in giving everything to the present. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
9:You can only take steps toward the future you want. It's not guaranteed to be there. ~ Amanda Howells, #NFDB
10:The fool's life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future ~ Seneca, #NFDB
11:The fool's life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
12:The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
13:Real generosity toward the future,” as Camus famously put it, “lies in giving all to the present. ~ James Carroll, #NFDB
14:I'm always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things. ~ Herbie Hancock, #NFDB
15:Albert Camus once said that ‘Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
16:I think the most well-adjusted people live in the present with an eye toward the future - I'm not among those. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
17:We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
18:A pioneer is not someone who makes her own soap. She is one who takes up her burdens and walks toward the future. ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, #NFDB
19:We have to change the whole job structure of America. We have got to basically reorient our economy toward the future. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
20:When you pray, move your feet.” Prayer without action, like optimism without engagement, is passive aggression toward the future. Even ~ Al Gore, #NFDB
21:Awareness means to be in the moment so totally that there is no movement toward the past, no movement toward the future—all movement stops. ~ Osho, #NFDB
22:But the railroads are a new force. No hatred is in their history. They heal the wounds of the past, and they reach toward the future. ~ Pearl S Buck, #NFDB
23:Stars are out and there is sea
enough beneath the glistening earth
to bear me toward the future
which is not so dark. I see. ~ Frank O Hara,#NFDB
24:It was a marriage of two minds, of two ... spirits tilting as gently and inescapably toward the future as paper whites tilt toward the sun. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
25:People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
26:Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
27:Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers. ~ Alison Gopnik, #NFDB
28:Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
29:Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
30:Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
31:It was a marriage of two minds, of two metropolitan spirits tilting as gently and inescapably toward the future as paper whites tilt toward the sun. And ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
32:"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves — slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh ^, #NFDB
33:All you can do is your inch. We grab everyone we can carry, put each other onto our backs, and crawl toward the future. Inch by inch—it’s all we can do. ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
34:The general rule is that my life is focused on the present, and very little on the past. If anything, I'm a little bit more focused toward the future. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
35:Everyone is moving at the same speed toward the future. But your children are moving at that same speed with their eyes closed. So you're the ones who've got to steer. ~ Jennifer Senior, #NFDB
36:I must say that though other days may not be so bright, as we look toward the future, that the brightest days will continue to be those we spent with you here in Ireland. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
37:Time had been something we feared, but with the babies the things that held time together - the years, the months, the weeks, the days - melted and flowed toward the future. ~ Kao Kalia Yang, #NFDB
38:It is with this surety that we must stand with Haiti, a country whose spirit and people will never be broken, and work in solidarity toward the future the Haitian people deserve. ~ Paul Farmer, #NFDB
39:At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future. ~ Sherman Alexie, #NFDB
40:Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
41:Exchange information, learn to talk sensibly about any subject, learn to express your thoughts, accept new ones, examine them, analyze. Think objectively. Think toward the future. ~ Anne McCaffrey, #NFDB
42:Exchange information, learn to speak sensibly about any subject, learn to express your thoughts, accept new ones, examine them, analyze. Think objectively. Think toward the future. ~ Anne McCaffrey, #NFDB
43:We don’t even have a goldfish.” “You’ve got to think toward the future.” My dad smiled at me. “Maybe one day you’ll move out and your mom and I will get a golden retriever to replace you. ~ Robin Benway, #NFDB
44:The only thing a person can ever really do is keep moving forward. Take that big leap forward without hesitation, without once looking back. Simply forget the past and forge toward the future. ~ Alyson Noel, #NFDB
45:I am a strong believer that as one moves toward the future, the strongest and clearest way to do it is if you have a good sense of your past. You cannot have a very tall tree without deep roots. ~ Cesar Pelli, #NFDB
46:An artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
47:promised myself I would never cry again for this cause. I would not attend anymore to my guilt, or my regrets about the past. I would turn my face away from all that and look toward the future. ~ Phyllis T Smith, #NFDB
48:Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it’s the axis on which the earth revolves–slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future; live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.” – Thích Nhat Hanh ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
49:God would have us look toward the future so that we might delay pleasure for the sake of a greater good. It is right to appreciate the good gifts of God, but these gifts are not satisfying as ends in themselves. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
50:At this moment” is a rare thing because only sometimes do I step with both feet on the land of the present; usually one foot slides toward the past, the other slides toward the future. And I end up with nothing. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
51:Learn to love the moment you are in. Treasure your experiences, for precious moments too quickly pass you by, and if you are always rushing toward the future, or pining for the past, you will forget to enjoy and appreciate the present. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
52:There is a design working behind the curtain of the stars, and we are fulfilling it, drawn toward the future on the tide of time, toward our destiny as the first settlers of a new world."
The room was still. He has them, she thought. ~ Amy Kathleen Ryan,#NFDB
53:Whom will you cry to, heart?
More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction, keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
54:It expresses an inveterate hopefulness and openness toward the future that has often been hard to sustain in the three decades since its publication but which characterizes Lefebvre’s philosophically induced intellectual and political optimism. ~ Henri Lefebvre, #NFDB
55:the sun stands low in the cloudless eastern sky, a fat, confident yellow-white ball advancing as ever for the first time toward the future and leaving in its wake the steadily accumulating past, which darkens as it recedes, making blind men of us all. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
56:I think I kind of get it," I say. "Your Wanderlove thing."
"Oh Yeah?"
"It's about always looking toward the future. You can appreciate the good things all around you, but the best part is imminent, just out of reach. Like... perpetual anticipation. ~ Kirsten Hubbard,#NFDB
57:We are never at home, we are always beyond. Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be."
-from "Our feelings reach out beyond us ~ Michel de Montaigne,#NFDB
58:Where can you find purpose? Like success and happiness, our purpose exists in the present, and we constantly strive toward the future to maintain it. What it is for which we strive is up to each of us. The important thing is that we strive toward something. ~ Philip Zimbardo, #NFDB
59:Sometimes we believe that happiness is not possible in the here and now, that we need a few more conditions to be happy. So we run toward the future to get the conditions we think are missing. But by doing so we sacrifice the present moment; we sacrifice true life. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
60:My policy has always been to burn my bridges behind me. My face is always set toward the future. If I make a mistake it is fatal. When I am flung back I fall all the way back—to the very bottom. My one safeguard is my resiliency. So far I have always bounced back. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
61:When we teach our children that their success in life is dependent on their performance, childhood becomes geared toward the future instead of being experienced simply as childhood. Children learn that who they are, as they are, isn’t enough in the adult world. ~ Shefali Tsabary, #NFDB
62:Omni is not a science magazine. It is a magazine about the future...Omni was sui generis. Although there were plenty of science magazines over the years...Omni was the first magazine to slant all its pieces toward the future. It was fun to read and gorgeous to look at. ~ Ben Bova, #NFDB
63:I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
64:The ghost of a smile appeared on her face. “Learn to love the moment you are in. Treasure your experiences, for precious moments too quickly pass you by, and if you are always rushing toward the future, or pining for the past, you will forget to enjoy and appreciate the present. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
65:All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
66:Our country is still young and its potential is still enormous. We should remember, as we look toward the future, that the more fully we believe in and achieve freedom and equal opportunity - not simply for ourselves but for others - the greater our accomplishments as a nation will be. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
67:God works to over throw the ungodly, and increasingly the world will come under the dominion of Christians, not by military aggression, but by godly labor, saving, in vestment, and orientation toward the future... This is where history is going. The future belongs to the people of God, who obey His laws ~ David Chilton, #NFDB
68:It's best to not confuse optimism with hope. Optimism is a psychological attitude toward life. Hope goes further. It is an anchor that one hurls toward the future, it's what lets you pull on the line and reach what you're aiming for and head in the right direction. Hope is also theological: God is there, too. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
69:You can only take steps toward the future you want. It's not guaranteed to be there.
This is why you have to live inside each beautiful or terrible thing as it happens to you because the present may be all you've got. And if there's more ahead then the present is where you can really shape your future. ~ Amanda Howells,#NFDB
70:The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
71:The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead; we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
72:It was not until after the coming of Christ that time and humans could breathe freely. It was not until after him that people began to live toward the future. Humans do not die in a ditch like a dog-but at home in history, while the work toward the conquest of death is in full swing; they die sharing in this work. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB
73:Looking toward the future, there are two possibilities. If I’m wrong and the MUH is false, then physics will eventually hit an insurmountable roadblock beyond which no further progress is possible: there would be no further mathematical regularities left to discover even though we still lacked a complete description of our physical reality. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
74:Don’t wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow may be too late. If we know how to live according to the insight of impermanence, we will not make many mistakes. We can be happy right now. We can love our beloved, care for her, and make her happy today. And we won’t run toward the future, losing our life, which is available only in the present moment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
75:Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
76:....hope is 'that virtue by which we take responsibility for the future.' ...hope is our positive orientation toward the future, a future in which we simultaneously recognize difficulty, responsibility, and delight. Hope is not relative to the present situation, nor is it dependent upon a specific outcome... Hope is not an antidote to despair, or a sidestepping of difficulty, but a companion to all these things. ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt, #NFDB
77:Ideas are the finery we wrap our brains in, to hide the reptile core that we can’t escape. The reptile brain, Ron, is a vestige of the past from which we can’t seem to slip loose. We chug-chug-chug toward the future, and the world of ideas grows exponentially, but we are still base creatures at times. We all have those sad, tragic moments where we neglect thought and act on old, withered snippets of instinct. ~ Jeremy Robert Johnson, #NFDB
78:I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
79:Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.
Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.
Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
80:I also came to see that I should not worry about tomorrow, next week, next year, or next century. The more willing I was to look honestly at what I was thinking and saying and doing now, the more easily I would come into touch with the movement of God's Spirit in me, leading me to the future. God is a God of the present and reveals to those who are willing to listen carefully to the moment in which they live the steps they are to take toward the future. "Do not worry about tomorrow," Jesus says, "tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34). ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
81:But these things now belonged to the past, and he was flying toward the future. As they banked, Dr. Floyd could see below him a maze of buildings, then a great airstrip, then a broad, dead-straight scar across the flat Florida landscape—the multiple rails of a giant launching track. At its end, surrounded by vehicles and gantries, a spaceplane lay gleaming in a pool of light, being prepared for its leap to the stars. In a sudden failure of perspective, brought on by his swift changes of speed and height, it seemed to Floyd that he was looking down on a small silver moth, caught in the beam of a flashlight. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
82:I'm not sure this will make sense to you, but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction, so that I no longer faced backward toward the past, but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would that future be? The moment this question formed in my mind, I knew with as much certainty as I'd ever known anything that sometime during that day I would receive a sign. This was why the bearded man had opened the window in my dream. He was saying to me, "Watch for the thing that will show itself to you. Because that thing, when you find it, will be your future. ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
83:Jesus no longer belongs to the past but lives in the present and is projected toward the future; Jesus is the everlasting "today" of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples, and all of us: as victory over sin, evil, and death - over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you, dear sister, you, dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness...and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive! ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
84:Where does it come from, this sickliness? For man is more sick, uncertain, changeable, indeterminate than any other animal, there is no doubt of that — he is the sick animal: how has that come about? Certainly he has also dared more, done more new things, braved more and challenged fate more than all the other animals put together: he, the great experimenter with himself, discontented and insatiable, wrestling with animals, nature, and gods for ultimate domination — he, still unvanquished, eternally directed toward the future, whose own restless energies never leave him in peace, so that his future digs like a spur into the flesh of every present — how should such a courageous and richly endowed animal not also be the most imperiled, the most chronically and profoundly sick of all sick animals? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
85:The ego is continuously, zealously, in search of the world. Compelled to navigate among beacons emitting conflicting and fragmentary signals and exposed to internal pressures of its own, it seeks to extract as much information from its sensations and perceptions as it can. It works to ward off dangers and to repeat pleasures. It organizes, with impressive efficiency, the individual's capacities for response and his encounters with men and things. It reasons, calculates, remembers, compares, thus equipping men to grope their way toward the future. Its appraisals are never beyond suspicion; they are bound to be distorted by conflicts and compromised by traumas. Thus the outside world never really enters the mind unscathed; the impressions with which the individual must work are so many mental representations of the real thing. But the ego, obeying its appetite for experience, bravely continues to determine what is and more difficult, what can be. ~ Peter Gay, #NFDB
86:I am struck by what a tawdry magician’s trick Time is after all. I am sixty-six years old. Viewed from your coign of vantage—facing toward the future—sixty-six years is a great deal of time. It is all of the experience of your life more than three times over. But, viewed from my coign of vantage—facing toward the past—this sixty-six years was the fluttering down of a cherry petal. I feel that my life was a picture hastily sketched but never filled in . . . for lack of time. Only yesterday—but more than fifty years ago—I walked along this river with my father. I can remember how big and strong his hand felt to my small fingers. Fifty years. But all the insignificant, busy things—the terribly important, now forgotten things that cluttered the intervening time collapse and fall away from my memory. And I remember another yesterday when my daughter was a little girl. We walked along here. At this very moment, the nerves in my hand remember the feeling of her chubby fingers clinging to one of mine. ~ Trevanian, #NFDB
87:When I was a young woman with four children, I was always living ahead of myself,” she said. “Everything I was doing was projected toward the future, and I was so busy, busy, busy, preparing for tomorrow, for the next week, for the next month. Then one day, it all changed. At thirty-eight years old, I found I had breast cancer. I can remember asking my doctor what I should plan for in my future. He said, ‘Diane, my advice to you is to live each day as richly as you can.’ As I lay in my bed after he left, I thought, will I be alive next year to take my son to first grade? Will I see my children marry? And will I know the joy of holding my grandchildren?” She looked out over the water, barefoot, her legs outstretched; a white visor held down her short, black hair. “For the first time in my life, I started to be fully present in the day I was living. I was alive. My goals were no longer long-range plans, they were daily goals, much more meaningful to me because at the end of each day, I could evaluate what I had done. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
88:We grossly overestimate the length of the effect of misfortune on our lives. You think that the loss of your fortune or current position will be devastating, but you are probably wrong. More likely, you will adapt to anything, as you probably did after past misfortunes. You may feel a sting, but it will not be as bad as you expect. This kind of misprediction may have a purpose: to motivate us to perform important acts (like buying new cars or getting rich) and to prevent us from taking certain unnecessary risks. And it is part of a more general problem: we humans are supposed to fool ourselves a little bit here and there. According to Trivers’s theory of self-deception, this is supposed to orient us favorably toward the future. But self-deception is not a desirable feature outside of its natural domain. It prevents us from taking some unnecessary risks—but we saw in Chapter 6 how it does not as readily cover a spate of modern risks that we do not fear because they are not vivid, such as investment risks, environmental dangers, or long-term security. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
89: Peanuts
“Correct! The photo is important! I say, Listen, they have nothing
When I get an idea. Then sit down and I make
Peanuts – meaning that every time I open my mouth,
one blank turn of events
after the next bends cunningly toward me
as I go twirling
my baton toward the future –
I personally, I impersonally, I personified and so on, lurching
querulously across each brief tableau
begat by scarecrows
in this wilderness of thorns. You get the picture
framed and mounted and all that patching
starts to make a kind of sense.”
A hush fell over the locker room
is one way to describe it. Another way, my way,
is a warm gap between bleachers
“Like to earn a hundred dollars? ”
took two loads of an astonishment. There were big deals
just beyond me, zooming in then out then in again
in a mad giddy rush while I
let a guy rope down from the scaffolding I’d
constructed as a kind of house. But it was him again,
deserted. Terrifying
soul of our surroundings, how innumerable your ripples,
to which my glances corresponded, pocketing
what they’d find!
~ Chris Edwards,#NFDB
90:God Sees You Differently When we focus on our shortcomings and limitations, it doesn’t leave us with much of a reason to believe in ourselves. Under personal, honest scrutiny, we don’t look like winners. But God sees you differently than you see yourself. While we tend to focus on outward evidence, God focuses on the heart. We analyze the past and present, but God looks toward the future. As we make a list of our mistakes and failures, He identifies crevices where potential exists. “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9). When God looks at us, He doesn’t see lost opportunity. He doesn’t see failure. God looks at us through eyes of love. When someone loves you and you yield to that love, you feel comfortable in their presence. Your confidence mounts. You know you’re accepted. And where room for improvement exists, someone who loves us will encourage us to step out with boldness and make progress. If we feel unworthy or unqualified, if fear tries to cripple us, we can choose to move forward in spite of it. ~ John Herrick, #NFDB
91:Wilma P. Mankiller No writer has more clearly articulated the unspoken emotions, dreams, and lifeways of contemporary Native people than Vine Deloria. This collection of Deloria’s works takes the reader on a fascinating journey through Indian country as Deloria responds to some of the most important issues of the last three decades. Deloria’s literary gift is amply demonstrated in pieces that are a mix of logic, humor, irreverence, and spirituality. But it is his clarity of thought and stunning ability to express complex concepts in a simple, straightforward manner that captivate the reader. One of the most compelling pieces in the collection, “If You Think About It, You Will See That It Is True,” reminded me of the phrase coined by Alice Walker, “looking backward toward the future.” With flawless logic and adroit use of language, Deloria examines the way many traditional Native people look at the universe, the connectedness of all living things, and our own insignificance in the totality of things compared to the objective, segmented way scientists in the academy view the universe. Deloria points out that “everything that humans experience has value and instructs in some aspect of life. . . . The ~ Vine Deloria Jr, #NFDB
92:But young children, whose prefrontal cortexes have barely begun to ripen, can’t conceive of a future, which means they spend their lives in the permanent present, a forever feeling of right now. At times, this is a desirable state of consciousness; indeed, for meditators, it’s the ultimate aspiration. But living in the permanent present is not a practical parenting strategy. “Everybody would like to be in the present,” says Daniel Gilbert, a social psychologist at Harvard and author of the 2006 best-seller Stumbling on Happiness. “Certainly it’s true that there is an important role for being present in our lives. All the data say that. My own research says that.” The difference is that children, by definition, only live in the present, which means that you, as a parent, don’t get much of a chance. “Everyone is moving at the same speed toward the future,” he says. “But your children are moving at that same speed with their eyes closed. So you’re the ones who’ve got to steer.” He thinks about this for a moment. “You know, back in the early seventies, I hung out with a lot of people who wanted to live in the present. And it meant that no one paid the rent.” In effect, parents and small children have two completely different temporal outlooks. Parents can project into the future; their young children, anchored in the present, have a much harder time of it. This difference can be a formula for heartbreak for a small child. ~ Jennifer Senior, #NFDB
93:It was this hierarchy—so central to Western cosmology for so long that, even today, a ten-year-old could intuitively get much of it right—that was challenged by the most famous compendium of all: Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s eighteen-thousand-page Encyclopédie. Published between 1751 and 1772, the Encyclopédie was sponsored by neither the Catholic Church nor the French monarchy and was covertly hostile to both. It was intended to secularize as well as to popularize knowledge, and it demonstrated those Enlightenment commitments most radically through its organizational scheme. Rather than being structured, as it were, God-down, with the whole world flowing forth from a divine creator, it was structured human-out, with the world divided according to the different ways in which the mind engages with it: “memory,” “reason,” and “imagination,” or what we might today call history, science and philosophy, and the arts. Like alphabetical order, which effectively democratizes topics by abolishing distinctions based on power and precedent in favor of subjecting them all to the same rule, this new structure had the effect of humbling even the most exalted subjects. In producing the Encyclopédie, Diderot did not look up to the heavens but out toward the future; his goal, he wrote, was “that our descendants, by becoming more learned, may become more virtuous and happier.”
It is to Diderot’s Encyclopédie that we owe every modern one, from the Britannica and the World Book to Encarta and Wikipedia. But we also owe to it many other kinds of projects designed to, in his words, “assemble all the knowledge scattered on the surface of the earth.” It introduced not only new ways to do so but new reasons—chief among them, the diffusion of information prized by an élite class into the culture at large. The Encyclopédie was both the cause and the effect of a profoundly Enlightenment conviction: that, for books about everything, the best possible audience was the Everyman. ~ Kathryn Schulz,#NFDB
94:STAY ON COURSE …Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead (Philippians 3:13). Well-trained athletes would never expect to win the race by constantly looking over their shoulder. They know in order to win they must keep focused on the finish line. As believers we cannot run the race always looking to the past. We must focus our attention toward the future. We can learn from the past, while living in the present, and focusing on the future. When it comes to past experiences there are two basic attitudes: First, some learn from the past and are helped. When Paul said he was, “ forgetting what is behind,” he was not suggesting a memory failure. God did not create us with an erase button behind our ears so we can eliminate hurtful memories. That’s not what it means at all. It means to no longer be influenced or affected by our past. When God said He would not remember our sins and iniquities (see Hebrews 10:17), He was not saying He will have a memory lapse. That is impossible with God. What He is saying is that our sins will no longer affect our standing with Him. Second, some people live in the past and are hindered. Sadly, there are many believers who never progress any further in their walk with God because all of their time is spent on painful memories. No doubt there were things in Paul’s past that could have been too heavy for him to carry into his future (see 1 Timothy 1:12-17). Instead of allowing his past memories to hurt him, they became inspirations to push him forward! Paul could not change what had happened to him in his past. But he determined to gain a new understanding of what they meant. He is a perfect example of a runner who refused to run the race backward! Without the power of the Holy Spirit it is impossible to break the shackles of past regret and hurt. No amount of “mind power” can accomplish what only God’s power can do. While we cannot change past events, like Paul, we can change how they affect us today. Father, I know I am easily distracted by hurtful memories. I pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to break their influence. Amen! ~ Paul Tsika, #NFDB
95:My Dearest, Can you forgive me? In a world that I seldom understand, there are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore. You, my darling, are the wind that I did not anticipate, the wind that has gusted more strongly than I ever imagined possible. You are my destiny. I was wrong, so wrong, to ignore what was obvious, and I beg your forgiveness. Like a cautious traveler, I tried to protect myself from the wind and lost my soul instead. I was a fool to ignore my destiny, but even fools have feelings, and I’ve come to realize that you are the most important thing that I have in this world. I know I am not perfect. I’ve made more mistakes in the past few months than some make in a lifetime. I was wrong to deny what was obvious in my heart: that I can’t go on without you. You were right about everything. I tried to deny the things you were saying, even though I knew they were true. Like one who gazes only backward on a trip across the country, I ignored what lay ahead. I missed the beauty of a coming sunrise, the wonder of anticipation that makes life worthwhile. It was wrong of me to do that, a product of my confusion, and I wish I had come to understand that sooner. Now, though, with my gaze fixed toward the future, I see your face and hear your voice, certain that this is the path I must follow. It is my deepest wish that you give me one more chance. For the first few days after you left, I wanted to believe that I could go on as I always had. But I couldn’t. I knew in my heart that my life would never be the same again. I wanted you back, more than I imagined possible, yet whenever I conjured you up, I kept hearing your words in our last conversation. No matter how much I loved you, I knew it wasn’t going to be possible unless we—both of us—were sure I would devote myself fully to the path that lay ahead. I continued to be troubled by these thoughts until late last night when the answer finally came to me. Oh, I am sorry, so very sorry, that I ever hurt you. Maybe I’m too late now. I don’t know. I love you and always will. I am tired of being alone. I see children crying and laughing as they play in the sand, and I realize I want to have children with you. I am sick and sad without you. As I sit here in the kitchen, I am praying that you will let me come back to you, this time forever. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
96: The Pure Norwegian Flag
Tri-colored flag, and pure,
Thou art our hard-fought cause secure;
Thor's hammer-mark of might
Thou bearest blue in Christian white,
And all our hearts' red blood
To thee streams its full flood.
Thou liftest us high when life's sternest,
Exultant, thou oceanward turnest;
Thy colors of freedom are earnest
That spirit and body shall never know dearth.Fare forth o'er the earth!
II
'The pure flag is but pure folly,'
You 'wise' men maintain for true.
But the flag is the truth poetic,
The folly is found in you.
In poetry upward soaring,
The nation's immortal soul
With hands invisible carries
The flag toward the future goal.
That soul's every toil and trial,
That soul's every triumph sublime,
Are sounding in songs immortal,To their music the flag beats time.
We bear it along surrounded
By mem'ry's melodious choir,
By mild and whispering voices,
By will and stormy desire.
It gives not to others guidance,
Can not a Swedish word say;
It never can flaunt allurement:Clear the foreign colors away!
III
The sins and deceits of our nation
Possess in the flag no right;
175
The flag is the high ideal
In honor's immortal light.
The best of our past achievements,
The best of our present prayers,
It takes in its folds from the fathers
And bears to the sons and heirs;
Bears it all pure and artless,
By tokens that tempt us unmarred,
Is for our will's young manhood
Leader as well as guard.
IV
They say: 'As by rings of betrothal
We are by the flag affied!'
But Norway is
not
betrothèd,
She
is
no one's promised bride.
She shares her abode with no one,
Her bed and her board to none yields,
Her will is her worthy bridegroom,
Herself rules her sea, her fields.
Our brother to eastward honors
This independence of youth.
He
knows well that by it only
Our wreath can be won in truth.
When we from the flag are taking
His colors,
he
knows 't is no whim,
But merely because we are holding
Our honor higher than him.
And none who himself has honor
Will seek him a different friend;
Our life we can for him offer,
But naught of our flag can lend.
176
TO SWEDEN
Respectful I seek a hearing,
With trust in your temper sane,
And plead now our cause before you
In words that are calm and plain:
If, Sweden,
you
were the smaller,
Were young your freedom's renown,
Had
your
flag a mark of union
That pressed you still farther down
By saying that you, as little,
Were set at the greater's board
(For this is the mark's real meaning,
By no one on earth ignored),
Yes, if it were you,-and your freedom
Not hallowed by age, but young,
And a century's want and weakness
Still heavy in memory hung,
The soul of your nation harrowed
By old injustice and need,
By luckless labor and longing,
-And did you its meaning heed;
Yes, if it were you, whose duty
To teach your people were tried,
To honor their new-born freedom,
To find in their flag their guide:
Would longer you suffer it sundered,
Leave foreign a single field?
Would you not claim it unplundered,
Your independence to shield?
Would not to yourself you say then:
'If one has high lineage long,
If greater his colors' glory,
The more alluring his song.
Oh, tempt not him who from trouble
Is rising with new found might;
With pure marks direct him, rather,
To honor's exalted height.'
177
Thus
you
would speak, elder hero,
If
you
in
our
home abode;
Your wont is the way of honor,
You fare on the forward road.
From eighteen hundred and fourteen,
And down to the latest day,
So oft for our independence
We stood like the stag at bay,
Brave men have risen among you,
And scorning the strife that swelled
Have talked for our cause high-minded,
Like Torgny to them of eld.
VI
ANSWER TO THE AGED RIDDERSTAD
You say, it is 'knightly duty,'
The fight for the flag to share,I hold you full high in honor,
Butthat
is our own affair!
For just because we encounter
The storm-blasts of slander stark,
It's 'knightly duty' to free now
The flag from the marring mark.
The 'parity' that mark preaches
Flies false over all the seas;
A pan-Scandinavian Sweden
Can never our nation please.
From 'knightly duty' the smaller
Must say: I am not a part;
The mark of my freedom and honor
Is whole for my mind and heart.
From 'knightly duty' the greater
178
Must say: A falsehood's fair sign
Can give me no special honor,
No longer shall it be mine.
For both it is 'knightly duty,'
With flags that are pure, to be
A warring world's bright example
Of peoples at peace, proud and free.
~ Bjornstjerne Bjornson,#NFDB
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3 Integral Yoga
3 Satprem
2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness