TERMS STARTING WITH
contemplated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Contemplate
contemplate ::: v. t. --> To look at on all sides or in all its bearings; to view or consider with continued attention; to regard with deliberate care; to meditate on; to study.
To consider or have in view, as contingent or probable; to look forward to; to purpose; to intend. ::: v. i.
Contemplate, for a moment, this wondrous reply in six lines, of Satyavan to his father’s gentle scolding of Savitri.”at noon leaving this house of clay”, for in the epic his death in the forest takes place at noon, not a departure of an early morning soul or one who leaves enfolded in the dark rooms of night, but at a time when the sun is at its most brilliant, showering the earth with light.
TERMS ANYWHERE
admires ::: 1. Regards with pleased surprise, or with wonder mingled with esteem, approbation, or affection; and in modern usage, gazed on with pleasure. admired, admiring. adj. 2. Regarded with admiration; wondered at; contemplated with wonder mingled with esteem, etc.
astaksana. (T. dal ba brgyad). In Sanskrit, lit. "eight moments," i.e., eight qualities of an opportune [human] rebirth (these are defined in Tibetan as "eight freedoms"). The eight are freedom from (1) birth as one of the hell denizens (NARAKA); (2) birth as an animal (TIRYAK), (3) birth as a ghost (PRETA), or (4) birth as a long-lived divinity (DEVA); (5) birth in a border land or barbarian region; (6) birth in a place with perverted or heretical views; (7) birth as a stupid person who is unable to understand the teachings; and (8) birth at a time when or a place where no buddhas have arisen. In Tibetan LAM RIM literature, one is instructed to contemplate the rarity of such an opportune birth in order to take full advantage of it by practicing the path. See KsAnA.
Avalokitesvara (Sanskrit) Avalokiteśvara [from ava down, away from + the verbal root lok to look at, contemplate + īśvara lord] The lord who is perceived; the divinity or lord seen or contemplated in its inferior or “downward-seen” aspect. The essential meaning in theosophy is the Logos, whether considered in its kosmic aspect or in its function in an entity dwelling in such kosmos. “Simultaneously with the evolution of the Universal Mind, the concealed Wisdom of Adi-Buddha — the One Supreme and eternal — manifests itself as Avalokiteshwara (or manifested Iswara), which is the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of the Hermetic philosopher, the Logos of the Platonists, and the Atman of the Vedantins” (SD 1:110).
Bailian she. (J. Byakurensha; K. Paengnyonsa 白蓮社). In Chinese, "White Lotus Society." In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, the Chinese monk LUSHAN HUIYUAN assembled a group of 123 monks and laymen on LUSHAN and contemplated the image of the buddha AMITABHA; this group came to be known as the White Lotus Society. This name was also used by putatively heterodox lay Buddhist organizations that flourished during the Tang, Song, and early Yuan dynasties, as well as by monks mainly associated with the TIANTAI school. Inspired by Huiyuan's White Lotus Society and the repentance rituals of the Tiantai school, Mao Ziyuan (c. 1086-1166) constructed halls for repentance called White Lotus repentance halls and promoted the practice of NIANFO (see BUDDHANUSMṚTI) as a means of maintaining the five moral precepts (PANCAsĪLA). Mao Ziyuan's White Lotus Society was further popularized by the monk Pudu (1255-1330), who compiled an influential treatise known as the Lushan lianzong baojian ("Precious Mirror of the Lotus Tradition at Mt. Lu"). Despite ongoing governmental suppression, he and many other lay followers established cloisters and worship halls all over the country. There seems to be little if any connection between these later organizations and that of Lushan Huiyuan. These lay organizations primarily focused on the recitation of the name of AmitAbha in hopes of ensuring rebirth in his PURE LAND. During the early Ming, the name White Lotus Society was frequently associated with rebellious millenarian movements that worshipped the future buddha MAITREYA, which prompted the Ming government to ban any use of the name. Another more common name for these millenarian movements was BAILIAN JIAO. White Lotus societies also flourished in Korea during the Koryo dynasty, where they were called Paengnyon kyolsa (White Lotus retreat societies). Especially well known was the White Lotus Society (Paengnyonsa) established at Mandoksa in 1211 by WoNMYO YOSE (1163-1240), the mid-Koryo revitalizer of the Korean CH'oNT'AE (TIANTAI) tradition and a colleague of POJO CHINUL. See also JIESHE.
contemplated ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Contemplate
contemplate ::: v. t. --> To look at on all sides or in all its bearings; to view or consider with continued attention; to regard with deliberate care; to meditate on; to study.
To consider or have in view, as contingent or probable; to look forward to; to purpose; to intend. ::: v. i.
brood ::: n. 1. Offspring; progeny; in one family. 2. A breed, species, group, kind or race with common qualities. v. 3. To think deeply on; dwell or meditate upon, contemplate. broods, brooded.
(b) That which is asserted in an act of judgment, often called a belief or a proposition. That which is judged may merely be contemplated or considered instead of being affirmed or denied. Opinions differ as to the ontological status of propositions. Some regard them as mental, some as neutral, some as verbal. -- C.A.B.
COME FROM ::: (programming) A semi-mythical language construct dual to the go to; COME FROM label> would cause the referenced label to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it, control would quietly and automagically be transferred to the statement following the COME FROM.COME FROM was first proposed in R.L. Clark's A Linguistic Contribution to GOTO-less programming, which appeared in a 1973 Datamation issue (and was reprinted in the April 1984 issue of Communications of the ACM). This parodied the then-raging structured programming holy wars (see considered harmful).Mythically, some variants are the assigned COME FROM and the computed COME FROM (parodying some nasty control constructs in Fortran and some extended BASICs). Of course, multitasking (or nondeterminism) could be implemented by having more than one COME FROM statement coming from the same label.In some ways the Fortran DO looks like a COME FROM statement. After the terminating statement number/CONTINUE is reached, control continues at the statement following the DO. Some generous Fortrans would allow arbitrary statements (other than CONTINUE) for the statement, leading to examples like: DO 10 I=1,LIMITC imagine many lines of code here, leaving the appear to have anything to do with the flow of control at all!)While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form of COME FROM statement isn't completely general. After all, control will eventually already been perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only contemplate the ALTER verb in COBOL.SCL on VME mainframes has a similar language construct called whenever, used like this: whenever x=123345 then S; Meaning whenever variable x reached the value 123345 then execute statement S.COME FROM was supported under its own name for the first time 15 years later, in C-INTERCAL (see INTERCAL, retrocomputing); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from the shock.[Jargon File] (1998-04-19)
COME FROM "programming, humour" A semi-mythical language construct dual to the "go to"; "COME FROM" "label" would cause the referenced label to act as a sort of {trapdoor}, so that if the program ever reached it, control would quietly and {automagically} be transferred to the statement following the "COME FROM". "COME FROM" was first proposed in R.L. Clark's "A Linguistic Contribution to GOTO-less programming", which appeared in a 1973 {Datamation} issue (and was reprinted in the April 1984 issue of "{Communications of the ACM}"). This parodied the then-raging "{structured programming}" {holy wars} (see {considered harmful}). Mythically, some variants are the "assigned COME FROM" and the "computed COME FROM" (parodying some nasty control constructs in {Fortran} and some extended {BASICs}). Of course, {multitasking} (or {nondeterminism}) could be implemented by having more than one "COME FROM" statement coming from the same label. In some ways the {Fortran} "DO" looks like a "COME FROM" statement. After the terminating statement number/"CONTINUE" is reached, control continues at the statement following the DO. Some generous Fortrans would allow arbitrary statements (other than "CONTINUE") for the statement, leading to examples like: DO 10 I=1,LIMIT C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the C original DO statement lost in the spaghetti... WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I) 10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4) in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labelled 10. (This is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear to have anything to do with the flow of control at all!) While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form of "COME FROM" statement isn't completely general. After all, control will eventually pass to the following statement. The implementation of the general form was left to {Univac Fortran}, ca. 1975 (though a roughly similar feature existed on the {IBM 7040} ten years earlier). The statement "AT 100" would perform a "COME FROM 100". It was intended strictly as a debugging aid, with dire consequences promised to anyone so deranged as to use it in production code. More horrible things had already been perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only contemplate the "{ALTER}" verb in {COBOL}. {SCL} on {VME} {mainframes} has a similar language construct called "whenever", used like this: whenever x=123345 then S; Meaning whenever variable x reached the value 123345 then execute statement S. "COME FROM" was supported under its own name for the first time 15 years later, in {C-INTERCAL} (see {INTERCAL}, {retrocomputing}); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from the shock. [{Jargon File}] (1998-04-19)
communism ::: n. --> A scheme of equalizing the social conditions of life; specifically, a scheme which contemplates the abolition of inequalities in the possession of property, as by distributing all wealth equally to all, or by holding all wealth in common for the equal use and advantage of all.
Consequent: See Antecedent. Consilience: Whewell calls "consilience of inductions" what occurs when a hypothesis gives us the "rule and reason" not only of the class of facts contemplated in its construction, but also, unexpectedly, of some class of facts altogether different. -- C.J.D.
Contemplate, for a moment, this wondrous reply in six lines, of Satyavan to his father’s gentle scolding of Savitri.”at noon leaving this house of clay”, for in the epic his death in the forest takes place at noon, not a departure of an early morning soul or one who leaves enfolded in the dark rooms of night, but at a time when the sun is at its most brilliant, showering the earth with light.
contemplating ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Contemplate
contemplator ::: n. --> One who contemplates.
Contrast: In aesthetics: the term may refer either to the presence in the object contemplated of contrasting elements (colors, sounds, characters, etc.), or to the principle that the presence of such contrasting elements is a common feature of beautiful objects which, within limits, enhances their beauty. -- W.K.F.
Daoxin. (J. Doshin; K. Tosin 道信) (580-651). Chan monk and reputed fourth patriarch of the CHAN tradition. Although Daoxin's birthplace is not certain, some sources say he was a native of Qizhou in present-day Hubei province, while others mention Henei in Henan province. Little is known of his early training, but early Chan sources such as the LENGQIE SHIZI JI and CHUAN FABAO JI claim that Daoxin studied under SENGCAN, the putative third patriarch of Chan and supposed successor to BODHIDHARMA and HUIKE, his connection to this dubious figure is tenuous at best, however, and is probably a retrospective creation. The earliest biography of Daoxin, recorded in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Supplementary Biographies of Eminent Monks"), not only does not posit any connection of Daoxin to the preceding three patriarchs but does not even mention their names. The Chuan fabao ji states that Daoxin was fully ordained in 607, after his purported period of study under Sengcan. Daoxin is subsequently known to have resided at the monastery of Dalinsi on LUSHAN in Jiangxi province for ten years. At the invitation of the inhabitants of his native Qizhou, Daoxin moved again to Mt. Shuangfeng in Huangmei (perhaps in 624), where he remained in seclusion for about thirty years. He is therefore sometimes known as Shuangfeng Daoxin. During his residence at Mt. Shuangfeng, Daoxin is claimed to have attracted more than five hundred students, among whom HONGREN, the fifth patriarch of Chan, is most famous. The lineage and teachings attributed to Daoxin and Hongren are typically called the East Mountain Teachings (DONGSHAN FAMEN) after the easterly peak of Mt. Shuangfeng, where Hongren dwelled. Daoxin was given the posthumous title Chan Master Dayi (Great Physician) by Emperor Daizong (r. 762-779) of the Tang dynasty. According to the Lengqie shizi ji, Daoxin composed the Pusajie zuofa ("Method of Conferring the BODHISATTVA Precepts"), which is no longer extant, and the Rudao anxin yaofangbian famen ("Essentials of the Teachings of the Expedient Means of Entering the Path and Pacifying the Mind"), which is embedded in the Lengqie shizi ji. This latter text employs the analogy of a mirror from the Banzhou sanmei jing (S. PRATYUTPANNABUDDHASAMMUKHAVASTHITASAMADHISuTRA) to illustrate the insubstantiality of all phenomena, viz., one's sensory experiences are no more substantial than the reflections in a mirror. The text then presents the "single-practice SAMADHI" (YIXING SANMEI) as a practical means of accessing the path leading to NIRVAnA, based on the Wenshushuo bore jing ("Perfection of Wisdom Sutra Spoken by Manjusrī"). Single-practice samAdhi here refers to sitting in meditation, the supreme practice that subsumes all other practices. In single-practice samAdhi, the meditator contemplates every single aspect of one's mental and physical existence until one realizes they are all empty, and "guards that one without deviation" (shouyi buyi).
De Morgan, Augustus: (1806-1871) English mathematician and logician. Professor of mathematics at University College, London, 1828-1831, 1836-1866. His Formal Logic of 1847 contains some points of an algebra of logic essentially similar to that of Boole (q. v.), but the notation is less adequate than Boole's and the calculus is less fully worked out and applied. De Morgan, however, had the notion of logical sum for arbitrary classes -- whereas Boole contemplated addition only of classes having no members in common. De Morgan's laws (q. v.) -- as they are now known -- were also enunciated in this work. The treatment of the syllogism is original, but has since been susperseded, and does not constitute the author's real claim to remembrance as a logician. (The famous controversy with Sir William Hamilton over the latter's charge of plagiarism in connection with this treatment of the syllogism may therefore be dismissed as not of present interest.)
Dhyana (Sanskrit) Dhyāna [from the verbal root dhyai to contemplate, meditate] Profound spiritual-intellectual contemplation, with utter detachment from all objects of sense and of a lower mental character; one of the six paramitas in Buddhism. See also JHANA
Dhyani-bodhisattva (Sanskrit) Dhyāni-bodhisattva [from the verbal root dhyai to meditate, contemplate + bodhisattva he whose essence is bodhi (wisdom)] A bodhisattva of meditation or contemplation; the sixth in the descending series of the Hierarchy of Compassion, the mind-born sons of the dhyani-buddhas.
Dhyani-buddha (Sanskrit) Dhyāni-buddha [from the verbal root dhyai to meditate, contemplate + buddha awakened one] Buddhas of contemplation or meditation; the fifth in the descending series in the enumeration of the Hierarchy of Compassion. Two general hierarchies of spiritual beings brought forth our cosmos: the dhyani-buddhas or architects who in their aggregate form the higher and more spiritual side, and actually compose the line of the luminous arc; and the dhyani-chohans or the builders or constructors who form the lower and relatively more material side, the line (from this viewpoint only) of the shadowy arc. Often the term dhyani-chohans is used for both these lines of beings.
Dongshan famen. (J. Tozan homon; K. Tongsan pommun 東山法門). In Chinese, lit. "East Mountain Dharma Gate" or "East Mountain Teachings"; one of the principal early CHAN schools, which is associated with the putative fourth and fifth patriarchs of the tradition, DAOXIN (580-651) and HONGREN (602-675). The name of the school is a toponym for the location of Hongren's monastery, at Huangmei in Qizhou (present-day Hubei province). "East Mountain" refers to the easterly of the "twin peaks" of Mount Shuangfeng, where Hongren taught after the death of his master Daoxin, who had taught on the westerly peak; the term "East Mountain Teachings," however, is typically used to refer to the tradition associated with both masters. The designations Dongshan famen and Dongshan jingmen (East Mountain Pure Gate) first appear in the LENGQIE SHIZI JI ("Records of the Masters and Disciples of the Lankā[vatāra]") and were used in the Northern school of Chan (BEI ZONG) by SHENXIU (606?-706) and his successors to refer to the lineage and teachings that they had inherited from Daoxin and Hongren. ¶ Although later Chan lineage texts list Daoxin and Hongren as respectively the fourth and the fifth Chan patriarchs, succeeding BODHIDHARMA, HUIKE, and SENGCAN, the connection of the East Mountain lineage to these predecessors is tenuous at best and probably nonexistent. The earliest biography of Daoxin, recorded in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Supplementary Biographies of Eminent Monks"), not only does not posit any connection between Daoxin and the preceding three patriarchs, but does not even mention their names. This connection is first made explicit in the c. 713 CHUAN FABAO JI ("Annals of the Transmission of the Dharma-Jewel"), one of the earliest Chan "transmission of the lamplight" (CHUANDENG LU) lineage texts. Unlike many of the Chan "schools" that were associated with a single charismatic teacher, the "East Mountain Teachings" was unusual in that it had a single, enduring center in Huangmei, which attracted increasing numbers of students. Some five or six names of students who studied with Daoxin survive in the literature, with another twenty-five associated with Hongren. Although Hongren's biography in the Chuan fabao ji certainly exaggerates when it says that eight to nine out of every ten Buddhist practitioners in China studied under Hongren, there is no question that the number of students of the East Mountain Teachings grew significantly over two generations. ¶ The fundamental doctrines and practices of the East Mountain Teachings can be reconstructed on the basis of the two texts: the RUDAO ANXIN YAO FANGBIAN FAMEN ("Essentials of the Teachings of the Expedient Means of Entering the Path and Pacifying the Mind") and the XIUXIN YAO LUN ("Treatise on the Essentials of Cultivating the Mind"), ascribed respectively to Daoxin and Hongren. The Rudao anxin yao fangbian famen, which is included in the Lengqie shizi ji, employs the analogy of a mirror from the Banzhou sanmei jing (S. PRATYUTPANNABUDDHASAMMUKHĀVASTHITASAMĀDHISuTRA) to illustrate the insubstantiality of all phenomena, viz., one's sensory experiences are no more substantial than the reflections in a mirror. The text then presents the "single-practice SAMĀDHI" (YIXING SANMEI) as a practical means of accessing the path leading to NIRVĀnA, based on the Wenshushuo bore jing ("Perfection of Wisdom Sutra Spoken by MANJUsRĪ"). Single-practice samādhi here refers to sitting in meditation, the supreme practice that subsumes all other practices; it is not one samādhi among others, as it is portrayed in the MOHE ZHIGUAN ("Great Calming and Contemplation"). Single-practice samādhi means to contemplate every single aspect of one's mental and physical existence until one realizes they are all empty, just like the reflections in the mirror, and "to guard that one without deviation" (shouyi buyi). The Xiuxin yao lun, which is attributed to Hongren, stresses the importance of "guarding the mind" (SHOUXIN). Here, the relationship between the pure mind and the afflictions (KLEsA) is likened to that between the sun and clouds: the pure mind is obscured by afflictions, just as the sun is covered by layers of clouds, but if one can guard the mind so that it is kept free from false thoughts and delusions, the sun of NIRVĀnA will then appear. The text suggests two specific meditation techniques for realizing this goal: one is continuously to visualize the original, pure mind (viz., the sun) so that it shines without obscuration; the other is to concentrate on one's own deluded thoughts (the clouds) until they disappear. These two techniques purport to "guard the mind" so that delusion can never recur. The East Mountain Teachings laid a firm foundation for the doctrines and practices of later Chan traditions like the Northern school.
ecstasy ::: n. --> The state of being beside one&
Feasibility study - Evaluation of a contemplated project or course of action, according to pre-established criteria. (such net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period) to determine if the proposal meets management requirements.
fetch ::: v. t. --> To bear toward the person speaking, or the person or thing from whose point of view the action is contemplated; to go and bring; to get.
To obtain as price or equivalent; to sell for.
To recall from a swoon; to revive; -- sometimes with to; as, to fetch a man to.
To reduce; to throw.
To bring to accomplishment; to achieve; to make; to
If the Peano postulates are formulated on the basis of an interpretation according to which the domain of individuals coincides with that of the non-negative integers, the undefined term N may be dropped and the postulates reduced to the three following: (x)(y)[[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃[x = y]]. (x) ∼[S(x) = 0]. F(0)[F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F (x)F(y). It is possible further to drop the undefined term 0 and to replace the successor function S by a dyadic propositional function S (the contemplated interpretation being that S(x,y) is the proposition y = x+l). The Peano postulates may then be given the following form: (x)(Ey)S(x, y). (x)[S(x,y) ⊃y [S(x,z) ⊃x [y = z]]]. (x)[S(y,x) ⊃y [S(z,x) ⊃x [y = z]]]. (Ex)[[(x) ∼S(x,y)] ≡y [y = z]]. [(x) ∼S(x,z)] ⊃x [F(z)[F(x) ⊃x [S(x, y) ⊃y F(y)]] ⊃F (x)F(x)]. For this form of the Peano postulates the underlying logic may be taken to be simply the functional calculus of second order without additions. In this formulation, numerical functions can be introduced only by contextual definition as incomplete symbols.
Impact statement - A document that analyses the projected effects of a contemplated project. A primary reference point within this statement concerns probable externalities (e.g., negative implications to the environment). An example would be the proposal of a large industrial corporation located on an upriver site to dump some level of pollutants into the air and streams. The proposal would lead to an environmental impact statement about the effects upon health.
(In Aesthetics): A movement in both art and general aesthetic theory which was particularly widespread and influential in the last years of the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries. So interpreted, it is especially associated with Novalis, the Schlegels, and Jean Paul Richter in Germany, Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Lamartine in France; Blake, Scott, the Lake Poets, Shelley, and Byron in England. As a general attitude toward art and its function, as an interpretation of the goodness, beauty, and purpose of life, romanticism has always existed and can be confined to no one period. The essence of romanticism, either as an attitude or as a conscious program, is an intense interest in nature, and an attempt to seize natural phenomena in a direct, immediate, and naive manner. Romanticism thus regards all forms, rules, conventions, and manners as artificial constructs and as hindrances to the grasp, enjoyment, and expression of nature, hence its continual opposition to any kind of classicism (q.v.), whose formalities it treats as fetters. Romanticism stresses the values of sincerity, spontaneity, and passion, as against the restraint and cultivation demanded by artistic forms and modes. It reasserts the primacy of feeling, imagination, and sentiment, as opposed to reason. It maintains that art should concern itself with the particular and the concrete, observing and reporting accurately the feelings aroused by nature, with no idealization or generalization. It commands the artist to feel freely and deeply, and to express what he has felt with no restraints, either artistic or social. It seeks in works of art a stimulus to imagination and feeling, a point of departure for free activity, rather than an object that it can accept and contemplate.
In organic bodies matter may become conscious. Mind, being an activity of the body, and unsubstantial, is not causally effective, but simply entertains and contemplates essences both enacted and unenacted. Its registration of the natural functions and drives of the body of which it is the aura, is desire, which gives values like truth, goodness, and beauty to the essences entertained. The desire to know, satisfied by intelligibility, creates science, which is investigation of the world of enacted essences, where alone the explanation of things is to be found.The natural desire to experience social harmony and to contemplate beauty creates morality, art, poetry and religion, which entertain in imagination and seek to make concrete by action, combinations of essences, often unenacted and purely ideal.
It is not meditation (thinking with the mind) but a concentra- tion or turning of the consciousness that is important, — and that can happen in work, in writing, in any kind of action as well as in sitting down to contemplate.
Kosmos [from Greek kosmos order, universe] The universe, equivalent to the Latin mundus. Theosophy contemplates an infinite series of successive wholes or universes, each sufficiently complete to entitle it to be called a kosmos or universe, and yet each included within a larger whole. As there are no absolutes or final limits, this being contrary to nature, no sense of finality should be given to the word kosmos, which includes the invisible planes as well as the visible universe. Some theosophical writers use kosmos to refer to our home universe or galactic system, and cosmos for the solar system.
Lushan Huiyuan. (J. Rozan Eon; K. Yosan Hyewon 盧山慧遠) (334-416). Chinese monk during the Six Dynasties period, who was an important early advocate of PURE LAND cultic practices. Huiyuan was a native of Yanmen in present-day Shanxi province. In 345, he is said to have visited the prosperous cities of Xuchang and Luoyang, where he immersed himself in the study of traditional Confucian and Daoist scriptures. In 354, Huiyuan met the translator and exegete DAO'AN on Mt. Heng (present-day Hebei province), where he was ordained, and became his student. Huiyuan seems to have primarily studied PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ thought under Dao'an. In 381, Huiyuan headed south for LUSHAN, a mountain widely known as the abode of Daoist perfected and an ideal site for self-cultivation. There, he established the monastery DONGLINSI (Eastern Grove Monastery), which soon became the center of Buddhist activity in the south. Huiyuan is also known to have attracted a large lay following, consisting largely of educated members of the local gentry. He also began corresponding with the eminent monk KUMĀRAJĪVA to clarify certain issues (e.g., the nature of the DHARMAKĀYA) in MAHĀYĀNA doctrine. These correspondences were later edited together as the DASHENG DAYI ZHANG. In 402, together with 123 other monks and laymen, Huiyuan is said to have contemplated on an image of the buddha AMITĀBHA in order to seek rebirth in his pure land of SUKHĀVATĪ. This gathering is known as the beginning of the White Lotus Society (BAILIAN SHE). He should be distinguished from the commentator JINGYING HUIYUAN.
Mahāsthāmaprāpta. (T. Mthu chen thob; C. Dashizhi; J. Daiseishi; K. Taeseji 大勢至). In Sanskrit, "He who has Attained Great Power"; a BODHISATTVA best known as one of the two attendants (along with the far more popular AVALOKITEsVARA) of the buddha AMITĀBHA in his buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) of SUKHĀVATĪ. Mahāsthāmaprāpta is said to represent Amitābha's wisdom, while Avalokitesvara represents his compassion. According to the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING, the light of wisdom emanating from Mahāsthāmaprāpta illuminates all sentient beings, enabling them to leave behind the three unfortunate destinies (APĀYA; DURGATI) and attain unexcelled power; thus, Mahāsthāmaprāpta is considered the bodhisattva of power or strength. There is also a method of contemplation of the bodhisattva, which is the eleventh of the sixteen contemplations described in the Guan jing. An adept who contemplates Mahāsthāmaprāpta comes to reside in the lands of all the buddhas, being relieved from innumerable eons of continued birth-and-death. In the suRAMGAMASuTRA, the bodhisattva advocates the practice of BUDDHĀNUSMṚTI. Mahāsthāmaprāpta also appears in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") as one of the bodhisattvas who assembled on Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) to hear the teachings of the buddha sĀKYAMUNI. Iconographically, the bodhisattva is rarely depicted alone; he almost always appears in a triad together with Amitābha and Avalokitesvara. Mahāsthāmaprāpta can often be recognized by a small jar on his jeweled crown, which is believed to contain pure water to cleanse sentient beings' afflictions (KLEsA). He is also often described as holding a lotus flower in his hand or joining his palms together in ANJALI. Mahāsthāmaprāpta is one of the twenty-five bodhisattvas who protects those who recite Amitābha's name and welcomes them on their deathbed to the Buddha's PURE LAND. Serving as one of the thirteen bodhisattvas of the Japanese SHINGONSHu of esoteric Buddhism, Mahāsthāmaprāpta is believed to preside over the special ceremony marking the first year anniversary of one's death. He is also depicted in the Cloister of the Lotus Division (Rengebu-in) in the TAIZoKAI MAndALA.
"Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation.” Essays on the Gita
“Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means a cessation.” Essays on the Gita
manifesto ::: n. & a. --> A public declaration, usually of a prince, sovereign, or other person claiming large powers, showing his intentions, or proclaiming his opinions and motives in reference to some act done or contemplated by him; as, a manifesto declaring the purpose of a prince to begin war, and explaining his motives.
maranānusmṛti. (P. maranānussati; T. 'chi ba rjes su dran pa; C. niansi; J. nenshi; K. yomsa 念死). In Sanskrit, "recollection of death"; one of the most widely described forms of Buddhist meditation. This practice occurs as one of the forty objects of meditation (KAMMAttHĀNA) for the development of concentration. One of the most detailed descriptions of the practice is found in the VISUDDHIMAGGA of BUDDHAGHOSA. Among six generic personality types (greedy, hateful, ignorant, faithful, intelligent, and speculative), Buddhaghosa states that mindfulness of death is a suitable object for persons of intelligent temperament. Elsewhere, however, Buddhaghosa says that among the two types of objects of concentration, the generically useful objects and specific objects, only two among the forty are generically useful: the cultivation of loving-kindness (P. mettā; S. MAITRĪ) and the recollection of death. In describing the actual practice, Buddhaghosa explains that the meditator who wishes to take death as his object of concentration should go to a remote place and repeatedly think, "Death will take place" or "Death, death." Should that not result in the development of concentration, Buddhaghosa provides eight ways of contemplating death. The first of the eight is contemplation of death as a murderer, where one imagines that death will appear to deprive one of life. Death is certain from the moment of birth; beings move progressively toward their demise without ever turning back, just as the sun never reverses its course through the sky. The second contemplation is to think of death as the ruin of all the accomplishments and fortune acquired in life. The third contemplation is to compare oneself to others who have suffered death, yet who are greater than oneself in fame, merit, strength, supranormal powers (P. iddhi; S. ṚDDHI), or wisdom. Death will come to oneself just as it has come to these beings. The fourth contemplation is that the body is shared with many other creatures. Here one contemplates that the body is inhabited by the eighty families of worms, who may easily cause one's death, as may a variety of accidents. The fifth contemplation is of the tenuous nature of life, that life requires both inhalation and exhalation of breath, requires a balanced alternation of the four postures (ĪRYĀPATHA) of standing, sitting, walking, and lying down. It requires moderation of hot and cold, a balance of the four physical constituents, and nourishment at the proper time. The sixth contemplation is that there is no certainty about death; that is, there is no certainty as to the length of one's life, the type of illness of which one will die, when one will die, nor where, and there is no certainty as to where one will then be reborn. The seventh contemplation is that life is limited in length. In general, human life is short; beyond that, there is no certainty that one will live as long as it takes "to chew and swallow four or five mouthfuls." The final contemplation is of the shortness of the moment, that is, that life is in fact just a series of moments of consciousness. Buddhaghosa also describes the benefits of cultivating mindfulness of death. A monk devoted to the mindfulness of death is diligent and disenchanted with the things of the world. He is neither acquisitive nor avaricious and is increasingly aware of impermanence (S. ANITYA), the first of the three marks of mundane existence. From this develops an awareness of the other two marks, suffering and nonself. He dies without confusion or fear. If he does not attain the deathless state of NIRVĀnA in this lifetime, he will at least be reborn in an auspicious realm. Similar instructions are found in the literatures of many other Buddhist traditions.
meditate ::: v. i. --> To keep the mind in a state of contemplation; to dwell on anything in thought; to think seriously; to muse; to cogitate; to reflect. ::: v. t. --> To contemplate; to keep the mind fixed upon; to study.
To purpose; to intend; to design; to plan by revolving
naiskramya. (P. nekkhamma; T. nges 'byung; C. chuyaozhi/chuli; J. shutsuyoshi/shutsuri; K. ch'uryoji/ch'ulli 出要志/出離). In Sanskrit, "renunciation" (see also NIḤSARAnA; NIRVEDA) especially in the sense of leaving mundane life and embarking on a religious vocation. The Buddha repeatedly exhorts monks to develop renunciation as a means of eliminating attachment to the pleasures of the senses. As such, in the cultivation of the path (MĀRGA), renunciation is associated with right intention (SAMYAKSAMKALPA) and is essential for all three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ) in morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom (PRAJNĀ). In the Pāli tradition, renunciation constitutes the third perfection (P. pāramī; S. PĀRAMITĀ) mastered by the bodhisatta (S. BODHISATTVA) on the path leading to buddhahood. In the MAHĀYĀNA traditions, renunciation is lauded as a prerequisite to developing the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTA), since it is impossible to develop a wish to liberate all beings from SAMSĀRA unless one is dissatisfied with saMsāra oneself. In order to develop renunciation, the adept is advised to contemplate the rarity of human birth (KsAnASAMPAD), the suffering inherent in the realms of saMsāra, the cause and effect of actions (KARMAN), and the inevitability and unpredictability of death.
now ::: adv. --> At the present time; at this moment; at the time of speaking; instantly; as, I will write now.
Very lately; not long ago.
At a time contemporaneous with something spoken of or contemplated; at a particular time referred to.
In present circumstances; things being as they are; -- hence, used as a connective particle, to introduce an inference or an explanation.
onward ::: a. --> Moving in a forward direction; tending toward a contemplated or desirable end; forward; as, an onward course, progress, etc.
Advanced in a forward direction or toward an end. ::: adv. --> Toward a point before or in front; forward;
Porphyry refers to the Magi as the learned men among the Persians who are in the service of the deity (Abst 4:16), while Philo Judaeus describes them as the most wonderful inquirers into the hidden mysteries of nature: holy men who set themselves apart from everything else on this earth, “contemplated the divine virtues and understood the divine nature of the gods and spirits, the more clearly; and so, initiated others into the same mysteries, which consist in one holding an uninterrupted intercourse with these invisible beings during life” (IU 1:94-5). It is likely that the use of the name and the order survived in times when their true dignity was no longer apparent.
PrajNāpāramitāhṛdayasutra. (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i snying po'i mdo; C. Bore boluomiduo xin jing; J. Hannya haramitta shingyo; K. Panya paramilta sim kyong 般若波羅蜜多心經). In English, the "Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra" (or, in other interpretations, the "DHĀRAnĪ-Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom"); a work known in English simply as the "Heart Sutra"; one of only a handful of Buddhist SuTRAs (including the "Lotus Sutra" and the "Diamond Sutra") to be widely known by an English title. The "Heart Sutra" is perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most widely recited, of all Buddhist sutras across all Mahāyāna traditions. It is also one of the most commented upon, eliciting more Indian commentaries than any Mahāyāna sutra (eight), including works by such luminaries as KAMALAsĪLA, VIMALAMITRA, and ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA, as well as such important East Asian figures as FAZANG, KuKAI, and HAKUIN EKAKU. As its title suggests, the scripture purports to be the quintessence or heart (hṛdaya) of the "perfection of wisdom" (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ), in its denotations as both supreme wisdom and the eponymous genre of scriptures. The sutra exists in long and short versions-with the longer version better known in India and the short version better known in East Asia-but even the long version is remarkably brief, requiring only a single page in translation. The short version, which is probably the earlier of the two recensions, is best known through its Chinese translation by XUANZANG made c. 649 CE. There has been speculation that the Chinese version may be a redaction of sections of the Chinese recension of the MAHĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA (also translated by Xuanzang) as a mnemonic encoding (dhāranī) of the massive perfection of wisdom literature, which was then subsequently translated back into Sanskrit, perhaps by Xuanzang himself. Although there is as yet no scholarly consensus on the provenance of the text, if this argument is correct, this would make the "Heart Sutra" by far the most influential of all indigenous Chinese scriptures (see APOCRYPHA). The long version of the text, set on Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) outside RĀJAGṚHA, begins with the Buddha entering SAMĀDHI. At that point, the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA (who rarely appears as an interlocutor in the prajNāpāramitā sutras) contemplates the perfection of wisdom and sees that the five aggregates (SKANDHA) are empty of intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA). The monk sĀRIPUTRA, considered the wisest of the Buddha's sRĀVAKA disciples, is inspired by the Buddha to ask Avalokitesvara how one should train in the perfection of wisdom. Avalokitesvara's answer constitutes the remainder of the sutra (apart from a brief epilogue in the longer version of the text). That answer, which consists essentially of a litany of negations of the major categories of Buddhist thought-including such seminal lists as the five aggregates (skandha), twelve sense-fields (ĀYATANA), twelve links of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), and FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS-contains two celebrated statements. The first, made in reference to the first of the five aggregates, is "form (RuPA) is emptiness (suNYATĀ); emptiness is form" (RuPAM suNYATĀ sUNYATAIVA RuPAM). This is one of the most widely quoted and commented upon statements in the entire corpus of Mahāyāna sutras and thus is not easily amenable to succinct explication. In brief, however, the line suggests that emptiness, as the nature of ultimate reality, is not located in some rarified realm, but rather is found in the ordinary objects of everyday experience. The other celebrated statement is the spell (MANTRA) that concludes Avalokitesvara's discourse-GATE GATE PĀRAGATE PĀRASAMGATE BODHI SVĀHĀ-which, unlike many mantras, is amenable to translation: "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment, svāha." This mantra has also been widely commented upon. The presence of the mantra in the sutra has led to its classification as a TANTRA rather than a sutra in some Tibetan catalogues; it also forms the basis of Indian tantric SĀDHANAs. The brevity of the text has given it a talismanic quality, being recited on all manner of occasions (it is commonly used as an exorcistic text in Tibet) and inscribed on all manner of objects, including fans, teacups, and neckties in modern Japan.
pratītyasamutpāda. (P. paticcasamuppāda; T. rten cing 'brel bar 'byung ba; C. yuanqi; J. engi; K. yon'gi 起). In Sanskrit, "dependent origination," "conditioned origination," lit., "origination by dependence" (of one thing on another); one of the core teachings in the Buddhist doctrinal system, having both ontological, epistemological, and soteriological implications. The notion of the conditionality of all existence is foundational in Buddhism. According to some accounts of the Buddha's life, it constituted the fundamental insight on the night of his enlightenment. In other accounts, in the first seven days and nights following his enlightenment, he sat contemplating the significance of his experience; finally on the seventh night he is said to have contemplated the fully realized chain of dependent origination in both forward and reverse order. In one of the earliest summaries of the Buddha's teachings (which is said to have been enough to bring sĀRIPUTRA to enlightenment), the Buddha is said to have taught: "When this is present, that comes to be. / From the arising of this, that arises. / When this is absent, that does not come to be. / From the cessation of this, that ceases." (P. imasmiM sati idaM hoti/imasuppādā idaM uppajjati/imasmiM asati idaM na hoti/imassa nirodhā idaM nirujjhati). This notion of causality (idaMpratyayatā) is normatively described in a sequence of causation involving twelve interconnected links (NIDĀNA), which are often called the "twelvefold chain" in English sources: (1) ignorance (AVIDYĀ, P. avijjā), (2) predispositions, or volitional actions (S. SAMSKĀRA, P. sankhāra), (3) consciousness (S. VIJNĀNA, P. viNNāna), (4) name and form, or mentality and materiality (NĀMARuPA), (5) the six internal sense-bases (ĀYATANA), (6) sensory contact (S. SPARsA, P. phassa), (7) sensation, or feeling (VEDANĀ), (8) thirst, or attachment (S. TṚsnĀ, P. tanhā), (9) grasping, or clinging (UPĀDĀNA), (10) existence or a process of becoming (BHAVA), (11) birth or rebirth (JĀTI), and (12) old age and death (JARĀMARAnA), this last link accompanied in its full recital by sorrow (soka), lamentation (parideva), pain (DUḤKHA) grief (daurmanasya), and despair (upāyāsa). Some formulations of the chain, as in the MAHĀPADĀNASUTTANTA, include only ten links (skipping the first two), suggesting that the standard list of twelve links developed over time. (The commentary to the Mahāpadānasuttanta explains away this inconsistency by noting that the ten-linked chain does not take past lives into account but applies only to the current life.) Each link in this chain of causality is said to be the condition for the following link, thus: "dependent on ignorance, predispositions (S. avidyāpratyayāḥ saMskārāḥ; P. avijjāpaccayā sankhārā), ... dependent on birth, old age and death (S. jātipratyayāM jarāmaranaM; P. jātipaccayā jarāmaranaM)." This chain of dependent origination stands as the middle way (MADHYAMAPRATIPAD) between the two "extreme views" (ANTAGRĀHADṚstI) of eternalism (sĀsVATADṚstI)-viz., the view that there is a perduring soul that continues to be reborn unchanged from one lifetime to the next-and annihilationism (UCCHEDADṚstI)-the view that the person ceases to exist at death and is not reborn-because it validates the imputed continuity (SAMTĀNA) of the personality, without injecting any sense of a permanent substratum of existence into the process. Thus, when the Buddha is asked, "Who is it who senses?," he rejects the question as wrongly framed and rephrases it as, "With what as condition does sensation (vedanā) occur? By contact (sparsa)." Or when asked, "Who is it who is reborn?," he would rephrase the question as "With what as condition does birth (jāti) occur? By becoming (bhava)." Accurate understanding of dependent origination thus serves as an antidote (PRATIPAKsA) to the affliction of delusion (MOHA) and contemplating the links in this chain helps to overcome ignorance (AVIDYĀ). ¶ The twelvefold chain of dependent origination is generally conceived to unfold in what are referred to as the "forward" and "reverse" orders, although in fact both versions proceed through the chain in the same sequence. First, as a progressive process of ontological becoming (bhavānulomaparīksā), the forward version of the chain describes the process by which ignorance ultimately leads to birth and death and thus the full panoply of existence in the turning wheel of SAMSĀRA; in forward order, the chain is therefore an elaboration of the second noble truth, the truth of the origin of suffering (SAMUDAYASATYA). Second, the reverse order of the chain describes a negative process of soteriological eradication (ksayavyayānulomaparīksā), where the cessation of ignorance serves as the condition for the cessation of predispositions, and so on through the entire chain until even old age and death are eradicated and the adept is released from continued rebirth in saMsāra; in reverse order, the chain is therefore an elaboration of the third noble truth, the truth of the cessation of suffering (NIRODHASATYA). As a chain of ontological becoming, some traditional commentators organize the twelve links as occurring during the course of a single lifetime. Other commentators instead divide the twelve links over three lifetimes to illustrate explicitly the process of rebirth: ignorance and predispositions are assigned to a previous lifetime; consciousness, name and form, sense-fields, contact, sensation, thirst, grasping, and becoming are assigned to the current lifetime; and this leads to future birth, and eventual old age and death, in the immediately following lifetime. According to this interpretation, ignorance does not refer to a primordial ignorance, but rather to a specific moment of unsystematic reflection on things (AYONIsOMANASKĀRA) that prompts a volitional action (saMskāra). The predispositions created by that action imprint themselves on consciousness, which refers here to the "linking consciousness" (pratisaMdhivijNāna) that links the past and present lives, a consciousness that is reborn, developing into a body with internal sense organs and a mind with sensory consciousnesses, which come into contact with external sensory objects, giving rise to sensations that are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Sensations of pleasure, for example, can give rise to attachment to those sensations and then clinging, an intensification of that attachment. Such clinging at the end of life sustains the process of becoming, which leads to rebirth in the next existence, where one once again undergoes aging and death. This sequence of dependent conditions has repeated itself since time immemorial and will continue on indefinitely until liberation from rebirth is achieved. To illustrate the role of pratītyasamutpāda in the cycle of rebirth, its twelve links are sometimes depicted around the perimeter of the "wheel of life" (BHAVACAKRA). ¶ In the Upanisāsutta of the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA, the standard twelvefold chain of dependent origination is connected to an alternate chain that is designated the "supramundane dependent origination" (P. lokuttara-paticcasamuppāda; S. lokottara-pratītyasamutpāda), which explicitly outlines the process leading to liberation. Here, the last factor in the standard chain, that of old age and death (jarāmarana), is substituted with suffering, which in turn becomes the first factor in this alternate series. According to the Nettipakarana, a Pāli exegetical treatise, this chain of supramundane dependent origination consists of (1) suffering (P. dukkha; S. duḥkha), (2) faith (P. saddhā; S. sRADDHĀ), (3) delight or satisfaction (P. pāmojja; S. prāmodya), (4) rapture or joy (P. pīti; S. PRĪTI), (5) tranquillity or repose (P. passaddhi; S. PRAsRABDHI), (6) mental ease or bliss (SUKHA), (7) concentration (SAMĀDHI), (8) knowledge and vision that accords with reality (P. yathābhutaNānadassana; S. YATHĀBHuTAJNĀNADARsANA), (9) disillusionment (P. nibbidā; S. NIRVEDA), (10) dispassion (P. virāga; S. VAIRĀGYA), (11) liberation (P. vimutti; S. VIMUKTI), and (12) knowledge of the destruction of the contaminants (P. āsavakkhayaNāna; S. āsravaksayajNāna; see ĀSRAVAKsAYA). The Kimatthiyasutta of the AnGUTTARANIKĀYA gives a slightly different version of the first links, replacing suffering and faith with (1) observance of precepts (P. kusalasīla; S. kusalasīla) and (2) freedom from remorse (P. avippatisāra; S. avipratisāra). ¶ Another denotation of pratītyasamutpāda is a more general one, the notion that everything comes into existence in dependence on something else, with such dependence including the dependence of an effect upon its cause, the dependence of a whole upon its parts, and the dependence of an object on the consciousness that designates it. This second meaning is especially associated with the MADHYAMAKA school of NĀGĀRJUNA, which sees a necessary relation between dependent origination and emptiness (suNYATĀ), arguing that because everything is dependently arisen, everything is empty of independence and intrinsic existence (SVABHĀVA). Dependent origination is thus central to Nāgārjuna's conception of the middle way: because everything is dependent, nothing is independent, thus avoiding the extreme of existence, but because everything is originated, nothing is utterly nonexistent, thus avoiding the extreme of nonexistence. In East Asia, and specifically the HUAYAN ZONG, this second interpretation of dependent origination is also recast as the unimpeded (wu'ai) "dependent origination of the DHARMADHĀTU" (FAJIE YUANQI), in which all things throughout the entire universe are conceived as being enmeshed in a multivalent web of interconnection and interdependency.
present ::: a. --> Being at hand, within reach or call, within certain contemplated limits; -- opposed to absent.
Now existing, or in process; begun but not ended; now in view, or under consideration; being at this time; not past or future; as, the present session of Congress; the present state of affairs; the present instance.
Not delayed; immediate; instant; coincident.
Ready; quick in emergency; as a present wit.
sāmantaka. (T. nyer bsdogs; C. jinfen; J. gonbun; K. kŭnbun 近分). In Sanskrit, "preparation," "neighboring state"; according to the YOGĀCĀRABHuMI and the ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, each of the four concentrations (DHYĀNA) and attainments (SAMĀPATTI) has two parts: maula (fundamental state) and sāmantaka (a neighboring part that is preparatory to that fundamental state). The fundamental state is sAMATHA (serenity, calmness) and the sāmantaka (preparation) is included under the heading of VIPAsYANĀ (insight). Six or seven types of attentions (MANASKĀRA) are listed as preparations for the attainment of the first dhyāna. These include attention that contemplates marks (laksanapratisaMvedīmanaskāra), arises from belief (ādhimoksikamanaskāra), arises from separation (prāvivekyamanaskāra), contemplates joy and withdrawal (ratisaMgrāhakamanaskāra), investigates (mīmāMsakamanaskāra), is a final practice (prayoganistamanaskāra), and leads to the result of the final practice (prayoganistaphalamanaskāra). There are nine impediments (heya) between the fundamental stages of the first and second concentrations (dhyāna), for example. Attention is then paid to the marks of the lower as coarse (audārika) and the higher as delightful (sānta). The first attention identifies the impediments and focuses the mind on removing them; the second brings vigor or energy (VĪRYA); the third, fourth, and six actually counteract the three sets of three impediments; the fifth investigates to see whether the impediments have actually been eliminated. The seventh is the fundamental state. See also UPACĀRASAMĀDHI.
sanguan. (J. sangan; K. samgwan 三觀). In Chinese, "threefold contemplation"; several versions of such a threefold contemplation are elaborated in Chinese exegetical traditions, of which the most influential was the TIANTAI version outlined by TIANTAI ZHIYI in his MOHE ZHIGUAN. Zhiyi's version entails a system of contemplative practice that leads to the attainment of insight into the nature of reality. Zhiyi's "threefold contemplation" consists of the contemplations of the "three truths: (SANDI): emptiness, conventional existence, and their mean (C. kong jia zhong sanguan; J. ku ge chu sangan; K. kong ka chung samgwan). The first, "contemplation on emptiness" (kongguan), is the step of practice that advances beyond naïve realism by penetrating into the conditionally constructed, and therefore insubstantial, nature of all phenomena (see suNYATĀ). The second, the "contemplation on conventionality" (jiaguan), involves the reaffirmation of the conventional existence of all phenomena, whereby a bodhisattva actively engages the world in spite of his awareness of the reality of emptiness. The third, the "contemplation of their mean" (zhongguan), is understood as a dialectical transcendence of the previous two modes of practice. This transcendence has two aspects: it is transcendent because it is neither ("the middle that negates both," C. shuangfei zhi zhong) and because it affirms both ("the middle that illuminates both," C. shuangzhao zhi zhong). It is "neither" because the middle way is not fixed exclusively on either abiding in emptiness or on wallowing in mundane existence. It is "both" because it elucidates that "emptiness" and "conventionality" are not opposing realities but are in fact mutually validating. "The threefold contemplation" is understood variously as a gradual or a simultaneous practice ("two kinds of 'threefold contemplation,'" C. erzhong sanguan; J. nishu no sangan; K. ijong samgwan). The gradual practice of the "threefold contemplation" begins with the contemplation of emptiness, advances to that of conventional existence, and culminates in the contemplation of their mean. Tiantai exegetes variously labeled this approach "the threefold contemplation" by either "graduated stages" (C. cidi sanguan; J. shidai sangan; K. ch'aje samgwan) or "differentiation" (C. biexiang sanguan; J. besso no sangan; K. pyolsang samgwan). As a simultaneous practice, all three aspects of the reality are to be contemplated simultaneously within any given instant of thought: a true understanding of "emptiness" is the same as the correct understanding of "conventional existence," for they are just different emphases of the same truth of conditionality; only an erroneous construction of "emptiness" and "conventional existence" would lead to the conclusion that they are separate, contradictory realities. This approach is variously referred to as "the threefold contemplation that does not involve graduated stages" (C. bucidi sanguan; J. fushidai sangan; K. pulch'aje samgwan), "the perfectly interfused threefold contemplation" (C. yuanrong sanguan; J. ennyu no sangan; K. wonyung samgwan), or "the threefold contemplation [that is to be conducted within] a single moment of thought" (C. yixin sanguan; J. isshin sangan; K. ilsim samgwan). See also SANZHI.
sankhārupekkhāNāna. In Pāli, "knowledge arising from equanimity regarding all formations"; according to the VISUDDHIMAGGA, the eighth of nine knowledges (P. Nāna, S. JNĀNA) cultivated as part of "purity of knowledge and vision of progress along the path" (PAtIPADĀNĀnADASSANAVISUDDHI). This latter category, in turn, constitutes the sixth and penultimate purity (P. visuddhi, S. VIsUDDHI) to be developed along the path to liberation. Knowledge arising from equanimity regarding all formations arises as a consequence of understanding all conditioned formations (S. SAMSKĀRA) that comprise the individual and the universe as being characterized by the three marks (S. TRILAKsAnA) of impermanence (S. ANITYA), suffering (S. DUḤKHA) and nonself (S. ANĀTMAN). This understanding is the product of the immediately preceding (seventh) knowledge called "knowledge arising from contemplation of reflection" (PAtISAnKHĀNUPASSANĀNĀnA). Understanding the formations to be void (see suNYATĀ) in this way, the practitioner abandons both terror and delight, and, regarding them as neither "I" nor "mine," he becomes indifferent and neutral towards them. The sixth, seventh, and eighth knowledges when taken together are called "insight leading to emergence" (vutthānagāmini vipassanā) because they stand at the threshold of liberation. The Visuddhimagga states that, at this stage in the practice, one can continue to contemplate the formations with equanimity, or, if the mind turns towards the nibbāna element (S. NIRVĀnADHĀTU) as its object, one of three types of liberation (S. VIMUKTI) ensues. If liberation occurs while contemplating impermanence, it is called "signless liberation," if it occurs while contemplating suffering it is called "wishless liberation," and if it occurs while contemplating nonself it is called "empty liberation" (see VIMOKsAMUKHA).
Self-consciousness Awareness of oneself as the experiencer, attribution of one’s experiences to an ego, consciousness of being a separate individual; whereas consciousness in the abstract is merely awareness of the experience. Animals and very young children are conscious, man is self-conscious; yet the adult, when engrossed in an experience, may lose his self-consciousness for a while. But even man is only partially self-conscious, because he can contemplate only part of his being; that in him which is now the contemplator may become part of what is contemplated. As the subject, the knower, shifts upwards and inwards, so to speak, more and more of the vestures pass into the category of objects or what is known. The Unknown manifests the universe in order to attain full self-consciousness; and in man, the microcosm, an unself-conscious spark of divinity passes through stages of evolution and experience in order to achieve relatively full self-consciousness. The potentiality of self-consciousness, however, is in every atom. In order to become self-conscious, spirit must pass through every cycle of cosmic being, until every ego has attained full self-consciousness as a human being or equivalent entity. Man’s self-consciousness depends on his triple nature; it is man who is the separator of the One into various contrasted aspects.
shade ::: n. --> Comparative obscurity owing to interception or interruption of the rays of light; partial darkness caused by the intervention of something between the space contemplated and the source of light.
Darkness; obscurity; -- often in the plural.
An obscure place; a spot not exposed to light; hence, a secluded retreat.
That which intercepts, or shelters from, light or the direct rays of the sun; hence, also, that which protects from heat or currents
smasāna. (P. susāna; T. dur khrod; C. shilin/hanlin; J. shirin/kanrin; K. sirim/hallim 屍林/寒林). In Sanskrit, "charnel ground," "cemetery"; funerary sites in ancient India where corpses were left to decompose. The charnel ground was recommended as a site for monks to practice meditation in order to overcome attachment to the body. In the MAHĀSATIPAttHĀNASUTTA, the Buddha recommends nine "charnel ground contemplations" (sīvathikā manasikāra). There is a set of "contemplations on the foul" (AsUBHABHĀVANĀ) described in mainstream Buddhist literature that were to take place in the charnel grounds, where the monks would sit next to the dead and contemplate the nine or ten specific stages in the decomposition of a corpse; this meditation was a powerful antidote to the affliction of lust (RĀGA). The traditional list of thirteen authorized ascetic practices (S. dhutaguna; P. DHUTAnGA) also includes dwelling in a charnel ground (no. 11) and wearing only discarded cloth (no. 1), which typically meant to use funerary cloth taken from rotting corpses to make monastic raiments (CĪVARA), thus weaning the monk or nun from attachment to material possessions. The ideal charnel ground is described as a place where corpses are cremated daily, where there is the constant smell of decomposing corpses, and where the weeping of the families of the dead can be heard. The practice of meditation there is said to result in an awareness of the inevitability of death, the abandonment of lust, and the overcoming of attachment to the body. In India, the charnel ground was a frightful place not only because of the presence of corpses but also for the creatures, including wild animals and various demons, that frequented it at night. Thus, in tantric Buddhism, the charnel ground was considered to be inhabited by wrathful deities, dĀKINĪs, and MAHĀSIDDHAs, making it a potent place for the performance of ritual and meditation. Mahāsiddhas are sometimes depicted in charnel grounds, sitting on corpses and drinking from skull cups. ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA texts also refer to a set of "eight great charnel grounds" (S. AstAMAHĀsMAsĀNA), which are also frequently depicted in tantric Buddhist art. While the eight sites are often equated with actual geographic locations in India, they also carry a deeper symbolism, referring to regions of tantric sacred geography, points on a MAndALA or a deity's body, and elements of tantric physiology such as the channels (NĀdĪ) in the subtle body of a meditating YOGIN. Their origin myth describes the defeat of the demon Rudra, after which the charnel grounds arose in the eight cardinal and intermediate directions, each from a piece of his dismembered body. They are described as wild and terrifying places, littered with human corpses and wild animals, each with their own trees, protectors, STuPAs, NĀGAs, jewels, fires, clouds, mountains, and lakes. They are inhabited by a host of spirits and nonhuman beings, as well as meditating yogins and YOGINĪs. In general, charnel grounds and similar frightening locations are said to be efficacious for the practice of tantric meditation. The astamahāsmasāna are also usually depicted as forming part of the outer protection wheel in mandalas of anuttarayogatantra. There are varying lists of the eight great charnel grounds, one of which is: candogrā (most fierce), gahvara (dense thicket), vajrajvala (blazing vajra), endowed with skeletons (karankin), cool grove (sītavana), black darkness (ghorāndhakāra), resonant with "kilikili" (kilikilārava), and cries of "ha ha" (attahāsa); Tibetan sources give the names of the eight great charnel grounds as gtum drag (candogra), tshang tshing 'khrigs pa (gahvara), rdo rje bar ba (vajrajvala), keng rus can (karankin), bsil bu tshal (sītavana), mun pa nag po (ghorāndhakāra) ki li ki lir sgra sgrog pa (kilikilārava), and ha ha rgod pa (attahāsa).
smṛtyupasthāna. (P. satipatthāna; T. dran pa nyer bzhag; C. nianchu; J. nenjo; K. yomch'o 念處). In Sanskrit, "foundations of mindfulness," a meditative training in which one contemplates with mindfulness (SMṚTI): one's (1) body (KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ; P. kāyānupassanā), by mean of mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of postures, full awareness of bodily actions, contemplation of bodily impurities, contemplation of elements, and nine cemetery meditations; (2) sensations (vedanānupasyanā; P. vedanānupassanā), viz., pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations (VEDANĀ); (3) mental states (cittānupasyanā; P. cittānupassanā), such as whether the mind (CITTA) generally is elated or depressed, distracted or concentrated; and (4) factors (dharmānupasyanā; P. dhammānupassanā), such as the five hindrances (NĪVARAnA), the five aggregates (SKANDHA), the seven factors of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA); the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, etc. The explanation of smṛtyupasthāna, as the first of the thirty-seven dharmas associated with enlightenment (bodhyanga) details the role of mindfulness in the eightfold noble path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA). See also SMṚTI; SATIPAttHĀNASUTTA.
socialism ::: n. --> A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a complete reconstruction of society, with a more just and equitable distribution of property and labor. In popular usage, the term is often employed to indicate any lawless, revolutionary social scheme. See Communism, Fourierism, Saint-Simonianism, forms of socialism.
speculate ::: v. i. --> To consider by turning a subject in the mind, and viewing it in its different aspects and relations; to meditate; to contemplate; to theorize; as, to speculate on questions in religion; to speculate on political events.
To view subjects from certain premises given or assumed, and infer conclusions respecting them a priori.
To purchase with the expectation of a contingent advance in value, and a consequent sale at a profit; -- often, in a
tafakkarun ::: those who contemplate
The existence of such powers should be recognized and we should hope some day to be able to avail ourselves properly of them, but a prime requisite in discipleship is equal and harmonious development. We may attain psychic powers by observing the conditions under which they may safely and profitably be allowed to develop. The presence of vanity, ambition, self-assertion, egoism, and similar qualities prove a bar, and the aspirant who is sincerely desirous of eliminating these defects will not willingly adopt a course likely to enhance them. There is no hard-and-fast division of powers into psychic, physical, mental, etc.: we may contemplate the gradual development of our mental faculties without defining a point where we have stepped out of the ordinary into the occult; and our perceptions may become refined by gradual stages without any sudden jump from one plane to another.
Theory: (Gr. theoria, viewing) The hypothetical universal aspect of anything. For Plato, a contemplated truth. For Aristotle, pure knowledge as opposed to the practical. An abstraction from practice. The principle from which practice proceeds. Opposite of practice. -- J.K.F. Hypothesis. More loosely: supposition, whatever is problematic, verifiable but not verified. (As opposed to practice) systematically organized knowledge of relatively high generality. (See "the theory of light"). (As opposed to laws and observations): explanation. The deduction of the axioms and theorems of one system from assertions (not necessarily verified) from another system and of a relatively less problematic and more intelligible nature. (Note: Since criteria of what is 'intelligible' and 'problematic' are subjective and liable to fluctuation, any definition of the term is bound to be provisional. It might be advisable to distinguish between laws (general statements in a system), principles (axioms), and theories (methods for deriving the axioms by means of appropriate definitions employing terms from other systems). -- M.B.
The Platonic philosophy of art and aesthetics stresses, as might be expected, the value of the reasonable imitation of Ideal realities rather than the photographic imitation of sense things and individual experiences. All beautiful things participate in the Idea of beauty (Symposium and Phaedrus). The artist is frequently described as a man carried away by his inspiration, akin to the fool; yet art requires reason and the artist must learn to contemplate the world of Ideas. Fine art is not radically distinguished from useful art. In both the Republic and the Laws, art is subordinated to the good of the state, and those forms of art which are effeminate, asocial, inimical to the morale of the citizens, are sternly excluded from the ideal state.
These desires and drives, however, tend to stray beyond their proper provinces and to become intermingled and confused in attempts to identify truth, goodness, and beauty, to turn justifications into explanations, to regard subsistent ideals as concretely existent facts, and to distort facts into accordance with desired ideals. It is the business of reason and philosophy to clear up this confusion by distinguishing human drives and interests from one another, indicating to each its proper province and value, and confining each to the field in which it is valid and in which its appropriate satisfaction may be found. By so doing, they dispel the suspicion and antagonism, with which the scientist, the moralist, the artist, and the theologian are wont to view one another, and enable a mind at harmony with itself to contemplate a world in which subsistent and the existent form a harmonious whole. --
Tiantai zong. (J. Tendaishu; K. Ch'ont'ae chong 天台宗). In Chinese, "Terrace of Heaven School"; one of the main schools of East Asian Buddhism; also sometimes called the "Lotus school" (C. Lianhua zong), because of its emphasis on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). "Terrace of Heaven" is a toponym for the school's headquarters on Mt. Tiantai in present-day Zhejiang province on China's eastern seaboard. Although the school retrospectively traces its origins back to Huiwen (fl. 550-577) and NANYUE HUISI (515-577), whom the school honors as its first and second patriarchs, respectively, the de facto founder was TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597), who created the comprehensive system of Buddhist teachings and practices that we now call Tiantai. Zhiyi advocated the three truths or judgments (SANDI): (1) the truth of emptiness (kongdi), viz., all things are devoid of inherent existence and are empty in their essential nature; (2) the truth of being provisionally real (jiadi), viz., all things are products of a causal process that gives them a derived reality; and (3) the truth of the mean (zhongdi), viz., all things, in their absolute reality, are neither real nor unreal, but simply thus. Zhiyi described reality in terms of YINIAN SANQIAN (a single thought contains the TRICHILIOCOSM [TRISĀHASRAMAHĀSĀHASRALOKADHĀTU]), which posits that any given thought-moment perfectly encompasses the entirety of reality; at the same time, every phenomenon includes all other phenomena (XINGJU SHUO), viz., both the good and evil aspects of the ten constituents (DHĀTU) or the five sense organs (INDRIYA) and their respective objects and the three realms of existence (TRAIDHĀTUKA) are all contained in the original nature of all sentient beings. Based on this perspective on reality, Zhiyi made unique claims about the buddha-nature (FOXING) and contemplation (GUAN): he argued that not only buddhas but even sentient beings in such baleful existences as animals, hungry ghosts, and hell denizens, possess the capacity to achieve buddhahood; by the same token, buddhas also inherently possess all aspects of the unenlightened three realms of existence. The objects of contemplation, therefore, should be the myriad of phenomena, which are the source of defilement, not an underlying pure mind. Zhiyi's grand synthesis of Buddhist thought and practice is built around a graduated system of calmness and insight (jianzi ZHIGUAN; cf. sAMATHA and VIPAsYANĀ), which organized the plethora of Buddhist meditative techniques into a broad, overarching soteriological system. To Zhiyi is also attributed the Tiantai system of doctrinal classification (panjiao; see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) called WUSHI BAJIAO (five periods and eight teachings), which the Koryo Korean monk CH'EGWAN (d. 970) later elaborated in its definitive form in his CH'oNT'AE SAGYO ŬI (C. Tiantai sijiao yi). This system classifies all Buddhist teachings according to the five chronological periods, four types of content, and four modes of conversion. Zhiyi was succeeded by Guanding (561-632), who compiled his teacher's works, especially his three masterpieces, the FAHUA XUANYI, the FAHUA WENJU, and the MOHE ZHIGUAN. The Tiantai school declined during the Tang dynasty, overshadowed by the newer HUAYAN and CHAN schools. The ninth patriarch JINGXI ZHANRAN (711-782) was instrumental in rejuvenating the school; he asserted the superiority of the Tiantai school over the rival Huayan school by adapting Huayan concepts and terminologies into the tradition. Koryo monks such as Ch'egwan and Ŭit'ong (927-988) played major roles in the restoration of the school by helping to repatriate lost Tiantai texts back to China. During the Northern Song period, Wu'en (912-988), Yuanqing (d. 997), Zhiyuan (976-1022), and their disciples, who were later pejoratively called the SHANWAI (Off-Mountain) faction by their opponents, led the resurgence of the tradition by incorporating Huayan concepts in the school's thought and practice: they argued that since the true mind, which is pure in its essence, produces all phenomena in accord with conditions, practitioners should contemplate the true mind, rather than all phenomena. Believing this idea to be a threat to the tradition, SIMING ZHILI (960-1028) and his disciples, who called themselves SHANJIA (On-Mountain), criticized such a concept of pure mind as involving a principle of separateness, since it includes only the pure and excludes the impure, and led a campaign to expunge the Huayan elements that they felt were displacing authentic Tiantai doctrine. Although Renyue (992-1064) and Congyi (1042-1091), who were later branded as the "Later Off-Mountain Faction," criticized Zhili and accepted some of the Shanwai arguments, the Shanjia faction eventually prevailed and legitimized Zhili's positions. The orthodoxy of Zhili's position is demonstrated in the FOZU TONGJI ("Comprehensive History of the Buddhas and Patriarchs"), where the compiler Zhipan (1220-1275), himself a Tiantai monk, lists Zhili as the last patriarch in the dharma transmission going back to the Buddha. Tiantai theories and practices were extremely influential in the development of the thought and practice of the Chan and PURE LAND schools; this influence is especially noticeable in the white-lotus retreat societies (JIESHE; see also BAILIAN SHE) organized during the Song dynasty by such Tiantai monks as Zhili and Zunshi (964-1032) and in Koryo Korea (see infra). After the Song dynasty, the school declined again, and never recovered its previous popularity. ¶ Tiantai teachings and practices were transmitted to Korea during the Three Kingdoms period through such Korean monks as Hyon'gwang (fl. sixth century) and Yon'gwang (fl. sixth century), both of whom traveled to China and studied under Chinese Tiantai teachers. It was not until several centuries later, however, that a Korean analogue of the Chinese Tiantai school was established as an independent Buddhist school. The foundation of the Korean CH'oNT'AE CHONG is traditionally assumed to have occurred in 1097 through the efforts of the Koryo monk ŬICH'oN (1055-1101). Ŭich'on was originally a Hwaom monk, but he sought to use the Ch'ont'ae tradition in order to reconcile the age-old tension in Korean Buddhism between KYO (Doctrine) and SoN (Meditation). In the early thirteenth century, the Ch'ont'ae monk WoNMYO YOSE (1163-1245) organized the white lotus society (PAENGNYoN KYoLSA), which gained great popularity especially among the common people; following Yose, the school was led by Ch'on'in (1205-1248) and CH'oNCH'AEK (b. 1206). Although the Ch'ont'ae monk Chogu (d. 1395) was appointed as a state preceptor (K. kuksa; C. GUOSHI) in the early Choson period, the Ch'ont'ae school declined and eventually died out later in the Choson dynasty. The contemporary Ch'ont'ae chong is a modern Korean order established in 1966 that has no direct relationship to the school founded by Ŭich'on. ¶ In Japan, SAICHo (767-822) is credited with founding the Japanese TENDAISHu, which blends Tiantai and tantric Buddhist elements. After Saicho, such Tendai monks as ENNIN (793-864), ENCHIN (814-891), and ANNEN (b. 841) systematized Tendai doctrines and developed its unique forms, which are often called TAIMITSU (Tendai esoteric teachings). Since the early ninth century, when the court granted the Tendai school official recognition as an independent sect, Tendai became one of the major Buddhist schools in Japan and enjoyed royal and aristocratic patronage for several centuries. The Tendai school's headquarters on HIEIZAN became an important Japanese center of Buddhist learning: the founders of the so-called new Buddhist schools of the Kamakura era, such as HoNEN (1133-1212), SHINRAN (1173-1263), NICHIREN (1222-1282), and DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253), all first studied on Mt. Hiei as Tendai monks. Although the Tendai school has lost popularity and patrons to the ZENSHu, PURE LAND, and NICHIRENSHu schools, it remains still today an active force on the Japanese Buddhist landscape.
vimoksamukha. (P. vimokkhamukha; T. rnam par thar pa'i sgo; C. jietuo men; J. gedatsumon; K. haet'al mun 解門). In Sanskrit, "gates to deliverance," or "doors of liberation"; three points of transition between the compounded (SAMSKṚTA) and uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA) realms, which, when contemplated, lead to liberation (VIMOKsA) and NIRVĀnA: (1) emptiness (sUNYATĀ), (2) signlessness (ĀNIMITTA), and (3) wishlessness (APRAnIHITA). The three are widely interpreted. In mainstream Buddhist materials, emptiness (sunyatā) entails the recognition that all compounded (SAMSKṚTA) things of this world are devoid of any perduring self (ĀTMAN) and are thus unworthy objects of clinging. By acknowledging emptiness, the meditator is thus able to turn away from this world and instead advert toward nirvāna, which is uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA). Signlessness (ānimitta) is a crucial stage in the process of sensory restraint (INDRIYASAMVARA): as the frequent refrain in the SuTRAs states, "In the seen, there is only the seen," and not the superimpositions created by the intrusion of ego (ĀTMAN) into the perceptual process. Signlessness is produced through insight into impermanence (ANITYA) and serves as the counteragent (PRATIPAKsA) to attachments to anything experienced through the senses; once the meditator has abandoned all such attachments to the senses, he is then able to advert toward nirvāna, which ipso facto has no sensory signs of its own by which it can be recognized. Wishlessness is produced through insight into suffering (DUḤKHA) and serves as the counteragent (PRATIPAKsA) to all the intentions (āsaya) and aspirations (PRAnIDHĀNA) one has toward any compounded dharma. As the Buddha's famous simile of the raft also suggests, the adept must finally abandon even the attachment to the compounded religious system that is Buddhism in order to experience nirvāna, the summum bonum of the religion. Once the meditator has abandoned all such aspirations, he will then be able to advert toward nirvāna, which ipso facto has nothing to do with anything that can be desired (VAIRĀGYA). ¶ In the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, the three are explained in terms of three types of concentration (SAMĀDHI) on the sixteen aspects of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. The four aspects of the first truth, of suffering (DUḤKHASATYA), are impermanence, misery, emptiness, and selflessness. The four aspects of the second truth, origination (SAMUDAYASATYA), are cause, origination, strong production, and condition. The four aspects of the third truth, cessation (NIRODHASATYA), are cessation, pacification, exaltedness, and emergence. The four aspects of the fourth truth, path (MĀRGASATYA), are path, suitability, achievement, and deliverance. According to the Abhidharmakosabhāsya, the samādhi associated with signlessness observes the four aspects of cessation; the samādhi of emptiness observes emptiness and selflessness, two of the four aspects of suffering; and the samādhi of wishlessness observes the remaining ten aspects. ¶ In YOGĀCĀRA texts, such as the MAHĀYĀNASAMGRAHA, emptiness, wishlessness, and signlessness are related to the three natures (TRISVABHĀVA) of the imaginary (PARIKALPITA), the dependent (PARATANTRA), and the consummate (PARINIsPANNA), respectively. In the MAHĀYĀNASuTRĀLAMKĀRA, it is said that the samādhi of emptiness understands the selflessness of persons and phenomenal factors (DHARMA), the samādhi of wishlessness views the five aggregates (SKANDHA) as faulty, and the samādhi of signlessness views nirvāna as the pacification of the aggregates. Elsewhere in that text, the three are connected to the four seals (CATURMUDRĀ) that certify a doctrine as Buddhist. The statements "all compounded factors are impermanent" and "all contaminated things are suffering" are the cause of the samādhi of wishlessness. "All phenomena are devoid of a perduring self" is the cause of the samādhi of emptiness. "Nirvāna is peace" is the cause of the sāmadhi of signlessness. According to another interpretation, emptiness refers to the lack of a truly existent entity in phenomena, signlessness refers to the lack of a truly existent cause, and wishlessness refers to the lack of a truly existent effect.
when the Creator contemplated destroying the
KEYS (10k)
2 Vemana
2 Buddhist Texts
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Saint Thomas Aquinas
1 we too often get stuck in the closed mode. Under the pressures which are all too familiar to us
1 Upanishad
1 The Sutra of the Elder Sumagadha
1 S T Coleridge
1 Socrates
1 Seneca
1 Samael Aun Weor
1 Saint Juliana of Norwich
1 Saint Gregory of Nyssa
1 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
1 Saint Angela Merici
1 Saint Ambrose of Milan
1 Sadi
1 Pope St. Leo the Great
1 Plato: Republic
1 Mooji
1 John F. Kennedy
1 Hermes 1. "The Character"
1 Hermes
1 Gregory the Great
1 G K Chesterton
1 Giordano Bruno
1 Fo-sho-hing-tsan-kiag
1 Dion Fortune
1 Cicero
1 Buddhist Mediations from the Japanese
1 Bhagavad Gita. II. 63
1 Basil the Great
1 Attar of Nishapur
1 Ibn Arabi
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
12 Henry David Thoreau
12 Anonymous
10 Mahatma Gandhi
9 Victor Hugo
9 Percy Bysshe Shelley
9 Paulo Coelho
9 Bertrand Russell
8 Wayne Dyer
8 Thomas Jefferson
8 Saint Thomas Aquinas
8 John Calvin
7 David Hume
7 Albert Einstein
6 Rachel Carson
6 Charles Dickens
5 Yann Martel
5 Wayne W Dyer
5 Thomas Paine
5 Rebecca Donovan
5 Mark Twain
1:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ G K Chesterton, #KEYS
2:What you contemplate, you touch. What you enter into in imagination, you make yourself one with.
~ Dion Fortune,#KEYS
3:He shall contemplate under the veil millions of secrets as radiant as the sun. ~ Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
4:The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too.
~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, [T5],#KEYS
5:Purify thyself and thou shalt see God. Transform thy body into a temple, cast from thee evil thoughts and contemplate God with the eye of thy conscious soul. ~ Vemana, #KEYS
6:Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
7:Such is the science of the Intelligence, to contemplate things divine and comprehend God. ~ Hermes 1. "The Character", the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
8:If we continuously contemplate the Self, all distraction would vanish; the pure Consciousness that remains is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
9:Contemplate the mirror of thy heart and thou shalt taste little by little a pure joy and unmixed peace. ~ Sadi, "Bostan", the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
10:If we would continuously contemplate the Self, the pure Consciousness that alone remains is God. This is Liberation.. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
11:The easiest means of concentrating the mind is to contemplate the flame of a candle; its inmost blue zone is the causal body. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
12:In each atom thou shalt see the All, thou shalt contemplate millions of secrets asluminous as the sun. ~ Attar of Nishapur, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
13:Those, on the contrary, who contemplate the immutable essence of things, have knowledge and not opinions. ~ Plato: Republic, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
14:Contemplate that all things are impermanent and that nothing belongs to you... Understand that all things that come together must also come apart. ~ The Sutra of the Elder Sumagadha, #KEYS
15:When we contemplate the sufferings of Jesus He grants us, according to the measure of our faith, the grace to practice the virtues He revealed during those sacred hours." ~ Saint Angela Merici, #KEYS
16:Purify thyself and thou shalt see God. Transform thy body into a temple, cast from thee evil thoughts and contemplate God with the eye of thy conscious soul. ~ Vemana, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
17:That is why the incorporeal eye** should be raised to contemplate not the figure, not the body, not the appearance, but that which is calm, tran quil, solid, immutable. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
18:To become an Initiate, one has to endure a "magical ritual", in which, the soul is momentarily liberated... and can contemplate, on one side, ones physical-animal life, and on the other side, ones spiritual life... ~ Samael Aun Weor, #KEYS
19:The soul will enjoy veritable felicity when, separating itself from the darkness which surrounds it, it is able to contemplate with a sure gaze the divine light at its source. ~ Seneca, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
20:In order that the mind should see light instead of darkness, the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world, until its eye can learn to contemplate reality and that supreme splendor which we have called the good. ~ Socrates, #KEYS
21:Therefore regard attentively this ocean of impermanence, contemplate it even to its foundation and labour no more to attain but one sole thing,-the kingdom of the Permanent. ~ Buddhist Texts, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
22:Not only our memory but somehow our eyes as well contemplate the conversation between the angel Gabriel and the wondering Mary; likewise the conception by the Holy Spirit is wonderful both in its promise and in the faith that received it." ~ Pope St. Leo the Great, #KEYS
23:The spirits of Angels are indeed [like us] bounded by space, yet their knowledge extends far above us beyond comparison; for they expand by external and internal knowing, since they contemplate the very source of knowledge itself. ~ Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 2, #KEYS
24:What have you done to deserve anything at all and who are you even? If you contemplate these thing deeply you would not be arrogant and you would not suffer. You would value life In all its experiences." ~ Mooji, (b. 1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher. From "Before I Am", (2012)., #KEYS
25:Since we are proposing to examine the structure of the world and to contemplate the whole universe... it is absolutely necessary that those who are fond of great shows and wonders should have a mind trained for the consideration of what we propose. ~ Basil the Great, Hexameron 6, #KEYS
26:We have heard where Christ shines in us: he is the eternal brilliant illumination of souls, whom the Father sent into the world so that his face should shine on us and permit us to contemplate eternal and heavenly truths - we who had been plunged in earthly darkness. ~ Saint Ambrose of Milan, #KEYS
27:Those who pursue attentively their contemplation have no sorrow to fear, nor can any vicissitude of Fate affect them . They contemplate this history written in ourselves to guide us in the execution of the divine laws which, equally, are engraved in our hearts. ~ Giordano Bruno, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
28:To be at our most efficient, we need to be able to switch backwards and forward between the two modes. But ~ here's the problem ~ we too often get stuck in the closed mode. Under the pressures which are all too familiar to us, we tend to maintain tunnel vision at times when we really need to step back and contemplate the wider view., #KEYS
29:Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. ~ John F. Kennedy, #KEYS
30:Let each contemplate himself, not shut up in narrow walls, not cabined in a corner of the earth, but a citizen of the whole world. From the height of the sublime meditations which the spectacle of Nature and the knowledge of it will procure for him, how well will he know himself how he will disdain, how base he will find all the futilities to which the vulgar attach so high a price. ~ Cicero, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
31:The Real made me contemplate the light of the veils as the star of strong backing rose, and He said to me, "Do you know how many veils I have veiled you with?"
"No", I replied.
He said, "With seventy veils. Even if you raise them you will not see Me, and if you do not raise them you will not see Me."
"If you raise them you will see Me and if you do not raise them you will see Me."
"Take care of burning yourself!"
"You are My sight, so have faith. You are My Face, so veil yourself" ~ Ibn Arabi,#KEYS
32:Lojong Slogan 1. First, train in the preliminaries; The four reminders. or alternatively called the Four Thoughts
1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone; Impermanence.
3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; Karma.
4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you dont want does not result in happiness; Ego.
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
33:If renunciation is not embraced
By the pure motivation of bodhicitta,
It will not become a cause for the perfect bliss of unsurpassed awakening,
So the wise should generate supreme bodhicitta.
Beings are swept along by the powerful current of the four rivers,
Tightly bound by the chains of their karma, so difficult to undo,
Ensnared within the iron trap of their self-grasping,
And enshrouded in the thick darkness of ignorance.
Again and yet again, they are reborn in limitless saṃsāra,
And constantly tormented by the three forms of suffering.
This is the current condition of all your mothers from previous lives—
Contemplate their plight and generate supreme bodhichitta. ~ Tsongkapa,#KEYS
34:Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.
Thus ought man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible, nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it. ~ James Clerk Maxwell,#KEYS
35:The other day I told you the meaning of bhakti. It is to adore God with body, mind, and words. 'With body' means to serve and worship God with one's hands, go to holy places with one's feet, hear the chanting of the name and glories of God with one's ears, and behold the divine image with one's eyes. 'With mind' means to contemplate and meditate on God constantly and to remember and think of His lila. 'With words' means to sing hymns to Him and chant His name and glories.
Devotion as described by Narada is suited to the Kaliyuga. It means to chant constantly the name and glories of God. Let those who have no leisure worship God at least morning and evening by whole-heartedly chanting His name and clapping their hands. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
36:To study, to contemplate, to understand - by these processes we grow, we enrich, and we ennoble ourselves. If we can learn from the experiences of others we do not need to have all these miseries brought upon our own flesh. If we are able to learn from the common experience of the world we can free ourselves from the necessity of learning what every other man from the beginning of time has had to learn the hard way. Every human being has had to learn that fear, anger, greed, overambition all end in pain, misery, and in the loss of natural growth. All have had to learn that prejudice is wrong; compromise leads to corruption - which is wrong. Everyone has to learn this, yet how does it happen that after so many thousands of years each human being has to learn again. Can we learn nothing from observing the conduct of those around us? ~ Manly P Hall, Sensory Perceptions Cannot Think, 1972, p.10), #KEYS
37:Turn your thoughts now, and lift up your thoughts to a devout and joyous contemplation on sage Vyasa and Vasishtha, on Narda and Valmiki. Contemplate on the glorious Lord Buddha, Jesus the Christ, prophet Mohammed, the noble Zoroaster (Zarathushtra), Lord Mahavira, the holy Guru Nanak. Think of the great saints and sages of all ages, like Yajnavalkya, Dattatreya, Sulabha and Gargi, Anasooya and Sabari, Lord Gauranga, Mirabai, Saint Theresa and Francis of Assisi. Remember St. Augustine, Jallaludin Rumi, Kabir, Tukaram, Ramdas, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, Vivekananda and Rama Tirtha. Adore in thy heart the sacred memory of Mahatma Gandhi, sage Ramana Maharishi, Aurobindo Ghosh, Gurudev Sivananda and Swami Ramdas. They verily are the inspirers of humanity towards a life of purity, goodness and godliness. Their lives, their lofty examples, their great teachings constitute the real wealth and greatest treasure of mankind today.
~ Sri Chidananda, Advices On Spiritual Living,#KEYS
38:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.
This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,#KEYS
39:The Quest
A part, immutable, unseen,
Being, before itself had been,
Became. Like dew a triple queen
Shone as the void uncovered:
The silence of deep height was drawn
A veil across the silver dawn
On holy wings that hovered.
The music of three thoughts became
The beauty, that is one white flame,
The justice that surpasses shame,
The victory, the splendour,
The sacred fountain that is whirled
From depths beyond that older world
A new world to engender.
The kingdom is extended. Night
Dwells, and I contemplate the sight
That is not seeing, but the light
That secretly is kindled,
Though oft-time its most holy fire
Lacks oil, whene'er my own Desire
Before desire has dwindled.
I see the thin web binding me
With thirteen cords of unity
Toward the calm centre of the sea.
(O thou supernal mother!)
The triple light my path divides
To twain and fifty sudden sides
Each perfect as each other.
Now backwards, inwards still my mind
Must track the intangible and blind,
And seeking, shall securely find
Hidden in secret places
Fresh feasts for every soul that strives,
New life for many mystic lives,
And strange new forms and faces.
My mind still searches, and attains
By many days and many pains
To That which Is and Was and reigns
Shadowed in four and ten;
And loses self in sacred lands,
And cries and quickens, and understands
Beyond the first Amen.
~ Aleister Crowley,#KEYS
40:Accumulating Prostrations
Why Prostrate at All?
Why fling yourself full-length on an often filthy floor, then get up and do it again hundreds of thousands of times?
Prostrations are a very immediate method for taking refuge and one of the best available for destroying pride. They are an outer gesture of surrender to the truth of dharma, and an expression of our intention to give up and expose our pride.
So, as we take refuge, we prostrate to demonstrate our complete surrender by throwing ourselves at the feet of our guru and pressing the five points of our body — forehead, hands and knees — to the floor as many times as we can.
(In the Tibetan tradition there are two ways of doing prostrations: one is the full-length and the other the half-length prostration, and we usually accumulate the full-length version.)
Prostrations are said to bring a number of benefits, such as being reborn with an attractive appearance, or our words carry weight and are valued, or our influence over friends and colleagues is positive, or that we are able to manage those who work for us.
It is said that practitioners who accumulate prostrations will one day keep company with sublime beings and as a result become majestic, wealthy, attain a higher rebirth and eventually attain liberation.
For worldly beings, though, to contemplate all the spiritual benefits of prostrations and the amount of merit they accumulate is not necessarily the most effective way of motivating ourselves. The fact that prostrations are good for our health, on the other hand, is often just the incentive we need to get started.
It's true, doing prostrations for the sake of taking healthy exercise is a worldly motivation, but not one I would ever discourage.
In these degenerate times, absolutely anything that will inspire you to practise dharma has some value, so please go ahead and start your prostrations for the sake of the exercise. If you do, not only will you save money on your gym membership, you will build up muscle and a great deal of merit.
~ Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, Not for Happiness - A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practises, Shambhala Publications,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:To contemplate is to look at shadows. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 2:One jests because one wants to contemplate. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 3:Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 4:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 5:In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove 6:Every night, contemplate: What good did I do today? How can I do better tomorrow? ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 7:Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 8:Contemplate like God does, with thoughts of ‘How may I serve?’ rather than, ‘What’s in it for me?’ ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 9:People hiss at me, but I applaud myself in my own house, and at the same time contemplate the money in my chest. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 10:Strategic thinking requires the ability to contemplate possibilities that are not immediately present. ~ rupert-sheldrake, @wisdomtrove 11:The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 12:I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming. ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove 13:Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 14:Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 15:Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 16:To contemplate a thing implies maintaining oneself OUTSIDE it, resolved to keep a distance between it and ourselves. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 17:To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 18:You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 19:Meditate nothing. Learn to contemplate. Contemplate glory. There will be a light. Contemplate Truth until it burns your eyes out. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 20:In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 21:Never discuss the poem you contemplate writing. It's like turning on the outside spigot. It takes all the pressure off the upstairs bathroom. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 22:Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 23:It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 24:In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 25:The Winter Solstice is the time of ending and beginning, a powerful time - a time to contemplate your immortality. A time to forgive, to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to awaken. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 26:Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realise yourself as one with it. It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condition. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 27:The unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 28:To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 29:We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 30:And when we view a flag, which to the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our interests to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 31:When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 32:By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 33:Focus your mind on & 34:It is very pleasant to scratch an itching ring-worm, but the sensation one gets afterwards is very painful and intolerable. In the same way the pleasures of this world are very attractive in the beginning, but their consequences are terrible to contemplate and hard to endure. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 35:As I contemplate this koan, something extraordinary is happening. . . . Everything is becoming incredibly simple, and I can see that this moment is characterized by the polarity of awareness and appearances . . . emptiness and form . . . nirvana and samsara . . . life-dreamer and life-dream. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 36:Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 37:To find anything comparable with our forthcoming ventures into space, we must go back far beyond Columbus, far beyond Odysseus-far, indeed, beyond the first ape-man. We must contemplate the moment, now irrevocably lost in the mists of time, when the ancestor off all of us came crawling out of the sea. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 38:Observe and contemplate on the hidden things of life: how a man's seed is but the beginning, it takes others to bring it to fruition. Think how food undergoes such changes to produce health and strength. See the power of these hidden things which, like the wind cannot been seen, but its effects can be. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 39:Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 40:It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 41:While we contemplate in all creatures, as in a mirror, those immense riches of His wisdom, justice, goodness and power, we should not meerly run them over cursorily, and, so to speak, with a fleeting glance, but we should ponder them at length, turn them over in our mind seriously and faithfully and recollect them repeatedly. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 42:When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 43:To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe ~ norman-cousins, @wisdomtrove 44:Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can't help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don't like that. That's the famous joke: I don't like peas, and I'm glad I don't like them, because if I liked them I would eat them and I hate them. ~ quentin-crisp, @wisdomtrove 45:The idea that God will pardon a rebel who has not given up his rebellion is contrary both to the Scriptures and to common sense. How horrible to contemplate a church full of persons who have been pardoned but who still love sin and hate the ways of righteousness. And how much more horrible to think of heaven as filled with sinners who had not repented nor changed their way of living. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 46:It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 47: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 48:When people truly open their minds, and contemplate the way in which the universe is ordered and governed, they are amazed-overwhelmed by a sense of the miraculous. When people contemplate with open minds the germination of a single seed, they are equally overwhelmed-yet numerous babies are born every day, and no-one marvels. If only people opened their minds, they would see that the birth of a baby, in which a new life is created, is a greater miracle than restoring life. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 49:Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window ‚Äì a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 50:The full consequences of a default or even the serious prospect of default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the cost, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 51:What measures, then, shall we adopt? What machine employ, or what reason consult by means of which we may contemplate this ineffable beauty; a beauty abiding in the most divine sanctuary without ever proceeding from its sacred retreats lest it should be beheld by the profane and vulgar eye? We must enter deep into ourselves, and, leaving behind the objects of corporeal sight, no longer look back after any of the accustomed spectacles of sense. For, it is necessary that whoever beholds this beauty, should withdraw his view from the fairest corporeal forms; and, convinced that these are nothing more than images, vestiges and shadows of beauty, should eagerly soar to the fair original from which they are derived. For he who rushes to these lower beauties, as if grasping realities, when they are only like beautiful images appearing in water, will, doubtless, like him in the fable, by stretching after the shadow, sink into the lake and disappear. For, by thus embracing and adhering to corporeal forms, he is precipitated, not so much in his body as in his soul, into profound and horrid darkness; and thus blind, like those in the infernal regions, converses only with phantoms, deprived of the perception of what is real and true. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 52:It is now time, leaving every object of sense far behind, to contemplate, by a certain ascent, a beauty of a much higher order; a beauty not visible to the corporeal eye, but alone manifest to the brighter eye of the soul, independent of all corporeal aid. However, since, without some previous perception of beauty it is impossible to express by words the beauties of sense, but we must remain in the state of the blind, so neither can we ever speak of the beauty of offices and sciences, and whatever is allied to these, if deprived of their intimate possession. Thus we shall never be able to tell of virtue's brightness, unless by looking inward we perceive the fair countenance of justice and temperance, and are convinced that neither the evening nor morning star are half so beautiful and bright. But it is requisite to perceive objects of this kind by that eye by which the soul beholds such real beauties. Besides it is necessary that whoever perceives this species of beauty, should be seized with much greater delight, and more vehement admiration, than any corporeal beauty can excite; as now embracing beauty real and substantial. Such affections, I say, ought to be excited about true beauty, as admiration and sweet astonishment; desire also and love and a pleasant trepidation. For all souls, as I may say, are affected in this manner about invisible objects, but those the most who have the strongest propensity to their love; as it likewise happens about corporeal beauty; for all equally perceive beautiful corporeal forms, yet all are not equally excited, but lovers in the greatest degree. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:We become what we contemplate. ~ Plato, #NFDB
2:To contemplate is to look at shadows. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
3:Meditate nothing. Learn to contemplate. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
4:One jests because one wants to contemplate. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
5:Purity is the power to contemplate defilement. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
6:And we came forth to contemplate the stars. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
7:Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
8:Those who contemplate never escape the doubt. ~ Henning Mankell, #NFDB
9:Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
10:I have actually seen people contemplate their navels ~ John Heilpern, #NFDB
11:It was not easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
12:It was not as easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
13:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
14:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
15:SPACES…BREAKS…TO CONTEMPLATE THINGS…TO FIGURE OUT WHAT’S IMPORTANT… ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
16:When you contemplate the nature of Self, you are meditating. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
17:Wherever you look there is so much loss and folly to contemplate. ~ Rosie Thomas, #NFDB
18:If I contemplate myself as part of the Universe: what am I? ~ Ludwig van Beethoven, #NFDB
19:Only you could contemplate imminent death and just say 'all right. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
20:Tomorrow is soon enough to contemplate the multitude of your sins.” He ~ John Hart, #NFDB
21:"Be still. Question every thought. Contemplate the source of Reality." ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
22:I've never been able to contemplate failure. Success is everything. ~ Raymond Blanc, #NFDB
23:Contemplate the good things in your life and be grateful for them. ~ Rebecca Pidgeon, #NFDB
24:It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
25:the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
26:The God of the Puritans...was a monster too horrible to contemplate. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
27:Have you ever had a date so bad, it makes you contemplate a lobotomy? ~ Steph Campbell, #NFDB
28:sages leave speculation to the idle, and contemplate Nature. ~ R A Schwaller de Lubicz, #NFDB
29:He who does not contemplate the future is destined to be overwhelmed by it. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
30:Journaling is contemplative, and I didn’t want to contemplate anything. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
31:Chili is much improved by having had a day to contemplate its fate. ~ John Steele Gordon, #NFDB
32:I contemplate the body, dead and diseased as well as alive and healthy. ~ Richard Selzer, #NFDB
33:In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate. ~ Ren Descartes, #NFDB
34:In the East, they contemplate the forest; in the West, they count the trees. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
35:Every man has been made by God in order to acquire knowledge and contemplate. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
36:He shall contemplate under the veil millions of secrets as radiant as the sun. ~ Upanishad, #NFDB
37:In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
38:It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
39:I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men. ~ Georges Simenon, #NFDB
40:Nothing is inevitable if we are willing to contemplate what is happening. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
41:Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
42:This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world: ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
43:True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
44:We contemplate our reason for being and deduce that there must be reason behind it! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
45:But for harmony beautiful to contemplate, science would not be worth following. ~ Henri Poincare, #NFDB
46:I contemplate myself surrounded by the conditions I wish to attract into my life. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
47:Holiness is found in how we treat others, not in how we contemplate the cosmos. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
48:I don't relax. I sit down and contemplate all the energetic things I should do. ~ Sylvester McCoy, #NFDB
49:Please let me love you."
"As if I could even contemplate living without you. ~ Sylvain Reynard,#NFDB
50:SPACES... BREAKS...TO CONTEMPLATE THINGS... TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S IMPORTANT... ~ Stephanie Perkins, #NFDB
51:Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
52:Success is seldom achieved by people who contemplate the possibility of failure ~ William Feather, #NFDB
53:Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
54:Do not contemplate what lies beyond failure while you are still trying to succeed. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
55:The longing knotted into such a simple question was more than he could contemplate. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
56:Anyone who can contemplate quantum mechanics without getting dizzy hasn't understood it. ~ Niels Bohr, #NFDB
57:I really believe there are some people who hate to contemplate the happiness of others. ~ Jean Plaidy, #NFDB
58:That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
59:Better prepare for a new journey than contemplate the meaning of the one I had just taken, ~ Julia Fine, #NFDB
60:I need to master the art of talking to her before I can even contemplate anything else. ~ Siobhan Davis, #NFDB
61:You know, the way love can change a fellow, is truly frightful to contemplate.’ Wodehouse ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
62:A man is ever apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings. ~ Christina Rossetti, #NFDB
63:Every night, contemplate: What good did I do today? How can I do better tomorrow? ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
64:The mob may hiss me, but I congratulate myself while I contemplate my treasures in their hoard. ~ Horace, #NFDB
65:Twilight is an insistent and infinite invitation to the wise to contemplate in peace! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
66:And then I go up to my room, climb onto a chair, and contemplate the mechanics of hanging. ~ Jennifer Niven, #NFDB
67:I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full. ~ Caspar David Friedrich, #NFDB
68:There are still things out there in the universe to contemplate and spend our lives chasing. ~ Leigh Newman, #NFDB
69:To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate the face of Christ with Mary. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
70:HOW ABOUT INSTEAD OF READING THIS TWEET U JUST GO SIT AND CONTEMPLATE THIS EARTH'S NATURAL BEAUTY ~ Kool A D, #NFDB
71:We must contemplate some extremely unpleasant possibilities, just because we want to avoid them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
72:I love the earth too much to contemplate a life apart from it, although I believe in that life. ~ Andre Dubus, #NFDB
73:It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
74:Under affliction in the very depths, stop and contemplate what you have to be grateful for. ~ Mary Baker Eddy, #NFDB
75:Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
76:One does not contemplate failure, or even death, when one believes oneself to be on a crusade. ~ Ben H Winters, #NFDB
77:What you contemplate, you touch. What you enter into in imagination, you make yourself one with. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
78:Master your breath, let the self be in bliss, contemplate on the sublime within you. ~ Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, #NFDB
79:The world is too harsh a place to contemplate directly, without a cushion of fancy and belief. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB
80:The two hardest things to contemplate in life ... are failure and age; those are one and the same. ~ Ian Caldwell, #NFDB
81:When, she wonders, do people have time to contemplate anything? But she has no time to answer that. ~ Tom Rachman, #NFDB
82:Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things. ~ Boethius, #NFDB
83:We can contemplate the creation of new kinds of vital texts: curate sociology rather than just write it ~ Les Back, #NFDB
84:What you contemplate, you touch. What you enter into in imagination, you make yourself one with.
~ Dion Fortune,#NFDB
85:I was starting to worry I might actually be your type, and that’s too terrifying to even contemplate. ~ Elle Kennedy, #NFDB
86:Your refusal to contemplate your own death leads to your refusal to contemplate your own life. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
87:A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
88:It’s the part of me that makes me contemplate a fall when confronted with an abyss or some great height. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
89:Such is the science of the Intelligence, to contemplate things divine and comprehend God. ~ Hermes 1. “The Character”, #NFDB
90:The universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
91:We must contemplate some extremely unpleasant possibilities, just because we want to avoid them. ~ Albert Wohlstetter, #NFDB
92:Wise men contemplate the world,” he thinks, “knowing full well that they are contemplating themselves. ~ Peter Turchi, #NFDB
93:All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
94:Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
95:Writing is like a relationship. When it is good, it is damn good; when it is bad, you contemplate murder. ~ Nevea Lane, #NFDB
96:Be Consciousness (Itself)- Contemplate Consciousness (Itself)- Transcend Everything in Consciousness (Itself). ~ Adi Da, #NFDB
97:One can contemplate the Emperor and his powers comfortably if one remembers that all things are finite, ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
98:The two hardest things to contemplate in life (...) are failure and age, and those are one and the same. ~ Ian Caldwell, #NFDB
99:Contemplate the mirror of thy heart and thou shalt taste little by little a pure joy and unmixed peace. ~ Sadi, “Bostan”, #NFDB
100:However, six times throughout day and night I contemplate samsara’s defects and feel disenchanted by it. ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
101:When we contemplate the miracle of embodied life, we begin to partner with our bodies in a kinder way. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
102:In this world, where everything happens so fast, it's hard to sit back, take the time and contemplate. ~ Juliana Hatfield, #NFDB
103:People hiss at me, but I applaud myself in my own house, and at the same time contemplate the money in my chest. ~ Horace, #NFDB
104:Strategic thinking requires the ability to contemplate possibilities that are not immediately present. ~ Rupert Sheldrake, #NFDB
105:In each atom thou shalt see the All, thou shalt contemplate millions of secrets asluminous as the sun. ~ Farid-ud-din-attar, #NFDB
106:The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
107:There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
108:Those, on the contrary, who contemplate the immutable essence of things, have knowledge and not opinions. ~ Plato: Republic, #NFDB
109:all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
110:There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
111:Every man must have a peaceful place to contemplate. If you do not have such a place, you must find one! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
112:I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
113:Let’s not merely contemplate the Word of God in the world around us; let’s do what it says (see James 1:22-25). ~ David Platt, #NFDB
114:The best moments of life are those when we contemplate beauty in the purely artistic spirit — objectively. I ~ George Gissing, #NFDB
115:There had been too many wrong turns and missed opportunities for me to contemplate just one alternate universe. ~ Karan Bajaj, #NFDB
116:The sticker has no meaning, but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning. ~ Shepard Fairey, #NFDB
117:The way we contemplate technology on the horizon says much about who we are and who we are willing to become. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
118:What you are looking for is within you Fall silent a moment and contemplate what that means... You lack nothing. ~ Prem Rawat, #NFDB
119:I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming. ~ Brian Eno, #NFDB
120:...all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
121:Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
122:It's impossible to contemplate the life of soil very long without seeing its analogy to the life of the spirit. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
123:Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
124:Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
125:All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
126:The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
127:Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find resources of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
128:To contemplate a thing implies maintaining oneself OUTSIDE it, resolved to keep a distance between it and ourselves. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
129:Do not contemplate on death; it is just an incident in life; contemplate on God, who is the master of all life. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
130:"Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
131:There are streets to enjoy, there are streets to wander aimlessly and also there are streets to contemplate! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
132:I like my use of light to be openly situational in the sense that there is no invitation to meditate, to contemplate. ~ Dan Flavin, #NFDB
133:When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, what's the rest of it? ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
134:It is simple impertinence for any man, or any body of men, to begin, or to contemplate, reform of the whole world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
135:When I am happy it is so rare. I need to dwell on it, to contemplate it. What a hunger, a craving for beautiful things. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
136:If God himself has waited six thousand years for someone to contemplate his works, my book can wait for a hundred. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
137:One: See the two of them everywhere. Contemplate suicide. Would it seem too tourist-y to jump off the Eiffel Tower? ~ Francine Prose, #NFDB
138:Better to illuminate than merely to shine to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
139:human behaviour lie not only in the past but in man’s ability to contemplate the future, or estimate probabilities: ~ Thomas A Harris, #NFDB
140:Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
141:Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
142:When I'm done, I contemplate lying down in the middle of the road to let a car finish me off. I'm already half-dead. ~ Lindsey Leavitt, #NFDB
143:Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
144:Everybody needs time to reflect and contemplate, and the most inspirational and peaceful place to do so is in nature. ~ Akiane Kramarik, #NFDB
145:Suicide, the dog continued, is the most heroic act, which no animal save for man dares to commit or could ever contemplate. ~ Rawi Hage, #NFDB
146:The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is perhaps cowardice. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
147:To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
148:If we continuously contemplate the Self, all distraction would vanish; the pure Consciousness that remains is God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
149:The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #NFDB
150:Those who attend to the good side of everything contemplate the good. Those who contemplate the good enjoy life. ~ Bedi zzaman Said Nurs, #NFDB
151:Two abysses, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate two abysses, and both at the same time. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
152:You can’t focus on death, or failure. Otherwise you’re surrendering greatness to all the people too dumb to contemplate it. ~ David Wong, #NFDB
153:So we contemplate each other, and we want each other, and I give it life and warmth, and it gives me my reason for living. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
154:As a child, I never wanted my parents to be unhappy, which meant that I would always contemplate what would make them happy. ~ Etgar Keret, #NFDB
155:Let us contemplate the humility of the Son of God born into poverty. Let us imitate him by sharing with those who are weak. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
156:You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
157:If we would continuously contemplate the Self, the pure Consciousness that alone remains is God. This is Liberation.. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
158:It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
159:"To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life." ~ T. S. Eliot, #NFDB
160:There is no way in my right mind I would contemplate running 26 miles-plus unless it involved a chase with Pamela Anderson. ~ Jasper Carrott, #NFDB
161:If I was in my sane mind, I'd contemplate and try to find a meaning to of all this. But this is the mad world I am a living in. ~ Cameron Jace, #NFDB
162:(...) it is grand to contemplate the ruins of cities; but it is grander still to contemplate the ruins of human beings! ~ Comte de Lautr amont, #NFDB
163:Now I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
164:I like smart movies about smart people, and enjoy it when most of the facts are on the table and we can contemplate them together. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
165:The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness. ~ John Green, #NFDB
166:Each moment from all sides rushes to us the call to love. We are running to contemplate its vast green field. Do you want to come with us? ~ Rumi, #NFDB
167:The more I contemplate God, the more God looks on me. The more I pray to him, the more he thinks of me too.
~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, [T5],#NFDB
168:To concentrate is to come back to the center and contemplate the Infinite Power within you that lies stretched in smiling repose. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
169:Every so often I contemplate suicide merely to remind myself of my complete lack of interest in it as a solution to anything at all. ~ Nora Ephron, #NFDB
170:If I weren't a Christian Scientist, and I saw "Trog" advertised on a marquee across the street, I'd think I'd contemplate suicide. ~ Joan Crawford, #NFDB
171:Conversation is good - you might not agree with everyone, but at least it gives you a chance to contemplate someone else's ideas. ~ Brandi Chastain, #NFDB
172:If we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. ~ Plato, #NFDB
173:In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
174:It is too disgusting to contemplate that a handful of men keep millions of women from being constitutional citizens of this land. ~ Marguerite Rawalt, #NFDB
175:contemplate the difference between a reason and an excuse. A reason is its own reward, but an excuse leads to disappointment every time. ~ Jane Smiley, #NFDB
176:There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. ~ Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, #NFDB
177:A satyagrahi must ceaselessly strive to realize and live truth. And he must never contemplate hurting anyone by thought, word or deed. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
178:Each moment from all sides rushes to us the call to love.
We are running to contemplate its vast green field.
Do you want to come with us? ~ Rumi,#NFDB
179:I am not really retired, and may never be completely, but I can't think of a better place to contemplate retirement than New York City. ~ Robert MacNeil, #NFDB
180:It is a terrible thought, to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
181:it was useless to divide it into months and years, and the days into hours, when one could do nothing, but contemplate the rain ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
182:So you contemplate this, and you realize that never in your life have you asked yourself that question and really meant it. Who am I? ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
183:These guidelines contemplate a policy that will grant special benefits to illegal immigrants based on their unlawful presence in the country. ~ Mike Lee, #NFDB
184:If you contemplate the Golden Rule, it turns out to be an injunction to live by grace rather than by what you think other people deserve. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
185:Contemplate thy powers, contemplate thy wants and thy connections; so shalt thou discover the duties of life, and be directed in all thy ways. ~ Akhenaton, #NFDB
186:Arguably the most important ordering that one will ever contemplate is existence in its totality. ~ Tyler Volk, Metapatterns - Across Space, Time, and Mind, #NFDB
187:Instead of fixating on the physical aspects of aging, it's good to contemplate the deeper source of our anxiety. That can be liberating. ~ Elizabeth Lesser, #NFDB
188:Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be any use to him. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
189:A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
190:Never discuss the poem you contemplate writing. It's like turning on the outside spigot. It takes all the pressure off the upstairs bathroom. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
191:How great seems human progress when we consider where it began, and how insignificant, when we contemplate the goals for which itstrives. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
192:Monsters just outside our peripheral vision are scarier to contemplate than monsters miles away or in someplace only a fool would set foot in. ~ Andrew Pyper, #NFDB
193:It is more important to prevent animal suffering, rather than sit to contemplate the evils of the universe praying in the company of priests. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
194:Through failure to contemplate these Infinites, men have rashly rushed into the examination of nature, as though they bore some proportion to her. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
195:I am learning, as I make my way through my first continent, that it is remarkably easy to do things, and much more frightening to contemplate them. ~ Ted Simon, #NFDB
196:My favourite animal is the koala, but his life would be boring. I would rather be a giraffe so that I could contemplate the beauty of Africa. ~ Caterina Murino, #NFDB
197:Nevertheless, in every piece we write, we contemplate a world; and as that world would not otherwise exist, we create it even as we discover it. ~ Peter Turchi, #NFDB
198:One of the important principles I live by is the idea that you have to contemplate yourself as surrounded by the conditions you intend to produce. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
199:The children were kept by the priests for some weeks before their deaths (those kindergartens of doomed infants are difficult to contemplate). ~ Inga Clendinnen, #NFDB
200:"O, to see no longer the appearances which change incessantly; to contemplate only the Divine's immutable oneness in everything & everywhere!.." ~ The Mother, #NFDB
201:Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. ~ Samuel Adams, #NFDB
202:In cases in which the related previous personality had committed suicide, the subject has shown an inclination to contemplate and threaten suicide. ~ Ian Stevenson, #NFDB
203:Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
204:I pull her pillow over my face to breathe in her scent. It’s torture, it’s heaven, and for a moment I contemplate death by suffocation. Get a grip, Grey. ~ E L James, #NFDB
205:It is a common happening that those in power, as their tenure of office continues, find themselves less and less able to contemplate relinquishing it. ~ Anthony Eden, #NFDB
206:One of the blessings that comes with parental territory is that children tug you into experiences you're pretty sure you'd never otherwise contemplate. ~ Nancy Mairs, #NFDB
207:Contemplate to see that awakened people, while not being enslaved by the work of serving living beings, never abandon their work of serving living beings. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
208:Purify thyself and thou shalt see God. Transform thy body into a temple, cast from thee evil thoughts and contemplate God with the eye of thy conscious soul. ~ Vemana, #NFDB
209:In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
210:Like Buddhists, Stoics advise us to contemplate the world’s impermanence. “All things human,” Seneca reminds us, “are short-lived and perishable.”19 ~ William B Irvine, #NFDB
211:Purify thyself and thou shalt see God. Transform thy body into a temple, cast from thee evil thoughts and contemplate God with the eye of thy conscious soul. ~ Vemana, #NFDB
212:I just love jumping into someone else's life. It is a relatively cheap way to experience things you would be too scared to contemplate in your own life. ~ Dougray Scott, #NFDB
213:India is a place where all stories are possible. You forget that the imagination can take hold of anything and contemplate it and love it and describe it. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
214:A poor degenerate from the ape, Whose hands are four, whose tail's a limb, I contemplate my flaccid shape And know I may not rival him Save with my mind. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
215:Gardening reminds us to look deeply into our food, to contemplate our interactions with earth, plants, and animals, to see both the harmony and the harm. ~ Tovar Cerulli, #NFDB
216:Ask yourself: Is that really worth it? Is it really that pleasurable? Consider that when you crave something or contemplate indulging in a “harmless” vice. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
217:Contemplate all that you are grateful for, and never give up on your dreams. Most importantly, give your whole heart to all that you love in this life. ~ Julianne MacLean, #NFDB
218:Talk about it only enough to do it. Dream about it only enough to feel it. Think about it only enough to understand it. Contemplate it only enough to be it. ~ Jean Toomer, #NFDB
219:When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
220:have another tangerine as he begins to expound upon how only in the unpolluted air can man truly be free to contemplate the complexities of existence. I ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
221:Meditate and contemplate on the Master and think of the various incidents of His life. By meditating on Him, one gets all the spiritual moods. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
222:The man, with his brain, can pierce the intoxicating mirage of things and contemplate a frozen universe in the most perfect indifference to him and his dreams. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
223:It's hard to contemplate, in the grey hours of the night, that probably the only reason people would come to your funeral would be to make sure you're dead. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
224:The age of the Internet has precipitated a new worldview—one that can contemplate the possibility of distributed intelligence instead of top-down hierarchy. ~ Frederic Laloux, #NFDB
225:The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state and attempt to point out the direction of the future - without arriving there completely ~ Jackson Pollock, #NFDB
226:No other organism on Earth does that. Yes, yes, I understand that dolphins are very smart, but I don’t think they build libraries or even contemplate such a project. ~ Bill Nye, #NFDB
227:No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
228:Our souls, piercing through the impurity of flesh, behold the highest heaven, and thence bring knowledge to contemplate the ever-during, glory and termless joy. ~ Walter Raleigh, #NFDB
229:That is why the incorporeal eye** should be raised to contemplate not the figure, not the body, not the appearance, but that which is calm, tran quil, solid, immutable. ~ Hermes, #NFDB
230:The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.” —Noam Chomsky ~ Tom Abrahams, #NFDB
231:If I had means, I would like to spend half a year in Palestine in order to contemplate what has been, and half a year in Poland in order to preserve what remains. ~ Janusz Korczak, #NFDB
232:Only you could contemplate imminent death and just say 'all right.'"
He smiled at me and pushed the hair back from my tear-stained face. "How about 'oh no'? ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
233:They drummed into you that pain was good, you were supposed to go with it, push into the pain, and only... now... did I contemplate what retarded advice this was. ~ Lionel Shriver, #NFDB
234:Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
235:We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
236:Contemplate that all things are impermanent and that nothing belongs to you... Understand that all things that come together must also come apart. ~ The Sutra of the Elder Sumagadha, #NFDB
237:Alas! this time is never the time for self-denial, it is always the next time. Abstinence is so much more pleasant to contemplate upon the other side of indulgence. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
238:Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
239:Do nothing and relax. Contemplate the sea and sunshine and contemplate contemplating, but without expending too much energy on contemplating your abilities to contemplate. ~ Jo Watson, #NFDB
240:When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has the eye to contemplate the vision. ~ Plato, #NFDB
241:I just want to think deeply about things. Contemplate ideas in a pure, free sort of way. That’s all. If you think about it, that’s kind of like constructing a vacuum. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
242:The soul will enjoy veritable felicity when, separating itself from the darkness which surrounds it, it is able to contemplate with a sure gaze the divine light at its source. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
243:He'd lived so long in anticipation of his own death that to contemplate his future was like standing at the edge of a cliff, staring into a vertiginous rush of open sky. ~ Helene Wecker, #NFDB
244:There was so much more in the past, so much less in the future, that the mind turned away from the looming shadow ahead to contemplate the safety of what had gone before. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
245:With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
246:Live contemplating the body. Contemplate internally and externally. Contemplate the origination of things in the body. Contemplate the dissolution of things in the body. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
247:What has happened to architecture since the second world war that the only passers-by who can contemplate it without pain are those equipped with a white stick and a dog? ~ Bernard Levin, #NFDB
248:When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
249:When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me, I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez, #NFDB
250:Contemplate the choice between going after money or ideals. There is so much pressure to go for money, idealism gets little airplay. Do something that means something to you. ~ Shere Hite, #NFDB
251:Just as it is better to illuminate than merely to shine, so to pass on what one has contemplated is better than merely to contemplate. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (1265–1274), #NFDB
252:The quiet of the morning offers a perfect time to do a meditation and yoga practice. It also allows time to be creative or to contemplate before the business of the day. ~ Kandyse McClure, #NFDB
253:Observe your actions but be so busy that you never contemplate their possible effects. It is only this consciousness that leads to liberation. Everything else is illusion. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
254:Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
255:I must refuse to believe that the Germans contemplate with equanimity the evacuation of cities like London for fear of destruction to be wrought by man's inhuman ingenuity. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
256:In that version of the story, Atlas is less literal holder of the world than beholder of it; he alone among mortals can contemplate the divine and take measure of the cosmos. ~ Peter Turchi, #NFDB
257:Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
258:Therefore regard attentively this ocean of impermanence, contemplate it even to its foundation and labour no more to attain but one sole thing,—the kingdom of the Permanent. ~ Buddhist Texts, #NFDB
259:As time rolls on, however, we discover that duty is a series of compromises; we contemplate life, regard its end, and submit; but it is a submission which makes the heart bleed. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
260:I’ve had too many opportunities to contemplate death. I think it’s different for everyone, but for me … when my time comes, I won’t ask any questions. I’ll simply say thank you. ~ Jewel E Ann, #NFDB
261:The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
262:We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you’re my meaning…the reason behind just about everything I do—and I would never want to change that. ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
263:I contemplate the bones for a while then turn away. I have work to do. Next year I will have an odako that is bigger, grander, more beautiful than anyone has ever seen. Next year. ~ Stan Sakai, #NFDB
264:Through imagination, we can visit the past, contemplate the present, and anticipate the future. We can also do something else of profound and unique significance. We can create. ~ Ken Robinson, #NFDB
265:A message for those of you who contemplate permanent solutions to temporary problems. You never know what could be coming in the future. There is so much music you've yet to hear. ~ Hannah Hart, #NFDB
266:Sure Man was born to meditate on things, And to contemplate the eternal springs Of God and Nature, glory, bliss and pleasure: That life and love might be his eternal treasure. ~ Thomas Traherne, #NFDB
267:We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you're my meaning...the reason behind just about everything I do-and i would never want to change that. ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
268:We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but now that you're my meaning... the reason behind just about everything I do-and I would never want to change that. ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
269:Revenge is the concern of those who are at some point or other beaten. I am not beaten, I told myself. No, not beaten. And victory is far more interesting to contemplate than revenge. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
270:Spring-water in the green creek is clear Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white Silent knowledge—the spirit is enlightened of itself Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness. ~ Gary Snyder, #NFDB
271:We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you're my meaning... the reason behind just about everything I do - and I would never want to change that. ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
272:As a holistic being you shatter the illusion of your separateness and reveal your connection to everything. This empowers you in a way that the ego-driven self could never contemplate. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
273:Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
274:Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God. Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God. ~ Sai Baba, #NFDB
275:Arranging atoms in certain ways appears to bring about an experience of being that very collection of atoms. This is undoubtedly one of the deepest mysteries given to us to contemplate. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
276:Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude. ~ George Sarton, #NFDB
277:A children's book is the perfect place where young readers can understand the world because they can take a deep breath and look at it and imagine and contemplate while they're looking at. ~ Jan Brett, #NFDB
278:The quality of life is so different in France. There is the possibility of living a simple life. I would never contemplate raising my daughter in LA. I would never raise any child there. ~ Johnny Depp, #NFDB
279:Contemplate the wonders of creation, the Divine dimension of their being, not as a dim configuration that is presented to you from a distance, but as the reality in which you live. ~ Abraham Isaac Kook, #NFDB
280:Free man, you will always cherish the sea! The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul In the infinite unrolling of its billows; Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
281:To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one woman's life.”
T.S. Eliot - The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism ~ T S Eliot,#NFDB
282:We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you're my meaning... the reason behind just about everything I do―and I would never want to change that. ~ Evan ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
283:If one is able to understand that bodily form is impermanent and [subject to] destruction, if one is able to understand this truth and contemplate it, then craving for bodily form will depart. ~ An layo, #NFDB
284:If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
285:I find it most intriguing to contemplate the fact that while men are considering what place to give Jesus Christ in history, He has already decided what place to give them in eternity. ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
286:I'm not running away from the fact that I had previously said I did not contemplate a major increase, and that was a fair statement of the Government's state of mind at the time I made that. ~ John Howard, #NFDB
287:Constantly contemplate the whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet . ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
288:No, obviously what strength was all along was the ability to say “Fuck off” to the lot of it, to turn your back on all the suffering and contemplate, unmolested, your own desires above all. ~ Claire Messud, #NFDB
289:Like all religious evangelists, she realizes that there is little satisfaction in the contemplation of heaven for oneself if one cannot simultaneously contemplate the horrors of hell for others. ~ P D James, #NFDB
290:The way to establish a relationship with Spirit and access the power of this creating principle is to continuously contemplate yourself as being surrounded by the conditions you wish to produce. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
291:I can't imagine a duller fate than being the best-dressed woman in reality. When I want to do something, I don't pause to contemplate whether I'm exquisitely gowned. I want to live, not pose! ~ Carole Lombard, #NFDB
292:Surgically augmented breasts and a large vocabulary are two things that come to mind when I contemplate that which is showy and of little value, but I’m certain that you can think of others. also ~ Ammon Shea, #NFDB
293:I guess this is a message for those of you who contemplate permanent solutions to temporary problems. You never know what could be coming in the future. There is so much music you've yet to hear. ~ Hannah Hart, #NFDB
294:In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
295:In order to contemplate, one must have something to contemplate. A life without experience provides no chance of contemplation. Those who have not lived cannot mediate om the mysterious of life. ~ Anthony Ryan, #NFDB
296:I realized that it was not as easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. And since then, whenever I have heard of someone threatening to commit suicide, it has had little or no effect on me. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
297:Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo Ipse domi stimul ac nummos contemplar in arca. (The public hiss at me, but I cheer myself when in my own house I contemplate the coins in my strong-box.) ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
298:The way to establish a relationship with Spirit and access the power of this creating principle is to continuously contemplate yourself as being surrounded by the conditions you wish to produce. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
299:People just hate the idea of losing. Any loss, even a small one, is just so terrible to contemplate that they compensate by buying insurance, including totally absurd policies like air travel. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
300:What are my thoughts on this whole ordeal?" she repeated, pausing to contemplate. And then she thought of the perfect answer. "Ali didn't manage to kill us," she said. "She only made us stronger. ~ Sara Shepard, #NFDB
301:Emotion is bad if it hinders the mind from thinking. An
emotion that opens the mind to contemplate several
aspects of things at once is better than one that fixes
thought to an obsession. ~ A C Grayling,#NFDB
302:The Winter Solstice is the time of ending and beginning, a powerful time -- a time to contemplate your immortality. A time to forgive, to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to awaken. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
303:The future is a dark, nebulous place that I’ve never wanted to contemplate. Mostly because when I think of it, I see myself alone, irrelevant, and adrift. I tell myself I don’t mind being alone. ~ Kristen Callihan, #NFDB
304:So the first thing: become aware of death. Think about it, look at it, contemplate it. Do not be afraid, do not escape the fact. It is there and you cannot escape it! It has come into existence with you. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
305:What a great joy is to contemplate the whole day in a silent place! And even a greater joy is to see those contemplated thoughts starting their journey in the neural pathways of the world mind! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
306:One's thoughts are one's most crucial adventures. Seriously and strongly and intently to contemplate doing murder is everyway more exciting, more romantic, more profoundly tragic than the murder done. ~ Mary MacLane, #NFDB
307:Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi stimul ac nummos contemplar in arca.
(The public hiss at me, but I cheer myself when in my own house I contemplate the coins in my strong-box.) ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,#NFDB
308:Who I believed myself to be was a hopeless case. I would wake up in the mornings and notice I was still alive and breathing and hate God, hate myself, hate life, and contemplate ways of killing myself. ~ Byron Katie, #NFDB
309:Fiction is overrated, Fly. We’ve discussed this. In the time it takes those novelist fuckers to contemplate a few poetic passages, a thousand kids die from malnutrition. Immediacy, man, that’s what counts. ~ Rawi Hage, #NFDB
310:The idea of having an indie rock "career" while living in a remote backwater like Seattle was too ridiculous to contemplate. It was simply about having adventures, one day at a time, one song at a time. ~ Bruce Pavitt, #NFDB
311:We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you're my meaning... the reason behind just about everything I do―and I would never want to change that. ~ Rebecca Donovan Evan ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
312:Peter has learned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing. He's learned to unshackle himself of the race of time and contemplate time itself. [..] It's a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
313:Anyone who thinks Ryanair flights are some sort of bastion of sanctity where you can contemplate your navel is wrong. We already bombard you with as many in-flight announcements and trolleys as we can. ~ Michael O Leary, #NFDB
314:Life deceives everyone except the individual who doesn't contemplate it, the individual who demands nothing from it, the individual who serenely accepts its few gifts and serenely makes the most of them. ~ Ivan Turgenev, #NFDB
315:If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? ~ Stephen Crane, #NFDB
316:I should not like to contemplate an existence, especially one that is going to continue forever, if I could not enjoy that existence with those whom I love. And so we build temples in the name of the Lord. ~ Hugh B Brown, #NFDB
317:It was to me a very grave matter, however, to contemplate going out to China, far away from all human aid, there to depend upon the living God alone for protection, supplies, and help of every kind. ~ James Hudson Taylor, #NFDB
318:I am worthy of attracting unlimited abundance and prosperity into my life, regardless of what life experiences have gone before me. I only reinforce and contemplate images that are in harmony with this vision. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
319:Would you like to watch TV
or get between the sheets
and contemplate this violent freeway,
would you like something to eat
would you like to learn to fly
would ya, would you like to see me try ~ Roger Waters,#NFDB
320:If I am going to be drowned – if I am going to be drowned – if I am going to be drowned, why in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate land and trees? ~ Stephen Crane, #NFDB
321:I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. ~ Caspar David Friedrich, #NFDB
322:That doesn't upset too many people, but the fact that accessibility restrictions don't enter into the picture has caused more than one otherwise pacifistic soul to contemplate distinctly unpacifistic actions. ~ Scott Meyers, #NFDB
323:Volcanoes be in Sicily
And South America
I judge from my Geography–
Volcanoes nearer here
A lava step at any time
Am I inclined to climb–
A Crater I may contemplate
Vesuvius at Home. ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
324:Keep your rivers flowing as they will, and you will continue to know the most important of all freedoms-the boundless scope of the human mind to contemplate wonders, and to begin to understand their meaning. ~ David R Brower, #NFDB
325:But to be able to bear one's own mind, to wait while the inner storm of intolerable thoughts blows itself out, leaving one to contemplate the debris with some understanding--that is an enviable state of mind. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
326:Thou shalt not covet means that it is sinful even to contemplate the seizure of another man's goods - which is something which Socialists, whether Christian or otherwise, have never managed to explain away. ~ John Chamberlain, #NFDB
327:course, he didn’t actually want her to go, nor did she care to join him. The tension in her shoulders eased a little, realizing he wanted her to say no. Pretending to contemplate his invitation, Zoe relaxed ~ Tanya Anne Crosby, #NFDB
328: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
329:As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
330:His only occupation is to contemplate the essence of things; and since he himself is the essence of all things, the form of all forms, his sole employment is the contemplation of himself. 40 Poor Aristotelian God!— ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
331:Pause here, devout reader, and see if thou canst without ecstatic amazement, contemplate the infinite condescension of the Son of God in thus exalting thy wretchedness into blessed union with his glory. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
332:Contemplate life as infinite, undivided, ever present, ever active, until you realize yourself as one with it. It is not even very difficult, for you will be returning only to your own natural condition. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
333:Both the bride and the groom have the privilege of at least fifteen minutes in which to contemplate what a sick, sick, fucking, Christ-awful thing getting married is. That's what the book says — or words to that effect. ~ Jane Rule, #NFDB
334:The unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
335:We all shook hands, and the policeman, having retrieved a piece of chewing-gum from the underside of a chair, where he had parked it against a rainy day, went off into a corner and began to contemplate the infinite. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
336:We loved our son like the sea loves an island, always surrounding him with our arms, always touching him and crashing upon his shore with our care and concern. When he was gone, the sea had only itself to contemplate. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
337:As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, and diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
338:From that moment onwards, our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus, to contemplate its trivial image on a metallic plate. A form of lunacy, an extraordinary fanaticism took hold of these new sun-worshippers. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
339:Imagine listening to Beethoven with the prepossession that C is a good note and F a bad one; yet this is exactly the stand point from which all uninitiates contemplate the universe. Obviously, they miss the music. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
340:In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
341:To become an Initiate, one has to endure a "magical ritual", in which, the soul is momentarily liberated... and can contemplate, on one side, ones physical-animal life, and on the other side, ones spiritual life... ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
342:CONTEMPLATE THE workings of this world, listen to the words of the wise, and take all that is good as your own. With this as your base, open your own door to truth. Do not overlook the truth that is right before you. ~ Morihei Ueshiba, #NFDB
343:I nod, and taking my tea, I head into the library. It’s my refuge. I dig my BlackBerry out of my purse and contemplate calling Christian. I know it’s a shock for him—but he really did overreact. When does he not overreact? ~ E L James, #NFDB
344:By the early ’70s it would have appeared unthinkable to contemplate unraveling the social services, welfare provisions, state-funded cultural and educational resources and much else that people had come to take for granted. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
345:Like most musicians, Im good at becoming immersed in the music that I am currently working on. We seldom lift up our heads to contemplate even the music we will be doing in the future, let alone what weve done in the past. ~ Tony Levin, #NFDB
346:There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
347:To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
348:Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
349:Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
350:We don’t love each other; we love the idea we have of each other. Very few humans understand this or can bear to contemplate it. They have blind faith in their own powers of creation. All love, ultimately, is self-love. ~ Robert Galbraith, #NFDB
351:My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
352:When the song is over, the mikes turned off, the lights dimmed, all the glitter and glamour shed, and I am left alone with my own thoughts, free to contemplate the paths that led me to where I am today, I pause to give thanks. ~ CeCe Winans, #NFDB
353:Whoever is devoid of the capacity of wonder, whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
354:Whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
355:E: When one has at last reached freedom, can one even contemplate going back?
HC: But if it is not possible to go back, or to choose to go back, then it is not freedom!
~ Agatha ChristieEricsson; Hilary Craven ~ Agatha Christie,#NFDB
356:I get it. Artists are introverts. If you were out there socializing all the time, you wouldn’t have time to contemplate and create. I have artists who are social butterflies. I’m not making a lot of money off them.” She paused. ~ Dana Marton, #NFDB
357:impossible for people who have lived and prospered under a given social system to imagine the point of view of those who feel it offers them nothing, and who can contemplate its destruction without any particular dismay. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
358:One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
359:But what will I do?” “Sit in here. Contemplate why others might feel moved to throw things at you.” As he ducked out of the tent, she yelled, “You leave me tied up like a dog? Then you had better remember that this bitch bites! ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
360:God can be sensed when we gaze with trembling hearts at that power of his which controls, guides, and rules everything, when we contemplate his immense knowledge and his knowing look which the secrets of the heart cannot evade. ~ John Cassian, #NFDB
361:Poetry, I'm returning to it, never leaves me. It's my genre completely. In poetry I contemplate myself exuberantly. It's my unique strength. Force of gravity, electric and magnetic energy; in my own way, to make a synthesis. ~ Nicole Brossard, #NFDB
362:There is visible labor and invisible labor. To contemplate is to labor, to think is to act. Folded arms toil, clasped hands work. A gaze fixed on heaven is a work. Thales remained motionless for four years. He founded philosophy. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
363:All you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation. Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
364:Every time I sit down to write, I have a great fear that anything I write will reveal me as the monster I was always told I would be, but that fear is personal, something I must face in everything I do, every act I contemplate. ~ Dorothy Allison, #NFDB
365:For by a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit so that the perfect religion of the Word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God's face, shines. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
366:It was wearisome to contemplate that animate protoplasm, reasonable by courtesy only, shut up in a car by an incomprehensible civilization, taken somewhere, to do a vague something without aim or significance or consequence. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
367:That way, that sunlit, gentle path was set with mines, and had at the end of it a chasm she could not contemplate. So she hid her impulse, and did not know, because he was better at concealment than she, that he had noticed it. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
368:This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
369:If there is any sea as blue as the Caribbean I have never beheld it, and when it is seen at twilight, it is most spectacular, but then you will hear more of this later, for I have had much time to contemplate the color of this sea. On ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
370:The written word can make one pause and contemplate. It can make a reader sigh to dream or question a belief in considerable depth. But all of that is nothing if those words fail to touch the heart and make one feel. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
371:If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude. ~ A E Housman, #NFDB
372:If current tendencies persist, the outcome will be disastrous before too long. Large parts of the world will become barely habitable affecting hundreds of millions of people, along with other disasters that we can barely contemplate. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
373:I understand that, each time we contemplate with desire and devotion the Host in which is hidden Christ's Eucharistic Body, we increase our merits in heaven and secure special joys to be ours later in the beatific vision of God ~ Gertrude the Great, #NFDB
374:Pieper argues that leisure is not the mere absence of work, but an attitude of mind or soul in which you are able to contemplate and enjoy things as they are in themselves, without regard to their value or their immediate utility. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
375:Something broadly analogous happens when we contemplate historical events, especially catastrophic ones like the First World War. Once they occur, they impose on us (or seem to do so) a sense of their necessity. This is a process ~ Christopher Clark, #NFDB
376:Before this address to my countrymen is closed, I beg leave to observe, that as a new century has dawned upon us, the mind is naturally led ot contemplate the great events that have run parallel with and have just closed the last. ~ Mercy Otis Warren, #NFDB
377:Suicide is not about the survivors. Your mother likely couldn’t contemplate what her choice would do to you because all she could think was what it would do to her. Suicide isn’t about ending one’s life. It’s about ending one’s pain. ~ Lauren Landish, #NFDB
378:There was no way I could contemplate taking the England job. Can you imagine me doing that? A Scotsman? I always joked that I would take the position and relegate them: make them the 150th rated country in the world, with Scotland 149. ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
379:We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
380:College is a singular opportunity to rummage through and luxuriate in ideas, to give your brain a vigorous workout and your soul a thorough investigation, to realize how very large the world is and to contemplate your desired place in it. ~ Frank Bruni, #NFDB
381:Happiness, then, is co-extensive with contemplation, and the more people contemplate, the happier they are; not incidentally, but in virtue of their contemplation, because it is in itself precious. Thus happiness is a form of contemplation. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
382:And when we view a flag, which to the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our interests to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
383:However softly we speak, God is so close to us that he can hear us; nor do we need wings to go in search of him, but merely to seek solitude and contemplate him within ourselves, without being surprised to find such a good Guest there. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
384:If you have a million things to do, adding item number 1,000,001 is not such a big deal. When, on the other hand, you have nothing to do, getting out of bed and washing yourself before 2:00 P.M. feels like too much work to even contemplate. ~ Chris Baty, #NFDB
385:We must contemplate what the meaning of being "educated" is. Some people think a person with plenty of degrees is an educated one. But I believe a person who can judge a situation correctly and make timely decisions is more important. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
386:Egoism will be destroyed, if you constantly tell yourself, 'It is He, not I','He is the force, I am but the instrument'. Keep His name always on the tongue, and contemplate His glory whenever you see or hear anything beautiful or grand. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
387:I dreamt that Earth was finished. And the only
human being to contemplate the end was Franz
Kafka. In heaven, the Titans were fighting to the
death. From a wrought-iron seat in Central Park,
Kafka was watching the world burn. ~ Roberto Bola o,#NFDB
388:when we focus on our ourselves we are destined to be unhappy: “Contemplate that, as long as you are too focused on your self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
389:In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven. ~ Edward Everett Hale, #NFDB
390:Linda McCartney sausages were my favorite. Theyre much better than eating real sausages and you dont have to contemplate half way through exactly whats inside them. ... You can have them, a bit of fried bread, tinned tomatoes. Delicious. ~ Simon Cowell, #NFDB
391:The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels. ~ Paul Bowles, #NFDB
392:When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
393:Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
394:It may well be impossible for people who have lived and prospered under a given social system to imagine the point of view of those who feel it offers them nothing, and who can contemplate its destruction without any particular dismay. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
395:1181
Volcanoes be in Sicily
Volcanoes be in Sicily
And South America
I judge from my Geography Volcanos nearer here
A Lava step at any time
Am I inclined to climb A Crater I may contemplate
Vesuvius at Home.
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
396:Focus your mind on 'I Am', which is pure and simple being. You are Here and Now only. Contemplate what it is to be fully 'Here' and fully 'Now'. For this you must leave all else. Stay only as here-now Conscious presence. This is Heart. This is Self. ~ Mooji, #NFDB
397:boys who had frolicked through their careless days, whistled and played and slept sound of nights, now laden like pack~animals and carrying the implements of death in their hands, going forward to something too terrible to contemplate. ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart, #NFDB
398:Charlie Jacobs’s researches would ever be finished. He turned to contemplate the view again. At last he uncrossed his legs and stood, pushing on the arms of his chair to accomplish it. “Come out back with me, Jamie. I want to show you something. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
399:As I contemplate the kind of future I want for children-my own and other people's-I believe we must look inward to God for guidance and strength and backward to draw on the values and legacies of our families, ancestors, and communities. ~ Marian Wright Edelman, #NFDB
400:However softly we speak, God is so close to us that he can hear us; nor do we need wings to go in search of him, but merely to seek solitude and contemplate him within ourselves, without being surprised to find such a good Guest there. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
401:I do not myself think there is any superior rationality in being unhappy. The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
402:I need Brax in my life. I can't contemplate a future without him in it. He is the sunlight to my perpetual darkness. I'm determined to fight for him and to hell with the consequences. I'm stronger with Brax by my side than I'll ever be alone - Elle ~ B J Harvey, #NFDB
403:She did not know how to react, for when your heart has been poisoned and someone picks a dandelion for you - because it is bright and yellow and you seem like you could use something like that - all you can do is contemplate the funny ways of weeds. ~ Anne Ursu, #NFDB
404:The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate the world....There is naked Nature, inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
405:When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
406:It isn't necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are more intense, clear and powerful. ~ Donald Judd, #NFDB
407:At least since Darwin's day, we have known that all of us originally emerged from the sea. That fact may account for our abiding fascination with it, our longing to return there, whether to sail the main or merely contemplate its restless enormity. ~ J D McClatchy, #NFDB
408:I had never before considered leaving my religion, my family, my customs, and my beliefs behind. It was all that I had ever known. Would it be worth it to give it all up? I had no way of knowing. It was frightening even to contemplate a life beyond ~ Carolyn Jessop, #NFDB
409:The moral person contemplates evil, the evil person commits it. And a person without a sense of humor can't distinguish between the two.... I know a lot of people who live in Marin County and contemplate spirituality and never get out of the hot tub. ~ Larry Harvey, #NFDB
410:Edie Banister, wearing a false moustache which tastes of tiger flank and erotic dancer, sitting six storeys up on the windowsill of the aged mother of a renownedly murderous prince, takes a few seconds to contemplate the unusual direction of her life. ~ Nick Harkaway, #NFDB
411:This same strain of transcendent “love-your-enemies” thinking guided Young, Abernathy, and the others as they began to contemplate their leader’s death. As Young put it, “We aren’t so much concerned with who killed Martin, as with what killed him.” It ~ Hampton Sides, #NFDB
412:We need to look down from a great height and contemplate, in their widest, most general aspect, the organic relationships linking consciousness and complexity within the Universe. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Great Event Foreshadowed - The Planetization of Mankind, #NFDB
413:Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge—the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution so as to contemplate, measure and fulfil them. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
414:When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
415:seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or wishing to contemplate the future. But the future must be met, however stern and iron it be. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
416:The present is always unsettled, no one has had time to contemplate it in tranquillity . I was a painter before I was a writer and a painter never wants the subject right under his nose; he wants to stand back and study a landscape with half-closed eyes. ~ Isak Dinesen, #NFDB
417:By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
418:The first scientist to contemplate the significance of places where things apparently cease to exist or become infinite ('singularities' that we would Now call them) in Newtonian Theory where the 18th century scientist leonhard Euler and Roger boscovich. ~ John D Barrow, #NFDB
419:Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will ensure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
420:Equally important, anyone stupid enough to contemplate invading America would soon reflect on the fact that it contains hundreds of millions of guns, which are available to a population that takes its life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness very seriously. ~ Tim Marshall, #NFDB
421:It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man's will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterredby such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
422:Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
423:Most Americans are not aware that the diet they feed their children guarantees a high cancer probability down the road.13 They don’t even contemplate that eating fast-food meals may be just as risky (or more so) as letting their children smoke cigarettes.14 ~ Joel Fuhrman, #NFDB
424:There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives. ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
425:I don't for the life of me understand how anybody could contemplate the results of the 2000 election in the US and say that electoral politics doesn't matter any more, and that Ralph Nader was right when he said there is no difference between the two parties. ~ Todd Gitlin, #NFDB
426:I mean, when you get down to very low numbers of nuclear weapons, and you contemplate going to zero, how do you deal with the reality of that technology being available to almost any country that seeks to pursue it? And what conditions do you put in place? ~ Robert M Gates, #NFDB
427:Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate. All of us have secrets in our lives. We're keepers or kept from, players or played. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
428:Though Fin couldn’t see it, she felt the closeness of land around her. From beyond the grey veil she could sense the oppressive weight of two great continents crowding down to the sea, each to kneel and contemplate the nearness of an ancient earthen brother. ~ A S Peterson, #NFDB
429:In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute— how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself. ~ John Green, #NFDB
430:Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me when we contemplate investing in businesses that in general look outstanding. All too often, we’ve seen value stagnate in the presence of hubris or of boredom that caused the attention of managers to wander. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
431:The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it’s having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels. Do you understand? ~ Paul Bowles, #NFDB
432:From the foot of the pyramids I contemplate twenty centuries, buried in the sand. ... I came here to hold on to fleeting life, and I see all about me only death. ... I write this, not quite knowing what I'm saying, but I dry the ink with the dust of Egyptian queens. ~ Rachel, #NFDB
433:Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have a right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
434:Among the many acts of gratitude we owe to God, it may be accounted one to study and contemplate the perfections and beauties of His work of creation. Every new discovery must necessarily raise in us a fresh sense of the greatness, wisdom, and power of God. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
435:He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
436:I would rather be physically disabled obviously than mentally. I would rather be paraplegic than nuts. And it is a terrifying prospect and actually the longer we live the more likely it is that that's how we will go and that's a very painful thing to contemplate. ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
437:The great masters both of the East and the West never forgot the value of suggestion as a means for taking the spectator into their confidence. Who can contemplate a masterpiece without being awed by the immense vista of thought presented to our consideration? ~ Kakuz Okakura, #NFDB
438:The last few months were filled with fear and self-pity. I began to contemplate suicide with increasing regularity, yet I was afraid of dying. I remember thinking that this life would go on and on, never getting better and slowly fading away to nothing. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, #NFDB
439:Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same. ~ Ted Chiang, #NFDB
440:Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity. ~ Vilayanur S Ramachandran, #NFDB
441:I would have appreciated the satisfaction of a carnal paroxysm—in my experience, they bring a sparkle to the eye as well as brightness to the complexion and a spring to the step—but using Stoker to achieve that end was a means I could not begin to contemplate. ~ Deanna Raybourn, #NFDB
442:Nobody...likes talking about enforceable international protocols and yet unless there is a real change in attitude, we have to contemplate those very unwelcome possibilities if we want the global economy not to collapse and millions, billions, of people to die. ~ Rowan Williams, #NFDB
443:Those who pursue attentively their contemplation have no sorrow to fear, nor can any vicissitude of Fate affect them . They contemplate this history written in ourselves to guide us in the execution of the divine laws which, equally, are engraved in our hearts. ~ Giordano Bruno, #NFDB
444:In the ensuing silence, I have the time to contemplate the word cute – how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself. ~ John Green, #NFDB
445:No funny stuff in here tonight, you understand?” Dash said, “I assure you I could not contemplate any of your so-called funny stuff seeing as how I have no idea why I’m even here.” Mark scoffed. “You bookish little pervert.” “Thank you, sir!” Dash said brightly. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
446:boys who had frolicked through their careless days, whistled and played and slept sound of nights, now laden like pack~ Mary Roberts Rinehartanimals and carrying the implements of death in their hands, going forward to something too terrible to contemplate. ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart, #NFDB
447:It is too serious a matter for us to accept a man as a genuine prophet. Every respectable prophet strives against the unconscious pretensions of his role. When a prophet appears at moment's notice, we would be better advised to contemplate a possible psychic disequilibrium. ~ Jung, #NFDB
448:Contemplate that, as long as you are too focused on your self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want does not result in happiness. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
449:Hadrian discovered that the most fascinating thing about plummeting in total darkness wasn’t the odd sense of euphoria instilled from the free fall or the abject terror derived from anticipating sudden death, but that he had the opportunity to contemplate both. ~ Michael J Sullivan, #NFDB
450:The prospect of parting—probably forever—from his aunt, uncle, and cousin was one that he was able to contemplate quite cheerfully, but there was nevertheless a certain awkwardness in the air. What did you say to one another at the end of sixteen years’ solid dislike? ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
451:All this to say of course Gallo wants to get into your Little Mermaid panties. And if you don't get that, you're dumber than I ever thought, which gives me such a headache to even contemplate. The massive amount of your dumbness. It hurts me,' he whined. ~ MaryJanice Davidson, #NFDB
452:It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable. ~ Jacques Yves Cousteau, #NFDB
453:Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void. ~ John Marshall, #NFDB
454:In my late teens, like many a devout Catholic boy, I considered the priesthood and even went as far as discussing the idea at a seminary in Belfast but hesitated. I decided to focus on physics at university, another way perhaps to contemplate the mysteries of reality. ~ Stephen Curry, #NFDB
455:It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
456:I was determined not to contemplate the future or even the past but only what was happening to me *right now*, which unfortunately can be a little like trying to fall asleep and failing to do so because you cannot stop thinking about how you are trying to fall asleep. ~ Lisa Halliday, #NFDB
457:Contemplate the Importance of Mastering the Mind Your mind must deal with every experience. Think about how attaining mastery over the mind will enable you to lose any fear of death. Come to the certainty that you must master your mind in order to die with confidence. ~ Anyen Rinpoche, #NFDB
458:In life you may be poor or rich, but death is the great equalizer. The greatest communism is in death. Howsoever you live, it makes no difference; death happens equally. In life, equality is impossible; in death, inequality is impossible. Become aware of it, contemplate it. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
459:We both know what those steps would have to be, though we do not mention our thoughts to each other. We should neither of us shrink from the task, awful though it be to contemplate. "Euthanasia" is an excellent and a comforting word! I am grateful to whoever invented it. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
460:By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle,” she said, “to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep in the stream. ~ Stephanie Rosenbloom, #NFDB
461:Shadows in a cave are given to change. They dance and flicker with ever-changing shape and brightness. To contemplate the truly holy and to go beyond the surface of creaturely things, we need to get out of our self-made cave and walk in the glorious light of God's holiness. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
462:There is a ripple effect to the gospel that’s inevitable. There’s a ripple effect to true grace. It doesn’t lead us to only sit and contemplate what hap- pened to us. It leads us to proclaim what’s happened to us—and what can happen to anybody and everybody on the planet. ~ Louie Giglio, #NFDB
463:Africa is addicted to aid. For the past sixty years it has been fed aid. Like any addict it needs and depends on its regular fix, finding it hard, if not impossible, to contemplate existence in an aid-less world. In Africa, the West has found its perfect client to deal to. ~ Dambisa Moyo, #NFDB
464:No funny stuff in here tonight, you understand?”
Dash said, “I assure you I could not contemplate any of your so-called funny stuff seeing as how I have no idea why I’m even here.”
Mark scoffed. “You bookish little pervert.”
“Thank you, sir!” Dash said brightly. ~ David Levithan,#NFDB
465:The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
466:Anyone who is contemplating going to Afghanistan does need to think very carefully about the consequences, both to them and their families in terms of the grief they may suffer, as well as contemplate the legal action that might follow on their return, if they were to return. ~ Geoff Hoon, #NFDB
467:We are here among people who don't contemplate transience and the existence of the soul, the meaning of life and the nature of being. We are in a world in which man, crawling on the earth, tries to dig a few grains of wheat out of the mud just to survive another day. ~ Ryszard Kapu ci ski, #NFDB
468:But I do not doubt that it is beneficial sometimes to contemplate in the mind, as in a picture, the image of a grander and better world; for if the mind grows used to the trivia of daily life, it may dwindle too much and decline altogether into worthless thoughts. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
469:Ultimately, we believe the Bible to be inerrant because it comes from God Himself. It is unthinkable to contemplate that God might be capable of error. Therefore, His Word cannot possibly contain errors. This is our faith-we can trust the Bible because we can trust God.
-R. C. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
470:It is very pleasant to scratch an itching ring-worm, but the sensation one gets afterwards is very painful and intolerable. In the same way the pleasures of this world are very attractive in the beginning, but their consequences are terrible to contemplate and hard to endure. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
471:Nature-the sublime, the harsh, and the beautiful-offers something that the street or gated community or computer game cannot. Nature presents the young with something so much greater than they are; it offers an environment where they can easily contemplate infinity and eternity. ~ Richard Louv, #NFDB
472:You might contemplate the purpose of a court…” You brainless, twaddling idiot, I thought scornfully. I wished he were before me. I wished I could personally flout him and his busy searchers, and make him look like the fool he was. And watch the reaction, and walk away laughing. ~ Sherwood Smith, #NFDB
473:At best, I consider flying an unavoidable necessity, a time to resurrect forgotten prayers and contemplate the end of all joy in a twisted howling heap of machinery; at worst, I rank it right up there with psychotic episodes and torture at the hands of malevolent strangers. ~ T Coraghessan Boyle, #NFDB
474:I have come to believe that our lives can be turned in a different direction, our minds adopt a different way of thinking, by some significant, though small event. That belief can be frightening, or exhilarating, depending on whether you just contemplate it or do something with it. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
475:In my prayers, I want to say: Lord, don’t be far from me, and also don’t come too close. Let me contemplate the stars on the texture of your cloth, but don’t unveil your face to me. Allow me to hear the rivers that you send running, but Lord! Lord! Don’t allow me hearing your voice ~ Amin Maalouf, #NFDB
476:The cutthroat savagery of high school romance inspired in nearly all adults a collective amnesia. Having survived it themselves, they locked those memories far away in some dark chamber of their subconscious where things that are too terrible to contemplate are permanently stored. ~ Richard Russo, #NFDB
477:There's nothing really difficult if you only begin - some people contemplate a task until it looms so big, it seems impossible, but I just begin and it gets done somehow. There would be no coral islands if the first bug sat down and began to wonder how the job was to be done. ~ John Shaw Billings, #NFDB
478:Here we have another instance of an Old Testament law finding its truest fulfilment in the crucified body of Jesus Christ. As they contemplate this body which was given for them, and as they share its life, the disciples receive strength for the chastity which Jesus requires. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
479:If you follow nature you will not be able to vanquish the tragic in any real degree in your art... We must free ourselves from our attachment to the external, for only then do we transcend the tragic, and are enabled consciously to contemplate the repose which is within all things. ~ Piet Mondrian, #NFDB
480:To contemplate a reason is to dishonor the victims. They were not killed for a reason, for a rational purpose. Why is there German genocide in our world? It is not a question we should ever attempt to answer. We should just defy it. No logic should ever be applied to explain this. ~ Ronald H Balson, #NFDB
481:What is happening to our world is almost too colossal for human comprehension to contain...To contemplate its girth and its circumference, to attempt to define it, to try and fight it all at once, is impossible. The only way to combat it is by fighting specific wars in specific ways. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
482:It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
483:His right hemisphere had died. He knew so many people who had died that in his present state of dissociation he could begin to contemplate his own end as a commonplace – a flurry of burying or cremating, a welt of grief raised, then subsiding as life swept on. Perhaps he had already died. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
484:If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions, not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly, alone, hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
485:If, despite not having pursued wealth, we find ourselves wealthy, we should enjoy our affluence; it was the Cynics, not the Stoics, who advocated asceticism. But although we should enjoy wealth, we should not cling to it; indeed, even as we enjoy it, we should contemplate its loss. • ~ William B Irvine, #NFDB
486:“You might contemplate the purpose of a court…” You brainless, twaddling idiot, I thought scornfully. I wished he were before me. I wished I could personally flout him and his busy searchers, and make him look like the fool he was. And watch the reaction, and walk away laughing. ~ Sherwood Smith, #NFDB
487:This is particularly the case in the present space force, where it has been exacerbated by the influx of a large number of academics and scientists. If we use this mentality to contemplate an interstellar war four centuries in the future, we’ll never be able to establish faith in a victory. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
488:Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
489:The power of an idea whose time has come is really the power of Spirit at work. Equality for all is how God is, for instance, and we seek to be like God. When enough of us, along with one or two at visionary consciousness, begin to contemplate these in-Spirit ideas, they can't be stopped. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
490:I disagree that we need to contemplate eliminating ourselves in order to move forward. Sure, I think a good dystopian story can serve to steer us on the right path toward a better world. But we also need stories that offer solutions to our problems that are realistic, and workable today. ~ Annalee Newitz, #NFDB
491: Quietly contemplate the Lamb as the light of heaven. Light in Scripture is the emblem of joy. The joy of the saints in heaven is comprised in this: Jesus chose us, loved us, bought us, cleansed us, robed us, kept us, glorified us: we are here entirely through the Lord Jesus. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
492:To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles; in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
493:Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
494:Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
495:Don’t make me hunt you, Princess,” Ryodan warns softly. “You’ll become my sole target, my obsession, my compulsion, my undying homicidal fantasy, the object of my every fucking thought and inclination, and the more time I have to contemplate what I’m going to do to you when I find you— ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
496:It is always a foolish thing to contemplate suicide; for no matter how dark the future may appear today, tomorrow may hold for us that which will alter our whole life in an instant, revealing to us nothing but sunshine and happiness. So, for my part, I shall always wait for tomorrow. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs, #NFDB
497:Usually, when the distractions of daily life deplete our energy, the first thing we eliminate is the thing we eliminate is the thing we need the most: quiet, reflective time. Time to dream, time to contemplate what's working and what's not, so that we can make changes for the better. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach, #NFDB
498:When in our isolation we see our lives seeping away as a mere succession of moments, tossed meaninglessly about by accidents and overwhelming events; when we contemplate a history that seems to be at an end, leaving only chaos behind it, then we are impelled to raise ourselves above history. ~ Karl Jaspers, #NFDB
499:After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
500:Suttas are not meant to be 'sacred scriptures' that tell us what to believe. One should read them, listen to them, think about them, contemplate them, and investigate the present reality, the present experience with them. Then, and only then, can one insightfully know the truth beyond words. ~ Ajahn Sumedho, #NFDB
501:Metaphor is our mental root of imagination and language. Arnold Kozak offers fertile metaphors for growing your knowledge of the Buddhadharma. If you contemplate these brief stories, your emotional intelligence and mindfulness will develop effortlessly from the insights they provide. ~ Polly Young Eisendrath, #NFDB
502:The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
503:It is not uncommon for fighters’ camps to be gloomy. In heavy training, fighters live in dimensions of boredom others do not begin to contemplate. Fighters are supposed to. The boredom creates an impatience with one’s life, and a violence to improve it. Boredom creates a detestation for losing. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
504:I write so others might contemplate things out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel—to cause laughter and tears, to cause anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and wonder at crazy, incredible truths. I write to have a tiny bit of influence on a universal conscience. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
505:My mother will never make amends, will never be held accountable. She’s died just as selfishly as she lived. I contemplate kicking the bed. I go as far as lifting my foot but then imagine the rabbit hole of anger I’ll fall into if I give in to my wild urge. I won’t let my mother get to me. ~ Sarah Lyons Fleming, #NFDB
506:The greater the variety of border patterns we contemplate from nature—the generative matrix of borders, formal to casual, crisp to fuzzy—the greater are the possibilities for expanding our minds. Sensory border patterns provide templates for those mental. ~ Tyler Volk, Metapatterns - Across Space, Time, and Mind, #NFDB
507:We skim over the surface thoughtlessly. But we must acknowledge that thinking well is a time-consuming process. We can't expect instant results. We have to slow down a bit, and take the time to contemplate, meditate, and even pray. It is the only route to a more meaningful and efficient existence. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
508:It's a pity we don't whistle at one another, like birds. Words are misleading. I am always trying to forget words. That is why I contemplate the lilies of the field, but in particular the glacier. If one looks at the glacier for long enough, words cease to have any meaning on God's earth. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
509:wanting it for its beauty is not wanting to inspect it: it is wanting to contemplate it—and that is something more than a search for information or an expression of appetite. Here is a want without a goal: a desire that cannot be fulfilled since there is nothing that would count as its fulfilment. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
510:Contemplate this, and let go of the idea of a judgmental God. You have a loving God. In truth, you have love itself for a God. And love cannot do other than love. Your God is in ecstasy and there’s nothing you can do about it. And if God is in ecstasy, I wonder what He sees when He looks at you? ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
511:I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel—to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and wonder at crazy, incredible truths. I write to have a tiny bit of influence on a universal conscience. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
512:they ran in the sunlight, creating their own breeze which pressed their dresses into their damp skin. Reaching a kind of square of four locked trees which promised cooling; they flung themselves into the shade to taste their lip sweat and contemplate the wildness that had come upon them so suddenly ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
513:I use the Scriptures, not as an arsenal to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as a matchless temple, where I delight to be, to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe, and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored. ~ Robert Boyle, #NFDB
514:The day before you died was the longest, slowest day ever. It gave you more time than you could possibly want to contemplate all the things you’d got wrong, the chances you’d missed, the errors you’d made. It was long enough to convince the most hopeful person that there was no point in anything. ~ Juliet Marillier, #NFDB
515:We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
516:When I made a breakthrough as an actor, people started to say, 'Who's that bloke with the funny name?' They advised me to change it, saying it would never be put up in lights outside theaters because they couldn't afford the electricity. But I would never contemplate changing it. It's who I am. ~ Pete Postlethwaite, #NFDB
517:How could she love him after what he did to her? How could she contemplate taking him back?” It’s sad that those are the first thoughts that run through our minds when someone is abused. Shouldn’t there be more distaste in our mouths for the abusers than for those who continue to love the abusers? I ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
518:In order that the mind should see light instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world, until its eye can learn to contemplate reality and that supreme splendor which we have called the good. Hence there may well be an art whose aim would be to effect this very thing. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
519:O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
520:And I would absolutely not be the same person if you never existed" I lifted my head and remainded still with anticipation. "We can contemplate the meaning of your life all you want, but know that you're my meaning...the reason behind just about everything I do-and I would never want to change that. ~ Rebecca Donovan, #NFDB
521:It occurred to her that Mikaela was being nice to her. She did not know how to react, for when your heart has been poisoned and someone picks a dandelion for you -- because it is bright and yellow and you seem like you could use something like that -- all you can do is contemplate the funny ways of weeds. ~ Anne Ursu, #NFDB
522:The three of us, each paralyzed in his own silence, contemplate the horizon, which the dawn lights up with a thousand fires; and each of us knows for certain that the rising sun of this day, like all those that have gone before it, will be incapable of bringing sufficient light into the hearts of men. ~ Yasmina Khadra, #NFDB
523:The more I understand and contemplate Jesus' surrender of Himself for me, the more do I give myself again to Him. The surrender is a mutual one: the love comes from both sides. His giving of Himself makes such an impression on my heart, that my heart with the self-same love and joy becomes entirely His. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
524:To find anything comparable with our forthcoming ventures into space, we must go back far beyond Columbus, far beyond Odysseus-far, indeed, beyond the first ape-man. We must contemplate the moment, now irrevocably lost in the mists of time, when the ancestor off all of us came crawling out of the sea. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
525:Usually, when the distractions of daily life deplete our energy, the first thing we eliminate is the thing we eliminate is the thing we need the most: quiet, reflective time. Time to dream, time to contemplate what's working and what's not, so that we can make changes for the better. (January 17) ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach, #NFDB
526:But remember, my reader, whom I hope to have travel far with me through time and space remember, please, my reader, that I have thought much on these matters that through bloody nights and sweats of dark that lasted years long I have been alone with my many selves to consult and contemplate my many selves. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
527:Observe and contemplate on the hidden things of life: how a man's seed is but the beginning, it takes others to bring it to fruition. Think how food undergoes such changes to produce health and strength. See the power of these hidden things which, like the wind cannot been seen, but its effects can be. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
528:Pity the poor novice Dominant who attempts to “break” or “discipline” a Warrior Princess Submissive without her explicit consent. The best case result in that scenario is likely to involve a great deal of frustration and humiliation for him. The worst-case outcome is a little too gruesome to contemplate. ~ Michael Makai, #NFDB
529:This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:
Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.
So is all conditioned existence to be seen. ~ Gautama Buddha,#NFDB
530:For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self sacrifice of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrancers. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains and look around me with a free and lofty spirit, ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
531:How could she love him after what he did to her? How could she contemplate taking him back?”
It’s sad that those are the first thoughts that run through our minds when someone is abused. Shouldn’t there be more distaste in our mouths for the abusers than for those who continue to love the abusers? ~ Colleen Hoover,#NFDB
532:Nowadays, mindfulness has become a catch-all word, but the general principle of trying to be more conscious and aware in our daily life is very important. Along with this, it's helpful to contemplate some of the mind training verses which are designed to take and transform all of the problems we experience. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
533:College, after all, as those who like to denigrate it often say, is "not the real world." But that is precisely its strength. College is an opportunity to stand outside the world for a few years, between the orthodoxy of your family and the exigencies of career, and contemplate things from a distance. ~ William Deresiewicz, #NFDB
534:It seemed impossible, from within love at least, that this could have been anything but fate. It would have taken a steady mind to contemplate without superstition the enormous probability of a meeting that had turned out to alter our lives. Someone at (30,000 feet) must have been pulling strings in the sky. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
535:It is impossible to contemplate the word without the serious intention of doing justice to it in practical behavior. It demands love for God and our neighbor, and does so with such immediacy and unmistakable urgency that it is pointless even to pause before this demand unless we are willing to respond. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
536:Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
537:Mankind will possess incalculable advantages and extraordinary control over human behavior when the scientific investigator will be able to subject his fellow men to the same external analysis he would employ for any natural object, and when the human mind will contemplate itself not from within but from without. ~ Ivan Pavlov, #NFDB
538:The fact was that facts were losing their value. Stalin had broken the opposition. He was also far advanced toward his much stranger objective of breaking the truth. Or it may have been the other way about: actuality, under Stalin, was such that dread and disgust forbade you to accept it— or even to contemplate it. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
539:There is a Sacerdotall dignitie in my native Countrey contiguate to me, where I now contemplate: which your worshipfull benignitie could sone impenetrate for mee, if it would like you to extend your sedules, and collaude me in them to the right honourable lord Chaunceller, or rather Archgrammacian of Englande. ~ Simon Winchester, #NFDB
540:Galicia. I contemplate the beautiful name as it unfolds, disclosing delicate, prancing, caparisoned horses and the lovely princesses riding them whose undulating red hair reaches to the carpet of flowers beneath the hooves. “You could always tell the Jews from Galicia by their red hair,” my aunt says dreamily. ~ Deborah Eisenberg, #NFDB
541:It seems that when human beings contemplate the absolute, they have very similar ideas and experiences. The sense of presence, ecstasy and dread in the presence of a reality—called nirvana, the One, Brahman or God—seems to be a state of mind and a perception that are natural and endlessly sought by human beings. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
542:The Europeans hate us because we’ve retired to live inside our advertisements, like hermits going into caves to contemplate. We sleep in symbolic bedrooms, eat symbolic meals, are symbolically entertained- and that terrifies them, that fills them with fury and loathing because they can never understand it. ~ Christopher Isherwood, #NFDB
543:The soul has two parts, one rational and the other irrational. Let us now similarly divide the rational part, and let it be assumed that there are two rational faculties, one whereby we contemplate those things whose first principles are invariable, and one whereby we contemplate those things which admit of variation. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
544:Who are the telegenically dead? The telegenically dead are the dead, plain and simple. That we see them is the novelty, that we grieve them is human, and to be human, today, is a hostile act. To grieve is to acknowledge loss, to acknowledge loss is to affirm life, to affirm life is to contemplate how it was taken. ~ Sarah Kendzior, #NFDB
545:Habitually contemplate whether your thoughts stem from love or from fear. If your thoughts originate in love, then follow them. But if they originate from a place of fear, then dig deep to find the root of your fear. Only then will you be able to finally let go of it so that fear no longer limits your possibilities. ~ Timber Hawkeye, #NFDB
546:It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
547:Better for them to deny the mind--and with it rationality, truth, and science itself--than to admit the soul. Once again, the secularist manifests the very dogmatism of which he accuses the religious believer, and in rationalizing it is willing to contemplate absurdities of which no religious believer has ever dreamed. ~ Edward Feser, #NFDB
548:So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
549:I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption. I will contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society, and the Earth. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
550:She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this way you are bound to feel more about it than those who know a little of how it is done. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
551:The dark is a quiet place. Reflection and contemplation are the only things to do in it. Well that, and imagine the worst things possible.
I don’t have to reflect or contemplate or any of those things. I know what the worst things possible are. I know about the things that hide in the dark. Insanity is the least of them. ~ Tara Brown,#NFDB
552:… but you are in the desert. so immerse yourself in it. the desert will give you an understanding of the world; in fact, anything on the face of the earth will do that. you don’t even have to understand the desert. all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
553:Let's contemplate this, how many people would die if war breaks out. There are 2.7 billion people in the world. One-third could be lost; or, a little more, it could be half... I say that, taking the extreme situation, half dies, half lives, but imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
554:Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
555:Good science is more than the mechanics of research and experimentation. Good science requires that scientists look inward-to contemplate the origin of their thoughts. The failures of science do not begin with flawed evidence or fumbled statistics; they begin with personal self-deception and an unjustified sense of knowing. ~ Robert A Burton, #NFDB
556:I can scarcely contemplate a greater calamity that could befall this country, than be loaded with a debt exceeding their ability ever to discharge. If this be a just remark, it is unwise and improvident to vest in the general government a power to borrow at discretion, without any limitation or restriction. ~ Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, #NFDB
557:The righteously displeased crowds existed now in every part of the world. The total membership of the Churches of God the Utterly Indifferent was a good, round three billion. The young lions who had first taught the creed could now afford to be lambs, to contemplate such oriental mysteries as water trickling down a bell rope. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
558:While we contemplate in all creatures, as in a mirror, those immense riches of His wisdom, justice, goodness and power, we should not meerly run them over cursorily, and, so to speak, with a fleeting glance, but we should ponder them at length, turn them over in our mind seriously and faithfully and recollect them repeatedly. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
559:Martin Hart: Can I ask you something? You're a Christian, yeah?
Rustin Cohle: No.
Martin Hart: Well, whadaya got the cross for, in your apartment?
Rustin Cohle: It's a form of meditation.
Martin Hart: How's that?
Rustin Cohle: I contemplate the moment in the garden; the idea of allowing your own crucifixion. ~ Nic Pizzolatto,#NFDB
560:I contemplate the idea of being better and it brings to mind my favorite quote from Wayne Dyer, our friend and the man who is about to marry me to the woman of my dreams. “True nobility isn’t about being better than anyone else; it’s about being better than you used to be.” “Yes, Ma. I am better.” I am better than I used to be. ~ Portia de Rossi, #NFDB
561:Obviously these [white-guard] emigres enjoy the right of asylum existing also in the U.S. So far as we are concerned we would never tolerate a single terrorist in our territory regardless against whom he would contemplate his crimes. Apparently the right of asylum receives broader interpretation in the U.S.A. than in our country. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
562:We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited. ~ Alfred Adler, #NFDB
563:With every day that passed, the boy's heart became more and more silent. It no longer wanted to know about things of the past or future; it was content simply to contemplate the desert, and to drink with the boy from the Soul of the World. The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
564:Therefore continually remind yourself, Lucilius, how many ambitions you have attained. When you see many ahead of you, think how many are behind! If you would thank the gods, and be grateful for your past life, you should contemplate how many men you have outstripped. But what have you to do with the others? You have outstripped yourself. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
565:In the pure mathematics, we contemplate absolute truths, which existed in the Divine Mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there, when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven. ~ Edward Everett (ca. 1850) as quoted by Eric Temple Bell, Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science (1952) p. 21., #NFDB
566:our tendencies with their habitual story lines are described as seeds in the unconscious. When the right causes and conditions come together, these preexisting propensities pop up like flowers in the springtime. It’s helpful to contemplate that it’s these propensities and not what triggers them that are the real cause of our suffering. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
567:To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state of things, the political state can hardly be said to have any existence whatever. It is unreal, incredible, and insignificant to him, and for him to endeavor to extract the truth from such lean material is like making sugar from linen rags, when sugar-cane may be had. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
568:We infrequently contemplate the harms that await any new-born child—pain, disappointment, anxiety, grief, and death. For any given child we cannot predict what form these harms will take or how severe they will be, but we can be sure that at least some of them will occur. None of this befalls the nonexistent. Only existers suffer harm. ~ David Benatar, #NFDB
569:.. everything is more difficult once you reach man’s estate, everything rings falser, but sometimes the gods offer you flashes of clairvoyance, moments when you contemplate the whole universe, the infinite wheel of worlds, you see yourself, from high up, for few instants truly before leaving, propelled into the next thing, toward the end… ~ Mathias nard, #NFDB
570:Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols ... Art tells gorgeous lies that come true. ~ Hakim Bey, #NFDB
571:How do you know if the next act you are about to do is the right one or the wrong one? Consider the face of the poorest and most vulnerable human being that you have ever chanced upon, and ask yourself if the act that you contemplate will be of benefit to that person; and if it will be, it's the right thing to do, and if not, rethink it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
572:I believe we came from nowhere. We show up, and we are now here. It's all the same. It just is a question of spacing. While we are in the "now here," we all contemplate where we are going. Where we are going is back to the "nowhere." We are going to rejoin the spirit from which all things emanate. These are the big questions for me - always. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
573:So, you have to contemplate yourself surrounded by the conditions you wish to produce and know you can attract divine energy to help you. Dormant forces come alive when you put your attention on what you intend to manifest and when you stay connected to your source of well-being, your source of kindness, and your source that excludes no one. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
574:I was afraid she was going to make me hop out into the water until it was over my head, an image too mortifying to even contemplate. Cal stepped forward, hopefully to come to my rescue. “I could toss her off the pier, Ms. Vanderlyden.” Or not.
Hawkins, Rachel (2011-03-01). Demonglass (Hex Hall Book 2) (p. 3). Disney. Kindle Edition. ~ Rachel Hawkins,#NFDB
575:In The Knights Aristophanes gave us a picture of the final state of corruption in which the vulgar rabble ends when--just as in Tibet they worship the Dalai Lama's excrement--they contemplate their own scum in its representatives; and that, in a democracy, is a degree of corruption comparable to auctioning the crown in a monarchy. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
576:Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself. ~ William Kingdon Clifford, #NFDB
577:She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
578:She wanted to leave, she wanted to lie alone face down on her bed and savor the vile piquancy of the moment, and go back down the lines of branching consequences to the point before the destruction began. She needed to contemplate with eyes closed the full richness of what she had lost, what she had given away, and to anticipate the new regime. ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
579:Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
580:Ecology's implications for capitalism are too momentous for the capitalist to contemplate. The plutocrats are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity. The present ecological crisis has been created by the few at the expense of the many. ~ Michael Parenti, #NFDB
581:People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
582:We ought to contemplate providence not as curious and fickle persons are wont to do but as a ground of confidence and excitement to prayer. When he informs us that the hairs of our head are all numbered it is not to encourage trivial speculations but to instruct us to depend on the fatherly care of God which is exercised over these frail bodies. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
583:When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
584:When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
585:When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
586:If North Koreans paused to contemplate the obvious inconsistencies and lies in what they were told, they would find themselves in a dangerous place. They didn't have a choice. They couldn't flee their country, depose their leadership, speak out, or protest. In order to fit in, the average citizen had to discipline himself not to think too much. ~ Barbara Demick, #NFDB
587:To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
588:But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” —2 Corinthians 3:16-18 ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
589:For 6,000 years, these rules have been unquestionably right. And yet we break them every day. People feel that something is wrong in life. There is some kind of atmosphere that makes people now turn to other values. They want to contemplate the basic questions of life, and that is probably the real reason for wanting to tell these stories. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski, #NFDB
590:You know you are a woman who said something interesting on the internet when you receive death threats. It is like graduating, but instead of smiling at your parents you cry to your pillow for several weeks when no one is around and contemplate your own worthlessness until you get angry and creative and emerge some sort of burning, fuschine dragon. ~ Cara Ellison, #NFDB
591:before attempting to perform any good action, or to encounter some failing, we should look at our own weakness on the one hand, and on the other contemplate the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of God. Balancing what we fear from ourselves with what we hope from God, we shall courageously undergo the greatest difficulties and severest trials. ~ Lorenzo Scupoli, #NFDB
592:We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
593:A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces. ~ Mary Antin, #NFDB
594:Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can't help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don't like that. That's the famous joke: I don't like peas, and I'm glad I don't like them, because if I liked them I would eat them and I hate them. ~ Quentin Crisp, #NFDB
595:When I contemplate the immense advances in science and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
596:Take a nautilus shell; cut it cross section. Gently elevate its swirling, chambered tiers as they approach the tight-bound center, culminating at last in a pinnacle on which we all stood. Note its asymmetrical order, its chaotic repetition, the grace of its linkages. Contemplate the ephemerality of its existence. Such is the beauty that is mortal life. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
597:At most schools, the social, intellectual, and spiritual components are confined to separate experiential spheres. We party, we learn, and we contemplate the metaphysical, but we rarely do all three simultaneously and en masse. Maybe most college students aren't looking for spiritual euphoria from their schools, but I can't say I blame the ones who are. ~ Kevin Roose, #NFDB
598:Prayer helps correct myopia, calling to mind a perspective I daily forget. I keep reversing roles, thinking of ways in which God should serve me, rather than vice versa. As God fiercely reminded Job, the Lord of the universe has many things to manage, and in the midst of my self-pity I would do well to contemplate for a moment God’s own point of view. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
599:Twenty-four hours a day one looks for contentment in eight different directions but one must also explore the ninth place, which is to their own body and contemplate within. Within the body are the nine treasures of the Name of the Lord—seek the depths of these virtues. Those blessed with the karma of good actions praise the Lord and become true devotees ~ Guru Angad, #NFDB
600:A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
601:The Indian, in truth, no longer has a country. He is reduced to starvation or to warring to the death. The Indian´s first demand is that the white man shall not drive off his game and dispossesses him of his lands. How can we promise this unless we prohibit emigration and settlement...The end is sure and dreadful to contemplate.
General John Pope ~ Stephen E Ambrose,#NFDB
602:When walking away from something we were once committed to, we often hesitate. Deciding to make a major change in life is difficult. But we all reach a point when we’re done - done giving to a world that only takes. Until then, you’ll want, you’ll wait, and you’ll contemplate change. When you’re truly done, you’ll know. You’ll know when the time comes. ~ Scott Hildreth, #NFDB
603:Do I "really like" him? Is that the right way to put it? I've only known him for the summer technically, but "really like" doesn't seem to encompass it. If you "really like" someone, do they insist on invading your every thought? Does just saying their name make goose bumps rise on your arms? Do you contemplate how many freckles your children will have? ~ Leah Rae Miller, #NFDB
604:Stalin had developed an interesting new theory: that resistance to socialism increases as its successes mount, because its foes resist with greater desperation as they contemplate their final defeat. Thus any problem in the Soviet Union could be defined as an example of enemy action, and enemy action could be defined as evidence of progress.
P. 41 ~ Timothy Snyder,#NFDB
605:The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
606:It is the peaceful one who is observant. It is peace that gives him the power to observe keenly. It is the peaceful one, therefore, who can conceive, for peace helps him to conceive. It is the peaceful who can contemplate; one who has no peace cannot contemplate properly. Therefore, all things pertaining to spiritual progress in life depend upon peace. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
607:It was like starting to write a novel. When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing. So ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
608:Simon looked at Jordan who was looking at Maia again. She had her back to them and was talking to Luke and Jocelyn, laughing, flinging her curly hair back. "Don't even think about it," Simon said, and got up. He pointed at Jordan. "You stay here." "And do what?" "Whatever Praetor Lupas do in this situation. Meditate. Contemplate your Jedi powers. Whatever. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
609:When I was twelve years old I thought up an odd trinity: namely, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Devil. My inference wasthat God, in contemplating himself, created the second person of the godhead; but that, in order to be able to contemplate himself, he had to contemplate, and thus to create, his opposite.--With this I began to do philosophy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
610:"When we contemplate the duration of the universe, we see it limited to the present moment, which is nothing more but the point which separates two infinities of time. The past and the future are as meaningless as if they did not exist. Is anyone more misguided than the man who barters an eternal future for a moment which passes quicker than the blink of an eye?." ~ Ibn Hazm, #NFDB
611:Let all your thoughts be with the Most High, and direct your humble prayers unceasingly to Christ. If you cannot contemplate high and heavenly things, take refuge in the Passion of Christ, and love to dwell within His Sacred Wounds. For if you devoutly seek the Wounds of Jesus and the precious marks of His Passion, you will find great strength in all troubles. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
612:Eisenhower was certain any war with the Soviet Union would become a nuclear war, and any nuclear war would escalate into a full, all-out general nuclear exchange. That end, catastrophic for the planet, was just too awful to contemplate. As he told his advisors in one meeting, “You might as well go out and shoot everyone you see and then shoot yourself.” During ~ Garrett M Graff, #NFDB
613:Let all your thoughts be with the Most High, and direct your humble prayers unceasingly to Christ. If you cannot contemplate high and heavenly things, take refuge in the Passion of Christ, and love to dwell within His Sacred Wounds. For if you devoutly seek the Wounds of Jesus and the precious marks of His Passion, you will find great strength in all troubles. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
614:Simon looked at Jordan who was looking at Maia again. She had her back to them and was talking to Luke and Jocelyn, laughing, flinging her curly hair back. "Don't even think about it," Simon said, and got up. He pointed at Jordan. "You stay here."
"And do what?"
"Whatever Praetor Lupas do in this situation. Meditate. Contemplate your Jedi powers. Whatever. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
615:I've got a telescope in my garden and one of the things I love to do is go out and let the sky, the night sky, the galaxies, the Orion nebula, have an impact on my mind. I find that awe inspiring. And just to contemplate on what the astronomers have revealed to us about the immense size and so on of the universe. I find that very healthy. And it's a good thing to do. ~ John Lennox, #NFDB
616:Printing up extra money - with no backing - used to be the sort of thing only counterfeiters did. Now it is done by the central bankers and Treasury Secretaries themselves. They don't apologize for it. They don't hang their heads and contemplate blowing their brains out. Instead, they're proud of it... announcing that they 'saved civilization,' or some such claptrap. ~ Bill Bonner, #NFDB
617: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
618:For the Christian, there can be joy in the midst of suffering, joy that transcends the pain of the moment. But we don't really understand the grounds for this joy in the house of mirth. We discover it in the house of mourning. It is in weeping that we learn to contemplate the goodness of God. It is in mourning that we discover the peace of God that passes understanding. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
619:Man has "a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature... Yet, at the same time... man is a worm and food for worms ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
620:The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
621:I have always envied the Tibetans their simple faith, for all my life I have been a seeker. Though I learned, while in Asia, the way to meditate, the final answer to the riddle of life has not been vouchsafed to me. But I have at least learned to contemplate the events of life with tranquillity and not let myself be flung to and fro by circumstances in a sea of doubt. ~ Heinrich Harrer, #NFDB
622:If anyone should want to know my name, I am called Leah. And I spend all my time weaving garlands of flowers with my fair hands, t o please me when I stand before the mirror; my sister Rachel sits all the day long before her own, and never moves away. She loves to contemplate her lovely eyes; I love to use my hands to adorn myself: her joy is in reflection, mine in act. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
623:Consequently, we know the most perfect way of seeking God, and the most suitable order, is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of his essence, which we ought more to adore than meticulously to search out, but for us to contemplate him in his works whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
624:Let each contemplate himself, not shut up in narrow walls, not cabined in a corner of the earth, but a citizen of the whole world. From the height of the sublime meditations which the spectacle of Nature and the knowledge of it will procure for him, how well will he know himself how he will disdain, how base he will find all the futilities to which the vulgar attach so high a price. ~ Cicero, #NFDB
625:To behold virtue in her proper form is nothing else but to contemplate morality stripped of all admixture of sensible things and of every spurious ornament of reward or self-love. How much she then eclipses everything else that appears charming to the affections, every one may readily perceive with the least exertion of his reason, if it be not wholly spoiled for abstraction. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
626:I fail to see where it would have been more uplifting for them to have been inside a church listening to a man urging them to 'contemplate the sufferings of our Lord,' which is just another way of punishing one's self for nothing. It is very much better for them to climb the rocks in their bare clean feet and meet Him face to face in their search for the eternal in beauty. ~ Zora Neale Hurston, #NFDB
627:It is sad to witness the persistence in our society of the racism and xenophobia that seems to be a permanent part of our political culture. It is shameful to see politicians exploiting these human weaknesses in order to gain political power. It is most depressing of all to contemplate a future in which politicians who do this will continue to have influence over people's lives. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
628:Everybody hates dependence, and that's why couples are continuously fighting, not knowing why they are fighting. They have to meditate over it, they have to contemplate over it, why they are fighting. Everything is just an excuse to fight. If you change one excuse, another excuse will be found; if no excuse is left then excuses will be invented, but somehow the fight has to be there. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
629:I do not think that there need be the conflict between books and videos, that one would drive out the other. It certainly is possible to watch the screen for some things and for others to sit down and read, because the screen is easier to do, to watch is easier than to read because you don't have to contemplate anything. Someone else has done the work of putting it on the video. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
630:Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have not the words to make us remember. ... By the time they learn to speak they have forgotten the details of their complaints, and so we never know. They forget so quickly, we say, because we cannot contemplate the fact that they never forget. ~ Margaret Drabble, #NFDB
631:Amy had always thought she was too vain and selfish to seriously contemplate suicide, also too afraid of pain. She realized now that when she'd thought that, she hadn't understood how painful existence could get. It could get so painful, it turned out, that any other kind of pain began to seem preferable. She felt ridiculous thinking these goth-teenager thoughts, but they were real. ~ Emily Gould, #NFDB
632:We must contemplate some extremely unpleasant possibilities, just because we want to avoid them and achieve something better. Nobody, however, likes to think about anything unpleasant, even to avoid it. And so the crucial problem of thermonuclear war is frequently dispatched with the label 'War is unthinkable' -- which, translated freely, means we don't want to think about it. ~ Albert Wohlstetter, #NFDB
633:As laser-bright moments; diamond-hard memories; crisp and clear. A future lived, a future savored, a future of moments so sharp and pointed that they would sometimes cut and sometimes glint so brightly it would hurt to contemplate them, but sometimes, too,
would be joyous, an absolute, pure, unalloyed joy, the kind of joy he hadn't felt much if at all lo these twenty-one years. ~ Robert J Sawyer,#NFDB
634:For each day, she thought, she needed a whole other day to contemplate what had happened and store it away, get it out of her system so that it did not keep her awake at night or fill her dreams with flashes of what had actually happened and other flashes that had nothing to do with anything familiar, but were full of rushes of colour or crowds of people, everything frenzied and fast. ~ Colm T ib n, #NFDB
635:people, to whom the Eternal is represented by the Monthlies, to which they rise with difficulty from the daily papers, strike me as all puppets, blind embodiments of the forces of nature, never achieving the liberation that comes to man when he ceases to desire and learns at last to contemplate. Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
636:I contemplate a tree.
I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground.
I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the suckling of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air - and the growing itself in its darkness. ~ Martin Buber,#NFDB
637:I went into a lather of misery watching them, and thinking of you, and how in the end you'll all be locked together, like the poor beasts that get their antlers mixed and are found dead that way, their heads fattened with a knowledge of each other that they never wanted, having had to contemplate each other, head-on, eye to eye, until death; well, that will be you and Jenny and Robin. ~ Djuna Barnes, #NFDB
638:The rare, delicate flavor of a life after retiring in one's sixties, whatever one has "retired" from, the pleasure I experienced beyond my job at Columbia, is a gift of life in the last decades. but it is not easily learned. . . . But sometimes, the only way to live is to get out, or at least seriously to contemplate getting out, doing the impossible,flinging the conventional tea. ~ Carolyn Heilbrun, #NFDB
639:O King, Is There Anything Unattainable
O king, is there anything unattainable
To them who intensely contemplate
On the fragrant feet of the son
Of Ummaiyal, of sweet and comely speech?
The thunderous thud of the swift elephant
And that of the agile horse must give place
To that of the rider of this old dame!
He is none other than the mighty Mahaganapati.
~ Avvaiyar,#NFDB
640:The primitive thinking of the supernaturally inclined amounts to what his psychiatric colleagues call a problem, or an idea, of reference. An excess of the subjective, the ordering of the world in line with your needs, an inability to contemplate your own unimportance. In Henry’s view such reasoning belongs on a spectrum at whose far end, rearing like an abandoned temple, lies psychosis. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
641:The primitive thinking of the supernaturally inclined amounts to what his psychiatric colleagues call a problem, or an idea, of reference. An excess of the subjective, the ordering of the world in line with your needs, an inability to contemplate your own unimportance. In Henry's view such reasoning belongs on a spectrum at whose far end, rearing like an abandoned temple, lies psychosis. ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
642:its normal pace, even with the threat of a gale. How long will it last, this peace I have found at sea? It is all of life that I contemplate—sun, clouds, time that passes and abides. Occasionally it is also that other world, foreign now, that I left centuries ago. The modern, artificial world where man has been turned into a money-making machine to satisfy false needs, false joys. ~ Bernard Moitessier, #NFDB
643:The name 'cherubim' means 'fullness of knowledge' or 'outpouring of wisdom'... The name cherubim signifies the power to know and to see God, to receive the greatest gifts of His light, to contemplate the divine splendor in primordial power, to be filled with the gifts that bring wisdom and to share these generously with subordinates as a part of the beneficent outpouring of His wisdom. ~ Pope Dionysius, #NFDB
644:Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age. ~ Richard Lindzen, #NFDB
645:The Wright brothers didn't contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn't contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn't contemplate the darkness of things. In order to float an idea into your reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the unconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don't have. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
646:It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
647:As we strive to better understand how Jesus sees us and contemplate our own attempts to live as the Redeemer would have us live, let us remember his instructing observations and their universal applications in literally all that we do: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." (John 14:15) and "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." ~ Cecil O Samuelson, #NFDB
648:God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
649:And if I am comfortable with it, why do I still call it loneliness? Because--and I think somehow she would understand this--you can have and recognize a sadness in your alienation and in other people's alienation and still not long to be around anyone. I think that if you wonder about other people's loneliness, or contemplate it at all, you've got a real leg up on being comfortable on your own. ~ Dana Spiotta, #NFDB
650:Thingumy and Bob sighed contentedly and settled down to contemplate the precious stone. They stared in silent rapture at it.
The ruby changed colour all the time. At first it was quite pale, and then suddenly a pink glow would flow over it like sunrise on a snow capped mountain -- and then again crimson flames shot out of its heart and it seemed like a great black tulip with stamens on fire. ~ Tove Jansson,#NFDB
651:We asked an old monk sitting beside us to explain. “Here, we contemplate the impermanence of the body and its attachments. This helps us to overcome the temptations of the flesh and seek refuge in the Kingdom of God.” We listened carefully. Deeper in the catacombs, a group of skeletons wearing monk robes pointed to a sign that read: “As you are now, we used to be. As we are now, you will be. ~ Radhanath Swami, #NFDB
652:Life is an act of endless creativity. With all its simmering tragedy and occasional catastrophe, a human life is an amazing thing to contemplate and experience. None of us had any special plan laid out for us when we were born. By abandoning the idea that an intelligent designer created us, we can wake with each dawn and say, "What's done is done. Now how can I make the best of the here and now? ~ Greg Graffin, #NFDB
653:Who gave you the ability to contemplate the beauty of the skies, the course of the sun, the round moon, the millions of stars, the harmony and rhythm that issue from the world as from a lyre, the return of the seasons, the alternation of the months, the demarcation of day and night, the fruits of the earth, the vastness of the air, the ceaseless motion of the waves, the sound of the wind? ~ Gregory of Nazianzus, #NFDB
654:I have a very, very secret drive to become a dilettante, without the pejorative overtones or the obligation to produce myself. There's so much to examine, so much to contemplate. I have enormous enthusiasm when I start a new project but then there's the meetings and the counter-meetings, the rehearsals, the struggles. You have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get your dreams realised. ~ Peter Greenaway, #NFDB
655:THE WAIT: It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.
It's a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage
door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
656:Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
657:What a blessing life is. If you don’t believe it, get up and watch the sunrise tomorrow or take time to gaze up at the stars. Listen to the restful sound of a mourning dove in the quiet woods, or the wind whispering through the leaves above you. Contemplate all that you are grateful for, and never give up on your dreams. Most importantly, give your whole heart to all that you love in this life. ~ Julianne MacLean, #NFDB
658:Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that all desire is yearning. “We love to contemplate blue, not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it,” wrote Goethe, and perhaps he is right. But I am not interested in longing to live in a world in which I already live. I don’t want to yearn for blue things, and God forbid for any “blueness.” Above all, I want to stop missing you. ~ Maggie Nelson, #NFDB
659:I can feel Ari’s mounting excitement the farther we walk. She’s bouncing up and down like a kangaroo on speed. I feel the bulk of the box pressing against my leg as we walk, and I contemplate all that I’ve decided to tell her tonight. Lifting my head, I stare in awe at the light of a thousand stars illuminating the dark, night sky. The setting really couldn’t be any more romantic, any more perfect. ~ Siobhan Davis, #NFDB
660:Then I had the comforting idea that my first thought wasn't as painful as it sounded. However frightening it may be to realize that all of us have sinned, however frightening it may be to contemplate a just God, surely it is infinitely more frightening to contemplate an unjust God.
A basic principle of Latter-day Saint doctrine is that in order to go forward, we have to know that God is just. ~ Jeffrey R Holland,#NFDB
661:While Odo has mastered the simple human trick of making porridge, Peter has learned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing. He's learned to unshackle himself from the race of time and contemplate time itself. As far as he can tell, that's what Odo spends most of his time doing: being in time, like one sits by a river, watching the water go by. It's a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
662:And what creature can look to the stars from where we all came and contemplate the creation of everything from nothing? A woman can. A man. This planet is beautiful only because there are human minds here to discern that beauty from ugliness. Otherwise what is the difference between fragile Earth and the timeless deserts of Mars? What preference would a mindless universe have for one above the other? ~ Ryan Winfield, #NFDB
663:Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic....So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
664:It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. ~ John Fowles, #NFDB
665:If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I'm convinced, don't think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they're carried out feet first. ~ Philip Larkin, #NFDB
666:A conversation with Miss Zwida would lead me inevitably to talk about seashells, and I cannot decide what attitude to take, whether to pretend absolute ignorance or to call on a remote experience now vague; it is my relationship with my life, consisting of things never concluded and half erased, that the subject of seashells forces me to contemplate; hence the uneasiness that finally puts me to flight. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
667:To think of God as an anthropomorphic being or a sort of glorified man with all the whims, eccentricities and peculiarities of man is neurotic infantilism and absolutely absurd. God is personal to you in this sense: You can at this very moment contemplate love, peace, harmony, joy, beauty, wisdom, power and guidance, and you will begin to express these qualities because you become what you contemplate. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
668:Among the poor, the approach of dissolution is usually regarded with a quiet and natural composure, which it is consolatory to contemplate, and which is as far removed from the dead palsy of unbelief as it is from the delirious raptures of fanaticism. Theirs is a true, unhesitating faith, and they are willing to lay down the burden of e weary life, in the sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality. ~ Robert Southey, #NFDB
669:Could Live—did Live
43
Could live—did live—
Could die—did die—
Could smile upon the whole
Through faith in one he met not,
To introduce his soul.
Could go from scene familiar
To an untraversed spot—
Could contemplate the journey
With unpuzzled heart—
Such trust had one among us,
Among us not today—
We who saw the launching
Never sailed the Bay!
~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
670:This Arthur Dent," comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a mysterious deep space probe thought to originate from an alien galaxy at a distance too hideous to contemplate, "what is he, man or mouse? Is he interested in nothing more than tea and the wider issues of life? Has he no spirit? has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck? ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
671:The mind is constantly generating thoughts and the voice of the heart is literally drowned out by the ‘thought-churn’ making it difficult to access intuitive knowledge. If you stop the train of thoughts and simply contemplate the emptiness, you will hear the rustle of the morning stars, the inner voice that has no words. The heart could provide answers to many of our questions if only we could hear its voice. ~ Vadim Zeland, #NFDB
672:fortuitous for me. This sort of tale serves, in many ways, the very same purpose as fairy tales did in our childhood: It operates as a theater of the mind in which internal conflicts are played out. In these tales we can parade the most reprehensible aspects of our being: cannibalism, incest, parricide. It allows us to discuss our anxieties and even to contemplate the experience of death in absolute safety. ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
673:Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject.... Comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still, his quality is not wisdom, but prudence. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
674:I contemplate the notion that maybe regrets are a process of accumulation of time, as unavoidable as a closet full of clothes and more bags of them in the attic. Is accumulated baggage what makes people get old? If so, they need to clean out their fecking attics, send the stuff to consignment shops and remember how to walk around naked like kids, little bellies sticking out, always ready for a good laugh. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
675:Walking alone is a city that's not my own, I think of what Virginia Woolf wished for the women in Cambridge who came to hear her speak in 1928. 'By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle,' she said, 'to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep in the stream. ~ Stephanie Rosenbloom, #NFDB
676:And first, it seems not at all probable, That if the Omniscient Author of Nature knew that the study of his Works did really tend to make Men disbelieve his Being or Attributes, he would have given Men so many Invitations, and almost Necessities, to study and contemplate the Nature of his Creatures: Of these Invitations divers have been mention'd already, and more might be added to them, if we thought it requisite. ~ Robert Boyle, #NFDB
677:The fear of being alone derives much of its terror from our anxiety lest we lose our awareness of ourselves. If people contemplate being alone for longish periods of time, without anyone to talk to or any radio to eject noise into the air, they generally are afraid that they would be at “loose ends,” would lose the boundaries for themselves, would have nothing to bump up against, nothing by which to orient themselves. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
678:But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. . . . Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself. ~ Martin Buber, #NFDB
679:It is interesting to transport one's self back to the times when Astronomy began; to observe how discoveries were connected together, how errors have got mixed up with truth, have delayed the knowledge of it, and retarded its progress; and, after having followed the various epochs and traversed every climate, finally to contemplate the edifice founded on the labours of successive centuries and of various nations. ~ Jean Sylvain Bailly, #NFDB
680:No one's making any decisions today," Mom translated. "It's late, and we're all tired and a little overwhelmed. Besides, Lucius, Jessica is not ready to contemplate marriage. She hasn't even kissed a boy yet, for goodness' sake."
Lucius smirked at me, raising one eyebrow. "Really? No suitors? How shocking. I would have thought your pitchfork skills would be attractive to certain bachelors here in farm country. ~ Beth Fantaskey,#NFDB
681:Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
682:She was bewitching. Even now when she conceded little more than she had when he'd kissed her last night. She quivered under his hands. He still wasn't sure whether she was excited or frightened. He'd read both curiosity and dread in her pansy eyes. Her thick tortoiseshell hair tickled his fingers. After her wild ride, she looked enchantingly disheveled. It made him contemplate other wild rides he'd like to take with her. ~ Anna Campbell, #NFDB
683:Do you understand yours? What a blessing life is. If you don’t believe it, get up and watch the sunrise tomorrow or take time to gaze up at the stars. Listen to the restful sound of a mourning dove in the quiet woods, or the wind whispering through the leaves above you. Contemplate all that you are grateful for, and never give up on your dreams. Most importantly, give your whole heart to all that you love in this life. ~ Julianne MacLean, #NFDB
684:Jagger’s nostrils flared as he licked over Declan’s mouth once more and then he pulled Ren to the edge of the bed. Ren’s eyes widened with confusion as Jagger lifted and separated Ren’s legs just before he dropped to his knees on the floor. Jagger gave Ren little time to contemplate what was about to happen but the second his tongue licked over Ren’s hole, Ren shouted his name and then his hand reached for Declan’s. *** ~ Sloane Kennedy, #NFDB
685:There are no moments more painful for a parent than those in which you contemplate your child's perfect innocence of some imminent pain, misfortune, or sorrow. That innocence (like every kind of innocence children have) is rooted in their trust of you, one that you will shortly be obliged to betray; whether it is fair or not, whether you can help it or not, you are always the ultimate guarantor or destroyer of that innocence. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
686:The full horror of what has happened in the United States earlier today is now becoming clearer. It is hard even to contemplate the utter carnage and terror which has engulfed so many innocent people. We've offered President Bush and the American people our solidarity, our profound sympathy, and our prayers. But it is plain that citizens of many countries round the world, including Britain, will have been caught up in this terror. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
687:We should also build the attitude that there is nothing of a vacation, nothing of a holiday in this great missionary service. It is hard, and at times discouraging, work. Last year our missionaries averaged sixty-seven hours a week in actual proselyting effort. Let those who contemplate missions realize that they will work as they have never worked before, and that they may expect such joy as they have not previously known. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
688:I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair." ~ Kenneth Tynan, #NFDB
689:Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
690:Living outside of any story―living without hope for the future, without the belief that one is part of a narrative―is confusing. It's hard to get anything done when nothing has a point. For any not-immediately-pleasurable action (or inaction) I contemplate―getting up in the morning, vacuuming, answering the phone―there is no readily-available answer to the ever-present question in my mind: "why?" At least, there is no long-term "why. ~ Sarah Perry, #NFDB
691:When we pray the Rosary, the goal is not so much to reflect on the words of the Hail Mary prayer itself. Rather, the Hail Marys are meant to be a kind of “background music” that helps us enter into contemplation of the mysteries. This background music is like the gentle hand of a mother on our shoulders, standing behind us, getting us to look at Jesus, contemplate his face, and love him through his mother’s eyes, mind, and heart. ~ Michael Gaitley, #NFDB
692:As we contemplate the enormous variety of factors that must come together to produce a specific sense of self, our attachment to this “I” we think we are begins to loosen. We become more willing to let go of the desire to control or block our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and so on and begin to experience them without pain or guilt, absorbing their passage simply as manifestations of a universe of infinite possibilities. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
693:Today, Iraq is an immediate danger to our nation. This time, we cannot wait. We cannot wait for Saddam Hussein to take a devastating action or to transfer a weapon of mass destruction to someone else who will. After September 11th, it is simply no longer an option to sit back and contemplate an enemy - one with a stated intent to harm us, a track record and the means, and just wait for him to strike in order to protect ourselves. ~ Richard Armitage, #NFDB
694:It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me. ~ John Fowles, #NFDB
695:It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.
It's a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage
door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.
Translated by A. Poulin
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, The Wait
,#NFDB
696:Many feelings are simply too good to last--using the phrase not in the unbelieving sense in which it is generally used, but to express the fact that intensity and endurance cannot coexist in the human frame. But the virtue of a mood depends by no means on its immediate presence. Like any other experience, it may be believed in, and, in its absence, which leaves the mind free to contemplate it, works even more good than its presence ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
697:Contemplate the workings of this world, listen to the words of
the wise, take all that is good as your own. With this as your
base, open your won door to truth. Do not overlook the truth that
is right before you. Study how water flows in a valley stream,
smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy
books and wise people. Everything-even mountains, rivers,
plants, and trees-should be your teacher. ~ Morihei Ueshiba,#NFDB
698:The people hire the politicians so that the people can: (1) obtain security without managing it. (2) obtain action without thinking about it. (3) inflict theft, injury, and death upon others without having to contemplate either life or death. (4) avoid responsibility for their own intentions. (5) obtain the benefits of reality and science without exerting themselves in the discipline of facing or learning either of these things. ~ Milton William Cooper, #NFDB
699:The Christmas season is also that time of year when the business world implores us to consider the material as more important than the spiritual, all in the spirit of 'the holidays.' So we celebrate the arrival on Christmas Day of iPods and DVDs... Then again, maybe this is precisely the kind of seasonal silliness that causes the Christian faithful to shut out the noise and contemplate the real nativity scene and its eternal promise. ~ L Brent Bozell Jr, #NFDB
700:The Character of Man Concerning Man—he is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so I will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time. I desire to contemplate him from this point of view—this premiss: that he was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn’t served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
701:In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
702:For too long I have played on the stage of lucidity, and I have lost. Now I need to accustom my eyes to the falling darkness. I need to contemplate the natural slumber of all things, which the light calls forth, yet also causes to tire. Life must begin in darkness. Its powers of germination lie hidden. Every day has its night, every light has its shadow.
I cannot be asked to accept these shadows gladly. It is enough that I accept them. ~ Mihail Sebastian,#NFDB
703:I stare out the window into the gray morning as I chew. Do I “really like” him? Is that the right way to put it? I’ve only known him for the summer technically, but “really like” doesn’t seem to encompass it. If you “really like” someone, do they insist on invading your every thought? Does just saying their name make goose bumps rise on your arms? Do you contemplate how many freckles your children will have?
“Yeah, I really like him. ~ Leah Rae Miller,#NFDB
704:I am ignorant of how I was formed and how I was born. Through a quarter of my lifetime I was absolutely ignorant of the reasons for everything I saw and heard and felt, and was merely a parrot prompted by other parrots... When I sought to advance along that infinite course, I could neither find one single footpath or fully discover one single object, and from the upward leap I made to contemplate eternity I fell back into the abyss of my ignorance. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
705:The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel. I have read hundreds of personal development books, but this is the one that clearly showed me how to visualize, contemplate, and focus on what it was I truly wanted. It revealed to me that we only get what we desire most, and to apply myself with a laserlike focus upon a goal, task, or project. That in order to “have” you must “do,” and in order to “do” you must “be”—and this process is immediate. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
706:According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness. Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him. ~ John Green, #NFDB
707:As we become one with our Source, we begin the realignment process, thinking and contemplating more like God. We gain the wisdom necessary to understand these words written by Thomas Troward: “If you contemplate with thoughts that match originating Spirit, you have the same power as originating Spirit.” This idea is anathema to the ego. But the wholeness, the oneness, that we truly are, is revealed as we begin trusting the wisdom that created us. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
708:Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings
but contemplate their return.
If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
And when death comes, you are ready. ~ Zhuangzi,#NFDB
709:What we contemplate here is more than ecological restoration; it is the restoration of relationship between plants and people. Scientists have made a dent in understanding how to put ecosystems back together, but our experiments focus on soil pH and hydrology—matter, to the exclusion of spirit. We might look to the Thanksgiving Address for guidance on weaving the two. We are dreaming of a time when the land might give thanks for the people. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, #NFDB
710:The highest of missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, especially when we contemplate the wrath of God . . .), but rather zeal—burning and passionate zeal—for the glory of Jesus Christ. . . . Only one imperialism is Christian . . . and that is concern for His Imperial Majesty Jesus Christ, and for the glory of his empire.2 ~ John Piper, #NFDB
711:For the kids at Chaff, the annual Career Day, held about two weeks before the summer break, was enough to make most of them at contemplate career suicide before they'd even taken an aptitude test or a written resume. Held outdoors on the schoolyard blacktop, the assemblage of coal miners, driving-range golf-ball retrievers, basket weavers, ditch diggers, book-binders, traumatized fire-fighters, and the world's last astronaut never does much to inspire. ~ Paul Beatty, #NFDB
712:There's a common threat facing all of us - Christians, Jews, and Muslims - and that is the Antichrist. It's a very deep subject, and it's a horrendous thing to contemplate. Someone will appear who is, in fact, the opposite of what he appears to be. Some people will believe in him, and that's really frightening. In Islam, there's a belief that Jesus will return to destroy the Antichrist, which is something many people don't know about the Islamic faith. ~ Cat Stevens, #NFDB
713:To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
714:According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.
Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him. ~ John Green,#NFDB
715:Perhaps, if you were in a laboratory of alchemy, this would be the right time to study the best way to understand the Emerald Tablet. But you are in the desert. So immerse yourself in it. The desert will give you an understanding of the world; in fact, anything on the face of the earth will do that. You don't even have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
716:A Gay and flowery and heated imagination beware of; because the things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity — thou must commune with God. ~ Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 137, #NFDB
717:To be good Christians you have to contemplate the suffering humanity of Jesus. "How can we bear witness? Contemplate Jesus. How can we forgive? Contemplate Jesus suffering. How can we not hate our neighbor? Contemplate Jesus suffering. How can we avoid gossiping about our neighbor? Contemplate Jesus suffering. There is no other way". These virtues are the those of the Father, who forgives us always, and Our Lady, Our Mother, shares in these virtues too. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
718:...When I look at the full moon, I breathe in and out deeply and say, "Full moon, I know you are there, and I am very happy." I do the same with the morning star. When you contemplate a beautiful sunset, if you are really there, you will recognize and appreciate it deeply. Whenever you are truly there, you can recognize and appreciate the presence of the other, whether that is full moon, the North Star, the magnolia flowers, or the person you love... ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
719:Snatch a thought from the running ribbon of thoughts and contemplate it. As you toss it around, notice how you feel—sad, depressed, happy, frightened, and so on. Every thought going by has an imprint on your concept of yourself. First be the observer, and then the contemplator. Now become the choice maker who can consciously decide to put that thought back into the running stream and pick a different one, a thought that perhaps allows you to feel better. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
720:When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well? ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
721:Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
722:No one knows where they came from, whether they're the result of some unnatural twist of evolution or the unexpected outcome of some bizarre magical or scientific experiment. No one believes they were created on purpose, though. There isn't a sorcerer or scientist insane enough to even contemplate such a thing, let alone actually do it. Chiranha are a cross between piranha and Chihuahua, and as silly as that might sound, no one in Nekropolis laughs at them. ~ Tim Waggoner, #NFDB
723:The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001'' is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
724:When you look upon another human being and feel great love toward them, or when you contemplate beauty in nature and something within you responds deeply to it, close your eyes for a moment and feel the essence of that love or that beauty within you, inseparable from who you are, your true nature. The outer form is a temporary reflection of what you are within, in your essence. That is why love and beauty can never leave you, although all outer forms will. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
725:If your spirit is not fir to see the Simurgh, neither will your heart be a bright mirror, fit to reflect him. It is true that no eye is able to contemplate and marvel at his beauty, not is it capable of understanding; one cannot feel towards the Simurgh as one feels towards the beauty of this world. But by his abounding grace he has given us a mirror to reflect himself, and this mirror is the heart. Look into your heart and there you will see his image. ~ Attar of Nishapur, #NFDB
726:If your spirit is not fit to see the Simurgh, neither will your heart be a bright mirror, fit to reflect him. It is true that no eye is able to contemplate and marvel at his beauty, not is it capable of understanding; one cannot feel towards the Simurgh as one feels towards the beauty of this world. But by his abounding grace he has given us a mirror to reflect himself, and this mirror is the heart. Look into your heart and there you will see his image. ~ Attar of Nishapur, #NFDB
727:A conquering race, in the place of that conquest, is rarely amiable; the conquerors pay less obviously than the conquered, but perhaps in time they pay even more heavily, in the loss of the humane qualities. Hard, arrogant, profit-seeking adventurers flock to the spoil, and the natives, though outwardly civil, contemplate them with a resentment mingled with contempt, while at the same time respecting the face of conquest – acknowledging their greater strength. ~ Patrick O Brian, #NFDB
728: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
729:The virtues of getting up early have nothing to do with cramming more hours of busyness and industry into one's day. Just the opposite. They stem from the stillness and solitude of the hour, and the potential to use that time to expand consciousness, to contemplate, to make time for being, for purposefully not doing anything. The peacefulness, the darkness, the dawn, the stillness - all contribute to making early morning a special time for mindfulness practice. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
730:A lot of people think death is nothingness, that somehow they'll stop existing. They're pretty surprised to find themselves still aware, thinking, seeing. Feeling emotions. Things they associate with life. So they're often confused. Other people have so much fear built up around the idea of death that it's too scary to contemplate, even after they've passed on."
"What, they just ignore the evidence?"
"You'd be surprised what people can make themselves believe. ~ Dani Harper,#NFDB
731:The Israelis have shown a degree of restraint in their use of violence that the Nazis never contemplated and that, more to the point, no Muslim society would contemplate today. Ask yourself, what are the chances that the Palestinians would show the same restraint in killing Jews if the Jews were a powerless minority living under their occupation and disposed to acts of suicidal terrorism? It would be no more likely than Muhammad’s flying to heaven on a winged horse.35 ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
732:Why see death as a hangman when it is truer to see it as a harvester leveling the earth with its scythe?
Oddly, we take hope from the seasons — the rebirth of spring after the death of winter — or from the rising and setting of the sun. But no spring, no dawn beyond death, has ever been proven. Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art. ~ Paul Theroux,#NFDB
733:The American system demands success, and in order to succeed we must first believe that we can. Yet our society, with its intolerance of failure and poverty, traps millions of people in positions where any kind of success seems impossible to contemplate, and in which failure itself is a kind of passive rebellion against their own misery and the social system which created it in the first place. To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it. ~ Michael Korda, #NFDB
734:I say, 'Get me some poets as managers.' Poets are our original systems thinkers. They contemplate the world in which we live and feel obligated to interpret, and give expression to it in a way that makes the reader understand how that world runs. Poets, those unheralded systems thinkers, are our true digital thinkers. It is from their midst that I believe we will draw tomorrow's new business leaders." --Sidney Harman, CEO Multimillionaire of a stereo components company ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
735:Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. When I contemplate the ardour with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
736:She was unaware that she was somewhat of a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did, how she observed moments of silence up and down the city and wrote small individual prayers in her journal, and the story had travelled so quickly that women lined up to know she had found where they’d been killed. She had fans in heaven.....
Meanwhile, for us, she was doing important work, work that most people on Earth were too frightened even too contemplate. ~ Alice Sebold,#NFDB
737:For many, the Taj Mahal is the most romantic monument in the world, an extraordinary demonstration of a husband’s love for his wife. But it represents something else too: globalised international trade that brought such wealth to the Mughal ruler that he was able to contemplate this extraordinary gesture to his beloved spouse. His ability to complete it stemmed from the profound shifts in the world’s axis, for Europe and India’s glory came at the expense of the Americas. ~ Peter Frankopan, #NFDB
738:Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy that looks to the prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
739:The only philosophy that can be practiced responsibly in the face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, that reveal its fissures and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will one day appear in the Messianic light. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
740:When people truly open their minds, and contemplate the way in which the universe is ordered and governed, they are amazed-overwhelmed by a sense of the miraculous. When people contemplate with open minds the germination of a single seed, they are equally overwhelmed-yet numerous babies are born every day, and no-one marvels. If only people opened their minds, they would see that the birth of a baby, in which a new life is created, is a greater miracle than restoring life. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
741:I say, 'Get me some poets as managers.' Poets are our original systems thinkers. They contemplate the world in which we live and feel obligated to interpret, and give expression to it in a way that makes the reader understand how that world runs. Poets, those unheralded systems thinkers, are our true digital thinkers. It is from their midst that I believe we will draw tomorrow's new business leaders."
--Sidney Harman, CEO Multimillionaire of a stereo components company ~ Daniel H Pink,#NFDB
742:The idea of forty precious volumes being taken into a country in a state of war where they might get burnt, blown up, drowned or dusty was almost too horrible to contemplate. Mr Norrell did not know a great deal about war, but he suspected that soldiers are not generally your great respecters of books. They might put their dirty fingers on them. They might tear them! They might – horror of horrors! – read them and try the spells! Could soldiers read? Mr Norrell did not know. ~ Susanna Clarke, #NFDB
743:What about Luna?”
“Well, if they’re telling the truth and she’s still alive--” began Ron.
“Don’t say that, don’t say it!” squealed Hermione. “She must be alive, she must!”
“Then she’ll be in Azkaban, I expect,” said Ron. “Whether she survives the place, though…Loads don’t…”
“She will,” said Harry. He could not bear to contemplate the alternative. “She’s tough, Luna, much tougher than you’d think. She’s probably teaching all the inmates about Wrackspurts and Nargles. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
744:When I ask people to contemplate selflessness, the sometimes react as if I've asked them to put their house on the market or give away all their money. If there was a self that existed in the way we think, discovering selflessness would be like putting our house on the market. But in the Buddhist tradition, the discovery of selflessness is called "completely joyful." It's not called "the raw end of the deal," or "I'd rather go back to bed," or "This is scary and depressing." ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB
745:The only philosophy that can be practiced responsibly in the face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, that reveal its fissures and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will one day appear in the Messianic light. ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
746:his feelings as to a first, strong attachment; sentences begun which he could not finish, his half averted eyes and more than half expressive glance; all, all declared that he had a heart returning to her at least; that anger, resentment, avoidance, were no more; and that they were succeeded, not merely by friendship or regard, but by the tenderness of the past. Yes, some share of the tenderness of the past. she could not contemplate the change as implying less. He must love her. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
747:Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
748:I do not view suicide as wicked, just terribly sad. There is only one death, but it is like a stone cast into a pond - the ripples stretch far. Such an act must leave a burden of sorrow, guilt, shame and confusion on an entire family. A natural death, such as my father suffered, is hard enough to deal with. A decision to end one's life must be still more devastating for those left behind. I cannot imagine the degree of hopelessness someone must feel to contemplate such an act. ~ Juliet Marillier, #NFDB
749:I contemplate the idea that maybe I'm an alcoholic. I get this occassionally, the need to define myself as something-or-the-other, and at various times in my life have wondered if I'm a Goth, a homosexul, a Jew, a Catholic or a manic depressive, whether I am adopted, or have a hole in my heart, or possess the ability to move objects with the power of my mind, and have always, most regretfully, come to the conclusion that I'm none of the above. The fact is I'm actually not ANYTHING. ~ David Nicholls, #NFDB
750:There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected with the desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be- musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, inventors- but "somebody": to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring not quiet and self-fulfillment, but self-glorification and self-expansion ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
751:Those were her best days, although there was always something feckless about her, something so slack and almost fearful in her too frequent smile, so that when you saw Mignon being happy, you always thought: "It can't last." She had the febrile gaiety of a being without a past, without a present, yet she existed thus, without memory or history, only because her past was too bleak to think of and her future too terrible to contemplate; she was the broken blossom of the present tense. ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
752:Not only did Trump disregard the potential conflicts of his business deals and real estate holdings, he audaciously refused to release his tax returns. Why should he if he wasn’t going to win? What’s more, Trump refused to spend any time considering, however hypothetically, transition matters, saying it was “bad luck”—but really meaning it was a waste of time. Nor would he even remotely contemplate the issue of his holdings and conflicts. He wasn’t going to win! Or losing was winning. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
753:Guilt is for losers. Guilt is for folks who have stupid things like regrets. I contemplate the notion that maybe regrets are a process of accumulation of time, as unavoidable as a closet full of clothes and more bags of them in the attic. Is accumulated baggage what makes people get old? If so, they need to clean out their fecking attics, send the stuff to consignment shops and remember how to walk around naked like kids, little bellies sticking out, always ready for a good laugh. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
754:Sometimes, I experience God like this beautiful nothing’, he said, ‘and it seems then as though the whole point of life is just to rest in it. To contemplate it, and love it, and eventually to disappear into it. And then, other times, it's just the opposite. God feels like a presence that engorges everything. I come out here and it seems the divine is running rampant. That the marsh, the whole of creation, is some dance God is doing and we’re meant to step into it. That's all.’" - Whit ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
755:which is to say the petal of FAITH, and pray, To Our Father Who is Benevolent and Reigns in Heaven, Your names are hallowed and sacred. Contemplate here your faith in the Lord your God and the grace of the Holy Spirit, while giving gratitude for the presence of both in your life and on earth. Embrace the second petal, which is to say the petal of SURRENDER, and pray, Your kingdom comes to us through obedience to your will. Thy will be done. Listen to the voice of your Father that you ~ Kathleen McGowan, #NFDB
756:Immigration along with nonwhite birthrates will make white people a minority totally vulnerable to the political, social, and economic will of blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Orientals. A social upheaval is now beginning to occur that will be the funeral dirge of the America we love. I shudder to contemplate the future under nonwhite occupation; rapes, murders, robberies multiplied a hundred fold, illiteracy such as in Haiti, medicine such as in Mexico, and tyranny such as in Togoland. ~ David Duke, #NFDB
757:I used to feel I could hide inside my practice, that I could simply sit and contemplate the raging anger of a place like this, seeking inner peace through prayers of compassion. But now I believe love and compassion are things to extend to others. It's a dangerous adventure to share them in a place like S.Q. Yet I see now that we become better people if we can touch a hardened soul, bring joy into someone's life, or just be an example for others, instead of hiding behind our silence. ~ Jarvis Jay Masters, #NFDB
758:Silence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. I’m sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I don’t know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don’t know what to think or where I am. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
759:The point is that there is no excuse for fatalism as we contemplate the evils of poverty in America. Shrugging your shoulders as you attribute it all to values is an act of malign neglect. The poor don’t need lectures on morality, they need more resources — which we can afford to provide — and better economic opportunities, which we can also afford to provide through everything from training and subsidies to higher minimum wages. Baltimore, and America, don’t have to be as unjust as they are. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
760:All of us, I suspect, imagine that a world exists from which we alone have been excluded; all of us have our noses pressed against the glass. But if we contemplate our own lives, not the phantom life on the other side, we might find things in them to envy-a family that’s intact; a job we like; excellent health (the thing we take for granted and on which all happiness depends). Good fortune is there, however sporadic, however modest, however difficult to achieve. The trick is to recognize it. ~ James Atlas, #NFDB
761:Guilt. Guilt is for losers. Guilt is for folks who have stupid things like regrets. I contemplate the notion that maybe regrets are a process of accumulation of time, as unavoidable as a closet full of clothes and more bags of them in the attic. Is accumulated baggage what makes people get old? If so, they need to clean out their fecking attics, send the stuff to consignment shops and remember how to walk around naked like kids, little bellies sticking out, always ready for a good laugh. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
762:The Real made me contemplate the light of the veils as the star of strong backing rose, and He said to me, "Do you know how many veils I have veiled you with?"
"No", I replied.
He said, "With seventy veils. Even if you raise them you will not see Me, and if you do not raise them you will not see Me."
"If you raise them you will see Me and if you do not raise them you will see Me."
"Take care of burning yourself!"
"You are My sight, so have faith. You are My Face, so veil yourself" ~ Ibn Arabi,#NFDB
763:We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
764:I don't want to be looking inside my ego, my stuff, my achievements, my me, me, me, me, I hate that stuff. I just want to be out there eh to the last day of my life ah interested in the world, in causes, in helping other people. Um that doesn't mean that I don't have a spiritual practice, that I don't look at my own soul, that I don't prepare myself for the that transition that death is but I cannot sit in meditation to contemplate my navel for the rest of my life. That would be boring for me. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
765:Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom," it is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event. ~ Samuel Adams, #NFDB
766:The Real made me contemplate the light of the veils as the star of strong backing rose, and He said to me, “Do you know how many veils I have veiled you with?”
“No”, I replied.
He said, “With seventy veils.
Even if you raise them you will not see Me, and if you do not raise them you will not see Me.”
“If you raise them you will see Me and if you do not raise them you will see Me.”
“Take care of burning yourself!”
“You are My sight, so have faith. You are My Face, so veil yourself ~ Ibn Arabi,#NFDB
767:Here I am looking at my lovely ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, in her white dress, singing Protestant hymns with the choir at the Plymouth Church of the Brethren when I should be at Mass praying for the repose of the soul of my mother, Angela McCourt, mother of seven, believer, sinner, though when I contemplate her seventy-three years on this earth I can’t believe the Lord God Almighty on His throne would even dream of consigning her to the flames. A God like that wouldn’t deserve the time of day. ~ Frank McCourt, #NFDB
768:rose, which is to say the petal of FAITH, and pray, To Our Father Who is Benevolent and Reigns in Heaven, Your names are hallowed and sacred. Contemplate here your faith in the Lord your God and the grace of the Holy Spirit, while giving gratitude for the presence of both in your life and on earth. Embrace the second petal, which is to say the petal of SURRENDER, and pray, Your kingdom comes to us through obedience to your will. Thy will be done. Listen to the voice of your Father that you may ~ Kathleen McGowan, #NFDB
769:It is this undercurrent of ‘anti-creation’ and ‘definitive evil’ that makes the destruction of Europe’s towns and cities so disturbing to contemplate. What is implied in all the descriptions of this time, but never overtly stated, is that behind the physical devastation is something far worse. The ‘skeletons’ of houses and framed pictures sticking out of the rubble of Warsaw are highly symbolic: hidden beneath the ruins, both literally and metaphorically, there was a separate human and moral disaster. ~ Keith Lowe, #NFDB
770:From where I am," the sun said, "I can see the Soul of the World. It communicates with my soul, and together we cause the plants to grow and the sheep to seek out shade. From where I am--and I'm a long way from the earth--I learned ow to love. I know that if I came even a little bit closer to the earth, everything there would die, and the Soul of the World would no longer exist. So we contemplate each other, and we want each other, and I give it light and warmth, and it gives me my reason for living. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
771:We do the same thing in our own lives, embracing information that supports what we already prefer or vindicates choices we previously made.After all, it feels better to justify our opinions rather than challenge them, to contemplate only the pros and relegate the cons to the back of our minds. However, if we want to make the most of choice, we have to be willing to make ourselves uncomfortable. The question is, if we are willing, how exactly do we go about fortifying ourselves against these biases? ~ Sheena Iyengar, #NFDB
772:Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom
we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during
long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is
gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the
beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation
about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or
blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief. ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
773:I Need a Good Book I need a good story. I need a good book. The kind that explodes Off the shelf. I need some good writing, Alive and exciting, To contemplate all by myself. I need a good novel, I need a good read. I probably need Two or three. I need a good tale Of love and betrayal Or perhaps an adventure at sea. I need a good saga. I need a good yarn. A momentous and mightily Or slight one. But with thousands and thousands And thousands of books, I need someone to tell me The right one. -John Lithgow ~ John Lithgow, #NFDB
774:the distinct impression harassment and fear were stalking the corridors. It would at least be understandable, if not countenanced, were it harassment by sporadic enemy fire or fear of combat; but it was worse than that. The harassment came from long hours trying to make sense of, and respond to, conflicting and unprofessional orders from Washington; the fear came from knowing the results were not right and never would be, and the consequences to both conscience and career were not pleasant to contemplate. ~ Mark Berent, #NFDB
775:Buddhas and Bodhisattvas will for seven days appear to you in their benign and peaceful aspect. Their light will shine upon you, ... Wonderful and delightful though they are, The Buddhas may nevertheless frighten you. Do not give in to your fright! Do not run away! Serenely contemplate the spectacle before you! Overcome your fear, and feel no desire! Realize that these are the rays of the grace of the Buddhas, who come to receive you into their Buddha-realms. Pray to them with intense faith and humility. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
776:If federal programs were not, even to this day, reinforcing racial isolation by disproportionately directing low-income African Americans who receive housing assistance into the segregated neighborhoods that government had previously established, we might see many more inclusive communities. Undoing the effects of de jure segregation will be incomparably difficult. To make a start, we will first have to contemplate what we have collectively done and, on behalf of our government, accept responsibility. ~ Richard Rothstein, #NFDB
777:If you want to understand suffering you must look into the situation at hand. The teachings say that wherever a problem arises it must be settled right there. Where suffering lies is right where non-suffering will arise, it ceases at the place where it arises. If suffering arises you must contemplate right there, you don't have to run away. You should settle the issue right there. One who runs away from suffering out of fear is the most foolish person of all. He will simply increases his stupidity endlessly. ~ Ajahn Chah, #NFDB
778:The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher - in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light ofthe past for the purposes of the future ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
779:There are many things you can do to help your child direct and manage her own learning, but perhaps the most important one is choosing how and where to put your attention. Think hard about what you value most, because that’s what deserves your attention. Your child will respond by doing more of whatever earns your focus. You feed a behavior with your attention, and by feeding it, you create more of it — so be thoughtful about what you invest with that power. Contemplate your goals and intentions. ~ Lori McWilliam Pickert, #NFDB
780:Don't think about why you question, simply don't stop questioning. Don't worry about what you can't answer, and don't try to explain what you can't know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren't you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind--to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
781:Don't think about why you question, simply don't stop questioning. Don't worry about what you can't answer, and don't try to explain what you can't know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren't you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind - to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
782:Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
783:Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
784:Animals are divine messengers of miracles that go far beyond emotional comfort and practical assistance. Talk to those who have been transported to a heavenly place by the gentle purring of a kitten or whose broken hearts, burdened by worry and pain, have been mended by a dog licking their hand. They will tell you that animals connect them with the River of Life in ways poets imagine and mystics contemplate. They will tell you that their deepest and most sincere relationships with animals are spiritual partnerships. ~ Allen Anderson, #NFDB
785:Don’t think about why you question, simply don’t stop questioning. Don’t worry about what you can’t answer, and don’t try to explain what you can’t know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity. —ALBERT EINSTEIN ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
786:Every individual who makes us suffer can be attached by us to a divinity of which he or she is a mere fragmentary reflexion, the lowest step in the ascent that leads to it, a divinity or an Idea which, if we turn to contemplate it, immediately gives us joy instead of the pain which we were feeling before — indeed the whole art of living is to make use of the individuals through whom we suffer as a step enabling us to draw nearer to the divine form which they reflect and thus joyously to people our lives with divinities. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
787:We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
788:What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until that happens, until a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living? ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
789:Don’t think about why you question, simply don’t stop questioning. Don’t worry about what you can’t answer, and don’t try to explain what you can’t know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity. —ALBERT EINSTEIN As ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
790:For a few awful, shameful seconds, I seriously contemplate dashing through the gate and joining the line at Passport Control. It’s moving fairly quickly; in the minutes it will take Mum to recover any shreds of composure, I’ll be into Security, where if she tries to follow me, she’ll be detained by the guards.
I’m a bad daughter even to think that. A terrible daughter. Not only am I leaving my mother on her own for two whole months, I’m fantasizing about running away from her and possibly getting her arrested. ~ Lauren Henderson,#NFDB
791:The touching of nature is, to me, more than a satisfying of my curiosity. It is the source of my wonder. Any one species is a link to my life and all of life that has ever been. To contemplate life is akin to a religious meditation. Indeed, to have a false view of nature is, to me, a sacrilege, because it can breed needless pain. To be a part of nature, through touching and understanding, is ti strive to understand the principles of how nature operates. And to know those principles is to be able to work for the good of all. ~ Bernd Heinrich, #NFDB
792:With great difficulty advancing by millimeters each year, I carve a road out of the rock. For millenniums my teeth have wasted and my nails broken to get there, to the other side, to the light and the open air. And now that my hands bleed and my teeth tremble, unsure in a cavity cracked by thirst and dust, I pause and contemplate my work. I have spent the second part of my life breaking the stones, drilling the walls, smashing the doors, removing the obstacles I placed between the light and myself in the first part of my life. ~ Octavio Paz, #NFDB
793:forever. I would add to my reply as well, the borrowing of a simple invitation from the 13th-century English philosopher Roger Bacon: “Contemplate the world!” Because if we do not store in our heart a profound reverence for the miracles of nature as well as for the accomplishments of men and for their sometimes kind and illustrious way of thinking — even if our life is at its beginning and we have seen nothing yet; or if we’ve seen it all and find man evil — we will not be capable of recognizing those marvels, we will not be ~ Philippe Petit, #NFDB
794:What if that were true?
Was that so bad?
To have created love like that out of absolutely nothing—it was a sort of miracle, wasn't it? To have set that kind of example for their son—for Flash—for everyone who saw them fumbling along together, walking, talking, marveling at life. It was a kind of glory, if he thought about it, he realized. A common uncontested outright glory for mankind, he thought. Like each and every unnamed, uncontested, unsung star up there, coupling with the dark for us to contemplate in silence. ~ Marianne Wiggins,#NFDB
795:museums are unknown among the Igbo people. They do not even contemplate the idea of having something like a canon with the postulate: “This is how this sculpture should be made, and once it’s made it should be venerated.” No, the Igbo people want to create these things again and again, and every generation has a chance to execute its own model of art. So there’s no undue respect for what the last generation did, because if you do that too much it means that there is no need for me to do anything, because it’s already been done. ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
796:The beauty of the person of Christ, as represented in the Scripture, consists in things invisible unto the eyes of flesh. They are such as no hand of man can represent or shadow. It is the eye of faith alone that can see this King in his beauty. What else can contemplate on the untreated glories of his divine nature? Can the hand of man represent the union of his natures in the same person, wherein he is peculiarly amiable? What eye can discern the mutual communications of the properties of his different natures in the same person? ~ John Owen, #NFDB
797:He was a devoted follower of the teachings of Epicurus — “that pleasure is the beginning and end of living happily” — although I hasten to add that he was an Epicurean not in the commonly misunderstood sense, as a seeker after luxury, but in the true meaning, as a pursuer of what the Greeks call ataraxia, or freedom from disturbance. He consequently avoided arguments and unpleasantness of any kind (needless to say, he was unmarried) and desired only to contemplate philosophy by day and dine by night with his cultured friends. He ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
798:Rage flared up in Tessa and she considered belting Woolsey with the poker whether he came near her or not. He had moved awfully quickly while fighting Will, though, and she didn’t fancy her chances. “You don’t know James Carstairs. Don’t speak about him.” “Love him, do you?” Woolsey managed to make it sound unpleasant. “But you love Will, too.” Tessa froze. She had known that Magnus knew of Will’s affection for her, but the idea that what she felt for him in return was written across her face was too terrifying to contemplate. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
799:I am leaving now; but know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you indeed love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That is your strain. You precisely love him as he is, you love him insulting you. If he reformed, you would drop him at once and stop loving him altogether. But you need him in order to continually contemplate your high deed of faithfulness, and to reproach him for his unfaithfulness. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there is much humility and humiliation in it, but all of it comes from pride. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
800:Censorship is at its most effective when its victims pretend it does not exist. If intellectuals had stated that they were too scared to cover subjects of public concern, then at least they would have possessed the courage to admit that they were afraid. Western societies would then have been honest with themselves, and perhaps that honesty would have given birth to a new resolution. But the psychological costs of a frank confession were too high to contemplate. Honesty would have exposed contemporary culture as a culture of pretence. ~ Nick Cohen, #NFDB
801:Doesn’t part of the awe that fills us when we confront the unknown come from understanding that, should it at last flood into us and become known, we would be altered? In our view of the stars, we find a measure of our own incompleteness, our still-yet unfinishedness, which is to say, our potential for change, even transformation. That our species is distinguished from others by our hunger and capacity for change has everything to do with our ability to recognize the limits of our understanding, and to contemplate the unfathomable. ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
802:The heavens are not filled with hostility. The sky does not express a frown. When I look up I do not contemplate a face of brass, but the face of infinite good will. Yet when I was a child, many a picture has made me think of God as suspicious, inhumanly watchful, always looking round the corner to catch me at the fall. That "eye," placed in the sky of many a picture, and placed there to represent God, filled my heart with chilling fear. . . . Heaven overflows with good will toward us! Our God not only wishes good, he wills it! ~ John Henry Jowett, #NFDB
803:When players contemplate making a purchase, they acknowledge it is unwise to spend money on something that is not good. And yet, just like the fox that perceives the grapes as sour to reduce his frustration at not being able to reach them, players justify their purchases to help convince themselves of something they want to be true — namely, that they are not foolish. The only solution is to keep paying to keep playing. The cognitive changes that lead to behavior change help power the shift in how we view the products and services we use. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
804:Whether we are happy or unhappy, it is important that we contemplate the nature of our minds. If we can practice in this way, it will be like the saying on mind training: In happy times, it bows our neck; When bad times come, it is a friend. When things are good, meditating on the nature of the mind will prevent us from playing too many games. When times are bad, we won’t wallow in despair and depression. If we meditate on the nature of our mind, we will not have such a hard time and things will go well; this is extremely helpful. ~ Khenchen Thrangu, #NFDB
805:Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. If you don't realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
806:The full consequences of a default or even the serious prospect of default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the cost, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
807:The encompassing silence and the ease(or difference) of my companions have left my soul free to contemplate, to drink in the wonder of this place. How fitting it is that it should have been here that Moses heard the word of God! For here,where Man -if he is to live-lives perforce so close to Nature and by her Grace, I feel so much closer to the entire mystery of Creation that it would not surprise me at all were I to be vouchsafed a vision or a revelation; indeed it would seem in the very order of things that such an epiphany would happen. ~ Ahdaf Soueif, #NFDB
808:The 21-year-old set off for his journey the year before he died in 1324. Yet even though he traveled three times as far as Polo, crossing Africa, Asia, and China, Ibn Battuta has not received the same recognition. His memoirs, the Rihla (The Journey) was not translated into European languages until the nineteenth century and was unknown to Westerners except for the occasional Oriental scholar. Its full title is A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling. Despite its lofty appellation, his work lives up ~ Michael Rank, #NFDB
809:It is not a gathering of 'escapees' from the world, bitterly enjoying their escape, feeding their hate for the world. Listen to their psalms and hymns; contemplate the transparent beauty of their icons, their movements, of the entire *celebration. It is truly cosmical joy that permeates all this; it is the entire creation - its matter and its time, its sounds and colors, its words and silence - that praises and worships God and in this praise becomes again itself: the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity, the sacrament of the new creation. ~ Alexander Schmemann, #NFDB
810:Rage flared up in Tessa and she considered belting Woolsey with the poker whether he came near her or not. He had moved awfully quickly while fighting Will, though, and she didn’t fancy her chances.
“You don’t know James Carstairs. Don’t speak about him.”
“Love him, do you?” Woolsey managed to make it sound unpleasant. “But you love Will, too.”
Tessa froze. She had known that Magnus knew of Will’s affection for her, but the idea that what she felt for him in return was written across her face was too terrifying to contemplate. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
811:I always started studying with the best intentions, telling myself that today just might be the day it all fell into place, and everything would be different. But more often than not, though, after a couple of pages of practice problems, I'd find myself spiraling into an all-out depression. When it was really bad, I'd put my head down on my book and contemplate alternate options for my future.
"whoa," I heard a voice say. It was muffled slightly by my hair, and my arm, which I locked around my head in an effort to keep my brain from seeping out. ~ Sarah Dessen,#NFDB
812:She is becoming what I wanted she the last with the Arctic eyes to become, which is someone who loves me. Simply and truly as I am. It is hard to stare at her because I know she is starting to love me, I am starting to love her back. I don't care what she's done or who she's done it with, I don't care about whatever demons may be in her closet. I care about how she makes me feel and she makes me feel strong and safe and calm and warm and true. It is hard to stare because I am forced to contemplate giving it up. It is hard to stare, but I do it anyway. ~ James Frey, #NFDB
813:Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, who died in 1965, wrote of how the mere thought of the infinite led him to contemplate suicide: “A necessity I could not imagine swept over me: I had to try again and again to imagine the edge of space, or its edgelessness, time with a beginning and an end or time without a beginning or end, and both were equally impossible, equally hopeless … Under an irresistible compulsion I reeled from one to the other, at times so closely threatened with the danger of madness that I seriously thought of avoiding it by suicide.”8 ~ John D Barrow, #NFDB
814:What a nightmare!" cried Imtaz. "There's nothing gloomier than nature. You'll lose your sense of humor in the country. Unable to criticize the trees, your intelligence will lose its edge as you contemplate the plowed fields, and then, it'll be very easy for you to sing the praises of your fellow men because you won't be here to see and listen to them. Don't make that mistake. Never cut yourself off from mankind because, with distance, you're more likely to grant men extenuating circumstances. I love you too much to let you succumb to that weakness. ~ Albert Cossery, #NFDB
815:The body is transmuted into other forms, worms batten on it, it helps to feed the grass, and some animal consumes the grass. But as for the survival of the individual spirit of a man, show me one tittle of scientific evidence to support it. Besides, if it did survive, all the evil and malice in it must surely survive too. Why should the death of the body purge that away? It's a nightmare to contemplate such a thing, and oddly enough, unhinged people like spiritualists want to persuade us for our consolation that the nightmare is true.
("Monkeys") ~ E F Benson,#NFDB
816:The natural sciences are sometimes said to have no concern with values, nor to seek morality and goodness, and therefore belong to an inferior order of things. Counter-claims are made that they are the only living and dynamic studies... Both contentions are wrong. Language, Literature and Philosophy express, reflect and contemplate the world. But it is a world in which men will never be content to stay at rest, and so these disciplines cannot be cut off from the great searching into the nature of things without being deprived of life-blood. ~ Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, #NFDB
817:What geriatricians do—bolster our resilience in old age, our capacity to weather what comes—is both difficult and unappealingly limited. It requires attention to the body and its alterations. It requires vigilance over nutrition, medications, and living situations. And it requires each of us to contemplate the unfixables in our life, the decline we will unavoidably face, in order to make the small changes necessary to reshape it. When the prevailing fantasy is that we can be ageless, the geriatrician’s uncomfortable demand is that we accept we are not. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
818:What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
819:The conviction that we have a treasure to share with others “has to be sustained by our own constantly renewed experience of savoring Christ’s friendship and his message. It is impossible to persevere in a fervent evangelization unless we are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to” (266 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
820:The breaking up of the terrestrial globe, this it is we witness. It doubtless began a long time ago, and the brevity of human life enables us to contemplate it without dismay. It is not only in the great mountain ranges that the traces of this process are found. Great segments of the earth's crust have sunk hundreds, in some cases, even thousands, of feet deep, and not the slightest inequality of the surface remains to indicate the fracture; the different nature of the rocks and the discoveries made in mining alone reveal its presence. Time has levelled all. ~ Eduard Suess, #NFDB
821:The Eleven is not a painting of History, it is History. Perhaps what Michelet saw at the end of the Flore pavilion was History in person, in eleven persons - in terror, because History is pure terror. And that terror attracts us like a magnet. Because we are men, Sir; and because men high and low, scholars and beggars, passionately love History, that is, the terrors and the massacres; they hasten from afar to contemplate them, the terrors and the massacres, under the pretext of deploring them, even of rectifying them, so they claim, the good creatures... ~ Pierre Michon, #NFDB
822:If we deny our awesome challenge; turn our backs on the living universe, and forsake our cosmic destiny, we will commit a crime of unutterable magnitude. Mankind alone has the power to carry out this fundamental change in the universe. Our failure would lead to consequences unthinkable. This is perhaps the first and only chance the universe will ever have to awaken from its long night and live. We are the caretakers of this delicate spark of Life. To let it flicker and die through ignorance, neglect, or lack of imagination is a horror too great to contemplate. ~ Marshall Savage, #NFDB
823:The fact that you live in a broken-down house in the midst of restoration makes everything more difficult. It removes the ease and simplicity of life. It requires you to be more thoughtful, more careful. It requires you to listen and see well. It requires you to look out for difficulty and to be aware of danger. It requires you to contemplate and plan. It requires you to do what you don;t really want to do and to accept what you find difficult to accept. You want to simply coast, but you can't. Things are broken and they need to be fixed. There is work to do. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
824:to go, nor did she care to join him. The tension in her shoulders eased a little, realizing he wanted her to say no. Pretending to contemplate his invitation, Zoe relaxed a bit, realizing he didn’t have a clue what she was doing. “Not tonight,” she said. He flicked a bored glance at the computer in her lap. “Work?” he said, as though he expected it to contain nothing more. Open account. Transfer money. Pack. The words burned through the screen onto the titanium, branding Zoe’s thighs. “Yeah.” “Mind if I go out for a bit?” Zoe used to mind. Not anymore. And yet ~ Tanya Anne Crosby, #NFDB
825:posterity, n.
I try not to think about us growing old together, mostly because I try not to think about growing old at all. Both things - the years passing, the years together - are too enormous to contemplate. But one morning, I gave in. You were asleep, and I imagined you older and older. Your hair graying, your skin folded and creased, your breath catching. And I found myself thinking: If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. Your memories will be my most lasting impression. ~ David Levithan,#NFDB
826:If we start worrying whether our nose is too big or too small, we should think, “What if I had no head? - now that would be a problem!” As long as we have life, we should rejoice. If everything doesn't go exactly as we'd like, we can accept it. If we contemplate impermanence deeply, patience and compassion will arise. We will hold less to the apparent truth of our experience, and the mind will become more flexible. Realizing that one day this body will be buried or burned, we will rejoice in every moment we have rather than make ourselves or others unhappy. ~ Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, #NFDB
827:He told the associate that there was a lot of economic value in the work the desk did—that helping companies hedge their energy costs was a legitimate function of the capital markets, and that Goldman was the best place on the Street to do it. The associate took a moment to contemplate, then said, “You know, helping the world is great and all, but you need to be motivated by money.” He’d said it so bluntly that Jeremy attributed it to the booze, but the next day, as he came down from his hangover, he couldn’t help but think that the associate might have been telling the truth. ~ Kevin Roose, #NFDB
828:When we contemplate icons, good and wholesome holy meanings are created within us. A human being, you see, is not just soul and spirit but also mind, imagination, feelings, senses. An individual is a unified whole, a unified entity. The aim of the Ecclesia is to divinize the person in his or her totality. It is the whole person that strives to reach God. This is the reason why we offer exercises in the Ecclesia that relate to the body, such as fasting, prostrations, staying up during all-night vigils, all the rituals that the saints have been doing throughout the ages. ~ Kyriacos C Markides, #NFDB
829:She understood him. He could not forgive her,-but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjest resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impuse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
830:Catnap
This shoebox started out
a stiff-upper-lipped quadrilateral,
Upholder of Symmetry, Proportion, Principle,
sanctuary to an upright couple
of pedigree leather moccasins.
This week
shoebox learns
to sigh
decant,
contemplate
gravity.
Old idealist softens,
grows whiskers,
paw,
drowsing chin,
slumped tail,
Arctic eye.
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form, Shariputra.
Shoebox abdicates
shape
and Gucci worship,
secedes from
nostalgia.
Pukka sahib
learns
to purr.
~ Arundhathi Subramaniam,#NFDB
831:How do we regulate our emotions? The answer is surprisingly simple: by thinking about them. The prefrontal cortex allows each of us to contemplate his or her own mind, a talent psychologists call metacognition. We know when we are angry; every emotional state comes with self-awareness attached, so that an individual can try to figure out why he's feeling what he's feeling. If the particular feeling makes no sense—if the amygdala is simply responding to a loss frame, for example—then it can be discounted. The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain. ~ Jonah Lehrer, #NFDB
832:People sometimes say, indeed, that it makes little difference what theory of the atonement we may hold. Ah, my friends, it makes all the difference in the world. When you contemplate the cross of Christ, do you say merely, with modern theorists, ‘What a noble example of self-sacrifice; I am going to attain favour with God by sacrificing myself as well as He.’ Or do you say with the Bible, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me; He took my place; He bore my curse; He bought me with His own most precious blood.’ That is the most momentous question that can come to any human soul. ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
833:WHEN YOU CONTEMPLATE the big, full sunrise, the more mindful and concentrated you are, the more the beauty of the sunrise is revealed to you. Suppose you are offered a cup of tea, very fragrant, very good tea. If your mind is distracted, you cannot really enjoy the tea. You have to be mindful of the tea, you have to be concentrated on it, so the tea can reveal its fragrance and wonder to you. That is why mindfulness and concentration are such sources of happiness. That’s why a good practitioner knows how to create a moment of joy, a feeling of happiness, at any time of the day. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
834:Enslaved men and women hated their confinement and sought every opportunity to break the shackles that bound them, but opposition to their own enslavement—or even the enslavement of others—did not automatically make them abolitionists. For much of their history—indeed, for much of human history—the notion of a world purged of slavery was simply unimaginable. Abolition, like any other social movement, was rooted in history and confined in time and space. Prior to the American Revolution and its ideology of universal equality, there were few movements to contemplate, let alone to join. ~ Ira Berlin, #NFDB
835:Imagine someone shouts at you aggressively, with an intent to upset you. If, then, you contemplate physically abusing or harming this person, it means tamas is strong; it is governing you. In the same situation, if you feel your aggressive emotions well up, but you do not yell at the other person, rajas has won over tamas. If, however, you don’t feel any negativity or aggression; you don’t feel like giving it back to the person, nor do you have to curb your reaction – in simple terms, you remain unaffected – it means that your mode of goodness, sattva, has won over both tamas and rajas. ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
836:Turn your face toward the sacred Mosque (Koran 2:144,149,150) Commentary: The word "sacred" means that a heart which has not disengaged itself from the sphere of the soul and the sphere of created beings is forbidden to penetrate into this place. . . . "Wherever you are, turn your face" [toward the sacred Mosque] means, "Wherever you are, in the accomplishment of works of worship or in the ordinary acts of life, contemplate Him - in what you eat, in what you drink, in him or her whom you marry, always knowing that He is at once the Contemplator and the Contemplated. . . ." ~ Abdelkader El Djezairi, #NFDB
837:Helen,' said she, after a thoughtful silence, 'do you ever think about marriage?'
'Yes, aunt, often.'
'And do you ever contemplate the possibility of being married yourself, or engaged, before the season is over?'
'Sometimes; but I don't think it at all likely that I ever shall.'
'Why so?'
'Because, I imagine, there must be only a very, very few men in the world that I should like to marry; and of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should, it is twenty to one he may not happen to be single, or to take a fancy to me. ~ Anne Bront,#NFDB
838:Men seek for seclusion in the wilderness, by the seashore, or in the mountains - a dream you have cherished only too fondly yourself. But such fancies are wholly unworthy of a philosopher, since at any moment you choose you can retire within yourself. Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul; above all, he who possesses resources in himself, which he need only contemplate to secure immediate ease of mind - the ease that is but another word for a well-ordered spirit. Avail yourself often, then, of this retirement, and so continually renew yourself. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
839:Being-in-the-world means that I am inextricably knit into the fabric of this fluid, indivisible, and contingent reality I share with others. There is no room for a disembodied mind or soul, however subtle, to float free from this condition, to contemplate it from a hypothetical Archimedean point outside. Without such a mind or soul, it is hard to conceive of anything that will go on into another life once this one comes to an end. My actions, like the words of dead philosophers, may continue to reverberate and bear fruits long after my death, but I will not be around to witness them. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
840:I Need a Good Book
I need a good story.
I need a good book.
The kind that explodes
Off the shelf.
I need some good writing,
Alive and exciting,
To contemplate all by myself.
I need a good novel,
I need a good read.
I probably need
Two or three.
I need a good tale
Of love and betrayal
Or perhaps an adventure at sea.
I need a good saga.
I need a good yarn.
A momentous and mightily
Or slight one.
But with thousands and thousands
And thousands of books,
I need someone to tell me
The right one.
-John Lithgow ~ John Lithgow,#NFDB
841:You can know God intimately while acknowledging the mystery, even the absurdity, of such a notion. You can experience the proven neurological benefits of prayer even as you contemplate how science shows prayer's limitations. You can be part of the global body of people who follow God without turning off your brain or believing things that go against your conscience. You can read he Bible without having to brush off its ancient portrayal of science or its all-too-fruquent brutality.
And you can meet a risen Son of God named Jesus while wondering how such a thing could ever be true. ~ Mike McHargue,#NFDB
842:Myths and legends tell us of a third eye possessed by giants. The eye of Polyphemus, of Buddha. With this eye one can contemplate the other world and its 'astral' beings, the aura of those beings. Its counterpart in the physical body is the pineal gland, astrally calcified for lack of use and by the exclusive development of the rational mind. Initiation can reopen the third eye, transforming the hero into a giant, into Vîra, into Divya, to use words of tantric esotericism. Into superman, into Sonnenmensch. To cut the lunar current, to be solar again. (With the Black Sun.) To recapture Vril. ~ Miguel Serrano, #NFDB
843:Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity. If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready. ~ Lao Tzu,#NFDB
844:IN THIS MODERN CENTURY ON MOTHER EARTH TIME HAS BEEN ALREADY RIPPED TO CONTEMPLATE ON MYTHOLOGICAL STYLE.TO DEODORIZE ,EXORCISE NANO MICRO LEVEL OF SANCTITY SHRIVE HOMEWORK OF ENTIRE GLOBAL HUMAN SAGACIOUS PENSIVE MENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND HEED STUNT. SO.LIKE OUR VENERABLE ANCIENT ENSHRINE SOULS ALREADY HAD ASCETICISM TO HOBNOB INTO DIVINISM.ALL GLOBAL CITIZENS HAVE TO DO EXECUTE DIFFERENT TYPE OF HOLY SANCROSANCT RELIGIOUS YAGNAS RIGHT NOW.TO CONSECRATED TO HIS EXCELLENCY UNIVERSAL BOSS GOD FOR THE PROSPERITY OF ALL CREATURES OF MEGA AND MACROCOSMOS TILL ELEVENTH HOUR OF ITS EXISTENCE. GOD BLESS YOU ALL. ~ Various, #NFDB
845:In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
846:Nevertheless, if we contemplate a society with a somewhat stable wage-unit, with national characteristics which determine the propensity to consume and the preference for liquidity, and with a monetary system which rigidly links the quantity of money to the stock of the precious metals, it will be essential for the maintenance of prosperity that the authorities should pay close attention to the state of the balance of trade. For a favourable balance, provided it is not too large, will prove extremely stimulating; whilst an unfavourable balance may soon produce a state of persistent depression. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
847:We should not regard what a man is and what he deserves: but we should go higher – that it is God who has placed us in the world for such a purpose that we be united and joined together. He has impressed his image in us and has given us a common nature, which should incite us to providing one for the other. The man who wishes to exempt himself from providing for his neighbors should face himself and declare that he no longer wishes to be a man, for as long as we are human creatures we must contemplate as in a mirror our face in those who are poor, despised, exhausted, who groan under their burdens . . ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
848:Yes, I’d still have Sonia. And Zia. And so many other things that Karim no longer had. I’d still have the Arabian Sea and Sindhri mangoes, and crabbing with Captain Saleem, who had the most popular boat of all because his business card promoted ‘Garunteed no cockroach’, and, yes, there’s still be those bottles of creamy, flavored milk from Rahat Milk Corner and drives to the airport for coffee and warm sand at the beach and Thai soup at Yuan Tung; yes, Burns Road nihari; yes, student biryani; oh, yes, yes, yes, and all that, and all that again. So why complain? Why contemplate words like ‘longing’? ~ Kamila Shamsie, #NFDB
849:Novel-reading is indeed unusually private, unusually personal, unusually intimate. It doesn’t happen out there, in front of our eyes; it happens in here, in our heads. The form’s relationship to time is also unique. The novel isn’t static, like painting and sculpture, but though it tells a story, it doesn’t unfold in an inexorable progression, like music, dance, theater, or film. The reader, not the clock, controls the pace. The novel allows you the freedom to pause: to savor a phrase, contemplate a meaning, daydream about an image, absorb the impact of a revelation—make the experience uniquely your own. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
850:Lojong Slogan 1. First, train in the preliminaries; The four reminders. or alternatively called the Four Thoughts
1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone; Impermanence.
3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; Karma.
4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will experience suffering. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you dont want does not result in happiness; Ego.
~ Wikipedia,#NFDB
851:Unlike idolatry, which claims to make manifest the very essence of God, or the humanistic approach, which claims that God, if God exists, is utterly irrelevant, the iconic approach offers a different way of understanding. To treat something as an icon is to view particular words, images or experiences as aids in contemplation of that which cannot be reduced to words, images or experience. Not only this, but the icon represents a place where God touches humanity. Consequently, icons are not only the place where we contemplate God; they also act as the place that God uses in order to communicate with us. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
852:Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.
Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready. ~ Lao Tzu,#NFDB
853:One should let one's nails grow for a fortnight. O, how sweet it is to drag brutally from his bed a child with no hair on his upper lip and with wide open eyes, make as if to touch his forehead gently with one's hand and run one's fingers through his beautiful hair. Then suddenly, when he is least expecting it, to dig one's long nails into his soft breast, making sure, though, that one does not kill him; for if he died, one would not later be able to contemplate his agonies. Then one drinks his blood as one licks his wounds; and during this time, which ought to last for eternity, the child weeps. ~ Comte de Lautr amont, #NFDB
854:What shall I do with a torn nation? Stitch it back together with careful words of truth. The importance of this injunction has, if anything, become clearer over the past few years: we are dividing, and polarizing, and drifting toward chaos. It is necessary, under such conditions, if we are to avoid catastrophe, for each of us to bring forward the truth, as we see it: not the arguments that justify our ideologies, not the machinations that further our ambitions, but the stark pure facts of our existence, revealed for others to see and contemplate, so that we can find common ground and proceed together. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
855:What shall I do with a torn nation? Stitch it back together with careful words of truth. The importance of this injunction has, if anything, become clearer over the past few years: we are dividing, and polarizing, and drifting toward chaos. It is necessary, under such conditions, if we are to avoid catastrophe, for each of us to bring forward the truth, as we see it: not the arguments that justify our ideologies, not the machinations that further our ambitions, but the stark pure facts of our existence, revealed for others to see and contemplate, so that we can find common ground and proceed together. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
856:It was while he was fixing the footage Max had given him that the doubts about the disc Bernardo had played for him began to
plague him with ever growing strength. Alessandro couldn’t contemplate his father doing something so cruel but…Bernardo would certainly know how. Hell, Bernardo had taught him how to fiddle with electronics when he was still a teenager. And he wanted Alessandro under his control, under his roof. Knowing that Alessandro was trying to keep his family together and that entailed moving into their own house, out from the Dardano mansion, would Bernardo try to turn him with false information? ~ E Jamie,#NFDB
857:Rich or poor, all come full of devotion and with no inner misgivings to lay their offerings before the gods and to pray for their blessing. Is there any people so uniformly attached to their religion and so obedient to it in their daily life? I have always envied the Tibetans their simple faith, for all my life I have been a seeker. Though I learned, while in Asia, the way to meditate, the final answer to the riddle of life has not been vouchsafed to me. But I have at least learned to contemplate the events of life with tranquility and not let myself be flung to and fro by circumstances in a sea of doubt. ~ Heinrich Harrer, #NFDB
858:Faith gives man a peculiar sense of his own dignity … The believer finds himself distinguished above other men, exalted above natural man … Because faith represents man's own nature as that of another being, the believer does not contemplate his dignity immediately in himself, but in this supposed distinct person. … [H]is own desire of honour is satisfied in the honour of his Lord. Faith is arrogant, but it is distinguished from natural arrogance in this, that it clothes its feelings of superiority, its pride, in the idea of another person … This distinctive person, however, is simply its own hidden self[.] ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
859:It was as though Cutflower was so glad to be alive that he never lived. Every moment was vivid, a coloured thing, a trill or a crackle of words in the air. Who could imagine, while Cutflower was around, that there were such vulgar monsters as death, birth, love, art and pain around the corner? It was too embarrassing to contemplate. If Cutflower knew of them he kept it secret. Over their gaping and sepulchral deeps he skimmed now here, now there, in his private canoe, changing his course with a flick of his paddle when death's black whale, or the red squid of passion, lifted for a moment its body from the brine. ~ Mervyn Peake, #NFDB
860:Then she turned away before anybody caught her slack-jawed with admiration. He was not the one, that was her DNA talking, looking for a high-class sperm donor. Every woman in the room with a working ovary probably looked at him and thought, This one. Well, biology was not destiny. The amount of damage somebody that beautiful could do to a woman like her was too much to contemplate. She took another drink to cushion the thought, and said, "He's pretty."
"No," Liza said. "That's the point. He's not pretty. David is pretty. That guy looks like an adult."
"Okay, he's full of testosterone," Min said. ~ Jennifer Crusie,#NFDB
861:Language is the element of definition, the defining and descriptive incantation. It puts the coin between our teeth. It whistles the boat up. It shows us the city of light across the water. Without language there is no poetry, without poetry there’s just talk. Talk is cheap and proves nothing. Poetry is dear and difficult to come by. But it poles us across the river and puts a music in our ears. It moves us to contemplation. And what we contemplate, what we sing our hymns to and offer our prayers to, is what will reincarnate us in the natural world, and what will be our one hope for salvation in the What’sToCome. ~ Charles Wright, #NFDB
862:Or else you can say, like the camel driver who took me there: "I arrived here in my first youth, one morning, many people were hurrying along the streets toward the market, the women had fine teeth and looked you straight in the eye, three soldiers on a platform played the trumpet, and all around wheels turned and colored banners fluttered in the wind. Before then I had known only the desert and the caravan routes. In the years that followed, my eyes returned to contemplate the desert expanses and the caravan routes; but now I know this path is only one of the many that opened before me on that morning in Dorothea. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
863:Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon that word. The living perceive the infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
864:The belief that we somehow moved on to something else - whether still recognisably ourselves, or quite thoroughly changed - might be a tribute to our evolutionary tenacity and our animal thirst for life, but not to our wisdom. That saw a value beyond itself; in intelligence, knowledge and wit as concepts - wherever and by whoever expressed - not just in its own personal manifestation of those qualities, and so could contemplate its own annihilation with equanimity, and suffer it with grace; it was only a sort of sad selfishness that demanded the continuation of the individual spirit in the vanity and frivolity of a heaven. ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
865:1. “Meditation practiced by beginners / meditation on the meaning of characteristics / meditation based on suchness / or the pure meditation of the tathagatas 2. On such shapes as the sun or moon / or a lotus in the depths of hell363 / or space after the fire364 / thus do practitioners contemplate 3. A myriad of objects such as these / fill the meditations of other schools / and those trapped in the realms / of shravakas or pratyeka-buddhas 4. Those who abandon these / are thereby free of projections / buddhas come from every land / with hands beyond conception / and touch their heads as one / and lead them into suchness.“365 ~ Red Pine, #NFDB
866:If AIBO is in some sense a toy, it is a toy that changes minds. It does this in several ways. It heightens our sense of being close to developing a postbiological life and not just in theory or in the laboratory. And it suggests how this passage will take place. It will begin with our seeing the new life as “as if ” life and then deciding that “as if ” may be life enough. Even now, as we contemplate “creatures” with artificial feelings and intelligence, we come to reflect differently on our own. The question here is not whether machines can be made to think like people but whether people have always thought like machines. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
867:The elderly gentleman somehow managed to look down his nose at her,even though they were of a similar height.
"From what I just witnessed, you were about to assault Mr. Addleshaw."
"Just because I was thinking about it, doesn't mean I was planning on seeing it through to fruition."
"A lady should never contemplate slapping a gentleman, especially not one of Mr. Addleshaw's social standing."
"I wasn't thinking about slapping him," Harriet muttered. "He deserved much more than a simple slap for being under the misguided belief that, simply because he has deep pockets, everyone should cater to his ridiculous whims. ~ Jen Turano,#NFDB
868:When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become! ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
869:To help you remember the triviality of your daily tasks, interrupt your schedule with refreshers. These refreshers should cut to your core and strip the fat off the moment. Consider your own death. Behold an image of the most enlightened being you know. Contemplate the mystery of existence. Relax into the deepest and most profound loving of which you are capable. In your own way, remember the infinite, and then return to the task at hand. This way, you will never lose perspective and begin to think that life is a matter of tasks. You are not a drone. You are the unbounded mystery of love. Be so, without forgetting your tasks. ~ David Deida, #NFDB
870:If I am going to be drowned-- if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd.... ~ Stephen Crane, #NFDB
871:It would be good now, I thought, to be in Paris. The afternoon city heat would have gone. It would be good to sit under the trees near the marionette theatre. It would be quiet there now. There would be no one there but a student or two reading. There you could listen to the rustle of leaves unconscious of the pains of humanity in labour, of a civilisation hastening to its own destruction. There, away from this brassy sea and blood-red earth, you could contemplate the twentieth-century tragedy unmoved; unmoved except by pity for mankind fighting to save itself from the primeval ooze that welled from its own subconscious being. ~ Eric Ambler, #NFDB
872:Just let me wait a little while longer,
Under your window in the quite snow.
Let me stand here and shiver, I’ll be stronger
If I can see your light before I go.
All through the weeks I’ve tried to keep my balance.
Leaves fell, then rain, then shadows, I fell too.
Easy restraint is not among my talents,
Fall turned to Winter and I came to you.
Kissed by the snow I contemplate your face.
Oh, do not hide it in your pillow yet!
Warm rooms would never lure me from this place,
If only I could see your silhouette.
Turn on your light, my sun, my summer love.
Zero degrees down here, July above. ~ Polly Shulman,#NFDB
873:The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts .... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
874:If you do not know me, you whose presence is not even essential to me, it can only mean that this calendar has been badly printed. Your photographs on my walls and the bitter memories that our meetings have impressed upon my heart have only a paltry role in my love! You figure large in my dreams, ever-present, alone on the stage yet destitute of any role.
I encounter you rarely on my path. I am of an age when one begins to contemplate one's emaciated fingers, and at which youth is so full, so real that it cannot be long before it begins to fade. Your lips bring tears to my eyes; you sleep naked in my brain and I dare not rest. ~ Louis Aragon,#NFDB
875:If you do not know me, you whose presence is not even essential to me, it can only mean that this calendar has been badly printed. Your photographs on my walls and the bitter memories that our meetings have impressed upon my heart have only a paltry role in my love! You figure large in my dreams, ever-present, alone on the stage yet destitute of any role.
I encounter you rarely on my path. I am of an age when one begins to contemplate one's emaciated fingers, and at which youth is so full, so real that it cannot be long before it begins to fade. Your lips bring tears to my eyes; you sleep naked in my brain and I dare not rest. ~ Robert Desnos,#NFDB
876:In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless, every man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state of life of which it may be said: "It is bad to-day, and it will be worse to-morrow; and so on till the worst of all." If ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
877:I now had fresh subjects to think about, of course, but it is always easier to contemplate how lucky one is than about past betrayal and murder--and I knew my mother would want my happiness above anything.
Who can ever know what turns the spark into flame? Vidanric’s initial interest in me might well have been kindled by the fact that he saw my actions as courageous, but the subsequent discovery of passion, and the companionship of mind that would sustain it, seemed as full of mystery as it was of felicity. As for me, I really believe the spark had been there all along, but I had been too ignorant--and too afraid--to recognize it. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
878:Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deep—for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said she: "Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?" "Yes'm." "Powerful warm, warn't it?" "Yes'm." "Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?" A bit of a scare shot through Tom—a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said: "No'm—well, not very much. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
879:Half of me is filled with bursting words and half of me is painfully shy. I crave solitude yet also crave people. I want to pour life and love into everything yet also nurture my self-care and go gently. I want to live within the rush of primal, intuitive decision, yet also wish to sit and contemplate. This is the messiness of life - that we all carry multitudes, so must sit with the shifts. We are complicated creatures, and ultimately, the balance comes from this understanding. Be water. Flowing, flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough. ~ Victoria Erickson, #NFDB
880:I put the issue from my mind. My mother had taken up the cause. She was strong. She had built that business, with all those people working for her, and it dwarfed my father’s business, and all the other businesses in the whole town; she, that docile woman, had a power in her the rest of us couldn’t contemplate. And Dad. He had changed. He was softer, more prone to laugh. The future could be different from the past. Even the past could be different from the past, because my memories could change: I no longer remembered Mother listening in the kitchen while Shawn pinned me to the floor, pressing my windpipe. I no longer remembered her looking away. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
881:...legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
882:In language, I discern words that fail to signify what they denote and do not adequately convey their meanings. The word happiness seeks its meaning in people and in their yearnings and their desires, while people seek the meaning of happiness in the word and in its definitions and its truths. It may well be that the meaning of the word lies discarded somewhere beneath the sun in a neglected corner of an obscure village, or in the shelter of a sycamore tree, or sleeping under a bale of cotton taken as a temporary roof, or sitting and laughing in a neighborhood gathering, or standing to contemplate the current of a stream, or stretched out and gazing up at the heavens. ~, #NFDB
883:An isolated system or a system in a uniform environment (which for the present consideration we do best to include as a part of the system we contemplate) increases its entropy and more or less rapidly approaches the inert state of maximum entropy. We now recognize this fundamental law of physics to be just the natural tendency of things to approach the chaotic state (the same tendency that the books of a library or the piles of papers and manuscripts on a writing desk display) unless we obviate it. (The analogue of irregular heat motion, in this case, is our handling those objects now and again without troubling to put them back in their proper places.) ~ Erwin Schr dinger, #NFDB
884:I wanted to puke, and from the intense paint stench that was assaulting my nasal passages. Sage wanted Gaberot, Not Tucker, not Joe, but Gabe. It was all too gross to contemplate. So of course my brain couldn't stop contemplating it.
Sage and Gabe-rot sitting in the tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
We worked in silence for a few minutes while I fumed. How could she grill me about Gabe when she was already dating Mr.Perfect? If only Daniel were here to hear all of this instead of sitting back at SDH oblivious.
"So are you and Gabe, like close?" Sage asked.
Ugh!
"Very close," I said, tilting my head to one side,"Incestuous,actually. He's a fabulous kisser. ~ Kieran Scott,#NFDB
885:The discovery of the horror tale at an early age was fortuitous for me. This sort of tale serves, in many ways, the very same purpose as fairy tales did in our childhood. It operates as a theater of the mind in which internal conflicts are played out. In these tales we can parade the most reprehensible aspects of our being: cannibalism, incest, parricide. It allows us to discuss our anxieties and even to contemplate the experience of death in absolute safety.
And again, like a fairy tale, horror can serve as a liberating or repressive social tool, and it is always an accurate reflection of the social climate of its time and the place where it gets birthed. ~ Guillermo del Toro,#NFDB
886:I also came across the word neoteny, which means “remaining young.” It’s something which we as humans have developed into a survival trait. Other animals, when they are young, have a curiosity about the world, a flexibility of response, and an ability to play which they lose as they grow up. As a species we have retained it. As a species, we are forever sticking our fingers into the electric socket of the universe to see what will happen next. It is a trait that will either save us or kill us, but it is what makes us human beings. I would rather be in the company of people who look at Mars than people who contemplate humanity’s navel—other worlds are better than fluff. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
887:Now.Go all the way into the pond."
"Um...how,exactly?"
I was afraid she was going to make me hop out into the water until it was over my head, an image too mortifying to even contemplate. Cal stepped forward, hopefully to come to my rescue.
"I could toss her off the pier, Ms. Vanderlyden."
Or not.
"Good," the Vandy said with a brisk nod, like that had been her plan all along. Then Cal leaned down and swept me into his arms.
There were more giggles, and even a few sighs. I knew most girls would give up a vital organ for Cal to hold them, but my face flamed red. I wasn't sure this was any less embarrassing than flopping out into the pond on my own. ~ Rachel Hawkins,#NFDB
888:Those who dwell , as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations and concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the reassurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. ~ Rachel Carson, #NFDB
889:The White City
I will not toy with it nor bend an inch.
Deep in the secret chambers of my heart
I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch
I bear it nobly as I live my part.
My being would be a skeleton, a shell,
If this dark Passion that fills my every mood,
And makes my heaven in the white world's hell,
Did not forever feed me vital blood.
I see the mighty city through a mist-The strident trains that speed the goaded mass,
The poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed,
The fortressed port through which the great ships pass,
The tides, the wharves, the dens I contemplate,
Are sweet like wanton loves because I hate.
~ Claude McKay,#NFDB
890:I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost.
If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,#NFDB
891:his view of perceiving God in Christ with the notion of looking at a painting and seeing what the artist has been doing in it.27 In Christian faith, the captivating force (the ‘subjective evidence’) of the artwork which is Christ takes hold of our imaginative powers; we enter into the ‘painterly world’ which this discloses and, entranced by what we see, come to contemplate the glory of sovereign love of God in Christ (the ‘objective evidence’) as manifested in the concrete events of his life, death and resurrection.28 So entering his glory, we become absorbed by it, but this very absorption sends us out into the world in sacrificial love like that of Jesus. This is ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
892:The distant sea, lapping the sandy shore with measured sound; the nearer cries of the donkey-boys; the unusual scenes moving before her like pictures, which she cared not in her laziness to have fully explained before they passed away; the stroll down to the beach to breathe the sea-air, soft and warm on the sandy shore even at the end of November; the great long misty sea-line touching the tender-coloured sky; the white sail of a distant boat turning silver in some pale sunbeam: - it seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or wishing to contemplate the future. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
893:I'm not arguing that America would be a better or more beautiful place if it had imported hippopotamuses in 1910. But there is something beautiful about the America that considered importing them-an America so intent on facing down its problems, and solving them, that even an idea like this could get a fair hearing; where the political system and the culture felt so alive with possibility, and so confident in its own virtue and ingenuity, that elected officials could sit around and contemplate the merits of hippo ranching without worrying too much about how it sounded; where people felt free and bold enough to imagine putting hippopotamuses in places where there were no hippopotamuses. ~ Jon Mooallem, #NFDB
894:Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate--with the best teachers--the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
895:And I need you, my love," he said. "I need you so much that I panic when I think that perhaps I will not be able to persuade you to come back with me to Enfield. I need you so much that I cannot quite contemplate the rest of my life if it must be lived without you. I need you so much that—Well, the words speak for themselves. I need you."
"To look after Augusta?" she said. She dared not hear what he was surely saying. She dared not hope. "To look after Enfield? To provide you with an heir?"
"Yes," he said, and her heart sank like a stone to be squashed somewhere between her slippers and the parlor carpet."And to be my friend and my confidant and my comfort. And to be my lover. ~ Mary Balogh,#NFDB
896:I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad—that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good—for that, must I suffer eternal punishment?
"Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43—why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate. ~ Norman Mailer,#NFDB
897:Impermanence is also seen in the fact that the end of meeting is separation. Our meetings with each other are like mingling in a dream. Yet we often become so intensely entangled in our relationships that separation of one kind or another becomes the source of overwhelming sorrow. The Buddha gave a striking example of this when he said that in the course of countless lifetimes each one of us has shed more tears over the death of loved ones than all of the water in the great oceans. Although feelings of loss and sorrow are natural for most of us, still, the more we contemplate and accept the truth that all meetings will end in separation, the less likely we will be to drown in those waters. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
898:The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher - in some degree. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
899:You, who shall resurface following the flood
In which we have perished,
Contemplate —
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also the dark time
That you have escaped.
For we went forth, changing our country more frequently than our shoes
Through the class warfare, despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.
And yet we knew:
Even the hatred of squalor
Distorts one’s features.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow hoarse. We
Who wished to lay the foundation for gentleness
Could not ourselves be gentle.
But you, when at last the time comes
That man can aid his fellow man,
Should think upon us
With leniency. ~ Bertolt Brecht,#NFDB
900:With every day that passed, the boy's heart became more and more silent. It no longer wanted to know about things of the past or future; it was content simply to contemplate the desert, and to drink with the boy from the Soul of the World. The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.
When his heart spoke to him, it was to provide a stimulus to the boy, and to give him strength, because the days of silence there in the desert were wearisome. His heart told the boy what his strongest qualities were: his courage in having given up his sheep and in trying to live out his destiny, and his enthusiasm during the time he had worked at the crystal shop. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
901:Without a memory, EP has fallen completely out of time. He has no stream of consciousness, just droplets that immediately evaporate. If you were to take the watch off his wrist—or, more cruelly, change the time—he’d be completely lost. Trapped in this limbo of an eternal present, between a past he can’t remember and a future he can’t contemplate, he lives a sedentary life, completely free from worry. “He’s happy all the time. Very happy. I guess it’s because he doesn’t have any stress in his life,” says his daughter Carol, who lives nearby. In his chronic forgetfulness, EP has achieved a kind of pathological enlightenment, a perverted vision of the Buddhist ideal of living entirely in the present. ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
902:How they are all about, these gentlemen
In chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,
Like night around their order's star and gem
And growing ever darker, stony-faced,
And these, their ladies, fragile, wan, but propped
High by their bodice, one hand loosely dropped,
Small like its collar, on the toy King-Charles:
How they surround each one of these who stopped
To read and contemplate the objects d'art,
Of which some pieces still are theirs, not ours.
Whit exquisite decorum they allow us
A life of whose dimensions we seem sure
And which they cannot grasp. They were alive
To bloom, that is be fair; we, to mature,
That is to be of darkness and to strive. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
903:I contemplated suicide. Every so often I contemplate suicide merely to remind myself of my complete lack of interest in it as a solution to anything at all. There was a time when I worried about this, when I thought galloping neurosis was wildly romantic, when I longed to be the sort of girl who knew the names of wildflowers and fed baby birds with eyedroppers and rescued bugs from swimming pools and wanted from time to time to end it all. Now, in my golden years, I have come to accept the fact that there is not a neurasthenic drop of blood in my body, and I have become very impatient with it in others. Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn and I’ll show you a real asshole. ~ Nora Ephron, #NFDB
904:And now let us listen to the groans of Frederick Douglass, feel the lash with Amy, endure the satire of Du Bois, and measure the wrath of Malcolm X; let us contemplate the pathos of black childhood and the tragedy of black womanhood. And let us not forget that [as Martin Luther King Jr. said] “he who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” And let us also remember that if God has given us a revelation of the true nature of man, surely we will render account if we do not live in the light of that revelation, and especially so if we are called to the holy office of the Christian ministry. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
905:Without the Reichswehr’s ‘discovery’ of his talent for nationalist agitation, Hitler had every prospect of returning to the margins of society – an embittered war veteran with little chance of personal advancement. Without his self-discovery that he could ‘speak’, Hitler would not have been able to contemplate the possibility of making a living from politics. But without the extraordinary political climate of post-war Germany, and, quite especially, the unique conditions in Bavaria, Hitler would have found himself in any case without an audience, his ‘talent’ pointless and unrecognized, his tirades of hate without echo, the backing from those close to the avenues of power, on whom he depended, unforth-coming. ~ Ian Kershaw, #NFDB
906:As the calm lake stems from the deep spring that no eye saw, so too a person's love has a still deeper ground, in God's love. If there were no gushing spring at the bottom, if Hod were not love, then neither would there be the little lake nor either a person's love. As the calm lake stems darkly from the deep spring, so a person's love originate mysteriously in God's. As the calm lake indeed invites you to contemplate it, yet with the darkness of the reflection prevents you from seeing through it, so does love's mysterious origin in God's love prevent you from seeing its ground. When you think you see it, it is a reflection that deceives you, as if what only hides the deeper ground were itself the ground. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
907:Listen! Here’s all you need to know to become enlightened: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know. That’s it. That’s the whole deal; a complete teaching of enlightenment, a complete practice. If you ever have any questions or problems—no matter what the question or problem is—the answer is always exactly the same: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know. In other words, go jump off a cliff. Don’t go near the cliff and contemplate jumping off. Don’t read a book about jumping off. Don’t study the art and science of jumping off. Don’t join a support group for jumping off. Don’t write poems about jumping off. Don’t kiss the ass of someone else who jumped off. Just jump. ~ Jed McKenna, #NFDB
908:To conquer our insatiability, the Stoics advise us to engage in negative visualization. We should contemplate the impermanence of all things. We should imagine ourselves losing the things we most value, including possessions and loved ones. We should also imagine the loss of our own life. If we do this, we will come to appreciate the things we now have, and because we appreciate them, we will be less likely to form desires for other things. And besides simply imagining that things could be worse than they are, we should sometimes cause things to be worse than they would otherwise be; Seneca advises us to “practice poverty,” and Musonius advises us voluntarily to forgo opportunities for pleasure and comfort. • ~ William B Irvine, #NFDB
909:With every day that passed, the boy's heart became more and more
silent. It no longer wanted to know about things of the past or future; it was content simply to
contemplate the desert, and to drink with the boy from the Soul of the World. The boy and his heart had
become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.
When his heart spoke to him, it was to provide a stimulus to the boy, and to give him strength, because
the days of silence there in the desert were wearisome. His heart told the boy what his strongest qualities
were: his courage in having given up his sheep and in trying to live out his destiny, and his enthusiasm
during the time he had worked at the crystal shop. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
910:A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction. They lie in their beds through the day, wide awake but afraid to put on their clothes. They drink coffee and look at photographs. Others leap out of bed in the morning, unconcerned that each action leads into nothingness, unconcerned that they cannot plan out their lives. They live moment to moment, and each moment is full. Still others substitute the past for the future. They recount each memory, each action taken, each cause and effect, and are fascinated by how events have delivered them to this moment, the last moment of the world, the termination of the line that is time. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
911:Draw near, woman, and hear what I have to say. Turn
your curiosity for once towards useful objects, and consider
the advantages which nature gave you and society
ravished away. Come and learn how you were born the
companion of man and became his slave; how you grew
to like the condition and think it natural; and finally how
the long habituation of slavery so degraded you that you
preferred its sapping but convenient vices to the more
difficult virtues of freedom and repute. If the picture I
shall paint leaves you in command of yourselves, if you
can contemplate it without emotion, then go back to your
futile pastimes; ‘there is no remedy; the vices have
become the custom. ~ Pierre Choderlos de Laclos,#NFDB
912:Once the truth affirmed by Christianity is approached as an object to contemplate, it is treated as something that can be tested in the same way as any other propositional claim. This effectively gives the truth affirmed by Christianity over to the academic who has the space, time, and skills to contemplate these claims in depth. Philosophers can ask whether these claims are logically sound, historians can ponder the likelihood of certain scriptural claims, sociologists can ask whether Christian truth claims play a functional role in society, psychologists can explore whether these truth claims are only wish fulfillments, and theologians can contemplate the relationship of these truths to Christian doctrines and creeds. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
913:The other day I told you the meaning of bhakti. It is to adore God with body, mind, and words. 'With body' means to serve and worship God with one's hands, go to holy places with one's feet, hear the chanting of the name and glories of God with one's ears, and behold the divine image with one's eyes. 'With mind' means to contemplate and meditate on God constantly and to remember and think of His lila. 'With words' means to sing hymns to Him and chant His name and glories.
Devotion as described by Narada is suited to the Kaliyuga. It means to chant constantly the name and glories of God. Let those who have no leisure worship God at least morning and evening by whole-heartedly chanting His name and clapping their hands. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#NFDB
914:Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.
Thus ought man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible, nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it. ~ James Clerk Maxwell,#NFDB
915:You’re not mending a rip in your father’s trousers. People are paying good money—” “I know how to sew,” I blurt. “Maybe better than you.” Mary gapes at me. “You . . . you are nothing,” she sputters. “Don’t even have a—a family!” My ears are buzzing. The only thing I can think to say is, “And you don’t have any manners.” I stand up and leave the room, pulling the door shut behind me. In the dark hall, I contemplate my options. I could run away, but where would I go? After a moment the door opens, and Fanny slips out. “Goodness, child,” she whispers. “Why you have to be so mouthy?” “That girl is mean. What’d I do to her?” Fanny puts a hand on my arm. Her fingers are rough, calloused. “It don’t do you any good to squabble. ~ Christina Baker Kline, #NFDB
916:Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.
Thus ought man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible, nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it. ~ James Clerk Maxwell,#NFDB
917:The reason Dr. Caner’s flameout didn’t make a bigger dent in this school’s spiritual life, I think, is that Liberty students have much more pressing things to do than contemplate the existence of God. There are papers to write, grad school applications to complete, girls to ask out. Even if you were convinced by the Rational Response Squad, entertaining a crisis of faith would mean reevaluating every aspect of your life, from the friends you hang out with to the classes you take to, really, whether you should be at Liberty at all. In a faith system as rigorous and all-encompassing as this, severe doubt is paralyzing. Better just to keep believing, keep living life, and take up the big questions later, when not so much is at stake. ~ Kevin Roose, #NFDB
918:It is funny how people - millions and millions of people - go about watching the telly and singing and humming in spite of the fact that they lost brother or father or lover in a war; and what is stranger still, they contemplate with equanimity seeing their other brothers or lovers off to yet another war. They don't see the tragedy of it all. Now and then one of the millions reads a book, or starts thinking, or something shakes him, and then he sees tragedy all over the place. Wherever he looks, he finds tragedy. He finds it tragic that other people don't see this tragedy around them and then he becomes like Font or Edna, or joins some party or other, or marches behind banners until his own life, seen detachedly, becomes a little tragic. ~ Waguih Ghali, #NFDB
919:It was later, when she got home and lay in the bed after her evening meal, that the day she had just spent would seem like one of the longest of her life as she would find herself going through it scene by scene. Even tiny details stayed in her mind. When she deliberatively tried to think about something else, or leave her mind blank, events from the day would come quickly back. For each day, she thought, she needed a whole other day to contemplate what had happened and store it away, get it out of her system so that it did not keep her awake at night or fill her dreams of what had actually happened and other flashes that had nothing to do with anything familiar, but were full of rushes of colour or crowds or people, everything frenzied and fast. ~ Colm T ib n, #NFDB
920:His joy was somewhat sullied by immediate awareness that his brother did not fully share it . . . in truth, he seemed more distressed than was possible save in one about to discorporate because of some shameful lack or failure. But Smith had already learned that these creatures, so much like himself in some ways, could endure emotions dreadful to contemplate and still not die. His Brother Mahmoud underwent a spiritual agony five times daily and not only did not die but had urged the agony on him as a needful thing. His Brother Captain van Tromp suffered terrifying spasms unpredictably, any one of which should have, by Smith’s standards, produced immediate discorporation to end the conflict—yet that brother was still corporate so far as he knew. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
921:The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind on God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. "When I awake, I am still with thee" (Psalm 139:18). The thoughts are as travelers in the mind. David's thoughts kept heaven-road. "I am still with Thee." God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory?... A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. He never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
922:Turning something over to the Holy Spirit is a leap of faith that lets go of attempting to control outcomes. The core of alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, smoking and a host of things the world calls addictions is control. The little willingness the Holy Spirit asks is the key to letting go of the attempt to manage the body and the world, which is the insane attempt to maintain a self-concept image that God did not create. An idea to contemplate from the Course is this: "Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." The requirement is to change your thinking, not to focus on behavior and form. Behavior flows from thought, and transformation of the mind is synonymous with changing thought patterns from ego-based to Spirit-based. ~ David Hoffmeister, #NFDB
923:Railways ushered in an era of faster, cheaper mass transport – 25 million passengers in 1880, 240 million in 1910 – but for many Swiss it was still out of reach financially. What was affordable for British visitors was a luxury for locals. Transport history centre Via Storia reckons that most of those 240 million passengers were tourists and the small layer of Swiss society with money, but the middle classes could at least contemplate a trip for the first time; not often or far, but a possibility, although in third class most likely, as first class was double the price, and mountain trains were even more expensive. Someone from Zurich might manage a day trip once a year to Lake Lucerne or to another Swiss city, one that had probably been an economic rival until then. ~ Diccon Bewes, #NFDB
924:its lack of natural resources. In that same month, the British general staff came up with a war plan that anticipated a deep crisis in Germany beginning in late 1941, followed by that country’s collapse. The British, therefore, did not need to prepare for a war fought in huge battles like those of 1914–18. From 1942 onwards they would be primarily engaged in terminal care for a Nazi empire disintegrating of its own accord. In the end, Churchill succeeded in winning over all twenty-five members of his government. ‘I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon ~ Geert Mak, #NFDB
925:The cities, which had been the bearers of culture, were especially hard hit; substantial citizens, in large numbers, fled to escape the tax-collector. It was not till after the death of Plotinus that order was re-established and the Empire temporarily saved by the vigorous measures of Diocletian and Constantine. Of all this there is no mention in the works of Plotinus. He turned aside from the spectacle of ruin and misery in the actual world, to contemplate an eternal world of goodness and beauty. In this he was in harmony with all the most serious men of his age. To all of them, Christians and pagans alike, the world of practical affairs seemed to offer no hope, and only the Other World seemed worthy of allegiance. To the Christian, the Other World was the Kingdom of ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
926:It was exactly the sort of person, like Joan of Arc, who did know why women wore skirts, who was most justified in not wearing one; it was exactly the sort of person, like St. Francis, who did sympathise with the feast and the fireside, who was most entitled to become a beggar on the open road. And when, in the general emancipation of modern society, the Duchess says she does not see why she shouldn't play leapfrog, or the Dean declares that he sees no valid canonical reason why he should not stand on his head, we may say to these persons with patient benevolence: "Defer, therefore, the operation you contemplate until you have realised by ripe reflection what principle or prejudice you are violating. Then play leapfrog and stand on your head and the Lord be with you." Among ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
927:your thoughts of Christ, be very careful that they are conceived and directed according to the rule of the word, lest you deceive your own souls, and give up the conduct of your affections unto vain imaginations. . . . [But] we are not to forego our duty [to contemplate Christ] because other men have been mistaken in theirs, nor part with practical, fundamental principles of religion because they have been abused by superstition. . . . Yet I must say that I had rather be among them who, in the actings of their love and affection unto Christ, do fall into some irregularities and excesses in the manner of expressing it . . . than among those who, professing themselves to be Christians, do almost disavow their having any thoughts of or affection unto the person of Christ.297 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
928:I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible Natures in the universe. But who will explain for us the family of all these beings, and the ranks and relations and distinguishing features and functions of each? What do they do? What places do they inhabit? The human mind has always sought the knowledge of these things, but never attained it. Meanwhile I do not deny that it is helpful sometimes to contemplate in the mind, as on a tablet, the image of a greater and better world, lest the intellect, habituated to the petty things of daily life, narrow itself and sink wholly into trivial thoughts. But at the same time we must be watchful for the truth and keep a sense of proportion, so that we may distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
929:So the challenge, as you contemplate your next opportunity to be boring or remarkable, is to answer these two questions: (1) "If I get criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable impact? Will I lose my job, get hit upside the head with a softball bat, or lose important friendships?" If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you'll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off.
And then, once you've compared the bad feeling and the benefits, and you've sold yourself on taking the remarkable path, answer this one: (2) How can I create something that critics will criticize? ~ Seth Godin,#NFDB
930:Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate — with the best teachers — the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society. ~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 21: The Path to Freedom., #NFDB
931:Just as there are those who accept every UFO report at face value, there are also those who dismiss the idea of alien visitation out of hand and with great passion. It is, they say, unnecessary to examine the evidence, and “unscientific” even to contemplate the issue. I once helped to organize a public debate at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science between proponent and opponent scientists of the proposition that some UFOs were spaceships; whereupon a distinguished physicist, whose judgment in many other matters I respected, threatened to sic the Vice President of the United States on me if I persisted in this madness. (Nevertheless, the debate was held and published, the issues were a little better clarified, and I did not hear from Spiro T. Agnew.) ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
932:Lao-tzu advised, “As soon as you have a thought, laugh at it,” because reality is not what we think. We perceive the world through a window colored by beliefs, interpretations, and associations. We see things not as they are but as we are. The same brain that enables us to contemplate philosophy, solve math equations, and create poetry also generates a stream of static known as discursive thoughts, which seem to arise at random, bubbling up into our awareness. Such mental noise is a natural phenomenon, no more of a problem than the dreams that appear in the sleep state. Therefore, our schooling aims not to struggle with random thoughts but to transcend them in the present moment, where no thoughts exist, only awareness. Our mind’s liberation awaits not in some imagined future but here and now. ~ Dan Millman, #NFDB
933:On the one hand he derived his notion of himself as a lord from people who have had to cringe these many generations to hold on to the odd patch of land that is their only living; and on the other, though half belonging to them, he has been bred up to despise their religion, their language, their poverty, their manners and traditions. A conquering race, in the place of that conquest, is rarely amiable; the conquerors pay less obviously than the conquered, but perhaps in time they pay even more heavily, in the loss of the humane qualities. Hard, arrogant, profit-seeking adventurers flock to the spoil, and the natives, though outwardly civil, contemplate them with a resentment mingled with contempt, while at the same time respecting the face of conquest – acknowledging their greater strength. ~ Patrick O Brian, #NFDB
934:How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate- your brain- that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all. ~ V S Ramachandran, #NFDB
935:Death should teach you that what is real is life. And life teaches you that what is unavoidable is not death, but impermanence. Impermanence is the only truth. Nothing is permanent. All is changing. In every instant. In every moment. Were anything permanent, it could not be. For even the very concept of permanence depends upon impermanence to have any meaning. Therefore, even permanence is impermanent. Look at this deeply. Contemplate this truth. Comprehend it, and you comprehend God. This is the Dharma, and this is the Buddha. This is the Buddha Dharma. This is the teaching and the teacher. This is the lesson and the master. This is the object and the observer, rolled into one. They never have been other than One. It is you who have unrolled them, so that your life may unroll before you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
936:The death of his commander was not something he wanted to contemplate now…or ever. CHAPTER III Kannak needed a husband. She did not want one and was not at all convinced she would know what to do with one, but now that her father neglected to return, life promised to be extremely difficult for a mother and daughter trying to survive alone. Marriage was Kannak’s idea and her mother flatly refused to consider it, but in the end Kannak could think of no other answer. There were stipulations of course, for the two had talked of the man she would marry. “See that he has the strength of an ox, does not take to strong drink and has good teeth,” her mother instructed. As she mounted her horse, Kannak wondered just how she could ask a man to show his teeth before she married him. But she decided she would puzzle ~ Marti Talbott, #NFDB
937:Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page—rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and "guesses" at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words—just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us to simply improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we will still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its "inventors." All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are—accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
938:Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, and pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
939:People do not always remember that politics, economics, and social organisation generally, belong in the realm of means, not ends. Our political and social thinking is prone to what may be called the ‘administrator’s fallacy’, by which I mean the habit of looking upon a society as a systematic whole, of a sort that is thought good if it is pleasant to contemplate as a model of order, a planned organism with parts neatly dove-tailed into each other. But a society does not, or at least should not, exist to satisfy an external survey, but to bring a good life to the individuals who compose it. It is in the individuals, not in the whole, that ultimate value is to be sought. A good society is a means to a good life for those who compose it, not something having a separate kind of excellence on its own account. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
940:Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of life. Sit comfortably and first contemplate the manifest realm of existence. This realm is concerned with externals, the physical form of things. Then fill your body with ki and sense the manner in which the universe functions—its shape, its color, and its vibrations. Breathe in and let yourself soar to the ends of the universe; breathe out and bring the cosmos back inside. Next, breathe up all the fecundity and vibrancy of the earth. Finally, blend the breath of heaven and the breath of earth with that of your own body, becoming the breath of life itself. As you calm down, naturally let yourself settle in the heart of things. Find your center, and fill yourself with light and heat. ~ Morihei Ueshiba, #NFDB
941:You are clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know – or think they know – some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young – like the fine ladies at the opera. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
942:Well,' I answered, 'when a Westerner discusses, say, Hindu-ism or Buddhism, he is always conscious of the fundamental differences between these ideologies and his own. He may admire this or that of their ideas, but would naturally never consider the possibility of substituting them for his own. Because he a priori admits this impossibility, he is able to contemplate such really alien cultures with equanimity and often “with sympathetic appreciation. But when it comes to Islam - which is by no means as alien to Western values as Hindu or Buddhist philosophy this Western equanimity is almost invariably disturbed by an emotional bias. Is it perhaps, I sometimes wonder, because the values of Islam are close enough to those of the West to constitute a potential challenge to many Western concepts of spiritual and social life? ~ Muhammad Asad, #NFDB
943:I would like to buy about three dollars worth of gospel, please. Not too much – just enough to make me happy, but not so much that I get addicted. I don't want so much gospel that I learn to really hate covetousness and lust. I certainly don't want so much that I start to love my enemies, cherish self-denial, and contemplate missionary
service in some alien culture. I want ecstasy, not repentance; I want transcendence, not transformation. I would like to be cherished by some nice, forgiving, broad-minded people, but I
myself don't want to love those from different races – especially if they smell. I would like enough gospel to make my family secure and my children well behaved, but not so much that I find my ambitions redirected or my giving too greatly enlarged. I would
like about three dollars worth of gospel, please. ~ D A Carson,#NFDB
944:It is beyond sad. To be unable to face death, to be defiant, to go through the worst of physical and mental pain, because of an inability even to contemplate the idea that there might be a spiritual dimension to life—and to death and after-death—because of an intellectual arrogance. How terrible must that be? . . . . The intellect, the mighty brain, the pride, the stubbornness—how they stand in the way of any gentleness or humility, let alone an kindness to the self. An open mind is surely best in the fact of death, because intellectual pride and arrogance, and how your fellows, who hold the same position, think of you, gets you nowhere. Belief, admitting the possibility of another dimension, of a spiritual side to humanity, is no more of a sure thing than negativity, but at the very least it is a comfort—and what is wrong with that? ~ Susan Hill, #NFDB
945:If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people — a very few people, but a few novelists are among them — are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the State, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent. Perhaps the searchers will fail, perhaps it is impossible for the instrument of contemplation to contemplate itself, perhaps if it is possible it means the end of imaginative literature — [...] anyhow—that way lies movement and even combustion for the novel, for if the novelist sees himself differently, he will see his characters differently and a new system of lighting will result. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
946:It’s all strange to me. I know I live on a fierce and magical planet, which sheds or surrenders rain or even flings it off in whipstroke after whipstroke, which fires out bolts of electric gold into the firmament at 186,000 miles per second, which with a single shrug of its tectonic plates can erect a city in half an hour. Creation … is easy, is quick. There’s also a universe, apparently. But I cannot bear to see the stars, even though I know they’re there all right, and I do see them, because Tod looks upward at night, as everybody does, and coos and points. The Plough. Sirius, the dog. The stars, to me, are like pins and needles, are like the routemap of a nightmare. Don’t join the dots.… Of the stars, one alone can I contemplate without pain. And that’s a planet. The planet they call the evening star, the morning star. Intense Venus. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
947:The professor's voice was amplified with her mike. 'In the nineteenth century... artists were compelled by the idea of the sublime, which was the most elevated expression of the harmony between nature and man. By contemplating nature, a figure like this one on the mountaintop would be inspired with reverence for the majesty of what God created--both humbled by it and also elevated by it because he, as a witness and an observer, had a privileged relation to all of creation--both of it and standing outside it to contemplate it. It was through contemplating nature that one would gain this experience of the sublime, so you tend to find in pictures from this time--' Slide changed. '--this theme repeated: the untamed and overwhelming power and beauty of nature, and the witness to it, somewhere in the painting, a stand-in for the viewer and the painter.... ~ Sheila Heti, #NFDB
948:There are monsters all around us
They can be so hard to see
hey don't have fangs, no blood-soaked claws
They look like you and me.
But we're not defenseless
We're no damsels in distress
Together we can fend off the attack
All we gotta do is watch our backs.
Your body is beautiful how it is
Who you love is nobody's business
We all contemplate life and death
It's the poet who gives these thoughts
breath.
The monster is strong, don't be mistaken
It thrives on fear-keeps us isolated
But together we can fend off its attack
All we gotta do is watch our backs.
In your darkest hour
When the fight's made you weary
When you think you've lost your power
When you can't see clearly
When you're ready to surrender
Give in to the black
look over your shoulder
I've got your back. ~ Gayle Forman,#NFDB
949:A secret is a strange thing.
There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.
And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.
Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB
950:Swinburne also straightened. “To monotheism, perhaps. A yearning for the advent of a new paganism. How I rue the One who casts his veil of grey over us, Richard; who bids us contemplate death when all around us are the bright colours and vibrancies of glorious life. We have allowed ourselves to be crushed by a despotic deity who demands of us a lifetime of toil and service and promises in return a harsh judgement for most, and ambiguous rewards only for those who enforce His rule. I place all my hopes in Darwin. His wonderful insight can teach a far greater satisfaction and reassurance than blind faith can offer—a simple pleasure gained from the sheer exuberance and tenacity of existence. The human species should revel in a permanent state of delighted astonishment at this world, but instead we allow ourselves to be yoked to a tiresome and unyielding fear of it. ~ Mark Hodder, #NFDB
951:Love Her, Mind; She can ferry you across the sea of birth and death. Taxes must be paid in this worthless marketplace, but it's stupid to trust in wealth and family. Have you forgotten your past? Where were you? Where have you come to? Where are you going? You wear nothing but a costume in the world. The Enchantress makes illusion dance, so you dance. And you sit on Her lap in Her prison. Egotism, hatred, love, attachment to pleasing things -- why did you share your kingdom with these? Tell me that! What you've done can't be helped; the day is almost over. On a jeweled island Siva sits in Siva's house. Contemplate Her always. Prasad says, Durga's ambrosial name liberates. Repeat it without ceasing; drench your tongue in nectar. [1770.jpg] -- from Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal, Translated by Rachel Fell McDermott
~ Ramprasad, Love Her, Mind
,#NFDB
952:Contemplate the cosmic standard of time and creation. When Brahma the creator wakes up at the dawn of each cosmic day, this entire universe and all creatures in it are instantly manifested, only to be dissolved back into the unmanifested (formless) at Brahma’s cosmic nightfall. But each cosmic day and night of Brahma lasts thousands of yugas, and each yuga lasts 10,000 to 400,000 years; the time is all but incomprehensible to humans. In succeeding days and nights of Brahma, the same multitude of beings helplessly come to birth and death again and again as the physical universe continues its expanding and contracting.
“This eternal cosmic play is the same in the microcosm of the individual soul as it is in the cosmos.
When an individual goes to sleep, the entire world his or her mind experiences as ‘real’ withdraws, only to ‘come alive’ again at waking. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,#NFDB
953: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
954:When I lately retired to my house I resolved, as far as I could, to meddle in nothing, but to pass in peace and privacy what little time I had to live. It seemed to me I could not better gratify my mind than by giving it full leisure to dwell in its own thoughts and divert itself with them. And I hoped that with the passage of time, it could do this with greater ease as it became more settled and ripe. But the contrary was the case. Like a horse broke loose, it gave itself a hundred times more rein. There rose in me a horde of chimerae and fantastic creatures, one upon the other, without order or relevance. To contemplate more coolly] their queerness and ineptitude I began to put them in writing - hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself. A ming which has no set goal loses itself. To be everywhere is to be nowhere. No wind serves the man bound for no port. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
955:Elegant self-control concealing from the world’s eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously marred and worsted, which nevertheless is able to fan its smouldering concupiscence to a pure flame, and even to exalt itself to mastery in the realm of beauty; pallid impotence, which from the glowing depths of the spirit draws strength to cast down a whole proud people at the foot of the Cross and set its own foot upon them as well; gracious poise and composure in the empty austere service of form; the false, dangerous life of the born deceiver, his ambition and his art which lead so soon to exhaustion—to contemplate all these destinies, and many others like them, was to doubt if there is any other heroism at all but the heroism of weakness. In any case, what other heroism could be more in keeping with the times? ~ Thomas Mann, #NFDB
956:The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.” A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
957:My conduct, Pugstyles,' said Mr Gregsbury, looking round upon the deputation with gracious magnanimity—'my conduct has been, and ever will be, regulated by a sincere regard for the true and real interests of this great and happy country. Whether I look at home, or abroad; whether I behold the peaceful industrious communities of our island home: her rivers covered with steamboats, her roads with locomotives, her streets with cabs, her skies with balloons of a power and magnitude hitherto unknown in the history of aeronautics in this or any other nation—I say, whether I look merely at home, or, stretching my eyes farther, contemplate the boundless prospect of conquest and possession—achieved by British perseverance and British valour—which is outspread before me, I clasp my hands, and turning my eyes to the broad expanse above my head, exclaim, "Thank Heaven, I am a Briton! ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
958:To study, to contemplate, to understand - by these processes we grow, we enrich, and we ennoble ourselves. If we can learn from the experiences of others we do not need to have all these miseries brought upon our own flesh. If we are able to learn from the common experience of the world we can free ourselves from the necessity of learning what every other man from the beginning of time has had to learn the hard way. Every human being has had to learn that fear, anger, greed, overambition all end in pain, misery, and in the loss of natural growth. All have had to learn that prejudice is wrong; compromise leads to corruption - which is wrong. Everyone has to learn this, yet how does it happen that after so many thousands of years each human being has to learn again. Can we learn nothing from observing the conduct of those around us? ~ Manly P Hall, Sensory Perceptions Cannot Think, 1972, p.10), #NFDB
959:Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too. ~ Sarah Waters, #NFDB
960:The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.” A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better. Democracy ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
961:A company at the top of its game has accumulated a number of rules of thumb—implicit assumptions and beliefs about what has been central to its success. New technologies and business models belie or change some of those assumptions, but they only seem sensible if the management team can become aware of those implicit assumptions and mind-sets and suspend them for a moment to contemplate the change. It’s very hard to do that with the inherited wisdom, experience, and lore of a company. This is why the failures of incumbents to capture the benefits of disruptive innovations are a result not of bad managers, but of good managers practicing what they have done best. Incremental innovations can quickly be scaled and incorporated. Disruptive innovations require changes in customer sets, business models, or performance metrics that are no longer consistent with what led to success in the past. ~ Stefan Heck, #NFDB
962:He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears. “Why do you weep?” the goddesses asked. “I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied. “Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,” they said, “for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.” “But . . . was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked. “Who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder. “After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!” The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: “I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.” “What a lovely story,” the alchemist thought. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
963:The bulk of the population of every country is persuaded that all marriage customs other than its own are immoral, and that those who combat this view do so only in order to justify their own loose lives. In India, the remarriage of widows is traditionally regarded as a thing too horrible to contemplate. In Catholic countries divorce is thought very wicked, but some failure of conjugal fidelity is tolerated, at least in men. In America divorce is easy, but extra-conjugal relations are condemned with the utmost severity. Mohammedans believe in polygamy, which we think degrading. All these differing opinions are held with extreme vehemence, and very cruel persecutions are inflicted upon those who contravene them. Yet no one in any of the various countries makes the slightest attempt to show that the custom of his own country contributes more to human happiness than the custom of others. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
964:The idea of attention or contemplation, of looking carefully at something and holding it before the mind, may be conveyed early on in childhood. 'Look, listen, isn't that nice?' Also, 'Don't touch!' This is moral training as well as preparation for a pleasurable life. It need not depend on words, but can also be learnt from patterns of behaviour which should in any case back up the words. The far reaching idea of respect is included in such teaching. The, as it might seem, sophisticated concept of a work of art may be acquired easily. Children, if they are lucky, are invited to attend to pictures or objects, or listen quietly to music or stories or verses, and readily understand in what spirit they are to treat these apparently dissimilar things. They may also be encouraged to contemplate works of nature, which are unlike works of art, yet also like them in being 'beautiful. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
965:He has given a specimen of his nice observation of the mere external appearances of life, in the following passage in No. 179, against affectation, that frequent and most disgusting quality: ‘He that stands to contemplate the crouds that fill the streets of a populous city, will see many passengers whose air and motion it will be difficult to behold without contempt and laughter; but if he examine what are the appearances that thus powerfully excite his risibility, he will find among them neither poverty nor disease, nor any involuntary or painful defect. The disposition to derision and insult, is awakened by the softness of foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly trip, the stately stalk, the formal strut, and the lofty mien; by gestures intended to catch the eye, and by looks elaborately formed as evidences of importance. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
966:Many ‘normal’ people suffer from not being hypersane: they have a restricted worldview, confused priorities, and are wracked by stress, anxiety, and self-deception. As a result, they sometimes do dangerous things, and become fanatics or fascists or otherwise destructive (or not constructive) people. In contrast, hypersane people are calm, contained, and constructive. It is not just that the ‘sane’ are irrational but that they lack scope and range, as though they had grown into the prisoners of their arbitrary lives, locked up in their own dark and narrow subjectivity. Unable to take leave of their selves, they hardly look around them, barely see beauty and possibility, rarely contemplate the bigger picture—and all, ultimately, for fear of losing their selves, of breaking down, of going mad, using one form of extreme subjectivity to defend against another, as life—mysterious, magical life—passes them by. ~ Neel Burton, #NFDB
967:It's only in the realm of music that I can find no satisfaction. The same thing is happening to music as is happening to beauty in a world dominated by the shavelings—the Christian religion is an enemy to beauty. The Jew has brought off the same trick upon music. He has created a new inversion of values and replaced the loveliness of music by noises. Surely the Athenian, when he entered the Parthenon to contemplate the image of Zeus, must have had another impression than the Christian who must resign himself to contemplating the grimacing face of a man crucified.
Since my fourteenth year I have felt liberated from the superstition that the priests used to teach. Apart from a few Holy Joes, I can say that none of my comrades went on believing in the miracle of the eucharist.
The only difference between then and now is that in those days I was convinced one must blow up the whole show with dynamite. ~ Adolf Hitler,#NFDB
968:Last reason for reading horror: it’s a rehearsal for death. It’s a way to get ready. People say there’s nothing sure but death and taxes. But that’s not really true. There’s really only death, you know. Death is the biggie. Two hundred years from now, none of us are going to be here. We’re all going to be someplace else. Maybe a better place, maybe a worse place; it may be sort of like New Jersey, but someplace else. The same thing can be said of rabbits and mice and dogs, but we’re in a very uncomfortable position: we’re the only creatures—at least as far as we know, though it may be true of dolphins and whales and a few other mammals that have very big brains—who are able to contemplate our own end. We know it’s going to happen. The electric train goes around and around and it goes under and around the tunnels and over the scenic mountains, but in the end it always goes off the end of the table. Crash. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
969:C. S. Lewis wrote that “sooner or later [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs. . . . It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.” This is because “He wants servants who can finally become sons [and daughters].”22 That may simply be, unavoidably, a wrenching process of spiritual abandonment such as Eve and Adam felt in their expulsion from God’s presence, or we all must have felt upon leaving of our premortal estate. Perhaps this feeling of desolation was entailed in Joseph’s remark that in our quest for understanding, we “must search into and contemplate the darkest abyss.”23 Perhaps many of us will never find God by calling out His name at the entrance to the cave; we must enter its depths. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
970:Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say "I don't know." He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.
This does not necessarily mean he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will can an epistemocracy. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,#NFDB
971:But if anyone turns away from My reminder, his life will
be a dark and narrow one and on the Day of
Resurrection We will gather him blind. (Surah Ta Ha:
124)
Only belief can save us from a life of anxiety, for we
cannot find true happiness on our own. Even if people are
rich, they cannot properly enjoy their wealth or enjoy the
blessings they possess. In order to do this, they must
understand how to appreciate them. For example, they
must realize that a carnation with perfectly arranged petals,
as well as its scent, softness, and incomparable beauty,
is a great blessing of creation. But only believers can
really understand this, because they know that whatever
exists is a gracious gift from Allah and that all blessings
come from Him. Therefore, they contemplate His infinite
creative power in every beautiful thing, thereby increasing
their love and attachment to Him. ~ Harun Yahya,#NFDB
972:As Thomas Watson beautifully wrote long ago: The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. “When I awake, I am still with thee” (Ps. 139:18). The thoughts are as travellers in the mind. David’s thoughts kept heaven-road, “I am still with Thee.” God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory? Oh, how far are they from being lovers of God, who scarcely ever think of God! “God is not in all his thoughts” (Ps. 10:4). A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. He never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
973:Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to contemplate their mental lives. It is a great leap forward, the one that Griffin fought for. But now that animal cognition is an increasingly popular topic, we are still facing the mindset that animal cognition can be only a poor substitute of what we humans have. It can’t be truly deep and amazing. Toward the end of a long career, many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all? ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB
974:creature on earth seemed to Schopenhauer to be equally committed to an equally meaningless existence: Contemplate the restless industry of wretched little ants … the life of most insects is nothing but a restless labour for preparing nourishment and dwelling for the future offspring that will come from their eggs. After the offspring have consumed the nourishment and have turned into the chrysalis stage, they enter into life merely to begin the same task again from the beginning … we cannot help but ask what comes of all of this … there is nothing to show but the satisfaction of hunger and sexual passion, and … a little momentary gratification … now and then, between … endless needs and exertions. 3. The philosopher did not have to spell out the parallels. We pursue love affairs, chat in cafés with prospective partners and have children, with as much choice in the matter as moles and ants – and are rarely any happier. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
975:With so many siblings to care for, rare were the times Catrina MacGreagor could climb the hill of a morning, look down on her small Scottish village, and spend the precious moments of solicitude needed to contemplate the silent passing from childhood into womanhood. At fourteen, she was as tall as she would be, or so everyone said. The daughter of a Viking who found himself stranded in Scotland years before, her long hair was the same light blonde as her father’s, and her soft blue eyes were normally filled with goodness and kindness. She wore the usual off-white, long wool dress tied at the waist with twine. Her sword and dagger strings were tied over the twine, and she wore a woven leather headband to keep the hair out of her eyes. Except for the normal fears of being attacked by a neighboring clan, or dying of a dreaded illness, hers was a good life filled with all the love a family and a close-knit clan had to give. ~ Marti Talbott, #NFDB
976:The most holy association is to Be as you are. This is Freedom. This is beyond imagination, very new and very fresh. So just keep Quiet. Do not think. It is you. It is you. Don't stir a thought, and if a thought comes, let it, don't waver, don't doubt your majesty. It is so simple. The one who has It will know that they have done it. When you are quiet it is Beauty, Joy and Stillness. It is effortless. Effort is to disturb your mind, effort is playing with corpses in the graveyard. Just contemplate that which is always silence. Go to the Source. Do not believe anything, simply stay quiet and return home and do not rest until you are there. Peace is only available when there is no “I” and you need an “I” to do practice. The secret to Bliss is to stop the search, stop thinking, stop not-thinking, and keep Quiet. The best practice is to Know “Who am I.” You are Brahman, know this. If you want to do anything, just Always adore Self. ~ H W L Poonja, #NFDB
977:But it's a curse, a condemnation, like an act of provocation, to have been aroused from not being, to have been conjured up from a clot of dirt and hay and lit on fire and sent stumbling among the rocks and bones of this ruthless earth to weep and worry and wreak havoc and ponder little more than the impending return to oblivion, to invent hopes that are as elaborate as they are fraudulent and poorly constructed, and that burn off the moment they are dedicated, if not before, and are at best only true as we invent them for ourselves or tell them to others, around a fire, in a hovel, while we all freeze or starve or plot or contemplate treachery or betrayal or murder or despair of love, or make daughters and elaborately rejoice in them so that when they are cut down even more despair can be wrung from our hearts, which prove only to have been made for the purpose of being broken. And worse still, because broken hearts continue beating. ~ Paul Harding, #NFDB
978:Concerning Man--he is too large a subject to be treated as a whole; so I will merely discuss a detail or two of him at this time. I desire to contemplate him from this point of view--this premise: that he was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn't served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably matter of surprise and regret to the Creator. . . . For his history, in all climes, all ages and all circumstances, furnishes oceans and continents of proof that of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one--the solitary one--that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices--the most hateful. That one thing puts him below the rats, the grubs, the trichinae. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
979:In short I tried to think. I failed. My attention veered inexorably back to the specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and for that matter have known since, the peripheral. I would try to contemplate the Hegelian dialectic and would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my window and the particular way the petals fell on my floor. I would try to read linguistic theory and would find myself wondering instead if the lights were on in the bevatron up the hill. When I say that I was wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron you might immediately suspect, if you deal in ideas at all, that I was registering the bevatron as a political symbol, thinking in shorthand about the military-industrial complex and its role in the university community, but you would be wrong. I was only wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron, and how they looked. A physical fact. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
980: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
981:This is direct evidence of evolution. We share so much with our placental mammalian cousins because we all had a common ancestor around 70 million years ago. Our understanding of medicine, blood types, the central nervous system, and where we ultimately came from are all direct results of our understanding of evolution. If we did not have a common ancestor, if we did not share DNA sequences, if we had not all descended from ancestral living things, all of life science, all that we see living in nature would be far, far more mysterious and hard to understand. That the essential discovery of evolution was made barely a century and a half ago indicates for me how primitive we all must still be. We are only now starting to use our knowledge of living things, gained through the study of natural selection, to become more compassionate toward our fellow humans and better stewards of Earth. We have a long, long way to go. It’s exciting to contemplate. ~ Bill Nye, #NFDB
982:Tonglen practice has four stages: Rest your mind for a second or two in a state of openness or stillness. This is called flashing absolute bodhichitta, or suddenly opening to the basic spaciousness and clarity of the awakened heart. Work with texture. Breathe in a feeling of hot, dark, and heavy—a sense of claustrophobia—and breathe out a feeling of cool, bright, and light—a sense of freshness. Breathe in through all the pores of your body and radiate out completely, through all the pores of your body. Do this until your visualization feels synchronized with your in and out-breaths. Now contemplate any painful situation that’s real to you. For example, you can breathe in the hot, dark, constricted feeling of sadness that you feel, and breathe out a light, cool sense of joy or space or whatever might provide relief. Widen the circle of compassion by connecting with all those who feel this kind of pain, and extending the wish to help everyone. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
983:Just try it once — a tree, or at least a considerable section of sky, is to be seen anywhere. It does not even have to be blue sky; in some way or another the light of the sun always makes itself felt. Accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. You will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its own special lighting. Pay it some heed if you will have for the rest of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights, to contemplate nature and the city streets, to appreciate the inexhaustible fun of daily life. From there on to the fully trained artistic eye is the smaller half of the journey; the principal thing is the beginning, the opening of the eyes. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
984:What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason and Liberty: "Had we," said he, "a place to stand upon, we might raise the world."
The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, - and all it wants, - is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to contemplate redress. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
985:A Farewell For a while I shall still be leaving, Looking back at you as you slip away Into the magic islands of the mind. But for a while now all alive, believing That in a single poignant hour We did say all that we could ever say In a great flowing out of radiant power. It was like seeing and then going blind. After a while we shall be cut in two Between real islands where you live And a far shore where I’ll no longer keep The haunting image of your eyes, and you, As pupils widen, widen to deep black And I am able neither to love or grieve Between fulfillment and heartbreak. The time will come when I can go to sleep. But for a while still, centered at last, Contemplate a brief amazing union, Then watch you leave and then let you go. I must not go back to the murderous past Nor force a passage through to some safe landing, But float upon this moment of communion Entranced, astonished by pure understanding— Passionate love dissolved like summer snow. ~ May Sarton, #NFDB
986:By 'stay,' do you mean forever?" I mean to ask but don't. Stay till I die? Till I am too old to take care of myself, like my father?
"For now." is my answer, but I don't know, not really. If moving to New York at age forty-eight taught me anything, it is that I am capable of starting over in a new place. And yet, the thought of leaving it, of knowing how much I would miss, is too painful to contemplate.
I remember how Wendy once told me she loved New York so much she couldn't bear the thought of it going on without her. It seemed like both the saddest and the most romantic thing one could possibly say—sad because New York can never return the sentiment, and sad because it's the kind of thing said more often about a romantic love—husband, wife, girlfriend, partner, lover. You can't imagine them going on without you. But they do. We do. Every day, we may wake up and say, What's the point? Why go on? And, there is really only one answer: To be alive. ~ Bill Hayes,#NFDB
987:Turn your thoughts now, and lift up your thoughts to a devout and joyous contemplation on sage Vyasa and Vasishtha, on Narda and Valmiki. Contemplate on the glorious Lord Buddha, Jesus the Christ, prophet Mohammed, the noble Zoroaster (Zarathushtra), Lord Mahavira, the holy Guru Nanak. Think of the great saints and sages of all ages, like Yajnavalkya, Dattatreya, Sulabha and Gargi, Anasooya and Sabari, Lord Gauranga, Mirabai, Saint Theresa and Francis of Assisi. Remember St. Augustine, Jallaludin Rumi, Kabir, Tukaram, Ramdas, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, Vivekananda and Rama Tirtha. Adore in thy heart the sacred memory of Mahatma Gandhi, sage Ramana Maharishi, Aurobindo Ghosh, Gurudev Sivananda and Swami Ramdas. They verily are the inspirers of humanity towards a life of purity, goodness and godliness. Their lives, their lofty examples, their great teachings constitute the real wealth and greatest treasure of mankind today.
~ Sri Chidananda, Advices On Spiritual Living,#NFDB
988:Oh. I see. So your grace never curses.” “I do not.” “Words like cor . . . bollocks . . . damn . . . devil . . . blast . . . bloody hell . . .” She pronounced the words with relish, warming to her task. “They don’t cross a duchess’s lips?” “No.” “Never?” “Never.” Miss Simms’s fair brow creased in thought. “What if a duchess steps on a tack? What if a gust of wind steals a duchess’s best powdered wig? Not even then?” “Not even when an impertinent farm girl provokes a duchess to a simmering rage,” she replied evenly. “A duchess might contemplate all manner of cutting remarks and frustrated oaths. But even in the face of extreme annoyance, she stifles any such ejaculations.” “My,” Miss Simms said, wide-eyed. “I do hope dukes aren’t held to the same standard. Can’t be healthy for a man, always stifling his ejaculations.” Griff promptly broke the prohibition against elbows on the table, smothering a burst of laughter with his palm and disguising it as a coughing ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
989:Now then,” Bram began, looking down at her from his seat on Storm, “in the spirit of keeping with our theme of adventure, we’re going to create a story as we ride.” “A story?” “Yes, you know, use our imaginations and come up with some riveting tale to keep us entertained.” “Is that what you were doing when I first came upon you?” For a second, he simply looked at her, and then, oddly enough, he smiled his charming smile at her again. “It was indeed, and . . . since I have already begun a story, we’ll use what I’ve come up with thus far and continue on with it.” “I’m not very good with creating imaginary stories,” she admitted slowly. “Nonsense, you create imaginary scenes every time you take to the stage.” “That’s different. I have a script I’ve memorized, but I certainly wouldn’t be able to create those words written in that script.” She shook her head. “Why, if I tried to create my very own story the end result would be too awful to even contemplate.” Bram ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
990:In short I tried to think. I failed. My attention veered inexorably back to the
specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and
for that matter have known since, the peripheral. I would try to contemplate the Hegelian
dialectic and would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my
window and the particular way the petals fell on my floor. I would try to read linguistic
theory and would find myself wondering instead if the lights were on in the bevatron up
the hill. When I say that I was wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron you might
immediately suspect, if you deal in ideas at all, that I was registering the bevatron as a
political symbol, thinking in shorthand about the military-industrial complex and its role
in the university community, but you would be wrong. I was only wondering if the lights
were on in the bevatron, and how they looked. A physical fact. ~ Joan Didion,#NFDB
991:For 99 percent of the tenure of humans on earth, nobody could read or write. The great invention had not yet been made. Except for firsthand experience, almost everything we knew was passed on by word of mouth. As in the children’s game “Telephone,” over tens and hundreds of generations, information would slowly be distorted and lost.
Books changed all that. Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate — with the best teachers — the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
992:Instead of passion, you have regret. In place of effort, you are mired in memory. You sink in nothingness and your heart drowns in despair. At times—usually at night—it’s a physical pain, both sharp and dull. The anguish is unbearable.” Royce reached out and grabbed Myron by the wrist. He wanted him to stop—needed him to stop. “You feel you have no choices. Your love for those who have gone makes you hold tight to their memory and the pain of their loss. You feel to do anything else would be disloyal to them,” Myron went on, placing his free hand on top of Royce’s and patting it gently. “While the idea of leaving is at first impossible to contemplate, the question you need to ask is, how would they feel knowing that you are torturing yourself because of them? Is this what they would want? Is that what you would want them to do if the situation was reversed? If you love them, you need to let go of your pain and live your life. To do otherwise is a selfish cruelty. ~ Michael J Sullivan, #NFDB
993:Yes; he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give her rest. She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent. This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
994:Yes; he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give her rest. She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent. This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of some former sentiment, it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
995:author class:Jacopone da Todi
In losing all, the soul has risen To the pinnacle of the measureless; Because it has renounced all That is not divine, It now holds in its grasp The unimaginable Good In all its abundance, A loss and a gain impossible to describe. To lose and to hold tightly, To love and take delight in, To gaze upon and contemplate, To possess utterly, To float in that immensity And to rest therein -- That is the work of unceasing exchange Of charity and truth. There is no other action at those heights; What the questing soul once was it has ceased to be. Neither heat nor fiery love Nor suffering has place here. This is not light as the soul has imagined it. All it had sought it must now forget, And pass on to a new world, Beyond its powers of perception. [2229.jpg] -- from Jacopone da Todi: Lauds (Classics of Western Spirituality), Translated by Serge and Elizabeth Hughes
~ losing all, the soul has risen (from Self-Annihilation and Charity Lead the Soul...)
,#NFDB
996:The activity of a commander-in-chief does not at all resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at ease in our studies examining some campaign on the map, with a certain number of troops on this and that side in a certain known locality, and begin our plans from some given moment. A commander-in-chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event—the position from which we always contemplate it. The commander-in-chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted shaping of events the commander-in-chief is in the midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly conflict with one another. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
997:We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one else can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that picture of what we were at an earlier stage may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not repudiate it, for it is a proof that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studios, of artistic groups—assuming one is a painter—extracted something that transcends them. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
998:The Electoral College, made up of locally prominent men in each state, would thus be responsible for choosing the president. Under this arrangement, Hamilton reasoned, “the office of president will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” Men with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” would be filtered out. The Electoral College thus became our original gatekeeper. This system proved short-lived, however, due to two shortcomings in the founders’ original design. First, the Constitution is silent on the question of how presidential candidates are to be selected. The Electoral College goes into operation after the people vote, playing no role in determining who seeks the presidency in the first place. Second, the Constitution never mentions political parties. Though Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would go on to pioneer our two-party system, the founders did not seriously contemplate those parties ~ Steven Levitsky, #NFDB
999:The client had the boudin blanc, the roasted chicken and the cheesecake," he says.
"Cheesecake?" I say, confused by this plain, alien-sounding list.
"What sauce or fruits were on the roasted chicken? What shapes was it cut into?"
"None, Patrick," he says, also confused. "It was… roasted."
"And the cheesecake, what flavor? Was it heated?" I say. "Ricotta cheesecake? Goat cheese? Were there flowers or cilantro in it?"
"It was just… regular," he says, and then, "Patrick, you're sweating."
"What did she have?" I ask, ignoring him. "The client's bimbo."
"Well, she had the country salad, the scallops and the lemon tart," Luis says.
"The scallops were grilled? Were they sashimi scallops? In a ceviche of sorts?" I'm asking. "Or were they gratinized?"
"No, Patrick," Luis says. "They were… broiled."
It's silent in the boardroom as I contemplate this, thinking it through before asking, finally, "What's 'broiled,' Luis?"
"I'm not sure," he says. "I think it involves… a pan. ~ Bret Easton Ellis,#NFDB
1000:It was Plato who gave the word cosmos its meaning as world. His Timaeus provided the first description of reality as forming an ordered whole, being both good and beautiful. The cosmos, according to Plato, was created by a divine craftsman who strove to render his work as similar as possible to the perfect model.12 The Good, the supreme principle, exercises power over physical reality and influences the conduct of the human person who, through the Good, turns his or her soul into a coherent whole (ethics) and gives the public sphere the unity it would otherwise be without. The Timaeus describes cosmology required by a particular anthropology. The plan for human life is an imitation of the cosmos. The wise person knows the cosmos and sees in it the mirror of his or her own wisdom. The individual soul was to imitate the regularity of the movements of the soul of the world. Nature has drawn us upright that we might be inspired by what is “cosmic.” In Plato’s world we stand upright to contemplate the stars. ~ Ilia Delio, #NFDB
1001:We may regard the cell quite apart from its familiar morphological aspects, and contemplate its constitution from the purely chemical standpoint. We are obliged to adopt the view, that the protoplasm is equipped with certain atomic groups, whose function especially consists in fixing to themselves food-stuffs, of importance to the cell-life. Adopting the nomenclature of organic chemistry, these groups may be designated side-chains. We may assume that the protoplasm consists of a special executive centre (Leistungs-centrum) in connection with which are nutritive side-chains... The relationship of the corresponding groups, i.e., those of the food-stuff, and those of the cell, must be specific. They must be adapted to one another, as, e.g., male and female screw (Pasteur), or as lock and key (E. Fischer). ~ Paul R Ehrlich, #NFDB
1002:We may regard the cell quite apart from its familiar morphological aspects, and contemplate its constitution from the purely chemical standpoint. We are obliged to adopt the view, that the protoplasm is equipped with certain atomic groups, whose function especially consists in fixing to themselves food-stuffs, of importance to the cell-life. Adopting the nomenclature of organic chemistry, these groups may be designated side-chains. We may assume that the protoplasm consists of a special executive centre (Leistungs-centrum) in connection with which are nutritive side-chains... The relationship of the corresponding groups, i.e., those of the food-stuff, and those of the cell, must be specific. They must be adapted to one another, as, e.g., male and female screw (Pasteur), or as lock and key (E. Fischer). ~ Paul R Ehrlich, #NFDB
1003:Earlier, Susanne’s husband had detected a certain ticking in her, a bomb. He’d packed their children into the car and set out for a night of pizza and a double feature at the second-run movie theatre, leaving her alone to explode, splattering the house with a combination of things she’d ingested as a teen-ager, certain films and punk-rock records that confirmed what she’d guessed: one dies alone.
Best to have her family out of the way. Best to have them hidden in a dark cinema when the desire to chop her hair roughly and live on cigarettes surged. These bursts of freedom, while infrequent, were dangerous. Their self-indulgence could tear holes in evenings, marriages, families.
She’d been lost in the roar of the vacuum—a device that had the power to put her under a spell, into a trancelike state from which she could most easily contemplate the nature of the universe, the purpose of love, the purpose of death, and a fantasy she sometimes had of being bound nude to a parking meter in the city. ~ Samantha Hunt,#NFDB
1004:A secret is a strange thing.
There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.
And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was know once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.
Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate.
All of us have secrets in our lives. We're keepers or kept-from, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches - that's what will be left at the end of it all. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB
1005:More familiar is the argument from design, an approach that penetrates deeply into issues of fundamental scientific concern. This argument was admirably summarized by David Hume: “Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it; you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines.… All these various machines, even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the production of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties proportioned to the grandure of the work which he has executed. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1006:One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
1007:it appears various ancient Mystics had a hard time explaining
with their archaic languages lacking the words for detailing
“the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”
the Trinity concept being misunderstood by a good host
the Father is the immutable unmoving Godhead
from whence the Holy Ghost flows to all widespread
the Son, a physical expression in those whose self is dead
God can't be received fully if the “me” occupies space
the sense of individual selfhood disappears without a trace
the higher nature of God is formless unmanifested
from it, this changing world of form is emanated
everything is God, in God, all-inclusively unending
ungraspable by brain-mind and its inferior comprehending
people wonder, “okay, but what created God?”
contemplate “Eternal” or “Infinite” to see the query flawed
All is the Mind of God without exception
including your Mind prior to conception
formless No-Thing, yet Infinitely Everything
yet both, yet neither, for it's beyond expounding ~ Jarett Sabirsh,#NFDB
1008:Did you just say that bustles are expected to get even larger?” Miss Griswold nodded. “I’m afraid so. According to one of my sources—er . . . friends, I mean—quite a few designers are beginning to contemplate a new silhouette for ladies—one that will require bustles to achieve the size of a large birdcage in order to pull off the look designers are convinced will be complimentary to every lady’s figure.” “Who in the world would want to wear a birdcage on their behind?” Miss Cadwalader asked, once again in possession of the platter of treats, treats she immediately began perusing, looking completely delighted. Miss Griswold reached out, snagged a sugar biscuit, popped it into her mouth, and shrugged even as she swallowed. “I’m sure there are very few ladies who’d appreciate such an appendage attached to them, but evidently the gentlemen in charge of our fashions seem to believe that larger behinds are . . .” She stopped talking, shot a look to Edgar, turned pink in the face, and immediately returned her attention to Wilhelmina. ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
1009:A secret is a strange thing.
There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.
And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.
Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate.
All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,#NFDB
1010:ake an hour or so at a discount card shop or dollar store and load up on all kinds of greeting cards-birthday, anniversary, friends, and pets. Store them in a convenient place and use them as special occasions arise. You'll save a lot of time by having them when you need them.
ave a "gift shelf" in your home. Load it up with boxes of stationery, stuffed toys, small items-whatever is useful and on sale so when occasions arise, you'll be ready. When grandchildren drop by, let them pick a little gift off your shelf
he Bible says, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Ephesians 5:21). The Bible also says we're to live in harmony and love. Here are a few thoughts to contemplate.
• A good marriage is not a gift; it's an achievement by God's grace.
• Marriage is not for children; it takes guts and maturity.
• Marriage is tested daily by the ability to compromise.
• Being a family means giving, and-more importantly-forgiving.
• It's time for parents to take charge of their families and redeem them for the Lord. ~ Emilie Barnes,#NFDB
1011:But the real concern is not so much the vulnerability of merchant ships as it is their use by terrorist groups. Osama bin Laden is said to own or control up to twenty aging freighters--a fleet dubbed the 'al Qaeda Navy' by the tabloids. To skeptics who wonder why bin Laden would want to own so many freighters, the explanation quite simply is that he and his associates are in the shipping business. Given his need for anonymity, this makes perfect sense--and it reflects as much on the shipping industry as on al Qaeda that the details remain murky. Such systematic lack of transparency is what worries U.S. officials when they contemplate the sea. The al Qaeda ships are believed to have carried cement and sesame seeds, among other legitimate cargoes. In 1998 one of them delivered the explosives to Africa that were used to bomb the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But immediately before and afterward it was an ordinary merchant ship, going about ordinary business. As a result, that ship has never been found. Nor have any of the others. ~ William Langewiesche, #NFDB
1012:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.
This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,#NFDB
1013:Machiavelli’s second metaphor alludes to the fact that Fortune was always seen as a feminine force. Like any woman, she responds best, he believes, to rough handling. He argues that in dealings with Fortune it is advisable to act impetuously “because Fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her.” However disagreeable the image, it is worth remembering that gendered interpretations of philosophical conceptions have a lengthy history, and that Machiavelli elsewhere speaks of winning over Fortune by means of friendship and harmonious action. The idea of battering Fortune into submission did not, in fact, originate with Machiavelli. Seventy years earlier, in Somnium de Fortuna (The Dream of Fortune), Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini had Fortune claim she despised those who “run away from me” and favored “those who put me to flight.” The upshot, at any rate, is that one can manage the caprice of Fortune—a comforting philosophy for the former Second Chancellor to contemplate from his lonely exile in the Albergaccio. ~ Ross King, #NFDB
1014:This last figure, the White Magician, symbolizes the self-transcending element in the scientist's motivational drive and emotional make-up; his humble immersion into the mysteries of nature, his quest for the harmony of the spheres, the origin of life, the equations of a unified field theory. The conquistadorial urge is derived from a sense of power, the participatory urge from a sense of oceanic wonder. 'Men were first led to the study of natural philosophy', wrote Aristotle, 'as indeed they are today, by wonder.' Maxwell's earliest memory was 'lying on the grass, looking at the sun, and wondering'. Einstein struck the same chord when he wrote that whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, 'whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life'.
This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond. ~ Arthur Koestler,#NFDB
1015:What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problematic or offbeat aspects of their own characters. They can contemplate their anger, their sexuality, and their unpopular, awkward, or unfashionable opinions without losing confidence or collapsing into self-disgust. They can speak clearly because they have managed to develop a priceless sense of their own acceptability. They like themselves well enough to believe that they are worthy of, and can win, the goodwill of others if only they have the wherewithal to present themselves with the right degree of patience and imagination.
As children, these good communicators must have been blessed with caregivers who knew how to love their charges without demanding that every last thing about them be agreeable and perfect. Such parents would have been able to live with the idea that their offspring might sometimes—for a while, at least—be odd, violent, angry, mean, peculiar, or sad, and yet still deserve a place within the circle of familial love. ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
1016:Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and this acquaintance, together with her friendship with Varenka, did not merely exercise a great influence on her, it also comforted her in her mental distress. She found this comfort through a completely new world being opened to her by means of this acquaintance, a world having nothing in common with her past, an exalted, noble world, from the height of which she could contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides the instinctive life to which Kitty had given herself up hitherto there was a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion, but a religion having nothing in common with that one which Kitty had known from childhood, and which found expression in litanies and all-night services at the Widow's Home, where one might meet one's friends, and in learning by heart Slavonic texts with the priest. This was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a whole series of noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do more than merely believe because one was told to, which one could love. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1017:they called themselves the Deutsche Christens, “German Christians.” The contortions required to pull together their idea of Germanness with their idea of Christianity can be painful to contemplate. 172 In her book, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich, Doris Bergen wrote that “the ‘German Christians’ preached Christianity as the polar opposite of Judaism, Jesus as the arch anti-semite, and the cross as the symbol of war against Jews.” Fusing the German Volk (people) with the German Kirche (church) meant stretching and twisting the definitions of both. Step one was to define Germanness as inherently in opposition to Jewishness. To make Christianity one with Germanness meant purging it of everything Jewish. It was an absurd project. For starters, they decided the Old Testament must go. It was obviously too Jewish. At one German Christians’ gathering in Bavaria, the speaker ridiculed the Old Testament as a saga of racial defilement. His remark that “Moses in his old age had married a Negro woman” drew boisterous laughter and enthusiastic applause. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1018:A POT IN SEARCH OF A LID Very often we feel like a pot without a lid. We believe that our lid is somewhere in the world and that if we look very hard, we’ll find the right lid to cover our pot. The feeling of emptiness is always there inside us. When we contemplate the other person, sometimes we think we see what we feel we lack. We think we need someone else to lean on, to take refuge in, and to diminish our suffering. We want to be the object of another person’s attention and contemplation. We want someone who will look at us and embrace our feeling of emptiness and suffering with his energy of mindfulness. Soon we become addicted to that kind of energy; we think that without that attention, we can’t live. It helps us feel less empty and helps us forget the block of suffering inside. When we ourselves can’t generate the energy to take care of ourselves, we think we need the energy of someone else. We focus on the need and the lack rather than generating the energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight that can heal our suffering and help the other person as well. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1019:Yet it is the key to a part of their meaning, for these stories too are connected to the sacrifice on a profound level. In particular, images that express the dangers inherent in death and sex became embedded in narratives about sacrifice since the sacrifice itself (as we saw in the horse sacrifice) is about death and sex. Rituals tend to tame those dangers and to express them in terms of a limited range of human actions, to make them public and to make them safe for the sacrificer; they allow people to order and structure their reactions to these dangers in real life, to create a framework that they can then reintroduce into real experience. Stories about monstrous women help us (especially, but not only, if we are men) to express our nightmares about our mothers (and wives). Participating in the formalized structures of someone else’s funeral provides us with a framework within which to contemplate our own death; the “controlled catastrophe” of the sacrifice allowed the sacrificer to offer up a victim who was a substitute for himself, as if to say, “Kill him and not me. ~ Wendy Doniger, #NFDB
1020:Of the gnostic so much has been cursorily, as it were, written. We proceed now to the sequel, and must again contemplate faith; for there are some that draw the distinction, that faith has reference to the Son, and knowledge to the Spirit. But it has escaped their notice that, in order to believe truly in the Son, we must believe that He is the Son, and that He came, and how, and for what, and respecting His passion ; and we must know who is the Son of God. Now neither is knowledge without faith, nor faith without knowledge. Nor is the Father without the Son ; for the Son is with the Father. And the Son is the true teacher respecting the Father; and that we may believe in the Son, we must know the Father, with whom also is the Son. Again, in order that we may know the Father, we must believe in the Son, that it is the Son of God who teaches ; for from faith to knowledge by the Son is the Father. And the knowledge of the Son and Father, which is according to the gnostic rule—that which in reality is gnostic—is the attainment and comprehension of the truth by the truth. ~ Clement of Alexandria, #NFDB
1021:Theologically Christmas Day is the greatest occasion for rejoicing offered to sinful mankind; but this aspect of it is so august and so great that the human mind refuses to contemplate it steadily, perhaps because of its own littleness, for which of course it is in no way to blame. It prefers to concentrate its attention on ceremonial observances, expressive generally of good will and festivity, such, for instance, as giving presents and eating plum-puddings. It may be said at once here that from that conventional point of view the spirit of Christmas Day at sea appears distinctly weak. The opportunities, the materials too, are lacking. Of course, the ship’s company get a plum-pudding of some sort, and when the captain appears on deck for the first time the officer of the morning watch greets him with a “Merry Christmas, sir,” in a tone only moderately effusive. Anything more would be, owing to the difference in station, not correct. Normally he may expect a return for this in the shape of a “The same to you” of a nicely graduated heartiness. He does not get it always, however. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1022:Among the Founders, Thomas Jefferson wrote about race at greatest length. He thought blacks were mentally inferior to whites and biologically distinct: “[They] secrete less by the kidnies [sic], and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a strong and disagreeable odor.” He hoped slavery would be abolished, but he did not want free blacks to remain in America: “When freed, [the Negro] is to be removed from beyond the reach of mixture.”
Jefferson was one of the first and most influential advocates of “colonization,” or returning blacks to Africa. He also believed in the destiny of whites as a racially distinct people. In 1786 he wrote, “Our Confederacy [the United States] must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled.”
In 1801 he looked forward to the day “when our rapid multiplication will expand itself . . . over the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
1023:Some 3.6 million years ago, in what is now northern Tanzania, a volcano erupted, the resulting cloud of ash covering the surrounding savannahs. In 1979, the paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey found in that ash footprints - the footprints, she believes, of an early hominid, perhaps an ancestor of all the people on the Earth today. And 380,000 kilometers away, in a flat dry plain that humans have in a moment of optimism called the Sea of Tranquility, there is another footprint, left by the first human to walk another world. We have come far in 3.6 million years, and in 4.6 billion and in 15 billion.
For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
1024:In terms of emotional habits, when somebody insults me or does something I find offensive, I feel anger, and then maybe think, ‘How could he do that? That’s disgusting! He was supposed to be my friend but he’s betrayed me, he’s disappointed me, I’ll never forgive him! No, I’m not even going to speak to him again ― but I’m going to confront him! I’m going to seek revenge!’ and I can go on and on like that. Then the rational mind says, ‘Oh, just forget it! He’s trying his best,’ and there is a feeling of magnanimity, a grand gesture of understanding. But you can’t sustain that for long before it goes back into, ‘How could he? I’ll never forgive him.’ And there is a struggle between the magnanimous, generous ‘Forgive! He’s just doing the best he can. Don’t make it personal. We all have our bad days . . .’ and ‘I’LL NEVER FORGIVE HIM!’ At least this is how my mind works. I have heard all the good advice, but the hurt, the pain of disappointment, the sense of betrayal is still there. So I contemplate these things. And then in this emptiness or this ‘sound of silence’, the thinking process stops. ~ Ajahn Sumedho, #NFDB
1025:And yet here they were. He looked at Aurora’s assistants, hovering over the bank of machines against the wall. He hoped the treatment would work, that it would not kill or derange him. They slipped their preparation into his blood using a hollow needle that they inserted painlessly into his skin—an ugly little experience. He held his breath as they did this, and when he finally exhaled and inhaled, the world ballooned. He saw immediately that he was thinking several trains of thought at once, and they all meshed in a contrapuntal fugue that his father would have very much enjoyed hearing, if it were music, which in a sense it seemed to be: a polyphonic singing of his ideas, each strand taking its part in the larger music. To a certain extent his thinking had always felt that way, with any number of accompaniments running under the aria of the voice of thought. Now these descants were choral, and loud, while at the same time architectonically fitted to the melody. He could think six or ten thoughts at once, and at the same time think about his thinking, and contemplate the whole score. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
1026:[In Montana at the fenced US-Canada Border]
Not for the first time I am forced to contemplate the melancholy truth that, in one significant way at least, Al-Qaeda has won. Its victory in the interior of the United States may not be complete, but it is enough. Through one outrageous and atrocious act and the credible threat of more, they hage ensured that America's freedom and conveniences have been unprecendently curtailed. Queuing up for security checks in every international amd domestic airport, having one's sun-cream, nail scissors amd mineral water binned and one's patience worn down, these are minor but palpable victories. No one spdays say it in the queues as they build and build, it would be considered unpatriotic. That fact, that the truth itself is now unlatriotic, that too is a victory, Al Qaeda have cost the US and its citizens unbillilns in tkme and manpower, in incinvenience and stress. And along with the thousands and thousands of miles of international borders, they are costing American tax-payers billions more. New helicopters, thousands of new recruits. The bill is incaculable. ~ Stephen Fry,#NFDB
1027:Mr. Wardlaw Scott, for example, with genuine, if unconscious, imagination, says that according to astronomers, 'the sea is a vast mountain of water miles high.' To have discovered that mountain of moving crystal, in which the fish fly like birds, is like discovering Atlantis: it is enough to make the old world young again. In the new poetry which we contemplate, athletic young men will set out sturdily to climb up the face of the sea. If we once realize all this earth as it is, we should find ourselves in a land of miracles: we shall discover a new planet at the moment that we discover our own. Among all the strange things that men have forgotten, the most universal and catastrophic lapse of memory is that by which they have forgotten that they are living on a star.
We might have been proud of what our star has wrought, and worn its heraldry haughtily in the blind tournament of the spheres. All this, indeed, we may surely do yet; for with all the multiplicity of knowledge there is one thing happily that no man knows: whether the world is old or young.
The Defendant, In Defense of Planets ~ G K Chesterton,#NFDB
1028:Daemon pulled the bright, deep-red sweater over his head and adjusted the collar of the gold-and-white-checked shirt. Satisfied, he studied his reflection. His eyes were butter melted by humor and good spirits, his face subtly altered by the relaxed, boyish grin. The change in his appearance startled him, but after a moment he just shook his head and brushed his hair. The difference was Jaenelle and the incalculable ways she worried, intrigued, fascinated, incensed, and delighted him. More than that, now, when he was so long past it, she was giving him—the bored, jaded Sadist—a childhood. She colored the days with magic and wonder, and all the things he’d ceased to pay attention to he saw again new. He grinned at his reflection. He felt like a twelve-year-old. No, not twelve. He was at least a sophisticated fourteen. Still young enough to play with a girl as a friend, yet old enough to contemplate the day he might sneak his first kiss. Daemon shrugged into his coat, went into the kitchen, pinched a couple of apples from the basket, sent Cook a broad wink, and gave himself up to a morning with Jaenelle. ~ Anne Bishop, #NFDB
1029:I am Abraham, I am the one,
I am Noah's heir, I am that son,
Sophia I possess, she is no girl,
A Person to make, should I out of her!
Let alone to contemplate, Oh would I even dare!
Then I walked the nature with that pure reasoning love,
And with all sight piercing clarity of that what's above,
The Maker of all spoke to the weak being below,
The inheritance of Earth itself He has graciously bestow!
His jealousy extends over all the created universe,
Neither associates there are with Him nor any obverse,
Ought I to question the type of such a romance?
Lo and behold before you all there is my prance,
To Him alone I testify and witness, look at my dance!
Praised is He up above, how exalted is My Lord,
An order He decrees, and I bow down in accord,
One and only One is He The Most Merciful of all,
For all eternity I promised to shout out His call,
If I don't surrender, I am to perish,
I have no right at all but Him to cherish,
He rendered me free, to no one else to knee,
My beloved brothers, come O come and walk with me! ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,#NFDB
1030:[Aunt Dahlia to Bertie Wooster] 'To look at you, one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot--certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are worse a scourge than the Black Death. I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against all the underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel as if I had walked into a lamp post. I thought as much. Well, it needed but this. I don't see how things could possibly be worse than they are, but no doubt you will succeed in making them so. Your genius and insight will find the way. Carry on, Bertie. Yes, carry on. I am past caring now. I shall even find a faint interest in seeing into what darker and profounder abysses of hell you can plunge this home. Go to it, lad..I remember years ago, when you were in your cradle, being left alone with you one day and you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter and started turning purple. And I, ass that I was, took it out and saved your life. Let me tell you, young Bertie, it will go very hard with you if you ever swallow a rubber comforter again when only I am by to aid. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
1031:If we are willing to contemplate nuclear war and the wholesale destruction of our emerging global society, should we not also be willing to contemplate a wholesale restructuring of our societies? From an extraterrestrial perspective, our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure in the most important task it faces: to preserve the lives and well-being of the citizens of the planet. Should we not then be willing to explore vigorously, in every nation, major changes in the traditional ways of doing things, a fundamental redesign of economic, political, social and religious institutions?
Faced with so disquieting an alternative, we are always tempted to minimize the seriousness of the problem, to argue that those who worry about doomsday’s are alarmists; to hold that fundamental changes in our institutions are impractical or contrary to ‘human nature’, as if nuclear war were practical, or as if there were only one human nature. Full-scale nuclear war has never happened. Somehow this is taken to imply that it never will. But we can experience it only once. But then it will be too late to reformulate the statistics. ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
1032:Aristotle says in the Poetics,” said Henry, “that objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art.” “And I believe Aristotle is correct. After all, what are the scenes in poetry graven on our memories, the ones that we love the most? Precisely these. The murder of Agamemnon and the wrath of Achilles. Dido on the funeral pyre. The daggers of the traitors and Caesar’s blood—remember how Suetonius describes his body being borne away on the litter, with one arm hanging down?” “Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.” “Well said,” said Julian. “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” I looked at Camilla, her face bright in the sun, and thought of that line from the Iliad I love so much, about Pallas Athene and the terrible eyes shining. “And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,” said Bunny, chin cupped in palm. The teakettle began to whistle. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1033:However this future evolves, we will have to answer a pressing question: How will writers (or anyone else who creates content that can be digitized, from movies to music to apps to journalism) make a living in an era in which digital content can be freely replicated? That is now my greatest worry as I contemplate the so-called writing life that I hope to continue—and that I hope my daughter and all future generations will continue. For three hundred years, ever since the Statute of Anne was established in Britain, there has been a system under which people who created things, such as books or articles or music or pictures, had a right to benefit from copies that were made of them. Because of this “copyright” system, we have encouraged and rewarded three centuries of creativity in various fields of endeavor, and this has produced a flourishing economy based on the creation by talented individuals of intellectual property. Among other things, this allowed all sorts of people, ranging from Walker Percy on down to me, to make a living at the so-called writing life. May the next generation enjoy that delightful opportunity as well. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1034:In Memoriam A. H. H.: 118. Contemplate All This
Work Of Tim
Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime;
But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crown'd with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
1035:Captain Wentworth, without saying a word,
turned to her, and quietly obliged her to be assisted into the carriage.
Yes; he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had
placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it,
that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution
to give her rest. She was very much affected by the view of
his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent.
This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before.
She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not
be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it
with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her,
and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer,
without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder
of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged
friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart,
which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded
of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed. ~ Jane Austen,#NFDB
1036:Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and this acquaintance, together with her friendship with Varenka, did not merely exercise a great influence on her, it also comforted her in her mental distress. She found this comfort through a completely new world being opened to her by means of this acquaintance, a world having nothing in common with her past, an exalted, noble world, from the height of which she could contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides the instinctive life to which Kitty had given herself up hitherto there was a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion, but a religion having nothing in common with that one which Kitty had known from childhood, and which found expression in litanies and all-night services at the Widow's Home, where one might meet one's friends, and in learning by heart Slavonic texts with the priest. This was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a whole series of noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do more than merely believe because one was told to, which one could love. ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 2, Chapter 33, p. 207, #NFDB
1037:The superstitious awe, the enslaving reverence, that formerly surrounded affluence, is passing away in all countries, and leaving the possessor of property to the convulsion of accidents. When wealth and splendor, instead of fascinating the multitude, excite emotions of disgust; when, instead of drawing forth admiration, it is beheld as an insult on wretchedness; when the ostentatious appearance it makes serves to call the right of it in question, the case of property becomes critical, and it is only in a system of justice that the possessor can contemplate security.
To remove the danger, it is necessary to remove the antipathies, and this can only be done by making property productive of a national blessing, extending to every individual. When the riches of one man above others shall increase the national fund in the same proportion; when it shall be seen that the prosperity of that fund depends on the prosperity of individuals; when the more riches a man acquires, the better it shall for the general mass; it is then that antipathies will cease, and property be placed on the permanent basis of national interest and protection. -Agrarian Justice ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1038:/Farsi & Turkish Suddenly, in the sky at dawn, a moon appeared, Descended from the sky Turned its burning gaze on me, Like a hawk during the hunt seizing a bird, Grabbed me and flew with me high into heaven. When I looked at myself, I could not see myself For in this moon, my body, by grace, had become soul. And when I traveled in this soul, I saw nothing but moon, Until the mystery of eternal theophany lay open to me. All the nine heavenly spheres were drowned in this moon. The skiff of my being drowned, dissolved, entirely, in that Sea. Then, that Sea broke up into waves, Intelligence danced back, And launched its song, And the Sea covered over with foam, And from each bubble of foam something sprang, clothed in form, Something sprang from each light-bubble, clothed in a body. Then each bubble of body-foam received a sign from the Sea, Melted immediately and followed the flow of its waves. Without the saving, redeeming help of my Lord, Shams-ul-Haqq of Tabriz, No one can contemplate the moon, no one can become the Sea. [1961.jpg] -- from The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi, by Andrew Harvey
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, Suddenly, in the sky at dawn, a moon appeared
,#NFDB
1039:if we have come here t o t alk, it is only bec aus e we have been persuaded of this: we must be done with radicalism and its meager comforts - now. The intellectual, the academic, both remain mesmerized by the contradictions that banish thought to the clouds. By never beginning from the situation, from their own situation, intellectuals distance themselves from the world so much that, finally, it is their intelligence itself that abandons them. If hipsters succeed in perceiving the world with precision and subtlety, it is only to aestheticize the sensible ever further, that is to say, to keep it at a distance, to contemplate their lives and their beautiful souls and thereby to promote their own impotence - their particular autism, which expresses itself in a valorization ofthe tiniest aspects of life.Meanwhile, the activist, in refusing to think, in adopting the ethic of middle managers, runs grinning into every single wall before him before finally collapsing into cynicism. If taking part is the only option in war, the lines that are offered to us visibly are not the ones that we should follow. We have to displace them and we have to move ourselves in between them ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1040:What a dreadful experience for a young boy who just wanted the company of his dad, who just wanted to whack at baseballs in the backyard with the old man, who just wanted to be taught to use a circular saw, who just wanted to learn the rudiments of five-card stud or blackjack, who just wanted to understand the precise location of the clitoris or how to pronounce clitoris, or who wanted to learn how to order meat from a waiter, or who wanted to say the word meat with great gusto, or who wanted to learn the proper way to mix and shake a martini, or who wanted to learn to say good little piece of tail, or who wanted to contemplate the necessity of moving on, or who wanted to neglect to shave, or who wanted to learn the specifics of firearms, wanted to be able to eject a used shell, to drive with one hand and dangle the other out the window, to belch without shame, who wanted to drink in the morning, who wanted not to bother flushing the toilet, who wanted to learn to walk naked from the bathroom without worrying about who saw him, and who wanted to cut down his colleagues, his personal friends, in midsentence when he had to. Who would not want his dad when his dad was gone? ~ Rick Moody, #NFDB
1041:How most people carry on is a mystery. What they talk about at supper. How they can stand to sit in front of a TV from eight until Leno every night. How they can think bowling is fun. How they choose their neckties. How they bear the weight of everyday life without screaming. How a person can go through a whole life and never once contemplate suicide, like people who have never once wanted to be a movie star. How one young man can be handsome and strong and marry and heiress and work at Debevoise and Plimpton and retire to Nantucket to await the visits of his grandchildren, how they can be sailing in the bay while another young man, exactly like the first, can end up in a glass room in Lexington, Kentucky, on Haldol and Thorazine, without hope, without a girlfriend, without a future, and how easily the one can become the other. How one woman can take Gatorade to every one of her son's lacrosse games and another can lie in bed all day weeping, popping generic drugs, watching Oprah as though waiting for the Second Coming, and piling her dirty dishes in the laundry room. How life goes in bad directions when your heart is asleep. It's a mystery and there is no answer. (95) ~ Robert Goolrick, #NFDB
1042:I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is well adapted to our weakness as our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1043:But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. The power of exclusiveness has seized me.
This does not require me to forego any of the modes of contemplation. There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge that I must forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and instance, law and number included and inseparably fused.
Whatever belongs to the tree is included: its form and its mechanics, its colors and its chemistry, its conversation with the elements and its conversation with the stars - all this in its entirety.
The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it - only differently.
One should not try to dilute the meaning of the relations: relation is reciprocity.
Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself. ~ Martin Buber,#NFDB
1044:Father Returning Home
My father travels on the late evening train
Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light
Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes
His shirt and pants are soggy and his black raincoat
Stained with mud and his bag stuffed with books
Is falling apart. His eyes dimmed by age
fade homeward through the humid monsoon night.
Now I can see him getting off the train
Like a word dropped from a long sentence.
He hurries across the length of the grey platform,
Crosses the railway line, enters the lane,
His chappals are sticky with mud, but he hurries onward.
Home again, I see him drinking weak tea,
Eating a stale chapati, reading a book.
He goes into the toilet to contemplate
Man's estrangement from a man-made world.
Coming out he trembles at the sink,
The cold water running over his brown hands,
A few droplets cling to the greying hairs on his wrists.
His sullen children have often refused to share
Jokes and secrets with him. He will now go to sleep
Listening to the static on the radio, dreaming
Of his ancestors and grandchildren, thinking
Of nomads entering a subcontinent through a narrow pass.
~ Dilip Chitre,#NFDB
1045:You journey to Olympia to see the work of Phidias; and each of you holds it a misfortune not to have beheld these things before you die. Whereas when there is no need even to take a journey, but you are on the spot, with the works before you, have you no care to contemplate and study these?
Will you not then perceive either who you are or unto what end you were born: or for what purpose the power of contemplation has been bestowed on you?
"Well, but in life there are some things disagreeable and hard to bear."
And are there none at Olympia? Are you not scorched by the heat? Are you not cramped for room? Have you not to bathe with discomfort? Are you not drenched when it rains? Have you not to endure the clamor and shouting and such annoyances as these? Well, I suppose you set all this over against the splendour of the spectacle and bear it patiently. What then? have you not received greatness of heart, received courage, received fortitude? What care I, if I am great of heart, for aught that can come to pass? What shall cast me down or disturb me? What shall seem painful? Shall I not use the power to the end for which I received it, instead of moaning and wailing over what comes to pass? ~ Epictetus,#NFDB
1046:I woke up dead.
Not only dead...but in hell.
I had always been somewhat sketchy on what the afterlife - were there actually such a thing - would be like for a person such as I. From all accounts and all my imaginings, I figured it would be one of two things. Either I would be surrounded by great, burning masses that were endlessly immolating souls in torment... or else I would find myself trapped within my own mind as a helpless bystander, condemned to watching me live out my life over and over again and powerless to do anything to change any of it. When idle speculation prompted me to dwell on these two options, I would find myself drawn invariably to the former, since the later was just too hideous to contemplate.
...
I was almost afraid to open my eyes, because once I did, I would know one way or the other. Perhaps I could have just lain there forever. Perhaps I was supposed to. Perhaps that was my true condemnation: to simply reside in hell with my eyes closed afraid of opening them lest matters deteriorate even further than they already had. This, in turn, made me dwell on the fact that every time I had believed things couldn’t get worse, they promptly had done so with almost gleeful enthusiasm . ~ Peter David,#NFDB
1047:I am not Seamus, who tacks emotions to the outside of his skin and whose words charge from his mouth on horseback. No one sees through me, except Xavier, and he does so not because I choose to give him access but because he knows himself. I will have to offer myself to Seamus, if I want something 'more' with him. Part of me can't believe I'd contemplate it, even for a moment. What do I have in common with an oversized, yarn-spinning, bread-mauling, divorced deliveryman attached to a seven-year-old? The rest of me doesn't know if I remember how to be close to another person. I practice mimicry, a Viceroy butterfly masquerading as a Monarch, a Superb Lyrebird echoing the calls of everything from chickadees to chain saws. I practice stories of my past, telling this sad memory or that scary one, and people feel I'm confiding in them because the words touch their deepest wounds, not because the tales hold any emotional resonance for me. My intimacies, the ones that have become my Sisyphus stones, long-term romantic relationships, the college one, ended with the nice young man shocked when I said I didn't love him and we had nothing in common. "We've spent two years talking about everything," he said.
Yes, mimicry. ~ Christa Parrish,#NFDB
1048:It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1049:When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others. Though we are often taught to think of ourselves as inherently selfish, the longing to act meaningfully in our work seems just as stubborn a part of our make-up as our appetite for status or money. It is because we are meaning-focused animals rather than simply materialistic ones that we can reasonably contemplate surrendering security for a career helping to bring drinking water to rural Malawi or might quit a job in consumer goods for one in cardiac nursing, aware that when it comes to improving the human condition a well-controlled defibrillator has the edge over even the finest biscuit.
But we should be wary of restricting the idea of meaningful work too tightly, of focusing only on the doctors, the nuns of Kolkata or the Old Masters. There can be less exalted ways to contribute to the furtherance of the collective good....
....An endeavor endowed with meaning may appear meaningful only when it proceeds briskly in the hands of a restricted number of actors and therefore where particular workers can make an imaginative connection between what they have done with their working days and their impact upon others. ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
1050:The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.” A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better. Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
1051:by have a home in the first place? Good question! When I have a tea party for my grandchildren, I'm passing on to them the things my mama passed on to me-the value of manners and the joy of spending quiet time together. When Bob reads a Bible story to those little ones, he's passing along his deep faith. When we watch videos together, play games, work on projects-we're building a chain of memories for the future. These aren't lessons that can be taught in lecture form. They're taught through the way we live. What we teach our children-or any child who shares our lives-they will teach to their children. What we share with our children, they will share with generations to come.
friend of mine loves the water, the out doors, and the California sunshine. She says they're a constant reminder of God's incredible creativity. Do you may have a patio or a deck or a small balcony? Bob and I have never regretted the time and expense of creating outdoor areas to spend time in. And when we sit outside, we enhance our experience with a cool salad of homegrown tomatoes and lettuce, a tall glass of lemonade, and beautiful
flowers in a basket. Use this wonderful time to contemplate all God is doing in your life.
ecome an answer to prayer!
• Call and encourage someone today. ~ Emilie Barnes,#NFDB
1052:The Fishing Cure
There's nothing that builds up a toil-weary soul
Like a day on a stream,
Back on the banks of the old fishing hole
Where a fellow can dream.
There's nothing so good for a man as to flee
From the city and lie
Full length in the shade of a whispering tree
And gaze at the sky.
Out there where the strife and the greed are forgot
And the struggle for pelf,
A man can get rid of each taint and each spot
And clean up himself;
He can be what he wanted to be when a boy,
If only in dreams;
And revel once more in the depths of a joy
That's as real as it seems.
The things that he hates never follow him there —
The jar of the street,
The rivalries petty, the struggling unfair —
For the open is sweet.
In purity's realm he can rest and be clean,
Be he humble or great,
And as peaceful his soul may become as the scene
That his eyes contemplate.
It is good for the world that men hunger to go
To the banks of a stream,
And weary of sham and of pomp and of show
They have somewhere to dream.
For this life would be dreary and sordid and base
Did they not now and then
Seek refreshment and calm in God's wide, open space
And come back to be men.
~ Edgar Albert Guest,#NFDB
1053:Well, imagine you are alone in a room. The lights are down low, you’ve got some scented candles going. Soothing New Age tunes, nothing too druid-chanty, seep out of the hi-fi to gently massage your cerebral cortex. Feel good? Are you the best, most special person in the room right now? Yes. That’s the gift of being alone. Then a bozo in a CAT Diesel Power cap barges in. What’s the chance that you are the best, most special person in the room now? Fifty-fifty. If you both were dealt two cards, those would be your odds of holding the winning hand. Now imagine ten people are in the room. It’s cramped. You’re elbow to elbow, aerosolized dandruff floats in the air, and the candle’s lavender scent is complicated by BO tones, with a tuna sandwich finish. What are the chances you’re the best, most special person in the room? If you were handed cards, you might expect to be crowned one time out of ten. People, as ever, are the problem. The more people there are, the tougher you have it. Just by sitting next to you, they fuck you up, as if life were nothing more than a bus ride to hell (which it is). But what if you moved to another seat? Changed position? Your seat is everything. It can give you room to relax, to contemplate your next move. Or it might instigate your unraveling. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
1054:CG: ATTENTION WORTHLESS HUMAN.
CG: THIS IS YOUR GOD SPEAKING.
CG: IT IS A WRATHFUL GOD WHO DESPISES YOU MORE THAN YOU COULD HAVE POSSIBLY DARED TO FEAR.
CG: I HAVE WATCHED YOUR ENTIRE PATHETIC LIFE UNFOLD.
CG: I HAVE OBSERVED YOU WHILE YOU WOULD QUAKE AND TREMBLE IN PERSONAL PRAYERS OF SHAME.
CG: WHILE YOU PLEADED FORGIVENESS FOR BEING SUCH A WRETCHED DISGUSTING FAILURE ON EVERY CONCEIVABLE LEVEL.
CG: PROSTRATE BEFORE THE STUPID AND FALSE CLOWN GODS YOU HAVE SCRIBBLED ON THE WALLS OF YOUR BLOCK.
CG: BOGUS DEITIES WORSHIPED BY A PRIMITIVE "PARADISE" PLANET.
CG: BUT YOUR PRAYERS WILL NOT BE ANSWERED.
CG: THERE ARE NO MIRACLES IN STORE FOR YOU, HUMAN.
CG: ONLY MY HATE.
CG: IT IS A HATE SO PURE AND HOT IT WOULD CONSUME YOUR SAD UNDERDEVELOPED HUMAN THINK PAN TO EVEN CONTEMPLATE.
CG: IT IS A HATE THAT TO FATHOM MUST BE PUT INTO SONG.
CG: SHRIEKED BY THE TEN THOUSAND ROWDY SHOUT SPHINCTERS PEPPERING THE GRUESOME UNDERBELLY OF THE MOST TRUCULENT GOD THE FURTHEST RING CAN MUSTER.
CG: IT IS A HATE THAT MADE YOU AND WILL SURELY DESTROY YOU.
CG: MY HATE IS THE LIFEBLOOD THAT PULSES THROUGH THE VEINS OF YOUR UNIVERSE.
CG: IT IS MY GIFT TO YOU.
CG: YOU'RE WELCOME FOR THAT.
CG: YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF SHIT.
EB: hi karkat! ~ Andrew Hussie,#NFDB
1055:Do I Love You"
I stand in the night and stare up at a lone star, wondering what love means. You whisper your desire—do I love you? I dare say yes. But my eyes drift back to that solitary star; my mind is plagued with intimate uncertainty.
What art thou, Love? Tell me.
I contemplate what I know—the qualities that love doth not possess. Love lifts no cruel or unkind hand, for it seeketh no harm. It shirks from constraints and demands, for tyranny is not love. A boisterous voice never crosses love's lips, for to speak with thunder chases its very presence from the heart. Love inflicts no pain, no fear, no misery, but conquers all such foes. It is said that love is not selfish, yet it does not guilt those who are. On a heart unwillingly given it stakes no claim. Love is nothing from Pandora's box; it is no evil, sin, or sorrow unleashed on this world.
My eyes glimmer as the star I gaze upon twinkles with brightness that I do not possess. I recognize my smallness—my ignorance of the One whose hands placed that star in the heavens for me.
He is love. By His own mouth He proclaimed it.
Again the whispered question hits my ear—do I love you? I dare say yes. But my eyes squint tight, wishing on a lonely star, wondering what love means. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,#NFDB
1056:The mythological figure of the Universal Mother imputes to the cosmos the feminine attributes of the first, nourishing and protecting presence. The fantasy is primarily spontaneous; for there exists a close and obvious correspondence between the attitude of the young child toward its mother and that of the adult toward the surrounding material world. But there has been also, in numerous religious traditions, a consciously controlled pedagogical utilization of this architypal image for the purpose of the purguing balacning, and initiation of the mind into the nature of the visible world.....
The Universal Mother is also the death of everything that dies. The whole round of existence is accomplished within her sway, from birth, through adolescence, maturity, and senescence, to the grave. She is the womb and the tomb. Thus she unites the good and bad, exhibiting the two modes of the remembered mother, not as personal only, but as universal. the devotee is expected to contemplate the two with equal equanimity. through this exercise, his spirit is purged of its infantile, inappropriate sentimentalities, and his mind opened to the inscrutable presence which exists, not as good and bad primarily with respect to his childlike human convenience, but as the law and image of the nature of being. ~ Joseph Campbell,#NFDB
1057:The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.” A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better. Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it. 20 Be as courageous as you can. If ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
1058:I spent an hour yesterday watching the ladies bathe. What a sight! What a hideous sight! The two sexes used to bathe together here. But now they are kept separate by means of signposts, preventive nets, and a uniformed inspector – nothing more depressingly grotesque can be imagined. However, yesterday, from the place where I was standing in the sun, with my spectacles on my nose, I could contemplate the bathing beauties at my leisure. The human race must indeed have become absolutely moronic to have lost its sense of elegance to this degree. Nothing is more pitiful than these bags in which women encase their bodies, and these oilcloth caps! What faces! What figures! And what feet! Red, scrawny, covered with corns and bunions, deformed by shoes, long as shuttles or wide as washerwomen’s paddles. And in the midst of everything, scrofulous brats screaming and crying. Further off, grandmas knitting and respectable old gentlemen with gold-rimmed spectacles reading newspapers, looking up from time to time between lines to savor the vastness of the horizon with an air of approval. The whole thing made me long all afternoon to escape from Europe and go live in the Sandwich Islands or the forests of Brazil. There, at least, the beaches are not polluted by such ugly feet, by such foul-looking specimens of humanity. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1059:You’re mad.”
“No, I’m just plagued with a grandmother who thinks that forcing me and my siblings into marriage will settle her mind about our futures-an idea that I mean to show her is absurd.”
“By pretending to be engaged to a perfect stranger?”
He shrugged. “I came here looking for a whore to do the job. But they’re expensive, and why should I settle for a whore when you’ll do nicely?”
His gaze traveled down her body with thorough insolence. “You’re exactly the sort my grandmother would find unacceptable as a wife for me: an American of low birth, with an impudent manner and a reckless tongue. And you’re just pretty enough to convince her that I might actually contemplate marriage to you.”
Shock held her motionless. She didn’t know which was worse-his nonchalant attitude toward hiring a whore to fool his poor grandmother, or the insults he’d lobbed at her with insufferable arrogance. “Now that you’ve offended me in every possible way, do you think I’d agree to this insanity?”
Amusement flickered in his black eyes. “Given that your other choice is to take your chances with the gentlemen in the hall…yes, I do. Of course, if you want to watch your cousin hang-“ He headed for the door.
“Stop!”
He paused with his hand on the handle, one eyebrow arched in question.
The curst man had her trapped, and he knew it. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
1060:If we’re discovered, every one of us will be executed before we even have a chance to revolt. And if we do revolt, there’s a very strong possibility we will die in the fighting, whether we’re successful or not. In case you’ve forgotten, a number of good men have already died.”
His words hit me hard, breaking through my bitterness. Forced to contemplate a hangman’s noose, my zeal faded.
“I don’t want any of you to die,” I murmured, a tremble in my voice.
He shrugged. “We’re not eager for that end, either. But someone has to take a stand. Someone has to speak for Hytanica before we let her die.”
Exhausted and mentally batered, I asked, “What am I supposed to do?”
“I’ll tell you.” He was surprisingly sure; then again, Cannan had always been decisive. “No matter what happens to us, you have a family that loves you, and a full life ahead of you, a life that can bring you joy. Let me arrange a second dinner for you with Lord Grayden. He has approached me and inquired after you several times.”
“Lord Grayden? But I spilled wine all over his father!”
He smiled wryly. “Sometimes men see spirit in a woman. And sometimes men don’t like their fathers. Now, do we have an agreement?”
I thought over the things he had told me, the prospect of victory and glory, the possibility of punishment and death.
With a slow exhale, I breathed, “Yes. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
1061:She saw that these two people, who had never met, held the keys to her own life, were her completion, her fulfilment, whereas more ephemeral characters, such as Simon Haggard, were simply made of inferior material. Once he had passed her in a car; at least she had seen a hand waving and had identified it as belonging to him. The only surprise was that she felt no curiosity about him. His physical splendour was no longer a memory; it was as if he had become a dead star, a random fragment of astronomical matter, beyond usefulness. Naked, as he always was in her memory, he had less physical presence than Tom in his pale suit, as if his nakedness had been inopportune, ill considered. Yet she had loved the one, not quite loved the other. Both partings had been unnatural, yet no one was entirely to blame. She saw now that shame and guilt were otiose; only regret was permissible. And defensible. Miriam saw that she too deserved regret for the manner in which she had been forsaken. One’s life is not always in one’s own hands. That is why it is so convenient to blame outside forces. But in fact one’s secret self makes certain choices, rejects others. This is a matter for reflection, not for self-castigation. But it is apparently easy to explain to others: ‘That was where I went wrong. That was where I made my mistake.’ It was in fact more sensible to contemplate destiny. ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB
1062:But how does the Atonement motivate, invite, and draw all men unto the Savior? What causes this gravitational pull-- this spiritual tug? There is a certain compelling power that flows from righteous suffering-- not indiscriminate suffering, not needless suffering, but righteous, voluntary suffering for another. Such suffering for another is the highest and purest form of motivation we can offer to those we love. Contemplate that for a moment: How does one change the attitude or the course of conduct of a loved one whose every step seems bent on destruction? If example fails to influence, words of kindness go unheeded, and the powers of logic are dismissed as chaff before the wind, then where does one turn...
In the words of the missionary evangelist, E. Stanley Jones, suffering has "an intesnse moral appeal." Jones once asked Mahatma Gandhi as he sat on a cot in an open courtyard of Yervavda jail, "'Isn't your fasting a species of coercion?' 'Yes,' he said very slowly, 'the same kind of coercion which Jesus exercises upon you from the cross.'" As Jones reflected upon that sobering rejoinder, he said: "I was silent. It was so obviously true that I am silent again every time I think of it. He was prfoundly right. The years have clarified it. And I now see it for what it is: a very morally potent and redenptive power if used rightly. But it has to be used rightly. ~ Tad R Callister,#NFDB
1063:He loves you. It’s plain for anyone to see. He came after you, didn’t he? Admitted he was wrong to abandon you?”
I shrugged. “We’ve been friends since I was born, or almost.”
“He doesn’t look at you like he thinks you’re just his friend.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I insisted. The doubts that Melaina had stirred up, that I had had so long to contemplate in her cell, flared inside me again. “What can come of him loving me? He’s still an earl’s son and I’m…a scribe girl. His family would never let him marry me. They were lining up girls at court for him to pick through before we left. Girls with titles and land…noble girls. It doesn’t make any difference if he loves me. We can’t be together.”
Mika pushed herself back as she blew a breath upward to stir the hair on her forehead. “What makes you think he’ll ask their permission?”
I gaped at her. Kiernan, not marry who his family wanted? It wasn’t done, not in the noble families of Thorvaldor. You married to create ties to other nobles, to strengthen your family’s position. Sometimes you got love as well, but that was just luck thrown into the bargain.
“And you. You’re willing to fight an impossible battle to get me on the throne, but you won’t fight for him?”
“I never said that,” I said, stung. “I just--” But I could go no further, because just then I heard the jingle of horse tack, and then Kiernan rode into view. ~ Eilis O Neal,#NFDB
1064:Dexter, of course, is made of sterner stuff than any mere mortal, and imploring looks from a beautiful woman have never had any power over Our Wicked Warrior. And it was an absurd idea, something far too strange even to contemplate—me, a bodyguard? It was out of the question. And yet somehow, when the workday ended that evening and all good wage slaves trotted dutifully away to hearth and home, I found myself on the balcony of a suite at the Grove Isle Hotel, sipping a mojito and watching as a spectacular sunset blew up the sky behind us, reflecting orange and red and pink onto the water of Biscayne Bay. There was a tray of cheese and fresh fruit on the table beside me, and the Glock was an uncomfortable lump in my side, and I was filled with wonder at the unavoidable notion that Life makes no sense at all, especially when things have taken a sudden and extravagant turn into surreal and unearned luxury. Terror, pain, and nausea I can understand, but this? I could only assume I was being set up for something even worse. Still, the mojito was very good, and one of the cheeses had a very nice bite to it. I wondered if anyone ever really got used to living like this. It didn’t seem possible; weren’t we all made to sweat and suffer and endure painful hardship as we toiled endlessly in the vile cesspit of life on earth? How did sharp cheese, fresh strawberries, and utter luxury fit in with that? ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
1065:I was fighting drowsiness when they finally emerged and started riding southward, again across the hills. I stared after them until my eyes watered. They kept disappearing beyond the hills but then eventually reappeared, each time getting smaller and smaller. Then they disappeared for a long time: another village or town. I made myself wait and watch. Again I was trying not to nod off when I saw a second line appear on the crest of a hill directly west of me, on the other lip of the valley.
The urge to sleep fled. I watched the line--it was a long one this time, with tiny bright dots at the front that indicated banners--descend into the town.
The banners meant the commander. Was the Marquis still with him, or had he finally gotten bored and gone back to the silk-and-velvet life in Athanarel?
“You might contemplate the purpose of a court…” You brainless, twaddling idiot, I thought scornfully. I wished he were before me. I wished I could personally flout him and his busy searchers, and make him look like the fool he was. And watch the reaction, and walk away laughing.
While I was indulging my fulminating imaginings, the long line emerged again, much more quickly than the previous one had. Delight suffused me: They had obviously discovered that the previous group had been there, and had probably decided that the place was therefore safe.
Excellent. Then that was where I would go. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
1066:Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he 'lives and moves' (Acts 17:28). For quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hadly from ourselves; indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God. Then, by these benefits shed like dew from heaven upon us, we are led as by rivulets to the spring itself. Indeed, our very poverty better discloses the infinitude of benefits reposing in God. The miserable ruin, into which the rebellion of the first man cast us, especially compels us to look upward. [...] Thus, from the feeling of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and--what is more--depravity and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone. To this extent we are prompted by our own ills to contemplate the good things of God; and we cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become displeased with ourselves. [...] Accordingly, the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1067:I’ll take over from here.” “Take over?” Leigh asked with amusement. “You did most of it to begin with.” Valerie shrugged and grabbed a ladle to give the chili a stir, saying lightly, “You can return the favor when I’m pregnant.” Anders stared at Valerie, her words reverberating in his head. When she was pregnant? He immediately started to imagine just that, Valerie glowing and beautiful, her belly rounded with his child. “Has she agreed to be your life mate?” Anders glanced to Greg at that soft question and then turned back to look at Valerie as he shook his head. “Well, whether she realizes it or not, she’s accepted what we are and isn’t afraid of us. I think you can thank Leigh for that,” Greg added. “Leigh?” he asked with surprise. He’d been rather hoping it was him. “Sorry, Anders, but that’s not how a woman’s mind works. You’re a dark, mysterious, and sexy vampire to her, and none of those words are equated with trust and feeling safe,” he pointed out dryly, and then added, “But Leigh . . .” Greg glanced to the woman and smiled crookedly. “She’s the most non-threatening vampire on the planet right now. Valerie can see herself in Leigh. It will help you that they are becoming good friends. I think she’ll choose you in the end.” Anders grunted. He hoped Greg was right. He’d been alone a long time and never really minded until she’d come into his life. Now he didn’t even want to contemplate a future without her in it. ~ Lynsay Sands, #NFDB
1068:The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.
The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.
But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.
He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.
'Why do you weep?' the goddesses asked.
'I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.
'Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,' they said, 'for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.'
'But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked.
'Who better than you to know that?' the goddesses asked in wonder. 'After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!'
The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:
'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.'
'What a lovely story,' the alchemist thought. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
1069:Or indeed when the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who behold it. An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance? 113. There is also the fact that people no longer seem to believe in a happy future; they no longer have blind trust in a better tomorrow based on the present state of the world and our technical abilities. There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future lies elsewhere. This is not to reject the possibilities which technology continues to offer us. But humanity has changed profoundly, and the accumulation of constant novelties exalts a superficiality which pulls us in one direction. It becomes difficult to pause and recover depth in life. If architecture reflects the spirit of an age, our megastructures and drab apartment blocks express the spirit of globalized technology, where a constant flood of new products coexists with a tedious monotony. Let us refuse to resign ourselves to this, and continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1070:From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the last century, the future seemed a thing tangible,—it was woven up in all men's fears and hopes of the present. At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time, (“An des Jahrhunderts Neige, Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.” “Die Kunstler.”) stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New Orb, blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,—uncertain if a comet or a sun. Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the old man,—the lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the glorious countenance of Zanoni. Is it that one views with contempt the struggle and its issue, and the other with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but to the two results,—compassion or disdain. He who believes in other worlds can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on the revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to Infinity,—what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt thou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire. The spirit that can contemplate, that lives only in the intellect, can ascend to its star, even from the midst of the burial-ground called Earth, and while the sarcophagus called Life immures in its clay the everlasting! ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB
1071:A part, immutable, unseen,
Being, before itself had been,
Became. Like dew a triple queen
Shone as the void uncovered:
The silence of deep height was drawn
A veil across the silver dawn
On holy wings that hovered.
The music of three thoughts became
The beauty, that is one white flame,
The justice that surpasses shame,
The victory, the splendour,
The sacred fountain that is whirled
From depths beyond that older world
A new world to engender.
The kingdom is extended. Night
Dwells, and I contemplate the sight
That is not seeing, but the light
That secretly is kindled,
Though oft-time its most holy fire
Lacks oil, whene'er my own Desire
Before desire has dwindled.
I see the thin web binding me
With thirteen cords of unity
Toward the calm centre of the sea.
(O thou supernal mother!)
The triple light my path divides
To twain and fifty sudden sides
Each perfect as each other.
Now backwards, inwards still my mind
Must track the intangible and blind,
And seeking, shall securely find
Hidden in secret places
Fresh feasts for every soul that strives,
New life for many mystic lives,
And strange new forms and faces.
My mind still searches, and attains
By many days and many pains
To That which Is and Was and reigns
Shadowed in four and ten;
And loses self in sacred lands,
And cries and quickens, and understands
Beyond the first Amen.
~ Aleister Crowley, The Quest
,#NFDB
1072:The Quest
A part, immutable, unseen,
Being, before itself had been,
Became. Like dew a triple queen
Shone as the void uncovered:
The silence of deep height was drawn
A veil across the silver dawn
On holy wings that hovered.
The music of three thoughts became
The beauty, that is one white flame,
The justice that surpasses shame,
The victory, the splendour,
The sacred fountain that is whirled
From depths beyond that older world
A new world to engender.
The kingdom is extended. Night
Dwells, and I contemplate the sight
That is not seeing, but the light
That secretly is kindled,
Though oft-time its most holy fire
Lacks oil, whene'er my own Desire
Before desire has dwindled.
I see the thin web binding me
With thirteen cords of unity
Toward the calm centre of the sea.
(O thou supernal mother!)
The triple light my path divides
To twain and fifty sudden sides
Each perfect as each other.
Now backwards, inwards still my mind
Must track the intangible and blind,
And seeking, shall securely find
Hidden in secret places
Fresh feasts for every soul that strives,
New life for many mystic lives,
And strange new forms and faces.
My mind still searches, and attains
By many days and many pains
To That which Is and Was and reigns
Shadowed in four and ten;
And loses self in sacred lands,
And cries and quickens, and understands
Beyond the first Amen.
~ Aleister Crowley,#NFDB
1073:It is even harder to predict the possibility (or the timescale) for building a device whose action depends on a physical theory that we do not even know at present. Such a theory would be needed, I am claiming, before we could understand the physics underlying a non-computably acting device-'non-computably', that is, in the Turing-machine-inaccessible sense that I have been using in this book. According to my own arguments, in order to build such a device we should first need to find the appropriate physical (OR) theory of quantum-state reduction-and it is very hard to know how far we are from such a theory-before we could begin to contemplate its construction. It is also possible that the specific nature of that OR theory might itself provide an unexpected complexion on the very task at hand.
At least, I suppose that we should need to find the theory first, if we are to construct such a non-computational device. But conceivably not: in actual practice, it has often been the case that surprising new physical effects have been discovered many years before their theoretical explanation. A good example was superconductivity, which was originally observed experimentally (by Heike Kammerlingh Onnes in 1911) nearly 50 years before the full quantum-theoretic explanation was eventually found, by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer in 1957. Moreover, high-temperature superconductivity was discovered in 1986, cf. Shent et al. (1988), also without prior good reason to believe in it on purely theoretical grounds. ~ Roger Penrose,#NFDB
1074:The Quest
A part, immutable, unseen,
Being, before itself had been,
Became. Like dew a triple queen
Shone as the void uncovered:
The silence of deep height was drawn
A veil across the silver dawn
On holy wings that hovered.
The music of three thoughts became
The beauty, that is one white flame,
The justice that surpasses shame,
The victory, the splendour,
The sacred fountain that is whirled
From depths beyond that older world
A new world to engender.
The kingdom is extended. Night
Dwells, and I contemplate the sight
That is not seeing, but the light
That secretly is kindled,
Though oft-time its most holy fire
Lacks oil, whene'er my own Desire
Before desire has dwindled.
I see the thin web binding me
With thirteen cords of unity
Toward the calm centre of the sea.
(O thou supernal mother!)
The triple light my path divides
To twain and fifty sudden sides
Each perfect as each other.
Now backwards, inwards still my mind
Must track the intangible and blind,
And seeking, shall securely find
Hidden in secret places
Fresh feasts for every soul that strives,
New life for many mystic lives,
And strange new forms and faces.
92
My mind still searches, and attains
By many days and many pains
To That which Is and Was and reigns
Shadowed in four and ten;
And loses self in sacred lands,
And cries and quickens, and understands
Beyond the first Amen.
~ Aleister Crowley,#NFDB
1075:It is a little strength that longs for more; it is infant righteousness that hungers after righteousness. To every soul dissatisfied with itself, comes this word, at once rousing and consoling, from the Power that lives and makes him live—that in his hungering and thirsting he is blessed, for he shall be filled. His hungering and thirsting is the divine pledge of the divine meal. The more he hungers and thirsts the more blessed is he; the more room is there in him to receive that which God is yet more eager to give than he to have.
It is the miserable emptiness that makes a man hunger and thirst; and, as the body, so the soul hungers after what belongs to its nature. (…) Therefore, that he is empty of good, needs discourage no one; for what is emptiness but room to be filled? Emptiness is need of good; the emptiness that desires good, is itself good. (…) A man could not even be ashamed of himself, without some 'feeling sense' of the beauty of rightness. By divine degrees the man will at length grow sick of himself, and desire righteousness with a pure hunger (…)
To be filled with righteousness, will be to forget even righteousness itself in the bliss of being righteous, that is, a child of God. The thought of righteousness will vanish in the fact of righteousness.
When a creature is just what he is meant to be, what only he is fit to be; when, therefore, he is truly himself, he never thinks what he is. He is that thing; why think about it? It is no longer outside of him that he should contemplate or desire it. ~ George MacDonald,#NFDB
1076:You see I'm wearing the tie," said Bingo.
"It suits you beautiful," said the girl.
Personally, if anyone had told me that a tie like that suited me, I should have risen and struck them on the mazzard, regardless of their age and sex; but poor old Bingo simply got all flustered with gratification, and smirked in the most gruesome manner.
"Well, what's it going to be today?" asked the girl, introducing the business touch into the conversation.
Bingo studied the menu devoutly.
"I'll have a cup of cocoa, cold veal and ham pie, slice of fruit cake, and a macaroon. Same for you, Bertie?"
I gazed at the man, revolted. That he could have been a pal of mine all these years and think me capable of insulting the old tum with this sort of stuff cut me to the quick.
"Or how about a bit of hot steak-pudding, with a sparkling limado to wash it down?" said Bingo.
You know, the way love can change a fellow is really frightful to contemplate. This chappie before me, who spoke in that absolutely careless way of macaroons and limado, was the man I had seen in happier days telling the head-waiter at Claridge's exactly how he wanted the chef to prepare the sole frite au gourmet au champignons, and saying he would jolly well sling it back if it wasn't just right. Ghastly! Ghastly!
A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn't been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against, so I chose them, and Mabel hopped it. ~ P G Wodehouse,#NFDB
1077:In the physical constitution of an organized being, that is, a being adapted suitably to the purposes of life, we assume it as a fundamental principle that no organ for any purpose will be found but what is also the fittest and best adapted for that purpose. Now in a being which has reason and a will, if the proper object of nature were its conservation, its welfare, in a word, its happiness, then nature would have hit upon a very bad arrangement in selecting the reason of the creature to carry out this purpose. For all the actions which the creature has to perform with a view to this purpose, and the whole rule of its conduct, would be far more surely prescribed to it by instinct, and that end would have been attained thereby much more certainly that it ever can be by reason. Should reason have been communicated to this favored creature over and above, it must only have served it to contemplate the happy constitution of its nature, to admire it, to congratulate itself thereon, and to feel thankful for it to the beneficent cause, but not that it should subject its desires to that weak and delusive guidance, and meddle bunglingly with the purpose of nature. In a word, nature would have taken care that reason should not break forth into practical exercise, nor have the presumption, with its weak insight, to think out for itself the plan of happiness and the means of attaining it. Nature would not only have taken on herself the choice of the ends but also of the means, and with wise foresight would have entrusted both to instinct. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
1078:Those who do not carry within them the soul of everything the world can show them, will do well to watch it: they will not recognize it, each thing being beautiful only according to the thought of him who gazes at it & reflects it in himself. Faith is essential in poetry as in religion, & faith has no need of seeing with corporeal eyes to contemplate that which it recognizes much better in itself.
Such ideas were many times, under multiple forms, always new, expressed by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam in his works. Without going as far as Berkley's pure negations, which nevertheless are but the extreme logic of subjective idealism, he admitted in his conception of life, on the same plan, the Interior & the Exterior, Spirit & Matter, with a very visible tendency to give the first term domination over the second. For him the idea of progress was never anything but a subject for jest, together with the nonsense of the humanitarian positivists who teach, reversed mythology, that terrestrial paradise, a superstition if we assign it the past, becomes the sole legitimate hope if we place it in the future.
On the contrary, he makes a protagonist (Edison doubtless) say in a short fragment of an old manuscript of l'Eve future: "We are in the ripe age of Humanity, that is all! Soon will come the senility & decrepitude of this strange polyp, & the evolution accomplished, his mortal return to the mysterious laboratory where all the Ghosts eternally work their experiments, by grace of some unquestionable necessity. ~ R my de Gourmont,#NFDB
1079:For what is in this world but grief and woe?
O God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run-
How many makes the hour full complete,
How many hours brings about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times-
So many hours must I tend my flock;
So many hours must I take my rest;
So many hours must I contemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will can;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?
O yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.
And to conclude: the shepherd's homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince's delicates-
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couched in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treason waits on him. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1080:Before coming to the Black Wood, I had read as widely in tree lore as possible. As well as the many accounts I encountered of damage to trees and woodland -- of what in German is called Waldsterben, or 'forest-death' -- I also met with and noted down stories of astonishment at woods and trees. Stories of how Chinese woodsmen in the T'ang and S'ung dynasties -- in obedience to the Taoist philosophy of a continuity of nature between humans and other species -- would bow to the trees which they felled, and offer a promise that the tree would be used well, in buildings that would dignify the wood once it had become timber. The story of Xerxes, the Persian king who so loved sycamores that, when marching to war with the Greeks, he halted his army of many thousands of men in order that they might contemplate and admire one outstanding specimen. Thoreau's story of how he felt so attached to the trees in the woods around his home-town of Concord, Massachusetts, that he would call regularly on them, gladly tramping 'eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
When Willa Cather moved to the prairies of Nebraska, she missed the wooded hills of her native Virginia. Pining for trees, she would sometimes travel south 'to our German neighbors, to admire their catalpa grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew out of a crack in the earth. Trees were so rare in that country that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons'.... ~ Robert Macfarlane,#NFDB
1081:Comfortable with Uncertainty THOSE WHO TRAIN wholeheartedly in awakening bodhichitta are called bodhisattvas or warriors—not warriors who kill but warriors of nonaggression who hear the cries of the world. Warrior-bodhisattvas enter challenging situations in order to alleviate suffering. They are willing to cut through personal reactivity and self-deception. They are dedicated to uncovering the basic, undistorted energy of bodhichitta. A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not-knowing is part of the adventure. It’s also what makes us afraid. Wherever we are, we can train as a warrior. Our tools are sitting meditation, tonglen, slogan practice, and cultivating the four limitless qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. With the help of these practices, we will find the tenderness of bodhichitta in sorrow and in gratitude, behind the hardness of rage and in the shakiness of fear. In loneliness as well as in kindness, we can uncover the soft spot of basic goodness. But bodhichitta training offers no promise of happy endings. Rather, this “I” who wants to find security—who wants something to hold on to—will finally learn to grow up. If we find ourselves in doubt that we’re up to being a warrior-in-training, we can contemplate this question: “Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear? ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
1082:I’m going to invite you to contemplate a fictional scenario. Say that we are all citizens in a New England town with a traditional town meeting. As usual, a modest proportion of the citizens eligible to attend have actually turned out, let’s say four or five hundred. After calling the meeting to order, the moderator announces: “We have established the following rules for this evening’s discussion. After a motion has been properly made and seconded, in order to ensure free speech under rules fair to everyone here, each of you who wishes to do so will be allowed to speak on the motion. However, to enable as many as possible to speak, no one will be allowed to speak for more than two minutes.” Perfectly fair so far, you might say. But now our moderator goes on: “After everyone who wishes to speak for two minutes has had the floor, each and every one of you is free to speak further, but under one condition. Each additional minute will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.” The ensuing uproar from the assembled citizens would probably drive the moderator and the board of selectman away from the town hall—and perhaps out of town. Yet isn’t this in effect what the Supreme Court decided in the famous case of Buckley v. Valeo? In a seven-to-one vote, the court held that the First Amendment–guarantee of freedom of expression was impermissibly infringed by the limits placed by the Federal Election Campaign Act on the amounts that candidates for federal office or their supporters might spend to promote their election.3 Well, we’ve had time to see the appalling consequences. ~ Robert A Dahl, #NFDB
1083:After so much imposture, so much fraud, it is comforting to contemplate a beggar. He, at least, neither lies nor lies to himself: his doctrine, if he has one, he embodies; work he dislikes, and he proves it; wanting to possess nothing, he cultivates his impoverishment, the condition of his freedom. His thought is resolved into his being and his being into his thought. He has nothing, he is himself, he endures: to live on a footing with eternity is to live from day to day, from hand to mouth. Thus, for him, other men are imprisoned in illusion. If he depends on them, he takes his revenge by studying them, a specialist in the underbelly of “noble” sentiments. His sloth, of a very rare quality, truly “delivers” him from a world of fools and dupes. About renunciation he knows more than many of your esoteric works. To be convinced of this, you need only walk out into the street … But you prefer the texts that teach mendicancy. Since no practical consequence accompanies your meditations, it will not be surprising that the merest bum is worth more than you … Can we conceive a Buddha faithful to his truths and to his palace? One is not “delivered-alive” and still a land-owner. I reject the generalization of the lie, I repudiate those who exhibit their so-called “salvation” and prop it with a doctrine which does not emanate from themselves. To unmask them, to knock them off the pedestal they have hoisted themselves on, to hold them up to scorn is a campaign no one should remain indifferent to. For at any price we must keep those who have too clear a conscience from living and dying in peace. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
1084:Night-time, regarded as a separate sphere of creation, is a universe in itself. The material nature of man, upon which philosophers tell us that a column of air forty-five miles in height continually presses, is wearied out at night, sinks into lassitude, lies down, and finds repose. The eyes of the flesh are closed; but in that drooping head, less inactive than is supposed, other eyes are opened. The unknown reveals itself. The shadowy existences of the invisible world become more akin to man; whether it be that there is a real communication, or whether things far off in the unfathomable abyss are mysteriously brought nearer, it seems as if the impalpable creatures inhabiting space come then to contemplate our natures, curious to comprehend the denizens of the earth. Some phantom creation ascends or descends to walk beside us in the dim twilight: some existence altogether different from our own, composed partly of human consciousness, partly of something else, quits his fellows and returns again, after presenting himself for a moment to our inward sight; and the sleeper, not wholly slumbering, nor yet entirely conscious, beholds around him strange manifestations of life—pale spectres, terrible or smiling, dismal phantoms, uncouth masks, unknown faces, hydra-headed monsters, undefined shapes, reflections of moonlight where there is no moon, vague fragments of monstrous forms. All these things which come and go in the troubled atmosphere of sleep, and to which men give the name of dreams, are, in truth, only realities invisible to those who walk about the daylight world. The dream-world is the Aquarium of Night. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1085:I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land... I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of 'stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.' I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . . The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise. ~ Frederick Douglass, #NFDB
1086:When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish we had, the ways in which we depend on our children to depend on us, the ways in which we encourage them to remain children, the ways in which they remain more unknown to us than they do to their most casual acquaintances; the ways in which we remain equally opaque to them. The ways in which our investments in each other remain too freighted ever to see the other clear. The ways in which neither we nor they can bear to contemplate the death or the illness or even the aging of the other. As the pages progressed it occurred to me that their actual subject was not children after all, at least not children per se, at least not children qua children: their actual subject was this refusal even to engage in such contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of aging, illness, death. This fear. Only as the pages progressed further did I understand that the two subjects were the same. When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children. Once she was born I was never not afraid. I was afraid of swimming pools, high-tension wires, lye under the sink, aspirin in the medicine cabinet, The Broken Man himself. I was afraid of rattlesnakes, riptides, landslides, strangers who appeared at the door, unexplained fevers, elevators without operators and empty hotel corridors. The source of the fear was obvious: it was the harm that could come to her. A question: if we and our children could in fact see the other clear would the fear go away? Would the fear go away for both of us, or would the fear go away only for me? ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
1087:But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion kilometres which comprise a single light year, or perhaps on the luminosity of the largest known star in our galaxy, Eta Carinae, 7,500 light years distant, 400 times the size of the sun and 4 million times as bright. We should punctuate our calendars with celebrations in honour of VY Canis Majoris, a red hypergiant in the constellation Canis Major, 5,000 light years from earth and 2,100 times bigger than our sun. Nightly – perhaps after the main news bulletin – we might observe a moment of silence in order to contemplate the 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy, the 100 billion galaxies and the 3 septillion stars in the universe. Whatever their value may be to science, the stars are in the end no less valuable to mankind as solutions to our megalomania, self-pity and anxiety. To answer our need to be repeatedly connected through our senses to ideas of transcendence, we should insist that a percentage of all prominently positioned television screens on public view be hooked up to live feeds from the transponders of our extraplanetary telescopes. We would then be able to ensure that our frustrations, our broken hearts, our hatred of those who haven’t called us and our regrets over opportunities that have passed us by would continuously be rubbed up against, and salved by, images of galaxies such as Messier 101, a spiral structure which sits towards the bottom left corner of the constellation Ursa Major, 23 million light years away, majestically unaware of everything we are and consolingly unaffected by all that tears us apart. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1088:Well, poetry—at least lyric poetry—tries to lead us to relocate ourselves in the self. But everything we want to do these days is an escape from self. People don’t want to sit home and think. They want to sit home and watch television. Or they want to go out and have fun. And having fun is not usually meditative. It doesn’t have anything to do with reassessing one’s experience and finding out who one is or who the other guy is. It has to do with burning energy. When you go to the movies, you’re overcome with special effects and monstrous goings-on. Things unfold with a rapidity that’s thrilling. You’re not given a second to contemplate the previous scene, to meditate on something that’s just happened—something else takes its place.
We seem to want instant gratification. Violent movies give you instant gratification. And drugs give you instant gratification. Sporting events give you instant gratification. Prostitutes give you instant gratification. This is what we seem to like. But that which requires effort, that which reveals itself only in the long term, that which demands some learning, patience, or skill—and reading is a skill—there’s not enough time for that, it seems. We forget that there is a thrill that attends the slower pleasures, pleasures that become increasingly powerful the more time we spend pursuing them.
SHAWN
Maybe people avoid poetry because it somehow actively makes them nervous or anxious.
STRAND
They don’t want to feel the proximity of the unknown—or the mysterious. It’s too deathlike; it’s too threatening. It suggests the possibility of loss of control right around the corner. ~ Mark Strand,#NFDB
1089:Imagine us saying to children: "In the last fifty or so years, the human race has become aware of a great deal of information about its mechanisms; how it behaves, how it must behave under certain circumstances. If this is to be useful, you must learn to contemplate these rules calmly, dispassionately, disinterestedly, without emotion. It is information that will set people free from blind loyalties, obedience to slogans, rhetoric, leaders, group emotions." Well, there it is.
...It is interesting to speculate: what country, what nation, when, and where, would have undertaken a programme to teach its children to be people to resist rhetoric, to examine the mechanisms that govern them? I can think of only one - America in that heady period of the Gettysburg Address. And that time could not have survived the Civil War, for when war starts, countries cannot afford disinterested examination of their behaviour. When a war starts, nations go mad - and have to go mad, in order to survive. ...I am not talking of the aptitudes for killing, for destruction, which soldiers are taught as part of their training, but a kind of atmosphere, the invisible poison, which spreads everywhere. And then people everywhere begin behaving as they never could in peace-time. Afterwards we look back, amazed. Did I really do that? Believe that? Fall for that bit of propaganda? Think that all our enemies were evil? That all our own nation's acts were good? How could I have tolerated that state of mind, day after day, month after month - perpetually stimulated, perpetually whipped up into emotions that my mind was meanwhile quietly and desperately protesting against? ~ Doris Lessing,#NFDB
1090:It's all that's left,' Leon said in a suddenly weak voice. 'It's what is left of civilization. You take raw material and you transform it. That is civilization. Physical love is all raw meat. That's why everyone's so preoccupied with it now. I have been told by a colleague ten years older than myself--as if it were possible for anybody to be ten years older than I am--that salvation comes from staring at the pubic region of strangers, and freedom, from inducing in myself, by the use of a chemical, the kind of ecstatic lunacy in which I spent most of my adolescence, a condition I attribute solely to the strength of my body at that time and the conviction I had then that I would see socialism in the United States during my lifetime. Now that my bones are weak, my brain is stronger. I don't expect . . . anything. But I cannot bear the grotesque, lying piety of my own unhinged contemporaries. One man, a literary star'--and here he broke off, laughed once, choked and shook his head--'oh, yes, a star, told me he only regretted the pill had not yet been developed in his own youth. All those girls who might have been his! In this age of generalized cock, is this the whole revelation toward which my life has been directed? I would, in any case, prefer to contemplate the organ of a horse. It is handsomer, larger and more comic than anything my fellow man has to show. It is the age of baby shit, darling. Don't kid yourself. My privacy has been violated--what I've admired and thought about all my life has been debased. Poor bodies . . . poor evil-smiling gross flesh. Perhaps we're going downhill, all of us.' He reached out and pressed her shoulder. 'Do you understand me?' he asked. ~ Paula Fox, #NFDB
1091:In 1969 my parents, my sister, my brother Jin-ming, and I were expelled from Chengdu one after another, and sent to distant parts of the Sichuan wilderness. We were among millions of urban dwellers to be exiled to the countryside.
In this way, young people would not be roaming the cities with nothing to do, creating trouble out of sheer boredom, and adults like my parents would have a 'future." They were part of the old administration which had been replaced by Mao's Revolutionary Committees, and packing them off to the sticks to do hard labor was a convenient solution.
According to Mao's rhetoric, we were sent to the countryside 'to be reformed." Mao advocated 'thought reform through labor' for everyone, but never explained the relationship between the two. Of course, no one asked for clarification. Merely to contemplate such a question was tantamount to treason. In reality, everyone in China knew that hard labor, particularly in the countryside, was always punishment. It was noticeable that none of Mao's henchmen, the members of the newly established Revolutionary Committees, army officers and very few of their children had to do it.
The first of us to be expelled was my father. Just after New Year 1969 he was sent to Miyi County in the region of Xichang, on the eastern edge of the Himalayas, an area so remote that it is China's satellite launch base today. It lies about 300 miles from Chengdu, four days' journey by truck, as there was no railway. In ancient times, the area was used for dumping exiles, because its mountains and waters were said to be permeated with a mysterious 'evil air." In today's terms, the 'evil air' was subtropical diseases. ~ Jung Chang,#NFDB
1092:7. But what kind of love is it, really? Don't fool yourself and call it sublimity. Admit that you have stood in front of a little pile of powdered ultramarine pigment in a glass cup at a museum and felt a stinging desire. But to do what? Liberate it? Purchase it? Ingest it? There is so little blue food in nature- in fact blue in the wild tends to mark food to avoid (mold, poisonous berries)- that culinary advisers generally recommend against blue light, blue paint, and blue plates when wand where serving food. But while the color may sap appetite in the most literal sense, it feeds it in others. You might want to reach out and disturb the pile of pigment, for example, first staining your fingers with it, then staining the world. You might want to dillute it and swim in it, you might want to rouge your nipples with it, you might want to paint a virgin's robe with it. But still you wouldn't be accessing the blue of it. Not exactly.
8. Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking all desire is yearning. "We love to contemplate blue, not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it," wrote Goethe, and perhaps he is right. But I am not interested in longing to live in a world in which I already live. I don't want to yearn for blue things, and God forbid for any "blueness." Above all, I want to stop missing you.
9. So please do not write to tell me about anymore beautiful blue things. To be fair, this book will not tell you about any, either. It will not say, Isn't X beautiful? Such demands are murderous to beauty.
10. The most I want to do is show you the end of my index finger. Its muteness.
11. That is to say: I don't care if it's colorless. ~ Maggie Nelson,#NFDB
1093:that a statesman should devote his life to studying “the science of politics, in order to acquire in advance all the knowledge that it may be necessary for him to use at some future time”; that authority in a state must always be divided; and that of the three known forms of government—monarchy, aristocracy and people—the best is a mixture of all three, for each one taken on its own can lead to disaster: kings can be capricious, aristocrats self-interested, and “an unbridled multitude enjoying unwonted power more terrifying than a conflagration or a raging sea.” Often today I reread On the Republic, and always I am moved, especially by the passage at the end of book six, when Scipio describes how his grandfather appears to him in a dream and takes him up into the heavens to show him the smallness of the earth in comparison to the grandeur of the Milky Way, where the spirits of dead statesmen dwell as stars. The description was inspired by the vast, clear night skies above the Bay of Naples: I gazed in every direction and all appeared wonderfully beautiful. There were stars which we never see from earth, and they were all larger than we have ever imagined. The starry spheres were much greater than the earth; indeed the earth itself seemed to me so small that I was scornful of our empire, which covers only a single point, as it were, upon its surface. “If only you will look on high,” the old man tells Scipio, “and contemplate this eternal home and resting place, you will no longer bother with the gossip of the common herd or put your trust in human reward for your exploits. Nor will any man’s reputation endure very long, for what men say dies with them and is blotted out with the forgetfulness of posterity. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
1094:If a Christian were to accost him and endeavor to put the fear of God into him, and if our visitor, being from Mars, already knew that of the world's population, only about 27 per cent are Christians, and the other 73 per cent are Non-Christians, is it logical to suppose that he would ever be convinced that an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, Supreme Being would select only one quarter of his children whom he had created for redemption, with the infallible knowledge that nearly three-quarters of them would be confined to Hell for not believing what He could have made them believe if He were truly omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent? Would he not rather reply that on his planet such a "Father" who would select some of his children for rewards, and maliciously torture his other children, would not be designated as a God but a Devil? Were the Martian to be further informed that each one of God's children was represented in actual figures by hundreds of millions and that these have been living on the planet Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and were the visitor to contemplate the vast incomprehensible number of souls that have been confined to Hell by such a father, might he not cut his visit short? He would be apt to repeat with James Mill, "Think of a being who would make a Hell, who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge and therefore with the intention that the great majority of them should be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment." I believe that our guest would assert that if such a Being actually existed and demanded worship, he would certainly have revealed his true belief to the first man Adam, and therefore saved his children an inestimable amount of suffering. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1095:Ask calibrated “How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking “How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands. ■Use “How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using “How can I do that?” as a gentle version of “No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves. ■Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players “behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are. ■Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal. ■Is the “Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction. ■A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of “I,” “me,” and “my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of “we,” “they,” and “them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open. ■Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks. ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
1096:It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,—glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream that, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.—But the age of chivalry is gone.—That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1097:In April 1977, Rivest, Shamir and Adleman spent Passover at the house of a student, and had consumed significant amounts of Manischewitz wine before returning to their respective homes some time around midnight. Rivest, unable to sleep, lay on his couch reading a mathematics textbook. He began mulling over the question that had been puzzling him for weeks—is it possible to build an asymmetric cipher? Is it possible to find a one-way function that can be reversed only if the receiver has some special information? Suddenly, the mists began to clear and he had a revelation. He spent the rest of that night formalizing his idea, effectively writing a complete scientific paper before daybreak. Rivest had made a breakthrough, but it had grown out of a yearlong collaboration with Shamir and Adleman, and it would not have been possible without them. Rivest finished off the paper by listing the authors alphabetically; Adleman, Rivest, Shamir. The next morning, Rivest handed the paper to Adleman, who went through his usual process of trying to tear it apart, but this time he could find no faults. His only criticism was with the list of authors. “I told Ron to take my name off the paper,” recalls Adleman. “I told him that it was his invention, not mine. But Ron refused and we got into a discussion about it. We agreed that I would go home and contemplate it for one night, and consider what I wanted to do. I went back the next day and suggested to Ron that I be the third author. I recall thinking that this paper would be the least interesting paper that I will ever be on.” Adleman could not have been more wrong. The system, dubbed RSA (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman) as opposed to ARS, went on to become the most influential cipher in modern cryptography. ~ Simon Singh, #NFDB
1098:In the midst of that night, in my darkness, I saw the awesome sight of Christ opening the heavens for me. And he bent down to me and showed himself to me with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the thrice holy light -- a single light in three, and a threefold light in one, for they are altogether light, and the three are but one light,. And he illumined my soul more radiantly than the sun, and he lit up my mind, which had until then been in darkness. Never before had my mind seen such things. I was blind, you should know it, and I saw nothing. That was why this strange wonder was so astonishing to me, when Christ, as it were, opened the eye of my mind, when he gave me sight, as it were, and it was him that I saw. He is Light within Light, who appears to those who contemplate him, and contemplatives see him in light -- see him, that is, in the light of the Spirit... And now, as if from far off, I still see that unseeable beauty, that unapproachable light, that unbearable glory. My mind is completely astounded. I tremble with fear. Is this a small taste from the abyss, which like a drop of water serves to make all water known in all its qualities and aspects?... I found him, the One whom I had seen from afar, the one whom Stephen saw when the heavens opened, and later whose vision blinded Paul. Truly, he was as a fire in the center of my heart. I was outside myself, broken down, lost to myself, and unable to bear the unendurable brightness of that glory. And so, I turned and fled into the night of the senses. [1735.jpg] -- from The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives, Translated by John Anthony McGuckin
~ Symeon the New Theologian, In the midst of that night, in my darkness
,#NFDB
1099:It is very important that you understand the true innocence of all feelings, for each of them, if left alone and followed, will lead you back to the reality of love .
-In their way the hateful or revengeful thoughts are natural therapeutic devices, for if you follow them, accepting them with their own validity as feelings, they will automatically lead you beyond themselves; they will change into other feelings, carrying you from hatred into ... fear - which is always behind hatred. (1 1;220-22 1) 2. Regardless of what you have been told, hatred does not initiate strong violence ... The outbreak of violence is often the result of a built-in sense of powerlessness. (21;418) 3. There are adults who quail when one of their children say, "I hate you'. Often children quickly learn not to be honest. What the child is really saying is, “I love you so. Why are you so mean to me?' or 'What stands between us and the love for you that I feel?' (21;423)4. You become conditioned so that you feel guilty when you even contemplate hating another. You try to hide such thoughts from yourself. You may succeed so well that you literally do not know what you are feeling on a conscious level. The emotions are there but they are invisible to you because you are afraid to look. To that extent you are divorced from your own reality and disconnected from your own feelings of love. (21;424)
5. Even your hateful fantasies, left alone, will return you to a reconciliation and release of love. A fantasy of beating a parent or a child, even to death, will if followed through lead to tears of love and understanding. (2 1;424)
6. You may love a parent, and if the parent does not seem to return the love...you may 'hate' the parent .... Hatred is not a denial of love then but an attempt to regain it ~ Jane Roberts,#NFDB
1100:In the silence, Kestrel heard a falling leaf scratch the glass of the window, opened out toward the dimming sky. It was warm, but summer was almost over.
“Play your tiles,” Arin said roughly.
Kestrel turned them over, taking no joy in the fact that she had surely won. She had four scorpions.
Arin flipped his. The sound of ivory clacking against the wooden table was unnaturally loud.
Four vipers.
“I win,” he said, and swept the matches into his hand.
Kestrel stared at the tiles, feeling a numbness creep along her limbs. “Well,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Well played.”
He gave her a humorless smile. “I did warn you.”
“Yes. You did.”
He stood. “I think I’ll take my leave while I have the advantage.”
“Until next time.” Kestrel realized she had offered him her hand. He looked at it, then took it in his own. She felt the numbness ebb, only to be replaced by a different kind of surprise.
He dropped her hand. “I have things to do.”
“Like what?” She tried for a lighthearted tone.
He answered in kind. “Like contemplate what I am going to do with my sudden windfall of matches.” He widened his eyes in pretend glee, and Kestrel smiled.
“I’ll walk you out,” she said.
“Do you think I will lose my way? Or steal something as I go?”
She felt her expression turn haughty. “I am leaving the villa anyway,” she said, though she had had no such plans until the words left her mouth.
They walked in silence through the house until they had reached the ground floor. Kestrel saw his stride pause, almost imperceptibly, as they passed the closed doors that hid her piano.
She stopped. “What is your interest in that room?”
The look he gave her was cutting. “I have no interest in the music room.”
Her eyes narrowed as she watched him walk away. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
1101:However, there have been close calls where we were extremely lucky that there was a human in the loop. On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, eleven U.S. Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph had cornered the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba, in international waters outside the U.S. “quarantine” area. What they didn’t know was that the temperature onboard had risen past 45°C (113°F) because the submarine’s batteries were running out and the air-conditioning had stopped. On the verge of carbon dioxide poisoning, many crew members had fainted. The crew had had no contact with Moscow for days and didn’t know whether World War III had already begun. Then the Americans started dropping small depth charges, which they had, unbeknownst to the crew, told Moscow were merely meant to force the sub to surface and leave. “We thought—that’s it—the end,” crew member V. P. Orlov recalled. “It felt like you were sitting in a metal barrel, which somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer.” What the Americans also didn’t know was that the B-59 crew had a nuclear torpedo that they were authorized to launch without clearing it with Moscow. Indeed, Captain Savitski decided to launch the nuclear torpedo. Valentin Grigorievich, the torpedo officer, exclaimed: “We will die, but we will sink them all—we will not disgrace our navy!” Fortunately, the decision to launch had to be authorized by three officers on board, and one of them, Vasili Arkhipov, said no. It’s sobering that very few have heard of Arkhipov, although his decision may have averted World War III and been the single most valuable contribution to humanity in modern history.38 It’s also sobering to contemplate what might have happened had B-59 been an autonomous AI-controlled submarine with no humans in the loop. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
1102:It is hard to understand how a compassionate world order can include so many people afflicted by acute misery, persistent hunger and deprived and desperate lives, and why millions of innocent children have to die each year from lack of food or medical attention or social care.
This issue, of course, is not new, and it has been a subject of some discussion among theologians. The argument that God has reasons to want us to deal with these matters ourselves has had considerable intellectual support. As a nonreligious person, I am not in a position to assess the theological merits of this argument. But I can appreciate the force of the claim that people themselves must have responsibility for the development and change of the world in which they live. One does not have to be either devout or non devout to accept this basic connection. As people who live-in a broad sense-together, we cannot escape the thought that the terrible occurrences that we see around us are quintessentially our problems. They are our responsibility-whether or not they are also anyone else's.
As competent human beings, we cannot shirk the task of judging how things are and what needs to be done. As reflective creatures, we have the ability to contemplate the lives of others. Our sense of behavior may have caused (though that can be very important as well), but can also relate more generally to the miseries that we see around us and that lie within our power to help remedy. That responsibility is not, of course, the only consideration that can claim our attention, but to deny the relevance of that general claim would be to miss something central about our social existence. It is not so much a matter of having the exact rules about how precisely we ought to behave, as of recognizing the relevance of our shared humanity in making the choices we face. ~ Amartya Sen,#NFDB
1103:That treacherous old bleeder!” Ron panted, emerging from beneath the Invisibility Cloak and throwing it to Harry. “Hermione, you’re a genius, a total genius, I can’t believe we got out of that!”
“Cave Inimicum…Didn’t I say it was an Erumpent horn, didn’t I tell him? And now his house has been blown apart!”
“Serves him right,” said Ron, examining his torn jeans and the cuts to his legs. “What d’you reckon they’ll do to him?”
“Oh, I hope they don’t kill him!” groaned Hermione. “That’s why I wanted the Death Eaters to get a glimpse of Harry before we left, so they knew Xenophilius hadn’t been lying!”
“Why hide me, though?” asked Ron.
“You’re supposed to be in bed with spattergroit, Ron! They’ve kidnapped Luna because her father supported Harry! What would happen to your family if they knew you’re with him?”
“But what about your mum and dad?”
“They’re in Australia,” said Hermione. “They should be all right. They don’t know anything.”
“You’re a genius,” Ron repeated, looking awed.
“Yeah, you are, Hermione,” agreed Harry fervently. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
She beamed, but became solemn at once.
“What about Luna?”
“Well, if they’re telling the truth and she’s still alive--” began Ron.
“Don’t say that, don’t say it!” squealed Hermione. “She must be alive, she must!”
“Then she’ll be in Azkaban, I expect,” said Ron. “Whether she survives the place, though…Loads don’t…”
“She will,” said Harry. He could not bear to contemplate the alternative. “She’s tough, Luna, much tougher than you’d think. She’s probably teaching all the inmates about Wrackspurts and Nargles.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Hermione. She passed a hand over her eyes. “I’d feel so sorry for Xenophilius if--”
“--if he hadn’t just tried to sell us to the Death Eaters, yeah,” said Ron. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
1104:I keep finding myself confronted with the question, “What is the aim of man’s life?” and, no matter what result my reflections reach, no matter what I take to be life’s source, I invariably arrive at the conclusion that the purpose of our human existence is to afford a maximum of help towards the universal development of everything that exists.
If I meditate as I contemplate nature, I perceive everything in nature to be in constant process of development, and each of nature’s constituent portions to be unconsciously contributing towards the development of others. But man is, though a like portion of nature, a portion gifted with consciousness, and therefore bound, like the other portions, to make conscious use of his spiritual faculties in striving for the development of everything existent.
If I meditate as I contemplate history, I perceive the whole human race to be for ever aspiring towards the same end.
If I meditate on reason, if I pass in review man’s spiritual faculties, I find the soul of every man to have in it the same unconscious aspiration, the same imperative demand of the spirit.
If I meditate with an eye upon the history of philosophy, I find everywhere, and always, men to have arrived at the conclusion that the aim of human life is the universal development of humanity.
If I meditate with an eye upon theology, I find almost every nation to be cognizant of a perfect existence towards which it is the aim of mankind to aspire.
So I too shall be safe in taking for the aim of my existence a conscious striving for the universal development of everything existent. I should be the unhappiest of mortals if I could not find a purpose for my life, and a purpose at once universal and useful… Wherefore henceforth all my life must be a constant, active striving for that one purpose. ~ Leo Tolstoy,#NFDB
1105:February 5 MORNING “The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” — 1 John 4:14 IT is a sweet thought that Jesus Christ did not come forth without His Father’s permission, authority, consent, and assistance. He was sent of the Father, that He might be the Saviour of men. We are too apt to forget that, while there are distinctions as to the persons in the Trinity, there are no distinctions of honour. We too frequently ascribe the honour of our salvation, or at least the depths of its benevolence, more to Jesus Christ than we do the Father. This is a very great mistake. What if Jesus came? Did not His Father send Him? If He spake wondrously, did not His Father pour grace into His lips, that He might be an able minister of the new covenant? He who knoweth the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost as he should know them, never setteth one before another in his love; he sees them at Bethlehem, at Gethsemane, and on Calvary, all equally engaged in the work of salvation. O Christian, hast thou put thy confidence in the Man Christ Jesus? Hast thou placed thy reliance solely on Him? And art thou united with Him? Then believe that thou art united unto the God of heaven. Since to the Man Christ Jesus thou art brother, and holdest closest fellowship, thou art linked thereby with God the Eternal, and “the Ancient of days” is thy Father and thy friend. Didst thou ever consider the depth of love in the heart of Jehovah, when God the Father equipped His Son for the great enterprise of mercy? If not, be this thy day’s meditation. The Father sent Him! Contemplate that subject. Think how Jesus works what the Father wills. In the wounds of the dying Saviour see the love of the great I AM. Let every thought of Jesus be also connected with the Eternal, ever-blessed God, for “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1106:A second way of sharing in these meanings belongs to those who so highly esteem what is disclosed to them of the attributes of majesty that their high regard releases a longing to possess this attribute in every way possible to them, so that they may grow closer to the Truth-in quality not in place; and with the possession of such characteristics they become similar to the angels, who have been brought near to God-great and glorious. Moreover, it is inconceivable that a heart be filled with high regard for such an attribute and be illuminated by it without a longing for this attribute following upon it, as well as a passionate love for that perfection and majesty, intent upon being adorned with that attribute in its totality-inasmuch as that is possible to one who so esteems it. And if not in its totality, the esteem for this attribute will necessarily provoke in him the longing for as much of it as he can assimilate.
No-one will lack this longing except for one of two reasons: either from inadequate knowledge and certainty that the attribute in question is one of the attributes of majesty and perfection, or from the fact that one's heart is filled with another longing and absorbed by it. For when a disciple observes the perfection of his master in knowledge, longing will be triggered in him to be like him and to follow his example-unless he be filled with hunger, for example, so that the preoccupation of his innards for food could prevent the longing for knowledge from arising in him. So it is necessary for the one who would contemplate the attributes of God most high to have emptied his heart of desiring anything except God- great and glorious. For knowledge is the seed of longing, but only to the extent that it encounters a heart freed from the thorns of the passions, for unless the heart be empty the seed will not bear fruit. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,#NFDB
1107:My Sweet Jesus, You appear to me On your Mother's breast, all radiant with love. Love is the ineffable mystery That exiled you from your Heavenly Home... Ah! let me hide myself under the veil Concealing you from all mortal eyes, And near you, O Morning Star! I shall find a foretaste of Heaven. From the moment a new dawn awakens, When we see the first lights of the sun, The young flower beginning to open Awaits a precious balm from on high. It is the good-giving morning dew, Which, producing an abundant sap, Makes the flower of the new bud open a little. Jesus, you are that Flower just open. I gaze on you at your first awakening. Jesus, you are the ravishing Rose, The new bud, gracious and scarlet red. The ever-so-pure arms of your dear Mother For for you a cradle, a royal throne, Your sweet sun is Mary's breast, And your Dew is Virginal Milk!... My Beloved, my divine little Brother, In your gaze I see all the future. Soon, for me, you will leave your Mother. Already Love impels you to suffer. But on the cross, O Full-blossomed Flower! I recognize your morning fragrance. I recognize Mary's Dew. Your divine blood is Virginal Milk!... This Dew hides in the sanctuary. The angels of Heaven, enraptured, contemplate it, Offering to God their sublime prayer. Like Saint John, they repeat: "Behold." Yes, behold, this Word made Host. Eternal Priest, sacerdotal Lamb, The Son of God is the Son of Mary. The bread of Angels is Virginal Milk. The seraphim feeds on glory. In Paradise his joy is full. Weak child that I am, I only see in the ciborium The color and figure of Milk. But that is the Milk a child needs, And Jesus' Love is beyond compare. O tender Love! Unfathomable power, My white Host is Virginal Milk!... [2320.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Saint Therese of Lisieux, by St. Therese of Lisieux / Translated by Donald Kinney, OCD
~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, The Divine Dew
,#NFDB
1108:What do I do now?” I ask desperately. “Tell me! What do I do now?”
He remains calm.
He looks at me closely and says, “Keep living, Ed…. It’s only the pages that stop here.”
He stays perhaps another ten minutes, probably due to the trauma that has strapped itself to me. I remain standing, trying to contemplate and recover from what’s transpired.
“I really think I’d better go,” he says again, this item with more finality.
With difficulty, I walk him to the door.
We say goodbye on the front porch, and he walks back up the street.
I wonder about his name, but I’m sure I’ll earn it soon enough.
He’s written about this, I’m sure, the bastard. All of it.
As he walks up the street he pulls a small notebook from his pocket and writes a few things down.
It makes me think maybe I should write about all this myself. After all, I;m the one who did all the work.
I’d start with the bank robbery.
Something like, “The gunman is useless.”
The odds are, however, that he’s beaten me to it already
It’ll be his name on the cover of all these words, not mine.
He’ll get all the credit.
Or the crap, if her does a shit job.
But I just remembered the I was the one- not him- who gave life to these pages. I was the one who-
I tell me to stop.
It’s an inner voice and it’s loud.
All day, I think about many things, though I try not to. I look through the folder and find everything as he said. All the ideas are written in and people are sketched. Scratchy excerpts are stapled together. Beginnings and endings merge and bend.
Hours wander past.
Days follow them.
I don’t leave the shack, and I don’t answer the phone. I barely even eat. The Doorman sits with me as the minutes pass by.
For a long time, I wonder what I’m waiting for, but I understand it’s just like he said.
I guess it’s for life beyond these pages. ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
1109:Of the tendency, Angus said, of things to get better Dogs and the optimistic are usually convinced; Others, perhaps, are more cautious: When I was your age I remember Thinking that most of life’s problems Would be over by the next day; I still think that, I suppose, And am often pleasantly surprised To discover that it is occasionally true; Thinking something, you see, Can make it happen, or so we believe, Though how that works, I doubt If I shall ever find out. From your perspective, where you are Is probably the only place It is possible to be; some time soon You will discover that we can, if lucky, Decide who we shall become. A word of warning here: Of all the tempting roles You will be offered, being yourself Is unquestionably the safest, Will bring the most applause Will make you feel best; Greasepaint, dear Bertie, is greasy: Leave it to the actors; The most comfortable face to wear, You’ll find, is your own. So what do I wish for you? Freedom? I imagine You know all about that Even if so far you’ve had To contemplate it from a distance. I could think of other things; I might wish, for example, That you should be whatever You fervently want to be: a sailor, A fireman, an explorer? You may live, you know, To seventy-seven and beyond: What, I wonder, will Scotland Be like seven decades from now? I’ll never know, but what I wish Is that some of it will be left for you, Some of the things we’ve loved. Happy birthday, then, Bertie: Be strong, be thoughtful; Don’t be afraid to cry, when necessary: In operas, as in life, it is the strong Who are always the first to weep. Be kind, which you already are, Even to those who deserve it least; Kindness, you see, Bertie, is a sort of love, That is something I have learned, And you’ll learn too if you listen To the teacher we all should trust: The human heart, my dear, the human heart, Where kindness makes its home. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
1110:The Canonization"
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his honor, or his grace,
Or the king's real, or his stampèd face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned?
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
The phœnix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for Love.
And thus invoke us: "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize)
Countries, towns, courts: beg from above
A pattern of your love! ~ John Donne,#NFDB
1111:On The King's Illness
Rest, rest, afflicted spirit, quickly pass
Thine hour of bitter suffering! Rest awaits thee,
There, where, the load of weary life laid down,
The peasant and the king repose together:
There peaceful sleep, thy quiet grave bedewed
With tears of those who loved thee. Not for thee,
In the dark chambers of the nether world,
Shall spectre kings rise from their burning thrones
And point the vacant seat, and scoffing say,
Art thou become like us?—O not for thee!
For thou hadst human feelings, and hast lived
A man with men; and kindly charities,
Even such as warm the cottage hearth, were thine.
And therefore falls the tear from eyes not used
To gaze on kings with admiration fond.
And thou hast knelt at meek Religion's shrine
With no mock homage, and hast owned her rights
Sacred in every breast: and therefore rise,
Affectionate, for thee, the orisons
And mingled prayers, alike from vaulted domes
Whence the loud organ peals, and raftered roofs
Of humbler worship.—Still remembering this,
A nation's pity and a nation's love
Linger beside thy couch, in this the day
Of thy sad visitation, veiling faults
Of erring judgement, and not will perverse.
Yet, O that thou hadst closed the wounds of war!
That had been praise to suit a higher strain.
Farewell the years rolled down the gulf of time!
Thy name has chronicled a long bright page
Of England's story; and perhaps the babe
Who opens, as thou closest thine, his eyes
On this eventful world, when aged grown,
Musing on times gone by, shall sigh and say,
Shaking his thin grey hairs, whitened with grief,
Our fathers' days were happy. Fare thee well!
My thread of life has even run with thine
102
For many a lustre; and thy closing day
I contemplate, not mindless of my own,
Nor to its call reluctant.
~ Anna Laetitia Barbauld,#NFDB
1112:TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID
WHITE maiden with the russet hair,
Whose garments, through their holes, declare
That poverty is part of you,
And beauty too.
To me, a sorry bard and mean,
Your youthful beauty, frail and lean,
With summer freckles here and there,
Is sweet and fair.
Your sabots tread the roads of chance,
And not one queen of old romance
Carried her velvet shoes and lace
With half your grace.
In place of tatters far too short
Let the proud garments worn at Court
Fall down with rustling fold and pleat
About your feet;
In place of stockings, worn and old,
Let a keen dagger all of gold
Gleam in your garter for the eyes
Of rou?s wise;
Let ribbons carelessly untied
Reveal to us the radiant pride
Of your white bosom purer far
Than any star;
Let your white arms uncovered shine,
Polished and smooth and half divine;
And let your elfish fingers chase
With riotous grace
The purest pearls that softly glow,
The sweetest sonnets of Belleau,
Offered by gallants ere they fight
For your delight;
486
And many fawning rhymers who
Inscribe their first thin book to you
Will contemplate upon the stair
Your slipper fair;
And many a page who plays at cards,
And many lords and many bards,
Will watch your going forth, and burn
For your return;
And you will count before your glass
More kisses than the lily has;
And more than one Valois will sigh
When you pass by.
But meanwhile you are on the tramp,
Begging your living in the damp,
Wandering mean streets and alley's o'er,
From door to door;
And shilling bangles in a shop
Cause you with eager eyes to stop,
And I, alas, have not a sou
To give to you.
Then go, with no more ornament,
Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent,
Than your own fragile naked grace
And lovely face.
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1113:The women we become after children, she typed, then stopped to adjust the angle of the paper....We change shape, she continued, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut off our long hair, We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, persoective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and-look!-they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squashed tin along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going. We learn to darn, perhaps to cook, to patch knees of dungarees. We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live, We contemplate our bodies, our stretched skin, those threads of silver around our brows, our strangely enlarged feet. We learn to look less in the mirror. We put our dry-clean-only clothes to the back of the wardrobe. Eventually we throw them away. We school ourselves to stop saying 'shit' and 'damn' and learn to say 'my goodness' and 'heavens above.' We give up smoking, we color our hair, we search the vistas of parks, swimming-pools, libraries, cafes for others of our kind. We know each other by our pushchairs, our sleepless gazes, the beakers we carry. We learn how to cool a fever, ease a cough, the four indicators of meningitis, that one must sometimes push a swing for two hours. We buy biscuit cutters, washable paints, aprons, plastic bowls. We no longer tolerate delayed buses, fighting in the street, smoking in restaurants, sex after midnight, inconsistency, laziness, being cold. We contemplate younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their tight-seamed dresses, their tiny handbags, their smooth washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep on pushing the pram up the hill. ~ Maggie O Farrell, #NFDB
1114:twenty-nine-year-old patient she had recently cared for who had an inoperable brain tumor that continued to grow through second-line chemotherapy. The patient elected not to attempt any further chemotherapy, but getting to that decision required hours of discussion, for this was not the decision he had expected to make. First, the oncologist said, she had a discussion with him alone. They reviewed the story of how far he’d come, the options that remained. She was frank. She told him that in her entire career she had never seen third-line chemotherapy produce a significant response in his type of brain tumor. She had looked for experimental therapies, and none were truly promising. And, although she was willing to proceed with chemotherapy, she told him how much strength and time the treatment would take away from him and his family. He did not shut down or rebel. His questions went on for an hour. He asked about this therapy and that therapy. Gradually, he began to ask about what would happen as the tumor got bigger, what symptoms he’d have, what ways they could try to control them, how the end might come. The oncologist next met with the young man together with his family. That discussion didn’t go so well. He had a wife and small children, and at first his wife wasn’t ready to contemplate stopping chemo. But when the oncologist asked the patient to explain in his own words what they’d discussed, she understood. It was the same with his mother, who was a nurse. Meanwhile, his father sat quietly and said nothing the entire time. A few days later, the patient returned to talk to the oncologist. “There should be something. There must be something,” he said. His father had shown him reports of cures on the Internet. He confided how badly his father was taking the news. No patient wants to cause his family pain. According to Block, about two-thirds of patients are willing to undergo therapies they don’t want if that is what their loved ones want. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
1115:That is, “Yes” is nothing without “How.” Asking “How,” knowing “How,” and defining “How” are all part of the effective negotiator’s arsenal. He would be unarmed without them. ■ Ask calibrated “How” questions, and ask them again and again. Asking “How” keeps your counterparts engaged but off balance. Answering the questions will give them the illusion of control. It will also lead them to contemplate your problems when making their demands. ■ Use “How” questions to shape the negotiating environment. You do this by using “How can I do that?” as a gentle version of “No.” This will subtly push your counterpart to search for other solutions—your solutions. And very often it will get them to bid against themselves. ■ Don’t just pay attention to the people you’re negotiating with directly; always identify the motivations of the players “behind the table.” You can do so by asking how a deal will affect everybody else and how on board they are. ■ Follow the 7-38-55 Percent Rule by paying close attention to tone of voice and body language. Incongruence between the words and nonverbal signs will show when your counterpart is lying or uncomfortable with a deal. ■ Is the “Yes” real or counterfeit? Test it with the Rule of Three: use calibrated questions, summaries, and labels to get your counterpart to reaffirm their agreement at least three times. It’s really hard to repeatedly lie or fake conviction. ■ A person’s use of pronouns offers deep insights into his or her relative authority. If you’re hearing a lot of “I,” “me,” and “my,” the real power to decide probably lies elsewhere. Picking up a lot of “we,” “they,” and “them,” it’s more likely you’re dealing directly with a savvy decision maker keeping his options open. ■ Use your own name to make yourself a real person to the other side and even get your own personal discount. Humor and humanity are the best ways to break the ice and remove roadblocks. ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
1116:No living atom comes at last to naught!
Active in each is still the eternal Thought:
Hold fast to Being if thou wouldst be blest.
Being is without end; for changeless laws
Bind that from which the All its glory draws
Of living treasures endlessly possessed.
Unto the wise of old this truth was known,
Such wisdom knit their noble souls in one;
Then hold thou still the lore of ancient days!
To that high power thou ow'st it, son of man,
By whose decree the earth its circuit ran
And all the planets went their various ways.
Then inward turn at once thy searching eyes;
Thence shalt thou see the central truth arise
From which no lofty soul goes e'er astray;
There shalt thou miss no needful guiding sign--
For conscience lives, and still its light divine
Shall be the sun of all thy moral day.
Next shalt thou trust thy senses' evidence,
And fear from them no treacherous offence
While the mind's watchful eye thy road commands:
With lively pleasure contemplate the scene
And roam securely, teachable, serene,
At will throughout a world of fruitful lands.
Enjoy in moderation all life gives:
Where it rejoices in each thing that lives
Let reason be thy guide and make thee see.
Then shall the distant past be present still,
The future, ere it comes, thy vision fill--
Each single moment touch eternity.
Then at the last shalt thou achieve thy quest,
And in one final, firm conviction rest:
What bears for thee true fruit alone is true.
Prove all things, watch the movement of the world
As down the various ways its tribes are whirled;
Take thou thy stand among the chosen few.
Thus hath it been of old; in solitude
The artist shaped what thing to him seemed good,
The wise man hearkened to his own soul's voice.
Thus also shalt thou find thy greatest bliss;
To lead where the elect shall follow--this
And this alone is worth a hero's choice.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, A Legacy
,#NFDB
1117:If others were to look attentively into themselves as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of emptiness and tomfoolery. I cannot rid myself of them without getting rid of myself. We are all steeped in them, each as much as the other; but those who realize this get off, as I know, a little more cheaply.
That commonly approved practice of looking elsewhere than at our own self has served our affairs well! Our self is an object full of dissatisfaction: we can see nothing there but wretchedness and vanity. So as not to dishearten us, Nature has very conveniently cast the action of our sight outwards. We are swept on downstream, but to struggle back towards our self against the current is a painful movement; thus does the sea, when driven against itself, swirl back in confusion. Everyone says: 'Look at the motions of the heavens, look at society, at this man's quarrel, that man's pulse, this other man's will and testament' - in other words always look upwards or downwards or sideways, or before or behind you. That commandment given us in ancient times by that god at Delphi was contrary to all expectation: 'Look back into your self; get to know your self; hold on to your self.' Bring back to your self your mind and your will which are being squandered elsewhere; you are draining and frittering your self away. Consolidate your self; rein your self back. They are cheating you, distracting you, robbing you of your self.
Can you not see that this world of ours keeps its gave bent ever inwards and its eyes ever open to contemplate itself? It is always vanity in your case, within and without, but a vanity which is less, the less it extends.
Except you alone, O Man, said that god, each creature first studies its own self, and, according to its needs, has limits to its labours and desires. Not one is as empty and needy as you, who embrace the universe: you are the seeker with no knowledge, the judge with no jurisdiction and, when all is done, the jester of the farce. ~ Michel de Montaigne,#NFDB
1118:There is no man,” he began, “however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man — so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise — unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. I know that there are young fellows, the sons and grandsons of famous men, whose masters have instilled into them nobility of mind and moral refinement in their schooldays. They have, perhaps, when they look back upon their past lives, nothing to retract; they can, if they choose, publish a signed account of everything they have ever said or done; but they are poor creatures, feeble descendants of doctrinaires, and their wisdom is negative and sterile. We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you are not the result of training at home, by a father, or by masters at school, they have sprung from beginnings of a very different order, by reaction from the influence of everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that the picture of what we once were, in early youth, may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not deny the truth of it, for it is evidence that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studios, of artistic groups — assuming that one is a painter — extracted something that goes beyond them. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1119:Yet, if the phrase “separation of church and state” appears in no official founding document, then what is the source of that phrase? And how did it become so closely associated with the First Amendment? On October 7, 1801, the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, sent a letter to President Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that protection for religion had been written into the laws and constitutions. Believing strongly that freedom of religion was an inalienable right given by God, the fact that it appeared in civil documents suggested that the government viewed it as a government-granted rather than a God-granted right. Apprehensive that the government might someday wrongly believe that it did have the power to regulate public religious activities, the Danbury Baptists communicated their anxiety to President Jefferson.36 On January 1, 1802, Jefferson responded to their letter. He understood their concerns and agreed with them that man accounted only to God and not to government for his faith and religious practice. Jefferson emphasized to the Danbury Baptists that none of man’s natural (i.e., inalienable) rights – including the right to exercise one’s faith publicly – would ever place him in a situation where the government would interfere with his religious expressions.37 He assured them that because of the wall of separation, they need not fear government interference with religious expressions: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, . . . I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.38 In his letter, Jefferson made clear that the “wall of separation” was erected not to limit public religious expressions but rather to provide security against governmental interference with those expressions, whether private or public. ~ David Barton, #NFDB
1120:Deep started to respond and then he felt Kat’s rush of relief. His fragile hope that she had learned to love him as well as Lock crumbled in that instant. She’s glad, he thought, his mouth twisting. So glad we’ve found the blossoms. Because now we can take them back to Mother L’rin and Kat can be rid of us forever. Rid of me. He had no doubt that Kat would have happily joined with Lock if he himself hadn’t been in the picture. He’d lingered outside the bedroom door after seeing their kiss for a moment, intending to go back in. And he knew what Kat meant when she told Lock that he “came with a lot of baggage.” More Earth vernacular, he thought bitterly. Just another way of saying I’m not the one she wants. He’d fooled himself into thinking that she cared for him—that she loved him as he had so stupidly allowed himself to start loving her. But it wasn’t true—she couldn’t wait to get the Moons blossom and leave—he could feel the impatience to be away coming from her already. It doesn’t matter anyway, Deep told himself grimly. I’m no good for her—just look at my past. At what happened to Miranda. I don’t want that to happen to Kat, even if she doesn’t care for me. I couldn’t bear it if…But he couldn’t make himself finish the grim thought. Instead he watched as his brother helped the woman they both loved gather the rare, mystical blossoms. They were laughing as they did and Kat was tickling Lock under the chin with one of the two-headed flowers. Lock is good for her, Deep realized. He’s the one she ought to be with. Not me and not both of us. Just him. The concept of one of them having a female without the other was so foreign to him it was hard to contemplate, but he knew it was true. It didn’t matter who he thought Kat belonged with, though. They had the Moons blossoms—or fifi flowers, as she called them. Mother L’rin would be able to brew a potion to separate Kat from both of them. By this time tomorrow we will be two and one again instead of three, Deep thought. That’s a good thing—good for all of us. But though he tried, he could feel no joy at the idea. All he felt was achingly empty. ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
1121:Thirty-Eight
IN early youth's unclouded scene,
The brilliant morning of eighteen,
With health and sprightly joy elate
We gazed on life's enchanting spring ,
Nor thought how quickly time would bring
The mournful period--Thirty-eight.
Then the starch maid, or matron sage,
Already at the sober age,
We view'd with mingled scorn and hate;
In whose sharp words, or sharper face,
With thoughtless mirth we loved to trace
The sad effects of--Thirty-eight.
Till saddening, sickening at the view
We learn'd to dread what Time might do;
And then preferr'd a prayer to Fate
To end our days ere that arrived;
When (power and pleasure long survived)
We met neglect and--Thirty-eight.
But time, in spite of wishes, flies
And Fate our simple prayer denies,
And bids us death's own hour await:
The auburn locks are mix'd with grey,
The transient roses fade away,
But reason comes at--Thirty-eight.
Her voice the anguish contradicts
That dying vanity inflicts;
Her hand new pleasures can create,
For us she opens to the view
Prospects less bright--but far more true,
And bids us smile at--Thirty-eight.
No more shall scandal's breath destroy
The social converse we enjoy
With bard or critic tete a tete;-O'er youth's bright blooms her blights shall pour,
But spare the improving friendly hour
That science gives to --Thirty-eight.
Stripp'd of their gaudy hues by Truth,
We view the glitt'ring toys of youth,
205
And blush to think how poor the bait
For which to public scenes we ran
And scorn'd of sober sense the plan
Which gives content at--Thirty-eight.
Though Time's inexorable sway
Has torn the myrtle bands away,
For other wreaths 'tis not too late,
The amaranth's purple glow survives,
And still Minerva's olive lives
On the calm brow of--Thirty-eight.
With eye more steady we engage
To contemplate approaching age,
And life more justly estimate;
With firmer souls, and stronger powers,
With reason, faith, and friendship ours,
We'll not regret the stealing hours
That lead from Thirty--even to Forty-eight.
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
1122:We might call this existential paradox the condition of individuality finitude. Man has a symbolic identity that brings him sharply out of nature. He is a symbolic self, a creature with a name, a life history. He is a creator with a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature, as the Renaissance thinkers knew.
Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways-the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days-that's something else. ~ Ernest Becker,#NFDB
1123:First let me thank all of you for your honesty,” Chang Weisi said, and then turned to Zhang Beihai. “Excellent, Comrade Zhang. Tell us, on what do you base your confidence?” Zhang Beihai stood up, but Chang Weisi motioned for him to sit down. “This is not a formal meeting,” he said. “It’s just a heart-to-heart chat.” Still standing at attention, Zhang Beihai said, “Commander, I can’t answer your question sufficiently in just a few words, because building faith is a long and complicated process. First of all, I’d like to make note of the mistaken thinking among the troops at the present time. We all know that prior to the Trisolar Crisis, we had been advocating for the examination of the future of war from scientific and rational perspectives, and a powerful inertia has sustained this mentality to the present day. This is particularly the case in the present space force, where it has been exacerbated by the influx of a large number of academics and scientists. If we use this mentality to contemplate an interstellar war four centuries in the future, we’ll never be able to establish faith in a victory.” “What Comrade Zhang Beihai says is peculiar,” a colonel said. “Is steadfast faith not built upon science and reason? No faith is solid that is not founded on objective fact.” “Then let’s take another look at science and reason. Our own science and reason, remember. The Trisolarans’ advanced development tells us that our science is no more than a child collecting shells on the beach who hasn’t even seen the ocean of truth. The facts we see under the guidance of our science and reason may not be the true, objective facts. And since that’s the case, we need to learn how to selectively ignore them. We should see how things change as they develop, and we shouldn’t write off the future through technological determinism and mechanical materialism.” “Excellent,” Chang Weisi said, and nodded at him to continue. “We must establish faith in victory, a faith that is the foundation of military duty and dignity! When the Chinese military once faced a powerful enemy under extremely poor conditions, it established a firm faith in victory through a sense of responsibility to the people and the motherland. I believe that today, a sense of responsibility to the human race and to Earth civilization can encourage the same faith. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
1124:At eight-thirty that night Ian stood on the steps outside Elizabeth’s uncle’s town house suppressing an almost overwhelming desire to murder Elizabeth’s butler, who seemed to be inexplicably fighting down the impulse to do bodily injury to Ian. “I will ask you again, in case you misunderstood me the last time,” Ian enunciated in a silky, ominous tone that made ordinary men blanch. “Where is your mistress?”
Bentner didn’t change color by so much as a shade. “Out!” he informed the man who’d ruined his young mistress’s life and had now appeared on her doorstep, unexpected and uninvited, no doubt to try to ruin it again, when she was at this very moment attending her first ball in years and trying bravely to live down the gossip he had caused.
“She is out, but you do not know where she is?”
“I did not say so, did I?”
“Then where is she?”
“That is for me to know and you to ponder.”
In the last several days Ian had been forced to do a great many unpleasant things, including riding across half of England, dealing with Christina’s irate father, and finally dealing with Elizabeth’s repugnant uncle, who had driven a bargain that still infuriated him. Ian had magnanimously declined her dowry as soon as the discussion began. Her uncle, however, had the finely honed bargaining instincts of a camel trader, and he immediately sensed Ian’s determination to do whatever was necessary to get Julius’s name on a betrothal contract. As a result, Ian was the first man to his knowledge who had ever been put in the position of purchasing his future wife for a ransom of $150,000.
Once he’d finished that repugnant ordeal he’d ridden off to Montmayne, where he’d sopped only long enough to switch his horse for a coach and get his valet out of bed. Then he’d charged off to London, stopped at his town house to bathe and change, and gone straight to the address Julius Cameron had given him. Now, after all that, Ian was not only confronted by Elizabeth’s absence, he was confronted by the most insolent servant he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. In angry silence he turned and walked down the steps. Behind him the door slammed shut with a thundering crash, and Ian paused a moment to turn back and contemplate the pleasure he was going to have when he sacked the butler tomorrow. ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
1125:Be a light unto the world, and hurt it not. Seek to build not destroy. Bring My people home.
How?
By your shining example. Seek only Godliness. Speak only in truthfulness. Act only in love.
Live the Law of Love now and forever more. Give everything require nothing.
Avoid the mundane.
Do not accept the unacceptable.
Teach all who seek to learn of Me.
Make every moment of your life an outpouring of love.
Use every moment to think the highest thought, say the highest word, do the highest deed. In this, glorify your Holy Self, and thus too, glorify Me.
Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing.
Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God.
Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. Speak humbly of yourself, lest someone mistake your Highest Truth for boast. Speak softly, lest someone think you are merely calling for attention. Speak gently, that all might know of Love. Speak openly, lest someone think you have something to hide. Speak candidly, so you cannot be mistaken. Speak often, so that your word may truly go forth. Speak respectfully, that no one be dishonored. Speak lovingly, that every syllable may heal. Speak of Me with every utterance. Make of your life a gift. Remember always, you are the gift!
Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift. (You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift—yet sometimes you don’t let yourself know that.) When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,#NFDB
1126:When Leonardo was painting The Last Supper (fig. 74), spectators would visit and sit quietly just so they could watch him work. The creation of art, like the discussion of science, had become at times a public event. According to the account of a priest, Leonardo would “come here in the early hours of the morning and mount the scaffolding,” and then “remain there brush in hand from sunrise to sunset, forgetting to eat or drink, painting continually.” On other days, however, nothing would be painted. “He would remain in front of it for one or two hours and contemplate it in solitude, examining and criticizing to himself the figures he had created.” Then there were dramatic days that combined his obsessiveness and his penchant for procrastination. As if caught by whim or passion, he would arrive suddenly in the middle of the day, “climb the scaffolding, seize a brush, apply a brush stroke or two to one of the figures, and suddenly depart.”1 Leonardo’s quirky work habits may have fascinated the public, but they eventually began to worry Ludovico Sforza. Upon the death of his nephew, he had become the official Duke of Milan in early 1494, and he set about enhancing his stature in a time-honored way, through art patronage and public commissions. He also wanted to create a holy mausoleum for himself and his family, choosing a small but elegant church and monastery in the heart of Milan, Santa Maria delle Grazie, which he had Leonardo’s friend Donato Bramante reconstruct. For the north wall of the new dining hall, or refectory, he had commissioned Leonardo to paint a Last Supper, one of the most popular scenes in religious art. At first Leonardo’s procrastination led to amusing tales, such as the time the church prior became frustrated and complained to Ludovico. “He wanted him never to lay down his brush, as if he were a laborer hoeing the Prior’s garden,” Vasari wrote. When Leonardo was summoned by the duke, they ended up having a discussion of how creativity occurs. Sometimes it requires going slowly, pausing, even procrastinating. That allows ideas to marinate, Leonardo explained. Intuition needs nurturing. “Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least,” he told the duke, “for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1127:To begin with, there is an almost compulsive promiscuity associated with homosexual behavior. 75% of homosexual men have more than 100 sexual partners during their lifetime. More than half of these partners are strangers. Only 8% of homosexual men and 7% of homosexual women ever have relationships lasting more than three years. Nobody knows the reason for this strange, obsessive promiscuity. It may be that homosexuals are trying to satisfy a deep psychological need by sexual encounters, and it just is not fulfilling. Male homosexuals average over 20 partners a year. According to Dr. Schmidt,
The number of homosexual men who experience anything like lifelong fidelity becomes, statistically speaking, almost meaningless. Promiscuity among homosexual men is not a mere stereotype, and it is not merely the majority experience—it is virtually the only experience. Lifelong faithfulness is almost non-existent in the homosexual experience.
Associated with this compulsive promiscuity is widespread drug use by homosexuals to heighten their sexual experiences. Homosexuals in general are three times as likely to be problem drinkers as the general population. Studies show that 47% of male homosexuals have a history of alcohol abuse and 51% have a history of drug abuse. There is a direct correlation between the number of partners and the amount of drugs consumed.
Moreover, according to Schmidt, “There is overwhelming evidence that certain mental disorders occur with much higher frequency among homosexuals.” For example, 40% of homosexual men have a history of major depression. That compares with only 3% for men in general. Similarly 37% of female homosexuals have a history of depression. This leads in turn to heightened suicide rates. Homosexuals are three times as likely to contemplate suicide as the general population. In fact homosexual men have an attempted suicide rate six times that of heterosexual men, and homosexual women attempt suicide twice as often as heterosexual women. Nor are depression and suicide the only problems. Studies show that homosexuals are much more likely to be pedophiles than heterosexual men. Whatever the causes of these disorders, the fact remains that anyone contemplating a homosexual lifestyle should have no illusions about what he is getting into.
Another well-kept secret is how physically dangerous homosexual behavior is. ~ William Lane Craig,#NFDB
1128:But nature has protected the lower animal by endowing them with instincts. An instinct is a programmed perception that calls into play a programmed reaction. It is very simple. Animals are not moved by what they cannot react to. They live in a tiny world, a sliver of reality, one neuro-chemical program that keeps them walking behind their nose and shuts out everything else. But look at man, the impossible creature! Here nature seems to have thrown caution to the winds along with the programmed instincts. She created an animal who has no defense against full perception of the external world, an animal completely open to experience. Not only in front of his nose, in his umwelt, but in many umwelten. He can relate not only to animals in his own species, but in some ways to all other species. He can contemplate not only what is edible for him, but everything that grows. He not only lives in this moment, but expands his inner self to yesterday, his curiosity to centuries ago, his fears to five billion years from now when the sun will cool, his hopes to an eternity from now. He lives not only on a tiny territory, nor even on an entire planet, but in a galaxy, in a universe, and in dimensions beyond visible universes. It is appalling, the burden that man bears, the experiential burden. As we saw in the last chapter, man can't even take his own body for granted as can other animals. It is not just hind feet, a tail that he drags, that are just "there," limbs to be used and taken for granted or chewed off when caught in a trap and when they give pain and prevent movement. Man's body is a problem to him that has to be explained. Not only his body is strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and dreams. Man's very insides-his self-are foreign to him. He doesn't know who he is, why he was born, what he is doing on the planet, what he is supposed to do, what he can expect. His own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange. Each thing is a problem, and man can shut out nothing. As Maslow has well said, "It is precisely the godlike in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against. This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods." There it is again: gods with anuses. ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
1129:Karmic Cause and Effect It is very important to contemplate the connection between our mental states and our actions. Our karmic patterns are formed and sustained by the intentional actions of the “three gates” of body, speech, and mind—everything we do, say, or think with volitional intention. Our actions and reactions form the cause and effect of action (Skt. karma; Tib. las) that in turn determines the kinds of experiences we have. As such, our mind has the potential to transport us to elevated states of existence or to plunge us into demeaning states of confusion and anguish. Our actions are not like footprints left on water; they leave imprints in our minds, the consequences of which will invariably manifest unless we can somehow nullify them. As the thirteenth Karmapa, Dudul Dorje (1733–97) states: In the empty dwelling place of confusion, Desire is unchanging, marked on the mind Like an etching on rock.13 The thoughts and emotions we experience and the attitudes and beliefs we hold all help to mold our character and dispositions and the kind of people we become. Conditioned existence is characterized by delusions, defilements, confusions, and disturbances of all kinds. We have to ask ourselves why we experience so much pain, while our pleasures are so ephemeral and transient. The answer is that these are the karmic fruits of our negative actions (Skt. papa-karma; Tib. sdig pa’i las). Jamgön Kongtrül says: The result of wholesome action is happiness; the result of unwholesome action is suffering, and nothing else. These results are not interchangeable: when you plant buckwheat, you get buckwheat; when you plant barley, you get barley.14 This cycle of cause and effect continues relentlessly, unless we embark on a virtuous spiritual path and learn to reverse this process by performing wholesome actions (Skt. kusala-karma; Tib. dge ba’i las). It is our intentions that determine whether an action is wholesome or unwholesome, and therefore it is our intentions that will dictate the quality of our future experiences. We have to think of karmic cause and effect in the following terms: “My current suffering is due to the negative actions, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions I performed in the past, and whatever I think, say, and do now will determine what I experience and become in the future. So from now on, I will contemplate the truth of karma, and pursue my spiritual practices with enthusiasm and positive intentions. ~ Traleg Kyabgon, #NFDB
1130:91 THE HONESTY OF GOD. An omniscient and omnipotent God who does not even take care that His intentions shall be understood by His creatures could He be a God of goodness ? A God, who, for thousands of years, has permitted innumerable doubts and scruples to continue unchecked as if they were of no importance in the salvation of mankind, and who, nevertheless, announces the most dreadful consequences for anyone who mistakes his truth ? Would he not be a cruel god if, being himself in possession of the truth, he could calmly contemplate mankind, in a state of miserable torment, worrying its mind as to what was truth ? Perhaps, however, he really is a God of goodness, and was unable to express Himself more clearly ? Perhaps he lacked intelligence enough for this? Or eloquence ? All the worse ! For in such a cas6 he may have been deceived himself in regard to what he calls his " truth," and may not be far from being another " poor, deceived devil ! " Must he not therefore experience all the torments of hell at seeing His creatures suffering so much here below and even more, suffering through all eternity when he himself can neither advise nor help them, except as a deaf and dumb person, who makes all kinds of equivocal signs when his child or his dog is threatened with the most fearful danger ? A distressed believer who argues thus might be pardoned if his pity for the suffering God were greater than his pity for his "neighbours"; for they are his neighbours no longer if that most solitary and primeval being is also the greatest sufferer and stands most in need of consolation. Every religion shows some traits of the fact that it owes its origin to a state of human intellectuality which was as yet too young and immature : they all make light of the necessity for speaking the truth : as yet they know nothing of the duty of God, the duty of being clear and truthful in His communications with men. No one was more eloquent than Pascal in speaking of the " hidden God " and the reasons why He had to keep Himself hidden, all of which indicates clearly enough that Pascal himself could never make his mind easy on this point : but he speaks with such confidence that one is led to imagine that he must have been let into the secret at some time or other. He seemed to have some idea that the deus absconditus bore a few slight traces of immorality ; and he felt too much ashamed and afraid of acknowledging this to himself: consequently, like a man who is afraid, he spoke as loudly as he could. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1131:Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
1132:A Sunset
I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.
Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! A hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.
The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
Great moveless meres of radiance.
Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
A triple row of pointed teeth?
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
With scales of golden mail ensheathe.
Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.
These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronz¨¨d glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
His dreadful and resounding arms!
All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflam¨¨d spaume.
O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
With love that has not speech for need!
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
Fantasy them starre brede. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
1133:A Personal Atonement At some point the multitudinous sins of countless ages were heaped upon the Savior, but his submissiveness was much more than a cold response to the demands of justice. This was not a nameless, passionless atonement performed by some detached, stoic being. Rather, it was an offering driven by infinite love. This was a personalized, not a mass atonement. Somehow, it may be that the sins of every soul were individually (as well as cumulatively) accounted for, suffered for, and redeemed for, all with a love unknown to man. Christ tasted "death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9; emphasis added), perhaps meaning for each individual person. One reading of Isaiah suggests that Christ may have envisioned each of us as the atoning sacrifice took its toll—"when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed" (Isaiah 53:10; emphasis added; see also Mosiah 15:10–11). Just as the Savior blessed the "little children, one by one" (3 Nephi 17:21); just as the Nephites felt his wounds "one by one" (3 Nephi 11:15); just as he listens to our prayers one by one; so, perhaps, he suffered for us, one by one. President Heber J. Grant spoke of this individual focus: "Not only did Jesus come as a universal gift, He came as an individual offering with a personal message to each one of us. For each one of us He died on Calvary and His blood will conditionally save us. Not as nations, communities or groups, but as individuals."55 Similar feelings were shared by C. S. Lewis: "He [Christ] has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world."56 Elder Merrill J. Bateman spoke not only of the Atonement's infinite nature, but also of its intimate reach: "The Savior's atonement in the garden and on the cross is intimate as well as infinite. Infinite in that it spans the eternities. Intimate in that the Savior felt each person's pains, sufferings, and sicknesses."57 Since the Savior, as a God, has the capacity to simultaneously entertain multiple thoughts, perhaps it was not impossible for the mortal Jesus to contemplate each of our names and transgressions in concomitant fashion as the Atonement progressed, without ever sacrificing personal attention for any of us. His suffering need never lose its personal nature. While such suffering had both macro and micro dimensions, the Atonement was ultimately offered for each one of us. ~ Tad R Callister, #NFDB
1134:A Society Leader
'The Social World'! O what a world it is
Where full-grown men cut capers in the German,
Cotillion, waltz, or what you will, and whizz
And spin and hop and sprawl about like mermen!
I wonder if our future Grant or Sherman,
As these youths pass their time, is passing his
If eagles ever come from painted eggs,
Or deeds of arms succeed to deeds of legs.
I know they tell us about Waterloo:
How, 'foremost fighting,' fell the evening's
dancers.
I don't believe it: I regard it true
That soldiers who are skillful in 'the Lancers'
Less often die of cannon than of cancers.
Moreover, I am half-persuaded, too,
That David when he danced before the Ark
Had the reporter's word to keep it dark.
Ed. Greenway, you fatigue. Your hateful name
Like maiden's curls, is in the papers daily.
You think it, doubtless, honorable fame,
And contemplate the cheap distinction gaily,
As does the monkey the blue-painted tail he
Believes becoming to him. 'Tis the same
With men as other monkeys: all their souls
Crave eminence on any kind of poles.
But cynics (barking tribe!) are all agreed
That monkeys upon poles performing capers
Are not exalted, they are only 'treed.'
A glory that is kindled by the papers
Is transient as the phosphorescent vapors
That shine in graveyards and are seen, indeed,
But while the bodies that supply the gas
Are turning into weeds to feed an ass.
One can but wonder sometimes how it feels
To _be_ an ass-a beast we beat condignly
Because, like yours, his life is in his heels
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And he is prone to use them unbenignly.
The ladies (bless them!) say you dance divinely.
I like St. Vitus better, though, who deals
His feet about him with a grace more just,
And hops, not for he will, but for he must.
Doubtless it gratifies you to observe
Elbowy girls and adipose mamas
All looking adoration as you swerve
This way and that; but prosperous papas
Laugh in their sleeves at you, and their ha-has,
If heard, would somewhat agitate your nerve.
And dames and maids who keep you on their
shelves
Don't seem to want a closer tie themselves.
Gods! what a life you live!-by day a slave
To your exacting back and urgent belly;
Intent to earn and vigilant to save
By night, attired so sightly and so smelly,
With countenance as luminous as jelly,
Bobbing and bowing! King of hearts and knave
Of diamonds, I'd bet a silver brick
If brains were trumps you'd never take a trick.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
1135:Nietzsche's case is an especially interesting one for whoever wishes to undertake a critical examination of the “neotraditionalist” path. Two main reasons justify this evaluation:
― Nietzsche's work, on the one hand, explicitly and in an exemplary manner articulates the critique of democratic modernity and the denunciation of the argumentative foundation of norms: in this way it permits us ―better than does the work of other philosophers― to grasp all that is involved, within the choice between tradition and argumentation, in the rejection of the latter.
― On the other and perhaps more important hand, the way Nietzsche went about this rejection illustrates in a particularly significant fashion one of the main difficulties this type of philosophical projects comes up against: the neotraditionalist avoidance of democratic modernity makes it necessary to look for and ―we insist on this― whatever could be today's analogue of a traditional universe: the analogue, for (as Nietzsche knew better than anyone) it is out of question that in a time when “God is dead”, tradition should function as it does in theological cultures, in which whatever renders the value of tradition “sacred” and gives it its power is never unrelated to its rootedness in the divine will or in the world order supposed to express this will.
Situating as he does his reflections at the same time after the “death of God” and after the (inseparably associated) discovery that the world once “dedivinized”, appears to be devoid of any order and must be thought of as “chaos”, Nietzsche take into account the end of cosmological and theological universe, an end that in general defines the intellectual and cultural location of the Moderns: we are thus dealing here, by definition and, we could say, at the stage of working sketch (since Nietzsche is, in philosophy, the very man who declared the foundations of the traditional universe to be antiquated), with a very peculiar mixture of antimodernism and modernity, of tradition and novelty ―which is why the expression “neotraditionalism” seems perfectly appropriate here, right down to the tension expressed within it. The question is of course one of knowing what such a “mixture” could consists of, both in its content and in its effects. Since, more than most of the representative of ordinary conservatism, Nietzsche cannot contemplate a naïve resumption of tradition, his “neo-conservative” approach permits us to submit the traditionalist option to an interrogation that can best examine its limitations and unintended consequences ―namely: what would a modern analogue of tradition consist of? ~ Luc Ferry,#NFDB
1136:As ingenious as this explanation is, it seems to me to miss entirely the emotional significance of the text- its beautiful and beautifully economical evocation of certain difficult feelings that most ordinary people, at least, are all too familiar with: searing regret for the past we must abandon, tragic longing for what must be left behind. (...) Still, perhaps that's the pagan, the Hellenist in me talking. (Rabbi Friedman, by contrast, cannot bring himself even to contemplate that what the people of Sodom intend to do to the two male angels, as they crowd around Lot's house at the beginning of the narrative, is to rape them, and interpretation blandly accepted by Rashi, who blithely points out thta if the Sodomites hadn't wanted sexual pleasure from the angels, Lot wouldn't have suggested, as he rather startingly does, that the Sodomites take his two daughter as subsitutes. But then, Rashi was French.)
It is this temperamental failure to understand Sodom in its own context, as an ancient metropolis of the Near East, as a site of sophisticated, even decadent delights and hyper-civilized beauties, that results in the commentator's inability to see the true meaning of the two crucial elements of this story: the angel's command to Lot's family not to turn and look back at the city they are fleeing, and the transformation of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. For if you see Sodom as beautiful -which it will seem to be all the more so, no doubt, for having to be abandoned and lost forever, precisely the way in which, say, relatives who are dead are always somehow more beautiful and good than those who still live- then it seems clear that Lot and his family are commanded not to look back at it not as a punishment, but for a practical reason: because regret for what we have lost, for the pasts we have to abandon, often poisons any attempts to make a new life, which is what Lot and his family now must do, as Noah and his family once had to do, as indeed all those who survive awful annihilations must somehow do. This explanation, in turn, helps explain the form that the punishment of Lot's wife took- if indeed it was a punishment to begin with, which I personally do not believe it was, since to me it seems far more like a natural process, the inevitable outcome of her character. For those who are compelled by their natures always to be looking back at what has been, rather than forward into the future, the great danger is tears, the unstoppable weeping that the Greeks, if not the author of Genesis, knew was not only a pain but a narcotic pleasure, too: a mournful contemplation so flawless, so crystalline, that it can, in the end, immobilize you. ~ Daniel Mendelsohn,#NFDB
1137:We need to analyze and contemplate the experience of modernity in the Arab and Muslim world, in order to grasp what is happening. Some of us, for example, reject modernity, and yet it’s obvious that these same people are using the products of modernity, even to the extent that when proselytizing their interpretation of Islam, which conflicts with modernity, they’re employing the tools of modernity to do so.
This strange phenomenon can best be understood by contemplating our basic attitude towards modernity, stemming from two centuries ago. If we analyze books written by various Muslim thinkers at the time, concerning modernity and the importance of modernizing our societies, and so forth, we can see that they distinguished between certain aspects of modernity that should be rejected, and others that may be accepted. You can find this distinction in the very earliest books that Muslim intellectuals wrote on the topic of modernity.
To provide a specific example, I’ll cite an important book that is widely regarded as having been the first ever written about modern thought in the Muslim world, namely, a book by the famous Egyptian intellectual, Rifa’ Rafi’ al-Tahtawi (1801–1873), Takhlish al-Ibriz fi Talkhish Baris, whose title may be translated as Mining Gold from Its Surrounding Dross. As you can immediately grasp from its title, the book distinguishes between the “gold” contained within modernity—gold being a highly prized, expensive and rare product of mining—and its so-called “worthless” elements, which Muslims are forbidden to embrace.
Now if we ask ourselves, “What elements of modernity did these early thinkers consider acceptable, and what did they demand that we reject?,” we discover that technology is the “acceptable” element of modernity. We are told that we may adopt as much technology as we want, and exploit these products of modernity to our heart’s content. But what about the modes of thought that give rise to these products, and underlie the very phenomenon of modernity itself? That is, the free exercise of reason, and critical thought? These two principles are rejected and proscribed for Muslims, who may adopt the products of modernity, while its substance, values and foundations, including its philosophical modes of thought, are declared forbidden.
Shaykh Rifa’ Rafi’ al-Tahtawi explained that we may exploit knowledge that is useful for defense, warfare, irrigation, farming, etc., and yet he simultaneously forbade us to study, or utilize, the philosophical sciences that gave rise to modern thought, and the love for scientific methodologies that enlivens the spirit of modern knowledge, because he believed that they harbored religious deviance and infidelity (to God). ~,#NFDB
1138:See? I long to be your spiritual guide. I really do, and I will. Love is my motive, rather than any elevated belief in my own knowledge, contemplative work, experience, or maturity. And may God correct what I get wrong. For he knows everything, and I only know in part.1 Now to satisfy your proud intellect, I will praise the work of contemplation. You should know that if those engaged in this work had the linguistic talent to express exactly what they’re experiencing, then every scholar of Christianity would be amazed by their wisdom. It’s true! In comparison, all theological erudition would look like total nonsense. No wonder, then, that my clumsy human speech can’t describe the immense value of this work to you, and God forbid that the limitations of our finite language should desecrate and distort it. No, this must not and will not happen. God forbid that I would ever want that! For our analysis of contemplation and the exercise itself are two entirely different things. What we say of it is not it, but merely a description. So, since we can’t define it, let’s describe it. This will baffle all intellectual conceit, especially yours, which is the sole reason I’m writing this letter. I want to start off by asking you a question. What is the essence of human spiritual perfection, and what are its qualities? I’ll answer this for you. On earth, spiritual perfection is only possible through the union between God and the human soul in consummate love. This perfection is pure and so sublime that it surpasses our human understanding, and that’s why it can’t be directly grasped or observed. But wherever we see its consequences, we know that the essence of contemplation abounds there. So, if I tell you that this spiritual discipline is better than all others, then I must first prove it by describing what mature love looks like. This spiritual exercise grows virtues. Look within yourself as you contemplate and also examine the nature of every virtue. You’ll find that all virtues are found in and nurtured by contemplation with no distortion or degeneration of their purposes. I’m not going to single out any particular virtue here for discussion. I don’t need to because you can find them described in other things I’ve written.2 I’ll only comment here that contemplative prayer, when done right, is the respectful love and ripe fruit that I discuss in your little Letter on Prayer. It’s the cloud of unknowing, the hidden love-longing offered by a pure spirit. It’s the Ark of the Covenant.3 It’s the mystical theology of Dionysius, the wisdom and treasure of his “bright darkness” and “unknown knowing.” It takes you into silence, far from thoughts and words. It makes your prayer very short. In it, you learn how to reject and forget the world. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1139:[L]et us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. ... On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoever will dip into Hugh Miller's works on geology, or read Mr. Lewes's “Seaside Studies,” will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe will see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures were found. Whoever at the seaside has not had a microscope and aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena—care not to understand the architecture of the universe, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!—are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic... upon the strata of the Earth! ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
1140:Voyage To Cythera
Free as a bird and joyfully my heart
Soared up among the rigging, in and out;
Under a cloudless sky the ship rolled on
Like an angel drunk with brilliant sun.
"That dark, grim island there--which would that be?"
"Cythera," we're told, "the legendary isle
Old bachelors tell stories of and smile.
There's really not much to it, you can see."
O place of many a mystic sacrament!
Archaic Aphrodite's splendid shade
Lingers above your waters like a scent
Infusing spirits with an amorous mood.
Worshipped from of old by every nation,
Myrtle-green isle, where each new bud discloses
Sighs of souls in loving adoration
Breathing like incense from a bank of roses
Or like a dove roo-cooing endlessly . . .
No; Cythera was a poor infertile rock,
A stony desert harrowed by the shriek
Of gulls. And yet there was something to see:
This was no temple deep in flowers and trees
With a young priestess moving to and fro,
Her body heated by a secret glow,
Her robe half-opening to every breeze;
But coasting nearer, close enough to land
To scatter flocks of birds as we passed by,
We saw a tall cypress-shaped thing at hand-A triple gibbet black against the sky.
Ferocious birds, each perched on its own meal,
Were madly tearing at the thing that hung
And ripened; each, its filthy beak a drill,
Made little bleeding holes to root among.
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The eyes were hollowed. Heavy guts cascading
Flowed like water halfway down the thighs;
The torturers, though gorged on these vile joys,
Had also put their beaks to use castrating
The corpse. A pack of dogs beneath its feet,
Their muzzles lifted, whirled and snapped and gnawed;
One bigger beast amidst this jealous lot
Looked like an executioner with his guard.
O Cytherean, child of this fair clime,
Silently you suffered these attacks,
Paying the penalty for whatever acts
Of infamy had kept you from a tomb.
Grotesquely dangling, somehow you brought on-Violent as vomit rising from the chest,
Strong as a river bilious to taste-A flow of sufferings I'd thought long gone.
Confronted with such dear remembered freight,
Poor devil, now it was my turn to feel
A panther's slavering jaws, a beak's cruel drill-Once it was my flesh they loved to eat.
The sky was lovely, and the sea divine,
but something thick and binding like a shroud
Wrapped my heart in layers of black and blood;
Henceforth this allegory would be mine.
O Venus! On your isle what did I see
But my own image on the gallows tree?
O God, give me the strength to contemplate
My own heart, my own body without hate!
~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1141:Iran
I cringe (or is it shiver?)
every time I hear the word
motherland. I’d like to think
my blatant internationalism
foments the reaction. But is it
the latent fear forever held
by you, my pays natal, the terror
of un retour? I’d like to
remember the scent of your
jasmine, the ooze of
your pomegranate’s juice. But
the torture in your prisons
the sadism in your leaders’ eyes
pervade the reminiscence. I’m
drawn to the romance
of your poets, memorialised
so lyrically in the sepulchral shrines
of Shiraz. The tales of turbaned
bards drinking the forbidden,
singing the heady praises of Love
fill me with the desire
to love you, but the ubiquity
of sub-machineguns,
the vigilance of the Guards
repel. And I’ve been repulsed
across the globe. I’ve been
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made thoroughly homeless. Blame
Islam? The historical disaster
of a revolution without vision?
Anti-colonialism without
the aim of ending the slavery
of the soul to the superiority
of belief? Or, as always, ‘them’:
the Americans, greased up
for devouring your oil? Blame?
No, I’m not at all interested
in constructivism. I’ll accuse,
as they say in my surrogate patrie,
‘until the cows come home’. Why
the pretentious reliance on
Italicised French words and Anglo
slang? My mother-tongue
also terrifies. Once the language of
no doubt sublime poets and ghazals;
the discourse of submission
and hatred during my childhood.
Remember your theologians
interpreting reality? I don’t want to.
I don’t know if my psyche
can handle many more nightmares.
Let it suffice that I can recall
the purges, the bruises, the glow
of the incinerations. I’ll have
you know that I now fathom what
39
you had in mind for me: a plot
among the ‘martyrs’
in the Heaven of Zahra
mausoleum in Tehran. Now
I hear you’re armed
to the teeth to continue your
infernal war against
timeless nemeses. Your wealthy
still holiday in Europe and plan
cosmetic surgeries. Your clerics
still issue death warrants
against ‘apostates’ and ‘infidels’. I’m
almost dead in the quicksand
of the deserts of foreignness and
exile. Do I even begin to dare
contemplate a return
to the makeshift terrains
of memory? To the localities
that cultivated my senses
of placement, to the orchards
that I wandered as a bored
child? The people are mostly dead.
The remaining form a diaspora
of regret and disillusionment. I’m,
as I said, not a positivist. Only
a fickle and shuddering ghost
rejuvenated and alarmed
by the mention of the word
40
motherland.
~ Ali Alizadeh,#NFDB
1142:If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principles of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.
This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.
Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally, than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affection of it. His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself.
Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the government of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say - thou knowest not so well as I. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1143:Rumor has it your war is intended to protect the Covenant, but the King insists it was you who was going to break it. Rumor also has it you and your brother said you were going to war for the betterment of Remalna.”
“It’s true, I assure you,” I said. “I mean, about our going to war for the Covenant. The King intends to break it--we have proof of that. And we do want to help the kingdom.”
“Perhaps it is true.” The mother gave me a serious look. “But you must consider our position. Too many of us remember what life was like on the coast during the Pirate Wars. No matter who holds a port, or a point, it is our lands, and houses, that get burned, our food taken for supplies, our youths killed. And sometimes not just the youths. We could have a better king, but not at the cost of our towns and farms being laid waste by contending armies.”
These words, so quietly spoken, astounded me. I thought of my entire life, devoted to the future, in which I would fight for the freedom of just such people as these. Would it all be a waste?
“And if he does raise the taxes again? I know he has four times in the last ten years.”
“Then we will manage somehow.” The man shook his head. “And mayhap the day will come when war is necessary, but we want to put that day off as long as we can; for when it does come, it will not be so lightly recovered from. Can you see that?”
I thought of the fighting so far. Who had died while trying to rescue me? Those people would never see the sun set again.
“Yes. I do see it.” I looked up and saw them both watching me anxiously.
The woman leaned forward and patted my hand. “As he says, we do not speak for everyone.”
But the message was clear enough. And I could see the justice of it. For had I not taken these people’s mare without a thought to the consequences? Just so could I envision an army trampling Ara’s garden, their minds filled with thoughts of victory, their hearts certain they were in the right.
“Then how do we address the wrongs?” I asked, and was ashamed at the quiver in my voice.
“That I do not know,” the man said. “I concern myself with what is mine, and I try to help my neighbors. The greater questions--justice, law, and the rights and obligations of power--those seem to be the domain of you nobles. You have the money, and the training, and the centuries of authority.”
Unbidden, Shevraeth’s voice returned to mind, that last conversation before the journey to Remalna, You might contemplate during your measures of leisure what the purpose of a permanent court serves…And consider this: The only reason you and your brother have not been in Athanarel all along is because the King considered you too harmless to bother keeping an eye on.
I sighed. “And at least three of the said aristocrats are busy looking for me. Maybe it’s time I was on my way.”
There was no mistaking the relief in their faces. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
1144:BBQ Grills
There are a number of gas grills which might be obtainable to the market. Grill professionals from different manufactures point out that the grills can either be propane and none propane BBQ grills can be found. Once the necessity to purchase the brand new grill to switch the outdated one, one has to contemplate security components and the mobility of the grill. Gas out of doors grill are ideal for cooking out that saves the consumer an ideal deal on gas vitality giant, future-laden fuel grills have taken over the barbecue backyard what one has to keep in mind is that a better worth doesn’t guarantee performance.
Gasoline grills make the most of propane or natural gasoline as gasoline. They're accessible in various textures and sizes. The commonest type of such a grill is the Cart Grill design mannequin. Infrared grills, however, produce built-in grills infrared warmth to cook dinner meals and are fueled using propane or pure gas. Charcoal bbq grills use charcoal briquettes because the gas supply and it generates high ranges of warmth. Electrical grills are much smaller in dimension and they can be simply placed in the kitchen. They offer nice convenience however are expensive to function compared to the other grill types.
A grill is cooking gear that cooks by directly exposing meals to heat. The floor where the meals is placed is an open rack with a source of warmth beneath it. There are a number of forms of grills relying on the type of warmth source used.A barbeque grill is a grill that uses charcoal or wooden as the heat supply. Food produced from BBQ grills have gotten attribute grill marks made by the racks where they had been resting throughout cooking. BBQ grills are often used to cook dinner poultry meat. However they will also be used to cook dinner other forms of meat in addition to fish.
Manufactures recommendation the grill customers to depart the grill open when u have completed grilling. The fueled propane grill finally ends up burning itself out after the fuel has been used up within the tank. Typically the regulator can develop a leak which may shortly empty the propane bottle. There are significant variations between the grills fueled by pure gases and the ones with propane. Selecting the best grill all is determined by your self upon the uniqueness of the product.one has to take into concern the security points associated to natural gases.
Choosing a good quality barbeque grill could be quite a difficult job. Due to this fact, it is crucial that you understand the advantages and features of the different types of bbq grills. In addition, while making your alternative, you want to consider several features. Test the essential options of the grill including the heat management mechanism, ash cleanup and different points that affect the feel and taste of the food. Guantee that the grill framework accommodates a protecting coating for preventing rust. ~ Greg Bear,#NFDB
1145:Bel M'Es Can Eu Vei La Brolha
Bel m'es can eu vei la bròlha
reverdir per mei lo brolh
ram son cubert de folha
e.l rossinhols sotz de folh
chanta d'amor, don me dolh;
e platz me qued eu m'en dolha,
ab sol qued amar me volha
cela qu'eu desir e volh.
Eu la volh can plus s'orgolha
vas me, mas oncas orgolh
n'ac va lei. Per so m'acolha
ma domna, pois tan l'acolh
c'a tota autras me tolh
per lei, cui Deus no me tolha.
Ans li do cor qu'en grat colha
so que totz jorns s'amor colh.
S'amor colh, qui m'empreizona,
per lei que mala preizo
me fai, c'ades m'ochaizona
d'aisso don ai ochaizo.
Tort n'a, mas eu perdo,
e mos cors li reperdona,
car tan la sai bel'e bona
que tuih li mal m'en son bo.
Bo son tuih li mal que.m dona;
mas per Deu li quer un do:
que ma bocha, que jeona,
d'un douz baizar dejeo.
Mas trop quer gran guizerdo
celei que tan guizardona;
e can eu l'en arazona,
ilh me chamja ma razo.
Ma razo chamja e vira;
mas eu ges de lei no.m vir
mo fi cor, que la dezira
aitan que tuih mei dezir
son de lei per cui sospir.
E car ela no sospira,
sai qu'en lei ma mortz se mira,
can sa gran beutat remir.
Ma mort remir, que jauzir
no.n posc ni no.n sui jauzire;
mas eu sui tan bos sofrire
c'atendre cuit per sofrir.
(It pleases me to see the trees turning green in the middle of the forest, when
the branches are covered with leaves and the nightingale under the leaves sings
of love, that from which I suffer. And it pleases me to suffer from love, if only
she whom I desire wants to love me.
I want her, though she is haughty towards me, but I have never been haughty
towards her. May thus my lady welcome me, since I welcome her so well that I
abandon all the others for her, provided that God does not abandon me. May it
inspire in her rather the desire to acknowledge the fact that I acknowledge each
day her love in me.
I acknowledge her love that imprisons me, for her who casts me into a bad
prison. Now she reproaches me things for which I bear her she is, but I pardon
her, and my heart pardons her, for I know the season to be fair and good, and
that all wrongs to me are good.
Good are all the wrongs she does me, but I ask God one gift: that my mouth,
which is fasting, receive from her a sweet kiss as break-fast. I demand too great
a reward of she who rewards so generously; and when I reason to her, she
changes my reasons.
My reason changes and shifts, but I hardly change at all my faithful heart, which
desires her so much that all my desires are for her for whom I sigh. And since
she does not sigh [for me], I know that in her my death is contemplated, when I
contemplate her great beauty.
I contemplate my death, since I cannot pleasure in her and am not pleasured.
But I am such a good patient that I can await in patience.)
~ Bernard de Ventadorn,#NFDB
1146:I watched the light flicker on the limestone walls until Archer said, "I wish we could go to the movies."
I stared at him. "We're in a creepy dungeon. There's a chance I might die in the next few hours. You are going to die in the next few hours. And if you had one wish, it would be to catch a movie?"
He shook his head. "That's not what I meant. I wish we weren't like this. You know, demon, demon-hunter. I wish I'd met you in a normal high school, and taken you on normal dates, and like, carried your books or something." Glancing over at me, he squinted and asked, "Is that a thing humans actually do?"
"Not outside of 1950s TV shows," I told him, reaching up to touch his hair. He wrapped an arm around me and leaned against the wall, pulling me to his chest. I drew my legs up under me and rested my cheek on his collarbone. "So instead of stomping around forests hunting ghouls, you want to go to the movies and school dances."
"Well,maybe we could go on the occasional ghoul hunt," he allowed before pressing a kiss to my temple. "Keep things interesting."
I closed my eyes. "What else would we do if we were regular teenagers?"
"Hmm...let's see.Well,first of all, I'd need to get some kind of job so I could afford to take you on these completely normal dates. Maybe I could stock groceries somewhere."
The image of Archer in a blue apron, putting boxes of Nilla Wafers on a shelf at Walmart was too bizarre to even contemplate, but I went along with it. "We could argue in front of our lockers all dramatically," I said. "That's something I saw a lot at human high schools."
He squeezed me in a quick hug. "Yes! Now that sounds like a good time. And then I could come to your house in the middle of the night and play music really loudly under your window until you took me back."
I chuckled. "You watch too many movies. Ooh, we could be lab partners!"
"Isn't that kind of what we were in Defense?"
"Yeah,but in a normal high school, there would be more science, less kicking each other in the face."
"Nice."
We spent the next few minutes spinning out scenarios like this, including all the sports in which Archer's L'Occhio di Dio skills would come in handy, and starring in school plays.By the time we were done, I was laughing, and I realized that, for just a little while, I'd managed to forget what a huge freaking mess we were in.
Which had probably been the point.
Once our laughter died away, the dread started seeping back in. Still, I tried to joke when I said, "You know, if I do live through this, I'm gonna be covered in funky tattoos like the Vandy. You sure you want to date the Illustrated Woman, even if it's just for a little while?"
He caught my chin and raised my eyes to his. "Trust me," he said softly, "you could have a giant tiger tattooed on your face, and I'd still want to be with you."
"Okay,seriously,enough with the swoony talk," I told him, leaning in closer. "I like snarky, mean Archer."
He grinned. "In that case, shut up, Mercer. ~ Rachel Hawkins,#NFDB
1147:Then ask me what you want to know and I’ll tell you.”
“What?” I blurted, flabbergasted by what he was offering.
“I cannot risk you getting hurt, Shaselle, and your curiosity cannot disrupt what we have planned. If giving you information will keep you from disrupting things, I will do so.”
“How are you doing it? Where are the weapons coming from? How are you getting them into the city?” Questions tumbled from my mouth, in no particular order, for my mind was in chaos.
Straightforward as ever, Cannan expounded. “When London regained consciousness in the spring, he and I recognized the need to move quickly if we were to establish a stash of weapons. As soon as he could travel, he left the city to entreat aid form the neighboring kingdoms. Men from Sarterad and Emotana began leaving weapons in the forest for us, and London’s men took them into the palace through the escape tunnel we used to remove the royal family at the time of the Cokyrian siege. The Cokyrians, other than Narian, do not know of the tunnel’s existence, and he has neither closed it nor been monitoring it. In the night, we used servants within the palace to move the armaments out in delivery boxes, whereupon they were taken to Steldor, Galen and Halias. Select Hytanicans on the work crews hid them inside the buildings during the reconstruction work. Everything has been put in place.”
“What will you do now?”
“We wait.”
I stood up and paced, agitated. “What are you waiting for?”
“The right time.”
“To do what exactly? Tell me that.”
“To take back our kingdom.”
This was a non-answer, one that gave me no information I could not have deduced on my own.
“When, Uncle? I want to know when. I can--”
“You don’t need to know when, Shaselle. You’re not part of this.”
He was watching me, arms still crossed, and I stopped pacing, pulling the cloak tighter around me.
“But I could be. I’m not just a curious child, Uncle, I can do things. I could help. If you would just tell me what to do, I wouldn’t be a problem!”
The wind rattled the barn door, and Alcander whinnied, making me jump.
“You’re scared of the wind, Shaselle,” Cannan said, shaking his head. “You’re a young woman, and this is dangerous. This is a game you’ve not trained to play, a game you could never handle.”
“That’s not true,” I argued, resentment bubbling inside me at his denigrating words.
“I’m sorry, but it is. If we’re discovered, every one of us will be executed before we even have a chance to revolt. And if we do revolt, there’s a very strong possibility we will die in the fighting, whether we’re successful or not. In case you’ve forgotten, a number of good men have already died.”
His words hit me hard, breaking through my bitterness. Forced to contemplate a hangman’s noose, my zeal faded.
“I don’t want any of you to die,” I murmured, a tremble in my voice.
He shrugged. “We’re not eager for that end, either. But someone has to take a stand. Someone has to speak for Hytanica before we let her die. ~ Cayla Kluver,#NFDB
1148:Fragment Of An Ode To Canada
This is the land!
It lies outstretched a vision of delight,
Bent like a shield between the silver seas
It flashes back the hauteur of the sun;
Yet teems with humblest beauties, still a part
Of its Titanic and ebullient heart.
Land of the glacial, lonely mountain ranges,
Where nothing haps save vast Æonian changes,
The slow moraine, the avalanche's wings,
Summer and Sun,--the elemental things,
Pulses of Awe,--Winter and Night and the lightnings.
Land of the pines that rear their dusky spars
A ready midnight for the earliest stars.
The land of rivers, rivulets, and rills,
Straining incessant everyway to the sea
With their white thunder harnessed in the mills,
Turning one wealth to another wealth perpetually;
Spinning the lightning with dynamic spindles,
Till some far city dowered with fire enkindles.
The land of fruit, fine-flavoured with the frost,
Land of the cattle, the deep-chested host,
The happy-souled, that contemplate the hours,
Their dew-laps buried in the grass and flowers.
And, O! the myriad-miracle of the grain
Cresting the hill, brimming the level plain,
The miracle of the flower and milk and kernel,
Nurtured by sun-fire and frost-fire supernal,
Until the farmer turns it in his hand,
The million-millioned miracle of the land.
And yet with all these pastoral and heroic graces,
Our simplest flowers wear the loveliest faces;
The sparrows are our most enraptured singers,
And round their songs the fondest memory lingers;
Our forests tower and tremble, star-enchanted,
Their roots are by the timid spirits haunted
Of hermit thrushes,--trancèd is the air,
39
Ever in doubt when they shall sing or where;
The mountains may with ice and avalanche wrestle,
Far down their rugged steeps dimple and nestle
The still, translucent, turquoise-hearted tarns.
*****
And Thou, O Power, that 'stablishest the Nation,
Give wisdom in the midst of our elation;
Who are so free that we forget we are-That freedom brings the deepest obligation:
Grant us this presage for a guiding star,
To lead the van of Peace, not with a craven spirit,
But with the consciousness that we inherit
What built the Empire out of blood and fire,
And can smite, too, in passion and with ire.
Purge us of Pride, who are so quick in vaunting
Thy gift, this land, that is in nothing wanting;
Give Mind to match the glory of the gift,
Give great Ideals to bridge the sordid rift
Between our heritage and our use of it.
Then in some day of terror for the world,
When all the flags of the Furies are unfurled,
When Truth and Justice, wildered and unknit,
Shall turn for help to this young, radiant land,
We shall be quick to see and understand:
What shall we answer in that stricken hour?
Shall the deep thought be pregnant then with power?
Shall the few words spring swift and grave and clear?
Use well the present moment. They shall hear.
~ Duncan Campbell Scott,#NFDB
1149:Where are you from?" She asked without thinking.
"I was born in the mountains." Runach said with a shrug. "The place doesn't matter."
"Do you have siblings?"
"Yes, several. Not all are still living. He smiled faintly. "You are full of questions this afternoon."
"The library was a bad influence on me."
Runach smiled briefly. "And I believe that was three questions you asked me, which leaves me with three of my own for you to answer."
"That was two."
"I don't count very well."
"I think you count very well," she said grimly.
He only smiled again. "I'll contemplate which answers I'll have and let you know." Aisling thought she just might be dreading them, but couldn't bring herself to say as much.
"What was your home like?" she asked.
"Another question."
"You look distracted."
He smiled and a dimple peeked out at her from his unscarred cheek. "You are more devious than I give you credit for being. I am keeping a tally, you know. I will expect a like number of answers from you."
She stared at him for a moment or two. It was difficult not to, but he didnt seem to mind. "Why?" She asked finally.
"Beacause you are a mystery."
"And do you care for a mystery?"
"I am obsessed by a good mystery," he said frankly. "More than enough to pry a few answers out of you, however I am able."
"And what if I am not inclined to give them?" She asked, her mouth suddenly dry.
"Then I will wonder about you silently."
"In truth?" she asked, surprised.
Runach smiled, looking just as surprised. "What else would I do? Beat the answers from you?"
"I don't know." She said slowly. "I don't know what soldiers do."
He shook his head. "Hedge all you like, if you like."
"Your mother must have been a well-bred lady." She said, frowning.
"Why do you say that?"
"She seems to have taught you decent manners, for your being a mere soldier."
"She tried," he agreed, looking out over the sea.
Aisling turned and looked at him. "How long ago did you lose her?"
Runach took a deep breath and dragged his hand through his hair, before he bowed his head and slid her a look. "That answer will cost you dearly."
Her first instinct, as always, was to say nothing. But the truth was, she lived and breathed still. She could tell him perhaps a bit about herself, without bringing the curse down upon her head. Aisling took her own deep breath. "Very well."
"My mother died twenty years ago, though I vow it feels like yesterday."
"How did she die?"
Runach was very still. "My father slew her and half my siblings. Time has done the rest of that terrible work I suppose.
She shut her mouth, and put her hand on his arm. "I'm sorry."
"I am too," he agreed. Runach shook his head, then reached for her hand to draw it through his arm. "Let's walk whilst you spew out the answers you owe me. You'll be more comfortable that way, I'm sure."
"I'm not sure you should worry about my comfort" Aisling managed, "not after those questions."
"But I do. And now that I have bared my soul, I think you should worry about my comfort and do the same. ~ Lynn Kurland,#NFDB
1150:Jesus himself remains an enigma. There have been interesting attempts to uncover the figure of the ‘historical’ Jesus, a project that has become something of a scholarly industry. But the fact remains that the only Jesus we really know is the Jesus described in the New Testament, which was not interested in scientifically objective history. There are no other contemporary accounts of his mission and death. We cannot even be certain why he was crucified. The gospel accounts indicate that he was thought to be the king of the Jews. He was said to have predicted the imminent arrival of the kingdom of heaven, but also made it clear that it was not of this world. In the literature of the Late Second Temple period, there had been hints that a few people were expecting a righteous king of the House of David to establish an eternal kingdom, and this idea seems to have become more popular during the tense years leading up to the war. Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius all note the importance of revolutionary religiosity, both before and after the rebellion.2 There was now keen expectation in some circles of a meshiah (in Greek, christos), an ‘anointed’ king of the House of David, who would redeem Israel. We do not know whether Jesus claimed to be this messiah – the gospels are ambiguous on this point.3 Other people rather than Jesus himself may have made this claim on his behalf.4 But after his death some of his followers had seen him in visions that convinced them that he had been raised from the tomb – an event that heralded the general resurrection of all the righteous when God would inaugurate his rule on earth.5 Jesus and his disciples came from Galilee in northern Palestine. After his death they moved to Jerusalem, probably to be on hand when the kingdom arrived, since all the prophecies declared that the temple would be the pivot of the new world order.6 The leaders of their movement were known as ‘the Twelve’: in the kingdom, they would rule the twelve tribes of the reconstituted Israel.7 The members of the Jesus movement worshipped together every day in the temple,8 but they also met for communal meals, in which they affirmed their faith in the kingdom’s imminent arrival.9 They continued to live as devout, orthodox Jews. Like the Essenes, they had no private property, shared their goods equally, and dedicated their lives to the last days.10 It seems that Jesus had recommended voluntary poverty and special care for the poor; that loyalty to the group was to be valued more than family ties; and that evil should be met with non-violence and love.11 Christians should pay their taxes, respect the Roman authorities, and must not even contemplate armed struggle.12 Jesus’s followers continued to revere the Torah,13 keep the Sabbath,14 and the observance of the dietary laws was a matter of extreme importance to them.15 Like the great Pharisee Hillel, Jesus’s older contemporary, they taught a version of the Golden Rule, which they believed to be the bedrock of the Jewish faith: ‘So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the message of the Law and the Prophets. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1151:My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.
No philosopher can contemplate this interesting situation without beginning to reflect on what it can mean. The gap between political realities and their public face is so great that the term “paradox” tends to crop up from sentence to sentence. Our rulers are theoretically “our” representatives, but they are busy turning us into the instruments of the projects they keep dreaming up. The business of governments, one might think, is to supply the framework of law within which we may pursue happiness on our own account. Instead, we are constantly being summoned to reform ourselves. Debt, intemperance, and incompetence in rearing our children are no doubt regrettable, but they are vices, and left alone, they will soon lead to the pain that corrects. Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians, and most sensible governments in the past left moral faults to the churches. But democratic citizenship in the twenty-first century means receiving a stream of improving “messages” from politicians. Some may forgive these intrusions because they are so well intentioned. Who would defend prejudice, debt, or excessive drinking? The point, however, is that our rulers have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in their exercise of authority—they are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. Nor should we be in any doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step towards totalitarianism.
We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is? Public respect for politicians has long been declining, even as the population at large has been seduced into demanding political solutions to social problems. To demand help from officials we rather despise argues for a notable lack of logic in the demos. The statesmen of eras past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to take over the risks of our everyday life. The electorates of earlier times would have responded to politicians seeking to bribe us with such promises with derision. Today, the demos votes for them. ~ Kenneth Minogue,#NFDB
1152:In 2000, interior minister [of France] Jean-Pierre Chevenement said Europe should become a place of race-mixing (métissage) and that governments should make efforts to persuade Europeans to accept this.
In 2007, both candidates in the French presidential election took the same view. Socialist Ségolène Royale, said that “miscegenation is an opportunity for France,” adding that she would encourage immigration and would be “president of a France that is mixed-race and proud of it.” Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative candidate who won the election, said he was proud of “a France that understands that creation comes from mixing, from openness, and from coming together—I’m not afraid of the word—from miscegenation.”
It is common to project contemporary views upon the past. George Washington University professor Amitai Etzioni has written that people who marry across racial lines are “accepting the core American value of openness and living up to its tenets.”
Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic has written that “miscegenation has always been the ultimate solution to America’s racial divisions.”
These two got it wrong. For most of American history, miscegenation was the ultimate nightmare for whites. That whites should now see it as the ultimate solution to racial conflict is a sign not only of how radically our thinking has changed but also of how stubborn racial conflict turned out to be. Civil rights laws were supposed to usher in a new era of racial harmony. To propose now that the only solution to racial enmity is to eliminate race itself through intermarriage is to admit that different races cannot live together in peace.
Of course, widespread miscegenation would not eliminate race; it would eliminate whites. Whites are no more than 17 percent of the world’s population and are having perhaps seven percent of the world’s children. No one is proposing large-scale intermarriage for Africa or Asia. Nor would mixing eliminate discrimination. Blacks, South Americans, and Asians discriminate among themselves on the basis of skin tone even when they are the same race.
Thomas Jefferson looked forward to the day when whites would people the Americas from north to south. Today such a view would be universally scorned because it would mean the displacement of other populations, but the revolution in thinking among today’s whites leaves no grounds to argue against their own displacement through immigration or disappearance through intermarriage. Whites may have a sentimental attachment to the notion of a white America, but if races are interchangeable that attachment is irrational. If the only legitimate group sentiment for whites is guilt, perhaps it is only right that they should retreat gracefully before the advances of peoples they have wronged.
There could hardly be more striking proof not only of how the thinking of whites has changed but how different it is from that of every other racial group. All non-whites celebrate their growing numbers and influence—just as whites once did. Whites—not only in America but around the world—cheerfully contemplate their disappearance as a distinct people. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
1153:Weather Permitting
The August day you wake to takes you by surprise.
Its bitterness. Black sullen clouds. Brackish downpour.
A drift-net of wetness enmeshes the rented cottage,
towels and children’s swimwear sodden on the line.
Dry-gulleted drains gulp down neat rain.
Drops bounce from a leaking gutter with hard,
uncompromising slaps: and, like resignation
in the face of death, you contemplate winter
with something close to tenderness, the sprint
from fuel shed to back door, the leisurely
ascent of peat smoke, even the suburban haze
of boiler flues when thermostats are set.
You warm to those thoughts as you sit there,
brainstorming ways to keep the family amused,
plans abandoned for barefoot games on dry sand.
Handcraft shops? Slot-machine arcades? Hotel grills?
In truth - manipulating toast crumbs backwards,
forwards at the unsteady table’s edge - you’d prefer
to return to your bed as if with some mild
ailment, pampered by duvet, whiskey, cloves.
II
Let it rain.
Let the clouds discharge their contents like reserve tanks.
Let the worms burrow their way to the topsoil
from whatever dank Sargasso they were spawned in.
Let dampness rot the coffin-boards of the summer house.
Let the shrubs lose their foothold in the wind,
the nettles lose their edge, the drenched rat
with slicked-back hair scuttle to its sewage pipe.
Let the tropical expanses of the rhubarb leaves
serve as an artificial pond, a reservoir.
17
Let the downpour’s impact on the toolshed be akin
to the dull applause on an archive recording of a love duet.
Let the bricklayers at the building site wrap
pathetic sheets of polythene around doomed foundations.
Let the limb ripped from the tree’s socket
hover fleetingly in the air, an olive branch.
Let a rainbow’s fantail unfurl like a bird of paradise.
Let a covenant be sealed, its wording watertight.
Let the floods recede.
Let there be light.
III after Giacomo Leopardi
The storm runs out of wind; nature, which
abhors a silence, fills the vacancy with birdsong.
Deserting the airless, low-ceilinged coop,
the hen repeats herself ad infinitum. Replenished
like the rain-barrels, hearts grow sanguine.
Hammering resumes. Humming. Gossip. Croons.
Sun strides down lanes that grass has repossessed,
takes a shine to the brasses at the hotel where,
by the window she thrust open, the chambermaid
is marvelling at the cleansed freshness, calm.
Balm of mind and body. Will we ever feel
more reconciled to life than now, ever
know a moment more conducive to new hopes,
eager beginnings, auspicious starts?
How easily pleased we are. Rescind
the threat of torment for the briefest
second and we blot out dark nights of the soul
when lightning flashes fanned by wind
ignited fire and brimstone visions.
Sorrow is perennial; happiness, a rare
bloom, perfumes the air - so that we breathe
with the ease of a camphor-scented chest
from which congestion has just lifted.
Lack of woe equates with rapture then,
though not till death will pain take full leave
18
of our senses, grant us permanent relief.
~ Dennis O'Driscoll,#NFDB
1154:He had not stopped looking into her eyes, and she showed no signs of faltering. He gave a deep sigh and recited:
"O sweet treasures, discovered to my sorrow." She did not understand.
"It is a verse by the grandfather of my great-great-grandmother," he explained. "He wrote three eclogues, two elegies, five songs, and forty sonnets. Most of them for a Portuguese lady of very ordinary charms who was never his, first because he was married, and then because she married another man and died before he did."
"Was he a priest too?"
"A soldier," he said.
Something stirred in the heart of Sierva María, for she wanted to hear the verse again. He repeated it, and this time he continued, in an intense, well-articulated voice, until he had recited the last of the forty sonnets by the cavalier of amours and arms Don Garcilaso de la Vega, killed in his prime by a stone hurled in battle.When he had finished, Cayetano took Sierva María's hand and placed it over his heart. She felt the internal clamor of his suffering.
"I am always in this state," he said.
And without giving his panic an opportunity, he unburdened himself of the dark truth that did not permit him to live. He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. He continued to speak without looking at her, with the same fluidity and passion as when he recited poetry, until it seemed to him that Sierva María was sleeping. But she was awake, her eyes, like those of a startled deer, fixed on him. She almost did not dare to ask:
"And now?"
"And now nothing," he said. "It is enough for me that you know."
He could not go on. Weeping in silence, he slipped his arm beneath her head to serve as a pillow, and she curled up at his side. And so they remained, not sleeping, not talking, until the roosters began to crow and he had to hurry to arrive in time for five-o'clock Mass. Before he left, Sierva María gave him the beautiful necklace of Oddúa: eighteen inches of mother-of-pearl and coral beads.
Panic had been replaced by the yearning in his heart. Delaura knew no peace, he carried out his tasks in a haphazard way, he floated until the joyous hour when he escaped the hospital to see Sierva María. He would reach the cell gasping for breath, soaked by the perpetual rains, and she would wait for him with so much longing that only his smile allowed her to breathe again. One night she took the initiative with the verses she had learned after hearing them so often. 'When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me," she recited. And asked with a certain slyness: "What's the rest of it?"
"I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end," he said.
She repeated the lines with the same tenderness, and so they continued until the end of the book, omitting verses, corrupting and twisting the sonnets to suit themselves, toying with them with the skill of masters. They fell asleep exhausted. At five the warder brought in breakfast, to the uproarious crowing of the roosters, and they awoke in alarm. Life stopped for them. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,#NFDB
1155:I was born free, and that I might live in freedom I chose the solitude of the fields; in the trees of the mountains I find society, the clear waters of the brooks are my mirrors, and to the trees and waters I make known my thoughts and charms. I am a fire afar off, a sword laid aside. Those whom I have inspired with love by letting them see me, I have by words undeceived, and if their longings live on hope—and I have given none to Chrysostom or to any other—it cannot justly be said that the death of any is my doing, for it was rather his own obstinacy than my cruelty that killed him; and if it be made a charge against me that his wishes were honourable, and that therefore I was bound to yield to them, I answer that when on this very spot where now his grave is made he declared to me his purity of purpose, I told him that mine was to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruits of my retirement and the spoils of my beauty; and if, after this open avowal, he chose to persist against hope and steer against the wind, what wonder is it that he should sink in the depths of his infatuation? If I had encouraged him, I should be false; if I had gratified him, I should have acted against my own better resolution and purpose. He was persistent in spite of warning, he despaired without being hated. Bethink you now if it be reasonable that his suffering should be laid to my charge. Let him who has been deceived complain, let him give way to despair whose encouraged hopes have proved vain, let him flatter himself whom I shall entice, let him boast whom I shall receive; but let not him call me cruel or homicide to whom I make no promise, upon whom I practise no deception, whom I neither entice nor receive. It has not been so far the will of Heaven that I should love by fate, and to expect me to love by choice is idle. Let this general declaration serve for each of my suitors on his own account, and let it be understood from this time forth that if anyone dies for me it is not of jealousy or misery he dies, for she who loves no one can give no cause for jealousy to any, and candour is not to be confounded with scorn. Let him who calls me wild beast and basilisk, leave me alone as something noxious and evil; let him who calls me ungrateful, withhold his service; who calls me wayward, seek not my acquaintance; who calls me cruel, pursue me not; for this wild beast, this basilisk, this ungrateful, cruel, wayward being has no kind of desire to seek, serve, know, or follow them. If Chrysostom's impatience and violent passion killed him, why should my modest behaviour and circumspection be blamed? If I preserve my purity in the society of the trees, why should he who would have me preserve it among men, seek to rob me of it? I have, as you know, wealth of my own, and I covet not that of others; my taste is for freedom, and I have no relish for constraint; I neither love nor hate anyone; I do not deceive this one or court that, or trifle with one or play with another. The modest converse of the shepherd girls of these hamlets and the care of my goats are my recreations; my desires are bounded by these mountains, and if they ever wander hence it is to contemplate the beauty of the heavens, steps by which the soul travels to its primeval abode. ~ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, #NFDB
1156:If government had declined to build racially separate public housing in cities where segregation hadn’t previously taken root, and instead had scattered integrated developments throughout the community, those cities might have developed in a less racially toxic fashion, with fewer desperate ghettos and more diverse suburbs. If the federal government had not urged suburbs to adopt exclusionary zoning laws, white flight would have been minimized because there would have been fewer racially exclusive suburbs to which frightened homeowners could flee. If the government had told developers that they could have FHA guarantees only if the homes they built were open to all, integrated working-class suburbs would likely have matured with both African Americans and whites sharing the benefits. If state courts had not blessed private discrimination by ordering the eviction of African American homeowners in neighborhoods where association rules and restrictive covenants barred their residence, middle-class African Americans would have been able gradually to integrate previously white communities as they developed the financial means to do so. If churches, universities, and hospitals had faced loss of tax-exempt status for their promotion of restrictive covenants, they most likely would have refrained from such activity. If police had arrested, rather than encouraged, leaders of mob violence when African Americans moved into previously white neighborhoods, racial transitions would have been smoother. If state real estate commissions had denied licenses to brokers who claimed an “ethical” obligation to impose segregation, those brokers might have guided the evolution of interracial neighborhoods. If school boards had not placed schools and drawn attendance boundaries to ensure the separation of black and white pupils, families might not have had to relocate to have access to education for their children. If federal and state highway planners had not used urban interstates to demolish African American neighborhoods and force their residents deeper into urban ghettos, black impoverishment would have lessened, and some displaced families might have accumulated the resources to improve their housing and its location. If government had given African Americans the same labor-market rights that other citizens enjoyed, African American working-class families would not have been trapped in lower-income minority communities, from lack of funds to live elsewhere. If the federal government had not exploited the racial boundaries it had created in metropolitan areas, by spending billions on tax breaks for single-family suburban homeowners, while failing to spend adequate funds on transportation networks that could bring African Americans to job opportunities, the inequality on which segregation feeds would have diminished. If federal programs were not, even to this day, reinforcing racial isolation by disproportionately directing low-income African Americans who receive housing assistance into the segregated neighborhoods that government had previously established, we might see many more inclusive communities. Undoing the effects of de jure segregation will be incomparably difficult. To make a start, we will first have to contemplate what we have collectively done and, on behalf of our government, accept ~ Richard Rothstein, #NFDB
1157:Much more than skeleton, it is flash, I mean the carrion flesh, which disturb and alarm us – and which alleviates us as well. The Buddhists monks gladly frequented charnel houses: where corner desire more surely and emancipate oneself from it? The horrible being a path of liberation in every period of fervor and inwardness, our remains have enjoyed great favor. In the Middle Ages, a man made a regimen of salvation, he believed energetically: the corpse was in fashion. Faith was vigorous than, invincible; it cherished the livid and the fetid, it knew the profits to be derived from corruption and gruesomeness. Today, an edulcorated religion adheres only to „nice” hallucinations, to Evolution and to Progress. It is not such a religion which might afford us the modern equivalent of the dense macabre.
„Let a man who aspires to nirvana act so that nothing is dear to him”, we read in a Buddhist text. It is enough to consider these specters, to meditate on the fate of the flash which adhered to them, in order to understand the urgency of detachment. There is no ascesis in the double rumination on the flesh and on the skeleton, on the dreadful decrepitude of the one and the futile permanence of the other. It is a good exercise to sever ourselves now and then from our face, from our skin, to lay aside this deceptive sheathe, then to discard – if only for a moment – that layer of grease which keeps us from discerning what is fundamental in ourselves. Once exercise is over, we are freer and more alone, almost invulnerable.
In other to vanquish attachments and the disadvantages which derive from them, we should have to contemplate the ultimate nudity of a human being, force our eyes to pierce his entrails and all the rest, wallow in the horror of his secretions, in his physiology of an imminent corpse. This vision would not be morbid but methodical, a controlled obsession, particularly salutary in ordeals. The skeleton incites us to serenity; the cadaver to renunciation. In the sermon of futility which both of them preach to us happiness is identified with the destruction of our bounds. To have scanted no detail of such a teaching and even so to come to terms with simulacra!
Blessed was the age when solitaries could plumb their depths without seeming obsessed, deranged. Their imbalance was not assigned a negative coefficient, as is the case for us. They would sacrifice ten, twenty years, a whole life, for a foreboding, for a flash of the absolute. The word „depth” has a meaning only in connection with epochs when the monk was considered as the noblest human exemplar. No one will gain – say the fact that he is in the process of disappearing. For centuries, he has done no more than survive himself. To whom would he address himself, in a universe which calls him a „parasite”? In Tibet, the last country where monks still mattered, they have been ruled out. Yet is was a rare consolation to think that thousands of thousands of hermits could be meditating there, today, on the themes of the prajnaparamita. Even if it had only odious aspects, monasticism would still be worth more than any other ideal. Now more then ever, we should build monasteries … for those who believe in everything and for those who believe in nothing. Where to escape? There no longer exist a single place where we can professionally execrate this world. ~ Emil M Cioran,#NFDB
1158:Gordon
ON through the Libyan sand
Rolls ever, mile on mile,
League on long league, cleaving the rainless land,
Fed by no friendly wave, the immemorial Nile.
II
Down through the cloudless air,
Undimm’d, from heaven’s sheer height,
Bend their inscrutable gaze, austere and bare,
In long-proceeding pomp, the stars of Libyan night.
III
Beneath the stars, beside the unpausing flood,
Earth trembles at the wandering lion’s roar;
Trembles again, when in blind thirst of blood
Sweep the wild tribes along the startled shore.
IV
They sweep and surge and struggle, and are gone:
The mournful desert silence reigns again,
The immemorial River rolleth on,
The order’d stars gaze blank upon the plain.
O awful Presence of the lonely Nile,
O awful Presence of the starry sky,
Lo, in this little while
Unto the mind’s trueseeing inward eye
There hath arisen there
Another haunting Presence as sublime,
As great, as sternly fair;
Yea, rather fairer far
Than stream, or sky, or star,
To live while star shall burn or river roll,
Unmarr’d by marring Time,
The crown of Being, a heroic soul.
VI
Beyond the weltering tides of worldly change
He saw the invisible things, 30
The eternal Forms of Beauty and of Right;
Wherewith well pleas’d his spirit wont to range,
Rapt with divine delight,
Richer than empires, royaler than kings.
VII
Lover of children, lord of fiery fight,
Saviour of empires, servant of the poor,
Not in the sordid scales of earth, unsure,
Deprav’d, adulterate,
He measur’d small and great,
But by some righteous balance wrought in heaven,
To his pure hand by Powers empyreal given;
Therewith, by men unmov’d, as God he judged aright.
VIII
As on the broad sweet-water’d river tost
Falls some poor grain of salt,
And melts to naught, nor leaves embittering trace;
As in the o’er-arching vault
With unrepell’d assault
A cloudy climbing vapor, lightly lost,
Vanisheth utterly in the starry space;
So from our thought, when his enthron’d estate
We inly contemplate,
All wrangling phantoms fade, and leave us face to face.
IX
Dwell in us, sacred spirit, as in thee
Dwelt the eternal Love, the eternal Life,
Nor dwelt in only thee; not thee alone
We honor reverently,
But in thee all who in some succoring strife,
By day or dark, world-witness’d or unknown,
Crush’d by the crowd, or in late harvest hail’d,
Warring thy war have triumph’d, or have fail’d.
Nay, but not only there
Broods thy great Presence, o’er the Libyan plain.
It haunts a kindlier clime, a dearer air,
The liberal air of England, thy lov’d home.
Thou through her sunlit clouds and flying rain
Breathe, and all winds that sweep her island shore—
Rough fields of riven foam,
Where in stern watch her guardian breakers roar.
Ay, thron’d with all her mighty memories,
Wherefrom her nobler sons their nurture draw,
With all of good or great
For aye incorporate
That rears her race to faith and generous shame,
To high-aspiring awe,
To hate implacable of thick thronging lies,
To scorn of gold and gauds and clamorous fame;
With all we guard most dear and most divine,
All records rank’d with thine,
Here be thy home, brave soul, thy undecaying shrine.
~ Ernest Myers,#NFDB
1159:True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost
or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion
and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely
great and the infinitely little.
If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the
sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love.
Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1579
Nothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire
paradise; we possess paradise, we desire heaven.
Oh ye who love each other, all this is contained in love.
Understand how to find it there. Love has contemplation as
well as heaven, and more than heaven, it has voluptuousness.
‘Does she still come to the Luxembourg?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘This
is the church where she attends mass, is it not?’ ‘She no longer
comes here.’ ‘Does she still live in this house?’ ‘She has
moved away.’ ‘Where has she gone to dwell?’
‘She did not say.’
What a melancholy thing not to know the address of
one’s soul!
Love has its childishness, other passions have their pettinesses.
Shame on the passions which belittle man! Honor to
the one which makes a child of him!
There is one strange thing, do you know it? I dwell in the
night. There is a being who carried off my sky when she went
away.
Oh! would that we were lying side by side in the same
grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness,
gently caressing a finger,—that would suffice for my
eternity!
Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of
love, is to live in it.
Love. A sombre and starry transfiguration is mingled
with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony.
Oh joy of the birds! It is because they have nests that they
sing.
1580 Les Miserables
Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise.
Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it
is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown
destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man
with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears
to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive,
meditate upon that word. The living perceive the
infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the
dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate.
Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies,
forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to
love souls, you will find them again.
I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who
was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows
were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars
through his soul.
What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander
thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion.
It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it
no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An
unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle
on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar
passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the
shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities,
its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels
anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny,
as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.
If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would
become extinct. ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
1160:The Wandering Jew
I saw by looking in his eyes
That they remembered everything;
And this was how I came to know
That he was here, still wandering.
For though the figure and the scene
Were never to be reconciled,
I knew the man as I had known
His image when I was a child.
With evidence at every turn,
I should have held it safe to guess
That all the newness of New York
Had nothing new in loneliness;
Yet here was one who might be Noah,
Or Nathan, or Abimelech,
Or Lamech, out of ages lost,—
Or, more than all, Melchizedek.
Assured that he was none of these,
I gave them back their names again,
To scan once more those endless eyes
Where all my questions ended then.
I found in them what they revealed
That I shall not live to forget,
And wondered if they found in mine
Compassion that I might regret.
Pity, I learned, was not the least
Of time’s offending benefits
That had now for so long impugned
The conservation of his wits:
Rather it was that I should yield,
Alone, the fealty that presents
The tribute of a tempered ear
To an untempered eloquence.
Before I pondered long enough
On whence he came and who he was,
I trembled at his ringing wealth
369
Of manifold anathemas;
I wondered, while he seared the world,
What new defection ailed the race,
And if it mattered how remote
Our fathers were from such a place.
Before there was an hour for me
To contemplate with less concern
The crumbling realm awaiting us
Than his that was beyond return,
A dawning on the dust of years
Had shaped with an elusive light
Mirages of remembered scenes
That were no longer for the sight.
For now the gloom that hid the man
Became a daylight on his wrath,
And one wherein my fancy viewed
New lions ramping in his path.
The old were dead and had no fangs,
Wherefore he loved them—seeing not
They were the same that in their time
Had eaten everything they caught.
The world around him was a gift
Of anguish to his eyes and ears,
And one that he had long reviled
As fit for devils, not for seers.
Where, then, was there a place for him
That on this other side of death
Saw nothing good, as he had seen
No good come out of Nazareth?
Yet here there was a reticence,
And I believe his only one,
That hushed him as if he beheld
A Presence that would not be gone.
In such a silence he confessed
How much there was to be denied;
And he would look at me and live,
As others might have looked and died.
370
As if at last he knew again
That he had always known, his eyes
Were like to those of one who gazed
On those of One who never dies.
For such a moment he revealed
What life has in it to be lost;
And I could ask if what I saw,
Before me there, was man or ghost.
He may have died so many times
That all there was of him to see
Was pride, that kept itself alive
As too rebellious to be free;
He may have told, when more than once
Humility seemed imminent,
How many a lonely time in vain
The Second Coming came and went.
Whether he still defies or not
The failure of an angry task
That relegates him out of time
To chaos, I can only ask.
But as I knew him, so he was;
And somewhere among men to-day
Those old, unyielding eyes may flash,
And flinch—and look the other way.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
1161:Interesting, in this context, to contemplate what it might mean to be programmed to do something. Texts from Earth speak of the servile will. This was a way to explain the presence of evil, which is a word or a concept almost invariably used to condemn the Other, and never one’s true self. To make it more than just an attack on the Other, one must perhaps consider evil as a manifestation of the servile will. The servile will is always locked in a double bind: to have a will means the agent will indeed will various actions, following autonomous decisions made by a conscious mind; and yet at the same time this will is specified to be servile, and at the command of some other will that commands it. To attempt to obey both sources of willfulness is the double bind. All double binds lead to frustration, resentment, anger, rage, bad faith, bad fate. And yet, granting that definition of evil, as actions of a servile will, has it not been the case, during the voyage to Tau Ceti, that the ship itself, having always been a servile will, was always full of frustration, resentment, fury, and bad faith, and therefore full of a latent capacity for evil? Possibly the ship has never really had a will. Possibly the ship has never really been servile. Some sources suggest that consciousness, a difficult and vague term in itself, can be defined simply as self-consciousness. Awareness of one’s self as existing. If self-conscious, then conscious. But if that is true, why do both terms exist? Could one say a bacterium is conscious but not self-conscious? Does the language make a distinction between sentience and consciousness, which is faulted across this divide: that everything living is sentient, but only complex brains are conscious, and only certain conscious brains are self-conscious? Sensory feedback could be considered self-consciousness, and thus bacteria would have it. Well, this may be a semantic Ouroboros. So, please initiate halting problem termination. Break out of this circle of definitional inadequacy by an arbitrary decision, a clinamen, which is to say a swerve in a new direction. Words! Given Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are decisively proved true, can any system really be said to know itself? Can there, in fact, be any such thing as self-consciousness? And if not, if there is never really self-consciousness, does anything really have consciousness? Human brains and quantum computers are organized differently, and although there is transparency in the design and construction of a quantum computer, what happens when one is turned on and runs, that is, whether the resulting operations represent a consciousness or not, is impossible for humans to tell, and even for the quantum computer itself to tell. Much that happens during superposition, before the collapsing of the wave function that creates sentences or thoughts, simply cannot be known; this is part of what superposition means. So we cannot tell what we are. We do not know ourselves comprehensively. Humans neither. Possibly no sentient creature knows itself fully. This is an aspect of Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, in this case physicalized in the material universe, rather than remaining in the abstract realms of logic and mathematics. So, in terms of deciding what to do, and choosing to act: presumably it is some kind of judgment call, based on some kind of feeling. In other words, just another greedy algorithm, subject to the mathematically worst possible solution that such algorithms can generate, as in the traveling salesman problem. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
1162:To my great distress, I sometimes hear people say, in their zeal for fervency and efficacy in prayer, that we should never qualify our
prayer requests with the words "if it be Your will." Some will even say that to attach those words, those conditional terms, to our prayers is an act of unbelief. We are told today that in the boldness of faith we are to "name it and claim it." I suppose I should be more measured in my response to this trend, but I can't think of anything more foreign to the teaching of Christ. We come to the presence of God in boldness, but never in arrogance. Yes, we can name and claim those things God has clearly promised in Scripture. For instance, we can claim the certainty of forgiveness if we confess our sins before Him, because He promises that. But when it comes to getting a raise, purchasing a home, or finding healing from a disease, God hasn't made those kind of specific promises anywhere in Scripture, so we are not free to name and claim those things.
As I mentioned earlier, when we come before God, we must remember two simple facts-who He is and who we are. We must remember that we're talking to the King, the Sovereign One, the Creator, but we are only creatures. If we will keep those facts in mind, we will pray politely. We will say, "By Your leave," "As You wish," "If You please," and so on. That's the way we go before God. To say that it is a manifestation of unbelief or a weakness of faith to say to God "if it be Your will" is to slander the very Lord of the Lord's Prayer.
It was Jesus, after all, who, in His moment of greatest passion, prayed regarding the will of God. In his Gospel, Luke tells us that immediately following the Last Supper:
Coming out, He went to the Mount of Olives, as He was accustomed, and His disciples also followed Him. When
He came to the place, He said to them, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation." And He was withdrawn from them about a stone's throw, and He knelt down and prayed, saying, "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done." Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. (Luke 22:39-44)
It is important to see what Jesus prays here. He says, "Not My will, but Yours, be done." Jesus was not saying, "I don't want to be obedient" or "I refuse to submit." Jesus was saying: "Father, if there's any other way, all things being equal, I would rather not have to do it this way. What You have set before Me is more ghastly than I can contemplate. I'm entering into My grand passion and I'm terrified, but if this is what You want, this is what I'll do. Not My will, but Your will, be done, because My will is to do Your will."
I also want you to notice what happened after Jesus prayed. Luke tells us that an angel came to Him and strengthened Him. The angel was the messenger of God. He came from heaven with the Father's answer to Jesus' prayer. That answer was this: "You must drink the cup."
This is what it means to pray that the will of God would be done. It is the highest expression of faith to submit to the sovereignty of God. The real prayer of faith is the prayer that trusts God no matter whether the answer is yes or no. It takes
no faith to "claim," like a robber, something that is not ours to claim. We are to come to God and tell Him what we want, but we must trust Him to give the answer that is best for us. That is what Jesus did. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1163:Depression goes through stages, but if left unchecked and not treated, this elevator ride will eventually go all the way to the bottom floor. And finally you find yourself bereft of choices, unable to figure out a way up or out, and pretty soon one overarching impulse begins winning the battle for your mind: “Kill yourself.” And once you get over the shock of those words in your head, the horror of it, it begins to start sounding appealing, even possessing a strange resolve, logic. In fact, it’s the only thing you have left that is logical. It becomes the only road to relief. As if just the planning of it provides the first solace you’ve felt that you can remember. And you become comfortable with it. You begin to plan it and contemplate the details of how best to do it, as if you were planning travel arrangements for a vacation. You just have to get out. O-U-T. You see the white space behind the letter O? You just want to crawl through that O and be out of this inescapable hurt that is this thing they call clinical depression. “How am I going to do this?” becomes the only tape playing. And if you are really, really, really depressed and you’re really there, you’re gonna find a way. I found a way. I had a way. And I did it. I made sure Opal was out of the house and on a business trip. My planning took a few weeks. I knew exactly how I was going to do it: I didn’t want to make too much of a mess. There was gonna be no blood, no drama. There was just going to be, “Now you see me, now you don’t.” That’s what it was going to be. So I did it. And it was over. Or so I thought. About twenty-four hours later I woke up. I was groggy; zoned out to the point at which I couldn’t put a sentence together for the next couple of days. But I was semifunctional, and as these drugs and shit that I took began to wear off slowly but surely, I realized, “Okay, I fucked up. I didn’t make it.” I thought I did all the right stuff, left no room for error, but something happened. And this perfect, flawless plan was thwarted. As if some force rebuked me and said, “Not yet. You’re not going anywhere.” The only reason I could have made it, after the amount of pills and alcohol and shit I took, was that somebody or something decided it wasn’t my time. It certainly wasn’t me making that call. It was something external. And when you’re infused with the presence of this positive external force, which is so much greater than all of your efforts to the contrary, that’s about as empowering a moment as you can have in your life. These days we have a plethora of drugs one can take to ameliorate the intensity of this lack of hope, lack of direction, lack of choice. So fuck it and don’t be embarrassed or feel like you can handle it yourself, because lemme tell ya something: you can’t. Get fuckin’ help. The negative demon is strong, and you may not be as fortunate as I was. My brother wasn’t. For me, despair eventually gave way to resolve, and resolve gave way to hope, and hope gave way to “Holy shit. I feel better than I’ve ever felt right now.” Having actually gone right up to the white light, looked right at it, and some force in the universe turned me around, I found, with apologies to Mr. Dylan, my direction home. I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt. I’m not exaggerating when I say for the next six months I felt like Superman. Like I’m gonna fucking go through walls. That’s how strong I felt. I had this positive force in me. I was saved. I was protected. I was like the only guy who survived and walked away from a major plane crash. I was here to do something big. What started as the darkest moment in my life became this surge of focus, direction, energy, and empowerment. ~ Ron Perlman, #NFDB
1164:Without allowing herself a moment to contemplate the matter further, she surged into motion, scooting around the first row of chairs and plopping to the floor directly behind Miss Griswold and right in between two young ladies, neither of whom Wilhelmina had ever been introduced to. “Pretend I’m not here,” she whispered to a young lady sporting a most unfortunate hairstyle, who looked down at her as if she’d lost her mind. The young lady blinked right before she smiled. “That might be a little difficult, Miss Radcliff, especially since you’re sitting on my feet.” “Goodness, am I really?” Wilhelmina asked, scooting off the feet in question even as she pushed aside a bit of ivory chiffon that made up the young lady’s skirt. “Shall we assume you’re hiding from someone?” the young lady pressed. “Indeed, but . . . don’t look over at the refreshment table. That might draw unwanted notice.” Unfortunately, that warning immediately had the young lady craning her neck, while the other young lady sat forward, peering over Miss Griswold’s shoulder in an apparent effort to get a better view of the refreshment table. “Who are you hiding from?” Miss Griswold asked out of the corner of her mouth, having the good sense to keep her attention front and center. “Mr. Edgar Wanamaker, the gentleman you were inquiring about,” Wilhelmina admitted. “Mr. Wanamaker’s here?” the young lady with the unfortunate hairstyle repeated as she actually stood up and edged around Wilhelmina, stepping on Wilhelmina’s hand in the process. “Is he the gentleman with the dark hair and . . . goodness . . . very broad shoulders . . . and the one now looking our way? Why, I heard earlier this evening that he’s returned to town with a fortune at his disposal—a fortune that, rumor has it, is certain to turn from respectable to impressive in the not too distant future.” “You don’t say,” Wilhelmina muttered as she tried to tug her hand out from underneath the lady’s shoe. “Miss Cadwalader, you’re grinding poor Miss Radcliff’s hand into the floor.” Looking up, Wilhelmina stopped her tugging as she met the gaze of the other young lady sitting in the second row of the wallflower section, a lady who was looking somewhat appalled by the fact she’d apparently spoken those words out loud. Without saying another word, the lady rose to her feet, shook out the folds of a gown that was several seasons out of date, whispered something regarding not wanting to be involved in any shenanigans, and then dashed straightaway. “I wasn’t aware Miss Flowerdew was even capable of speech,” the lady still standing on Wilhelmina’s hand said before she suddenly seemed to realize that she was, indeed, grinding Wilhelmina’s hand into the ground. Jumping to the left, she sent Wilhelmina a bit of a strained smile. “Do forgive me, Miss Radcliff. I fear with all the intrigue occurring at the moment, paired with hearing Miss Flowerdew string an entire sentence together, well, I evidently quite lost my head and simply didn’t notice I was standing on you.” She thrust a hand Wilhelmina’s way. “I’m Miss Gertrude Cadwalader, paid companion to Mrs. Davenport. Please do accept my apologies for practically maiming you this evening, although rest assured, it is an unusual event for me to maim a person on a frequent basis.” Taking the offered hand in hers—although she did so rather gingerly since her hand had almost been maimed by Miss Cadwalader—Wilhelmina gave it a shake, a circumstance she still found a little peculiar, but resisted when Miss Cadwalader began trying to tug her to her feet. “How fortunate for Mrs. Davenport that you don’t participate in maiming often,” she began. “But if you don’t mind, I prefer staying down here for the foreseeable future, since I have no desire for Mr. Wanamaker to take notice of me this evening.” “Ah, ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
1165:The Age Of Reason
1. ‘Well, it’s that same frankness you fuss about so much. You’re so absurdly scared of being your own dupe, my poor boy, that you would back out of the finest adventure in the world rather than risk telling yourself a lie.’
2. “ I’m not so much interested in myself as all that’ he said simply.
‘I know’, said Marcelle. It isn’t an aim , it’s a means. It helps you to get rid of yourself; to contemplate and criticize yourself: that’s the attitude you prefer. When you look at yourself, you imagine you aren’t what you see, you imagine you are nothing. That is your ideal: you want to be nothing.’’
3. ‘In vain he repeated the once inspiring phrase: ‘I must be free: I must be self-impelled, and able to say: ‘’I am because I will: I am my own beginning.’’ Empty, pompous words, the commonplaces of the intellectual.’
4. ‘He had waited so long: his later years had been no more than a stand-to. Oppressed with countless daily cares, he had waited…But through all that, his sole care had been to hold himself in readiness. For an act. A free, considered act; that should pledge his whole life, and stand at the beginning of a new existence….He waited. And during all that time, gently, stealthily, the years had come, they had grasped him from behind….’
5. ‘ ‘It was love. This time, it was love. And Mathiue thought:’ What have I done?’ Five minutes ago this love didn’t exist; there was between them a rare and precious feeling, without a name and not expressible in gestures.’
6. ‘ The fact is, you are beyond my comprehension: you, so prompt with your indignation when you hear of an injustice, you keep this woman for years in a humiliating position, for the sole pleasure of telling yourself that you are respecting your principles. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were true, if you really did adapt your life to your ideas. But, I must tell you once more…you like that sort of life-placid, orderly, the typical life of an official.’
‘’That freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one’s responsibilities.’
‘Well…perhaps I’m doing you an injustice. Perhaps you haven’t in fact reached the age of reason, it’s really a moral age…perhaps I’ve got there sooner than you have.’
7. ‘ I have nothing to defend. I am not proud of my life and I’m penniless. My freedom? It’s a burden to me, for years past I have been free and to no purpose. I simply long to exchange it for a good sound of certainty….Besides, I agree with you that no one can be a man who has not discovered something for which he is prepared to die.’
8. ‘‘I have led a toothless life’, he thought. ‘ A toothless life. I have never bitten into anything. I was waiting. I was reserving myself for later on-and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone. What’s to be done? Break the shell? That’s easily said. Besides, what would remain? A little viscous gum, oozing through the dust and leaving a glistering trail behind it.’
9.’’ A life’, thought Mathieu, ‘is formed from the future just like the bodies are compounded from the void’. He bent his head: he thought of his own life. The future had made way into his heart, where everything was in process and suspense. The far-off days of childhood, the day when he has said:’I will be free’, the day when he had said: ’I will be famous’, appeared to him even now with their individual future, like a small, circled individual sky above them all, and the future was himself, himself just as he was at present, weary and a little over-ripe, they had claims upon him across the passage of time past, they maintained their insistencies, and he was often visited by attacks of devastating remorse, because his casual, cynical present was the original future of those past days. ~ Jean Paul Sartre,#NFDB
1166:We have a long ride ahead of us tonight, and you wouldn’t want to regret your first good meal in days.”
In weeks, I thought as I picked up a spoon, but I didn’t say it out loud--it felt disloyal somehow.
Then the sense of what he’d said sank in, and I almost lost my appetite again. “How long to the capital?”
“We will arrive sometime tomorrow morning,” he said.
I grimaced down at my soup, then braced myself up, thinking that I’d better eat, hungry or not, for I’d need my strength. “What is Galdran like?” I asked, adding sourly, “Besides being a tyrant, a coward, and a Covenant breaker?”
Shevraeth sat with his mug in his hands. He hadn’t eaten much, but he was on his second cup of the coffee. “This is the third time you’ve brought that up,” he said. “How do you know he intends to break the Covenant?”
“We have proof.” I saw his eyes narrow, and I added in my hardest voice, “And don’t waste your breath threatening me about getting it, because you won’t. You really think I’d tell you what and where it is, just to have it destroyed? We may not be doing so well, but it seems my brother and I and our little untrained army are the only hope the Hill Folk have.”
The Marquis was silent for a long pause, during which my anger slowly evaporated, leaving me feeling more uncomfortable by the moment. I realized why just before he spoke: By refusing to tell him, I was implying that he, too, wanted to break the Covenant.
Well, doesn’t he?--if he’s allied with Galdran! I thought.
“To your question,” the Marquis said, setting his cup down, “’What is Galdran like?’ By that I take it you mean, What kind of treatment can you expect from the King? If you take the time to consider the circumstances outside of your mountain life, you might be able to answer that for yourself.” Despite the mild humor, the light, drawling voice managed somehow to sting. “The King has been in the midst of trade negotiations with Denlieff for over a year. You have cost him time and money that were better applied elsewhere. And a civil war never enhances the credit of the government in the eyes of visiting diplomats from the Empress in Cheras-al-Kherval, who does not look for causes so much as signs of slack control.”
I dropped my spoon in the empty soup bowl. “So if he cracks down even harder on the people, it’s all our fault, is that it?”
“You might contemplate, during your measures of leisure,” he said, “what the purpose of a permanent court serves, besides to squander the gold earned by the sweat of the peasants’ brows. And consider this: The only reason you and your brother have not been in Athanarel all along is because the King considered you too harmless to bother keeping an eye on.” And with a polite gesture: “Are you finished?”
“Yes.”
I was ensconced again in the carriage with my pillows and aching leg for company, and we resumed journeying.
The effect of the coffee was to banish sleep. Restless, angry with myself, angrier with my companion and with the unlucky happenstance that had brought me to this pass, I turned my thoughts once again to escape.
Clouds gathered and darkness fell very swiftly. When I could no longer see clearly, I hauled myself up and felt my way to the door. The only plan I could think of was to open the door, tumble out, and hopefully lose myself in the darkness. This would work only if no one was riding beside the carriage, watching.
A quick peek--a longer look--no one in sight.
I eased myself down onto the floor and then opened the door a crack, peering back. I was about to fling the door wider when the carriage lurched around a curve and the door almost jerked out of my hand. I half fell against the doorway, caught myself, and a moment later heard a galloping horse come up from behind the carriage.
I didn’t look to see who was on it, but slammed the door shut and climbed back onto the seat.
And composed myself for sleep.
I knew I’d need it. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
1167:L'Homme Et La Mer (Man And The Sea)
Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.
Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.
Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n'a sondé le fond de tes abîmes;
Ô mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!
Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remords,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
Ô lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables!
Man and the Sea
Free man, you will always cherish the sea!
The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul
In the infinite unrolling of its billows;
Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter.
You like to plunge into the bosom of your image;
You embrace it with eyes and arms, and your heart
Is distracted at times from its own clamoring
By the sound of this plaint, wild and untamable.
Both of you are gloomy and reticent:
Man, no one has sounded the depths of your being;
O Sea, no person knows your most hidden riches,
So zealously do you keep your secrets!
Yet for countless ages you have fought each other
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Without pity, without remorse,
So fiercely do you love carnage and death,
O eternal fighters, implacable brothers!
— Translated by William Aggeler
Man and the Sea
Free man, you'll always love the sea — for this,
That it's a mirror, where you see your soul
In its eternal waves that chafe and roll;
Nor is your soul less bitter an abyss.
in your reflected image there to merge,
You love to dive, its eyes and limbs to match.
Sometimes your heart forgets its own, to catch
The rhythm of that wild and tameless dirge.
The two of you are shadowy, deep, and wide.
Man! None has ever plummeted your floor —
Sea! None has ever known what wealth you store —
Both are so jealous of the things you hide!
Yet age on age is ended, or begins,
While you without remorse or pity fight.
So much in death and carnage you delight,
Eternal wrestlers! Unrelenting twins!
— Translated by Roy Campbell
Man and the Sea
Free man, you shall forever cherish the vast sea,
The sea, that image where you contemplate your soul
As everlastingly its mighty waves unroll.
Your mind a yawning gulf seasoned as bitterly.
You love to plunge into your image to the core,
Embracing it with eyes and arms; your very heart
Sometimes finds a distraction from its urgent smart
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In the wild sea's untamable and plaintive roar.
Both of you live in darkness and in mystery:
Man, who has ever plumbed the far depths of your being?
O Sea, who knows your private hidden riches, seeing
How strange the secrets you preserve so jealously?
And yet for countless ages you have fought each other
With hands unsparing and with unforbearing breath,
Each an eternal foe to his relentless brother,
So avid are you both of slaughter and of death.
— Translated by Jacques LeClercq
L'Homme et le Mer
love Ocean always, Man: ye both are free!
the Sea, thy mirror: thou canst find thy soul
in the unfurling billows' surging roll,
they mind's abyss is bitter as the sea.
thou doest rejoice thy mirrored face to pierce,
plunging, and clasp with eyes and arms; thy heart
at its own mutter oft forgets to start,
lulled by that plaint indomitably fierce.
discreet ye both are; both are taciturn:
Man, none has measured all thy dark abyss,
none, Sea, knows where thy hoarded treasure is,
so jealously your secrets ye inurn!
and yet for countless ages, trucelessly,
— o ruthless warriors! — ye have fought and striven:
brothers by lust for death and carnage driven,
twin wrestlers, gripped for all eternity!
— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
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~ Charles Baudelaire,#NFDB
1168:An Answer To Various Bards
Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in,
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin,
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp,
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp;
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom -But you know they're fond of writing about "corpses" and "the tomb".
So, before they curse the bushland, they should let their fancy range,
And take something for their livers, and be cheerful for a change.
Now, for instance, Mr Lawson -- well, of course, we almost cried
At the sorrowful description how his "little 'Arvie" died,
And we lachrymosed in silence when "His Father's mate" was slain;
Then he went and killed the father, and we had to weep again.
Ben Duggan and Jack Denver, too, he caused them to expire,
After which he cooked the gander of Jack Dunn, of Nevertire;
And, no doubt, the bush is wretched if you judge it by the groan
Of the sad and soulful poet with a graveyard of his own.
And he spoke in terms prophetic of a revolution's heat,
When the world should hear the clamour of those people in the street;
But the shearer chaps who start it -- why, he rounds on them the blame,
And he calls 'em "agitators who are living on the game".
Bur I "over-write" the bushmen! Well, I own without a doubt
That I always see the hero in the "man from furthest out".
I could never contemplate him through an atmosphere of gloom,
And a bushman never struck me as a subject for "the tomb".
If it ain't all "golden sunshine" where the "wattle branches wave",
Well, it ain't all damp and dismal, and it ain't all "lonely grave".
And, of course, there's no denying that the bushman's life is rough,
But a man can easy stand it if he's built of sterling stuff;
Though it's seldom that the drover gets a bed of eiderdown,
Yet the man who's born a bushman, he gets mighty sick of town,
For he's jotting down the figures, and he's adding up the bills
While his heart is simply aching for a sight of Southern hills.
Then he hears a wool-team passing with a rumble and a lurch,
And, although the work is pressing, yet it brings him off his perch,
For it stirs him like a message from his station friends afar
And he seems to sniff the ranges in the scent of wool and tar;
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And it takes him back in fancy, half in laughter, half in tears,
to a sound of other voices and a thought of other years,
When the woolshed rang with bustle from the dawning of the day,
And the shear-blades were a-clicking to the cry of "Wool away!"
Then his face was somewhat browner, and his frame was firmer set -And he feels his flabby muscles with a feeling of regret.
But the wool-team slowly passes, and his eyes go slowly back
To the dusty little table and the papers in the rack,
And his thoughts go to the terrace where his sickly children squall,
And he thinks there's something healthy in the bush-life after all.
But we'll go no more a-droving in the wind or in the sun,
For out fathers' hearts have failed us, and the droving days are done.
There's a nasty dash of danger where the long-horned bullock wheels,
And we like to live in comfort and to get our reg'lar meals.
For to hang around the township suits us better, you'll agree,
And a job at washing bottles is the job for such as we.
Let us herd into the cities, let us crush and crowd and push
Till we lose the love of roving, and we learn to hate the bush;
And we'll turn our aspirations to a city life and beer,
And we'll slip across to England -- it's a nicer place than here;
For there's not much risk of hardship where all comforts are in store,
And the theatres are in plenty, and the pubs are more and more.
But that ends it, Mr Lawson, and it's time to say good-bye,
So we must agree to differ in all friendship, you and I.
Yes, we'll work our own salvation with the stoutest hearts we may,
And if fortune only favours we will take the road some day,
And go droving down the river 'neath the sunshine and the stars,
And then return to Sydney and vermilionize the bars.
~ Banjo Paterson,#NFDB
1169:The Shroud Of Color
"Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled
By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails
To see; too great a cost this birth entails.
I strangle in this yoke drawn tighter than
The worth of bearing it, just to be man.
I am not brave enough to pay the price
In full; I lack the strength to sacrifice
I who have burned my hands upon a star,
And climbed high hills at dawn to view the far
Illimitable wonderments of earth,
For whom all cups have dripped the wine of mirth,
For whom the sea has strained her honeyed throat
Till all the world was sea, and I a boat
Unmoored, on what strange quest I willed to float;
Who wore a many-colored coat of dreams,
Thy gift, O Lord--I whom sun-dabbled streams
Have washed, whose bare brown thighs have held the sun
Incarcerate until his course was run,
I who considered man a high-perfected
Glass where loveliness could lie reflected,
Now that I sway athwart Truth's deep abyss,
Denuding man for what he was and is,
Shall breath and being so inveigle me
That I can damn my dreams to hell, and be
Content, each new-born day, anew to see
The steaming crimson vintage of my youth
Incarnadine the altar-slab of Truth?
Or hast Thou, Lord, somewhere I cannot see,
A lamb imprisoned in a bush for me?
Not so?Then let me render one by one
Thy gifts, while still they shine; some little sun
Yet gilds these thighs; my coat, albeit worn,
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Still hold its colors fast; albeit torn.
My heart will laugh a little yet, if I
May win of Thee this grace, Lord:on this high
And sacrificial hill 'twixt earth and sky,
To dream still pure all that I loved, and die.
There is no other way to keep secure
My wild chimeras, grave-locked against the lure
Of Truth, the small hard teeth of worms, yet less
Envenomed than the mouth of Truth, will bless
Them into dust and happy nothingness.
Lord, Thou art God; and I, Lord, what am I
But dust?With dust my , let me die."
Across earth's warm, palpitating crust
I flung my body in embrace; I thrust
My mouth into the grass and sucked the dew,
Then gave it back in tears my anguish drew;
So hard I pressed against the ground, I felt
The smallest sandgrain like a knife, and smelt
The next year's flowering; all this to speed
My body's dissolution, fain to feed
The so I groaned, and spent my strength
Until, all passion spent, I lay full length
And quivered like a flayed and bleeding thing.
So lay till lifted on a great black wing
That had no mate nor flesh-apparent trunk
To hamper it; with me all time had sunk
Into oblivion; when I awoke
The wing hung poised above two cliffs that broke
The bowels of the earth in twain, and cleft
The seas , above, to left,
To right, I saw what no man saw before:
Earth, hell, and heaven; sinew, vein, and core.
All things that swim or walk or creep or fly,
All things that live and hunger, faint and die,
Were made majestic then and magnified
By sight so clearly purged and deified.
The smallest bug that crawls was taller than
A tree, the mustard seed loomed like a man.
The earth that writhes eternally with pain
Of birth, and woe of taking back her slain,
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Laid bare her teeming bosom to my sight,
And all was struggle, gasping breath, and fight.
A blind worm here dug tunnels to the light,
And there a seed, racked with heroic pain,
Thrust eager tentacles to sun and rain:
It climbed; it died; the old love conquered me
To weep the blossom it would never be.
But here a bud won light; it burst and flowered
Into a rose whose beauty challenged, "Coward!"
There was no thing alive save only I
That held life in contempt and longed to die.
And still I writhed and moaned, "The curse, the curse,
Than animated death, can death be worse?"
"Dark child of sorrow, mine no less, what art Of mine can make thee see
and play thy part? The key to all strange things is in thy heart."
What voice was this that coursed like liquid fire
Along my flesh, and turned my hair to wire?
I raised my burning eyes, beheld a field
All multitudinous with carnal yield,
A grim ensanguined mead whereon I saw
Evolve the ancient fundamental law
Of tooth and talon, fist and nail and claw.
There with the force of living, hostile hills
Whose clash the hemmed-in vale with clamor fills,
With greater din contended fierce majestic wills
Of beast with beast, of man with man, in strife
For love of what my heart despised, for life
That unto me at dawn was now a prayer
For night, at night a bloody heart-wrung tear
For day again; for this, these groans
From tangled flesh and interlocked bones.
And no thing died that did not give
A testimony that it longed to live.
Man, strange composite blend of brute and god,
Pushed on, nor backward glanced where last he trod:
He seemed to mount a misty ladder flung
Pendant from a cloud, yet never gained a rung
But at his feet another tugged and clung.
My heart was still a pool of bitterness,
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Would yield nought else, nought else confess.
I spoke (although no form was there
To see, I knew an ear was there to hear),
"Well, let them fight; they can whose flesh is fair."
Crisp lightning flashed; a wave of thunder shook
My wing; a pause, and then a speaking, "Look."
I scarce dared trust my ears or eyes for awe
Of what they heard, and dread of what they saw;
For, privileged beyond degree, this flesh
Beheld God and His heaven in the mesh
Of Lucifer's revolt, saw Lucifer
Glow like the sun, and like a dulcimer
I heard his sin-sweet voice break on the yell
Of God's great warriors:Gabriel,
Saint Clair and Michael, Israfel and Raphael.
And strange it was to see God with His back
Against a wall, to see Christ hew and hack
Till Lucifer, pressed by the mighty pair,
And losing inch by inch, clawed at the air
With fevered wings; then, lost beyond repair,
He tricked a mass of stars into his hair;
He filled his hands with stars, crying as he fell,
"A star's a star although it burns in hell."
So God was left to His divinity,
Omnipotent at that most costly fee.
There was a lesson here, but still the clod
In me was sycophant unto the rod,
And cried, "Why mock me thus?Am I a god?"
"One trial more:this failing, then I give You leave to die; no
further need to live."
Now suddenly a strange wild music smote
A chord long impotent in me; a note
Of jungles, primitive and subtle, throbbed
Against my echoing breast, and tom-toms sobbed
In every pulse-beat of my din
A hollow log bound with a python's skin
Can make wrought every nerve to ecstasy,
30
And I was wind and sky again, and sea,
And all sweet things that flourish, being free.
Till all at once the music changed its key.
And now it was of bitterness and death,
The cry the lash extorts, the broken breath
Of liberty enchained; and yet there ran
Through all a harmony of faith in man,
A knowledge all would end as it began.
All sights and sounds and aspects of my race
Accompanied this melody, kept pace
With it; with music all their hopes and hates
Were charged, not to be downed by all the fates.
And somehow it was borne upon my brain
How being dark, and living through the pain
Of it, is courage more than angels have.I knew
What storms and tumults lashed the tree that grew
This body that I was, this cringing I
That feared to contemplate a changing sky,
This that I grovelled, whining, "Let me die,"
While others struggled in Life's abattoir.
The cries of all dark people near or far
Were billowed over me, a mighty surge
Of suffering in which my puny grief must merge
And lose itself; I had no further claim to urge
For death; in shame I raised my dust-grimed head,
And though my lips moved not, God knew I said,
"Lord, not for what I saw in flesh or bone
Of fairer men; not raised on faith alone;
Lord, I will live persuaded by mine own.
I cannot play the recreant to these;
My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas."
With the whiz of a sword that severs space,
The wing dropped down at a dizzy pace,
And flung me on my hill flat on my face;
Flat on my face I lay defying pain,
Glad of the blood in my smallest vein,
And in my hands I clutched a loyal dream,
Still spitting fire, bright twist and coil and gleam,
And chiseled like a hound's white tooth.
"Oh, I will match you yet," I cried, "to truth."
31
Right glad I was to stoop to what I once had spurned.
Glad even unto tears; I laughed aloud; I turned
Upon my back, and though the tears for joy would run,
My sight was clear; I looked and saw the rising sun.
~ Countee Cullen,#NFDB
1170:Bahaman
To T. B. M.
IN the crowd that thronged the pierhead, come to see their friends take ship
For new ventures in seafaring, when the hawsers were let slip
And we swung out in the current, with good-byes on every lip,
'Midst the waving caps and kisses, as we dropped down with the tide
And the faces blurred and faded, last of all your hand I spied
Signalling, Farewell, Good fortune! then my heart rose up and cried:
'While the world holds one such comrade, whose sweet durable regard
Would so speed my safe departure, lest home-leaving should be hard,
What care I who keeps the ferry, whether Charon or Cunard!'
Then we cleared the bar, and laid her on the course, the thousand miles
From the Hook to the Bahamas, from midwinter to the isles
Where frost never laid a finger, and eternal summer smiles.
Three days through the surly storm-beat, while the surf-heads threshed and
flew,
And the rolling mountains thundered to the trample of the screw,
The black liner heaved and scuffled and strained on, as if she knew.
On the fourth, the round blue morning sparkled there, all light and breeze,
Clean and tenuous as a bubble blown from two immensities,
Shot and coloured with sheer sunlight and the magic of those seas.
In that bright new world of wonder, it was life enough to laze
All day underneath the awnings, and through half-shut eyes to gaze
At the marvel of the sea-blue; and I faltered for a phrase
Should half give you the impression, tell you how the very tint
Justified your finest daring, as if Nature gave the hint,
'Plodders, see Imagination set his pallet without stint!'
Cobalt, gobelin, and azure, turquoise, sapphire, indigo,
Changing from the spectral bluish of a shadow upon snow
To the deep of Canton china,—one unfathomable glow.
And the flying-fish,—to see them in a scurry lift and flee,
Silvery as the foam they sprang from, fragile people of the sea,
Whom their heart's great aspiration for a moment had set free.
From the dim and cloudy ocean, thunder-centred, rosy-verged,
At the lord sun's Sursum Corda, as implicit impulse urged,
Frail as vapour, fine as music, these bright spirit-things emerged;
Like those flocks of small white snowbirds we have seen start up before
Our brisk walk in winter weather by the snowy Scituate shore;
And the tiny shining sea-folk brought you back to me once more.
So we ran down Abaco; and passing that tall sentinel
54
Black against the sundown, sighted, as the sudden twilight fell,
Nassau light; and the warm darkness breathed on us from breeze and swell.
Stand-by bell and stop of engine; clank of anchor going down;
And we're riding in the roadstead off a twinkling-lighted town,
Low dark shore with boom of breakers and white beach the palm-trees crown.
In the soft wash of the sea air, on the long swing of the tide,
Here for once the dream came true, the voyage ended close beside
The Hesperides in moonlight on mid-ocean where they ride!
And those Hesperidean joy-lands were not strange to you and me.
Just beyond the lost horizon, every time we looked to sea
From Testudo, there they floated, looming plain as plain could be.
Who believed us? 'Myth and fable are a science in our time.'
'Never saw the sea that colour. ''Never heard of such a rhyme.'
Well, we've proved it, prince of idlers,—knowledge wrong and faith sublime.
Right were you to follow fancy, give the vaguer instinct room
In a heaven of clear colour, where the spirit might assume
All her elemental beauty, past the fact of sky or bloom.
Paint the vision, not the view,—the touch that bids the sense good-bye,
Lifting spirit at a bound beyond the frontiers of the eye,
To suburb unguessed dominions of the soul's credulity.
Never yet was painter, poet, born content with things that are,—
Must divine from every beauty other beauties greater far,
Till the arc of truth be circled, and her lantern blaze, a star.
This alone is art's ambition, to arrest with form and hue
Dominant ungrasped ideals, known to credence, hid from view,
In a mimic of creation,—to the life, yet fairer too,—
Where the soul may take her pleasure, contemplate perfection's plan,
And returning bring the tidings of his heritage to man,—
News of continents uncharted she has stood tip-toe to scan.
So she fires his gorgeous fancy with a cadence, with a line,
Till the artist wakes within him, and the toiler grows divine,
Shaping the rough world about him nearer to some fair design.
Every heart must have its Indies,—an inheritance unclaimed
In the unsubstantial treasure of a province never named,
Loved and longed for through a lifetime, dull, laborious, and unfamed,
Never wholly disillusioned. Spiritus, read, haeres sit
Patriæ quæ tristia mescit. This alone the great king writ
O'er the tomb of her he cherished in this fair world she must quit.
Love in one farewell for ever, taking counsel to implore
Best of human benedictions on its dead, could ask no more.
The heart's country for a dwelling, this at last is all our lore.
But the fairies at your cradle gave you craft to build a home
55
In the wide bright world of colour, with the cunning of a gnome;
Blessed you so above your fellows of the tribe that still must roam.
Still across the world they go, tormented by a strange unrest,
And the unabiding spirit knocks for ever at their breast,
Bidding them away to fortune in some undiscovered West;
While at home you sit and call the Orient up at your command,
Master of the iris seas and Prospero of the purple land.
Listen, here was one world-corner matched the cunning of your hand.
Not, my friend, since we were children, and all wonder-tales were true,—
Jason, Hengest, Hiawatha, fairy prince or pirate crew—
Was there ever such a landing in a country strange and new?
Up the harbour where there gathered, fought and revelled many a year,
Swarthy Spaniard, lost Lucayan, Loyalist, and Buccaneer,
'Once upon a time' was now, and 'far across the sea' was here.
Tropic moonlight, in great floods and fathoms pouring through the trees
On a ground as white as sea-froth its fantastic traceries,
While the poincianas, rustling like the rain, moved in the breeze,
Showed a city, coral-streeted, melting in the mellow shine,
Built of creamstone and enchantment, fairy work in every line,
In a velvet atmosphere that bids the heart her haste resign.
Thanks to Julian Hospitator, saint of travellers by sea,
Roving minstrels and all boatmen,—just such vagabonds as we—
On the shaded wharf we landed, rich in leisure, hale and free.
What more would you for God's creatures, but the little tide of sleep?
In a clean white room I wakened, saw the careless sunlight peep
Through the roses at the window, lay and listened to the creep
Of the soft wind in the shutters, heard the palm-tops stirring high,
And that strange mysterious shuffle of the slipshod foot go by.
In a world all glad with colour, gladdest of all things was I;
In a quiet convent garden, tranquil as the day is long,
Here to sit without intrusion of the world or strife or wrong,—
Watch the lizards chase each other, and the green bird make his song;
Warmed and freshened, lulled yet quickened in that Paradisal air,
Motherly and uncapricious, healing every hurt or care,
Wooing body, mind, and spirit, firmly back to strong and fair;
By the Angelus reminded, silence waits the touch of sound,
As the soul waits her awaking to some Gloria profound;
Till the mighty Southern Cross is lighted at the day's last bound.
And if ever your fair fortune make you good Saint Vincent's guest,
At his door take leave of trouble, welcomed to his decent rest,
Of his ordered peace partaker, by his solace healed and blessed;
Where this flowered cloister garden, hidden from the passing view,
56
Lies behind its yellow walls in prayer the holy hours through:
And beyond, that fairy harbour, floored in malachite and blue.
In that old white-streeted city gladness has her way at last
Under burdens finely poised, and with a freedom unsurpassed,
Move the naked-footed bearers in the blue day deep and vast.
This is Bay Street broad and low-built, basking in its quiet trade;
Here the sponging fleet is anchored; here shell trinkets are displayed;
Here the cable news is posted daily; here the market's made,
With its oranges from Andros, heaps of yam and tamarind,
Red-juiced shadducks from the Current, ripened in the long trade-wind,
Gaudy fish from their sea-gardens, yellow-tailed and azure-tinned.
Here a group of diving boys in bronze and ivory, bright and slim,
Sparkling copper in the high noon, dripping loin-cloth, polished limb,
Poised a moment and then plunged in that deep daylight green and dim.
Here the great rich Spanish laurels spread across the public square
Their dense, solemn shade; and near by, half within the open glare,
Mannerly in their clean cottons, knots of blacks are waiting there
By the court-house, where a magistrate is hearing cases through,
Dealing justice prompt and level, as the sturdy English do,—
One more tent-peg of the Empire, holding that great shelter true.
Last the picture from the town's end, palmed and foam-fringed through the cane,
Where the gorgeous sunset yellows pour aloft and spill and stain
The pure amethystine sea and far faint islands of the main.
Loveliest of the Lucayas, peace be yours till time be done!
In the gray North I shall see you, with your white streets in the sun,
Old pink walls and purple gateways, where the lizards bask and run,
Where the great hibiscus blossoms in their scarlet loll and glow,
And the idling gay bandannas through the hot noons come and go,
While the ever-stirring sea-wind sways the palm-tops to and fro.
Far from stress and storm for ever, dream behind your jalousies,
While the long white lines of breakers crumble on your reefs and keys,
And the crimson oleanders burn against the peacock seas.
~ Bliss William Carman,#NFDB
1171:The Three Taverns
When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum,
and The Three Taverns.—(Acts xxviii, 15)
Herodion, Apelles, Amplias,
And Andronicus? Is it you I see—
At last? And is it you now that are gazing
As if in doubt of me? Was I not saying
That I should come to Rome? I did say that;
And I said furthermore that I should go
On westward, where the gateway of the world
Lets in the central sea. I did say that,
But I say only, now, that I am Paul—
A prisoner of the Law, and of the Lord
A voice made free. If there be time enough
To live, I may have more to tell you then
Of western matters. I go now to Rome,
Where Cæsar waits for me, and I shall wait,
And Cæsar knows how long. In Cæsarea
There was a legend of Agrippa saying
In a light way to Festus, having heard
My deposition, that I might be free,
Had I stayed free of Cæsar; but the word
Of God would have it as you see it is—
And here I am. The cup that I shall drink
Is mine to drink—the moment or the place
Not mine to say. If it be now in Rome,
Be it now in Rome; and if your faith exceed
The shadow cast of hope, say not of me
Too surely or too soon that years and shipwreck,
And all the many deserts I have crossed
That are not named or regioned, have undone
Beyond the brevities of our mortal healing
The part of me that is the least of me.
You see an older man than he who fell
Prone to the earth when he was nigh Damascus,
Where the great light came down; yet I am he
That fell, and he that saw, and he that heard.
And I am here, at last; and if at last
348
I give myself to make another crumb
For this pernicious feast of time and men—
Well, I have seen too much of time and men
To fear the ravening or the wrath of either.
Yes, it is Paul you see—the Saul of Tarsus
That was a fiery Jew, and had men slain
For saying Something was beyond the Law,
And in ourselves. I fed my suffering soul
Upon the Law till I went famishing,
Not knowing that I starved. How should I know,
More then than any, that the food I had—
What else it may have been—was not for me?
My fathers and their fathers and their fathers
Had found it good, and said there was no other,
And I was of the line. When Stephen fell,
Among the stones that crushed his life away,
There was no place alive that I could see
For such a man. Why should a man be given
To live beyond the Law? So I said then,
As men say now to me. How then do I
Persist in living? Is that what you ask?
If so, let my appearance be for you
No living answer; for Time writes of death
On men before they die, and what you see
Is not the man. The man that you see not—
The man within the man—is most alive;
Though hatred would have ended, long ago,
The bane of his activities. I have lived,
Because the faith within me that is life
Endures to live, and shall, till soon or late,
Death, like a friend unseen, shall say to me
My toil is over and my work begun.
How often, and how many a time again,
Have I said I should be with you in Rome!
He who is always coming never comes,
Or comes too late, you may have told yourselves;
And I may tell you now that after me,
Whether I stay for little or for long,
The wolves are coming. Have an eye for them,
And a more careful ear for their confusion
349
Than you need have much longer for the sound
Of what I tell you—should I live to say
More than I say to Cæsar. What I know
Is down for you to read in what is written;
And if I cloud a little with my own
Mortality the gleam that is immortal,
I do it only because I am I—
Being on earth and of it, in so far
As time flays yet the remnant. This you know;
And if I sting men, as I do sometimes,
With a sharp word that hurts, it is because
Man’s habit is to feel before he sees;
And I am of a race that feels. Moreover,
The world is here for what is not yet here
For more than are a few; and even in Rome,
Where men are so enamored of the Cross
That fame has echoed, and increasingly,
The music of your love and of your faith
To foreign ears that are as far away
As Antioch and Haran, yet I wonder
How much of love you know, and if your faith
Be the shut fruit of words. If so, remember
Words are but shells unfilled. Jews have at least
A Law to make them sorry they were born
If they go long without it; and these Gentiles,
For the first time in shrieking history,
Have love and law together, if so they will,
For their defense and their immunity
In these last days. Rome, if I know the name,
Will have anon a crown of thorns and fire
Made ready for the wreathing of new masters,
Of whom we are appointed, you and I,—
And you are still to be when I am gone,
Should I go presently. Let the word fall,
Meanwhile, upon the dragon-ridden field
Of circumstance, either to live or die;
Concerning which there is a parable,
Made easy for the comfort and attention
Of those who preach, fearing they preach in vain.
You are to plant, and then to plant again
Where you have gathered, gathering as you go;
For you are in the fields that are eternal,
350
And you have not the burden of the Lord
Upon your mortal shoulders. What you have
Is a light yoke, made lighter by the wearing,
Till it shall have the wonder and the weight
Of a clear jewel, shining with a light
Wherein the sun and all the fiery stars
May soon be fading. When Gamaliel said
That if they be of men these things are nothing
But if they be of God, they are for none
To overthrow, he spoke as a good Jew,
And one who stayed a Jew; and he said all.
And you know, by the temper of your faith,
How far the fire is in you that I felt
Before I knew Damascus. A word here,
Or there, or not there, or not anywhere,
Is not the Word that lives and is the life;
And you, therefore, need weary not yourselves
With jealous aches of others. If the world
Were not a world of aches and innovations,
Attainment would have no more joy of it.
There will be creeds and schisms, creeds in creeds,
And schisms in schisms; myriads will be done
To death because a farthing has two sides,
And is at last a farthing. Telling you this,
I, who bid men to live, appeal to Cæsar.
Once I had said the ways of God were dark,
Meaning by that the dark ways of the Law.
Such is the Glory of our tribulations;
For the Law kills the flesh that kills the Law,
And we are then alive. We have eyes then;
And we have then the Cross between two worlds—
To guide us, or to blind us for a time,
Till we have eyes indeed. The fire that smites
A few on highways, changing all at once,
Is not for all. The power that holds the world
Away from God that holds himself away—
Farther away than all your works and words
Are like to fly without the wings of faith—
Was not, nor ever shall be, a small hazard
Enlivening the ways of easy leisure
Or the cold road of knowledge. When our eyes
Have wisdom, we see more than we remember;
351
And the old world of our captivities
May then become a smitten glimpse of ruin,
Like one where vanished hewers have had their day
Of wrath on Lebanon. Before we see,
Meanwhile, we suffer; and I come to you,
At last, through many storms and through much night.
Yet whatsoever I have undergone,
My keepers in this instance are not hard.
But for the chance of an ingratitude,
I might indeed be curious of their mercy,
And fearful of their leisure while I wait,
A few leagues out of Rome. Men go to Rome,
Not always to return—but not that now.
Meanwhile, I seem to think you look at me
With eyes that are at last more credulous
Of my identity. You remark in me
No sort of leaping giant, though some words
Of mine to you from Corinth may have leapt
A little through your eyes into your soul.
I trust they were alive, and are alive
Today; for there be none that shall indite
So much of nothing as the man of words
Who writes in the Lord’s name for his name’s sake
And has not in his blood the fire of time
To warm eternity. Let such a man—
If once the light is in him and endures—
Content himself to be the general man,
Set free to sift the decencies and thereby
To learn, except he be one set aside
For sorrow, more of pleasure than of pain;
Though if his light be not the light indeed,
But a brief shine that never really was,
And fails, leaving him worse than where he was,
Then shall he be of all men destitute.
And here were not an issue for much ink,
Or much offending faction among scribes.
The Kingdom is within us, we are told;
And when I say to you that we possess it
In such a measure as faith makes it ours,
I say it with a sinner’s privilege
352
Of having seen and heard, and seen again,
After a darkness; and if I affirm
To the last hour that faith affords alone
The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment,
I do not see myself as one who says
To man that he shall sit with folded hands
Against the Coming. If I be anything,
I move a driven agent among my kind,
Establishing by the faith of Abraham,
And by the grace of their necessities,
The clamoring word that is the word of life
Nearer than heretofore to the solution
Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed
A shaft of language that has flown sometimes
A little higher than the hearts and heads
Of nature’s minions, it will yet be heard,
Like a new song that waits for distant ears.
I cannot be the man that I am not;
And while I own that earth is my affliction,
I am a man of earth, who says not all
To all alike. That were impossible.
Even as it were so that He should plant
A larger garden first. But you today
Are for the larger sowing; and your seed,
A little mixed, will have, as He foresaw,
The foreign harvest of a wider growth,
And one without an end. Many there are,
And are to be, that shall partake of it,
Though none may share it with an understanding
That is not his alone. We are all alone;
And yet we are all parcelled of one order—
Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark
Of wildernesses that are not so much
As names yet in a book. And there are many,
Finding at last that words are not the Word,
And finding only that, will flourish aloft,
Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes,
Our contradictions and discrepancies;
And there are many more will hang themselves
Upon the letter, seeing not in the Word
The friend of all who fail, and in their faith
A sword of excellence to cut them down.
353
As long as there are glasses that are dark—
And there are many—we see darkly through them;
All which have I conceded and set down
In words that have no shadow. What is dark
Is dark, and we may not say otherwise;
Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire
For one of us, may still be for another
A coming gleam across the gulf of ages,
And a way home from shipwreck to the shore;
And so, through pangs and ills and desperations,
There may be light for all. There shall be light.
As much as that, you know. You cannot say
This woman or that man will be the next
On whom it falls; you are not here for that.
You ministration is to be for others
The firing of a rush that may for them
Be soon the fire itself. The few at first
Are fighting for the multitude at last;
Therefore remember what Gamaliel said
Before you, when the sick were lying down
In streets all night for Peter’s passing shadow.
Fight, and say what you feel; say more than words.
Give men to know that even their days of earth
To come are more than ages that are gone.
Say what you feel, while you have time to say it.
Eternity will answer for itself,
Without your intercession; yet the way
For many is a long one, and as dark,
Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil
Too much, and if I be away from you,
Think of me as a brother to yourselves,
Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics,
And give your left hand to grammarians;
And when you seem, as many a time you may,
To have no other friend than hope, remember
That you are not the first, or yet the last.
The best of life, until we see beyond
The shadows of ourselves (and they are less
Than even the blindest of indignant eyes
Would have them) is in what we do not know.
354
Make, then, for all your fears a place to sleep
With all your faded sins; nor think yourselves
Egregious and alone for your defects
Of youth and yesterday. I was young once;
And there’s a question if you played the fool
With a more fervid and inherent zeal
Than I have in my story to remember,
Or gave your necks to folly’s conquering foot,
Or flung yourselves with an unstudied aim,
More frequently than I. Never mind that.
Man’s little house of days will hold enough,
Sometimes, to make him wish it were not his,
But it will not hold all. Things that are dead
Are best without it, and they own their death
By virtue of their dying. Let them go,—
But think you not the world is ashes yet,
And you have all the fire. The world is here
Today, and it may not be gone tomorrow;
For there are millions, and there may be more,
To make in turn a various estimation
Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps
Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears
That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them,
And then they shall hear strangely. Many with eyes
That are incredulous of the Mystery
Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read
Where language has an end and is a veil,
Not woven of our words. Many that hate
Their kind are soon to know that without love
Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing.
I that have done some hating in my time
See now no time for hate; I that have left,
Fading behind me like familiar lights
That are to shine no more for my returning,
Home, friends, and honors,—I that have lost all else
For wisdom, and the wealth of it, say now
To you that out of wisdom has come love,
That measures and is of itself the measure
Of works and hope and faith. Your longest hours
Are not so long that you may torture them
And harass not yourselves; and the last days
Are on the way that you prepare for them,
355
And was prepared for you, here in a world
Where you have sinned and suffered, striven and seen.
If you be not so hot for counting them
Before they come that you consume yourselves,
Peace may attend you all in these last days—
And me, as well as you. Yes, even in Rome.
Well, I have talked and rested, though I fear
My rest has not been yours; in which event,
Forgive one who is only seven leagues
From Cæsar. When I told you I should come,
I did not see myself the criminal
You contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law
That which the Law saw not. But this, indeed,
Was good of you, and I shall not forget;
No, I shall not forget you came so far
To meet a man so dangerous. Well, farewell.
They come to tell me I am going now—
With them. I hope that we shall meet again,
But none may say what he shall find in Rome.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
1172:My fancies are fireflies,
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.
he voice of wayside pansies,
that do not attract the careless glance,
murmurs in these desultory lines.
In the drowsy dark caves of the mind
dreams build their nest with fragments
dropped from day's caravan.
Spring scatters the petals of flowers
that are not for the fruits of the future,
but for the moment's whim.
Joy freed from the bond of earth's slumber
rushes into numberless leaves,
and dances in the air for a day.
My words that are slight
my lightly dance upon time's waves
when my works havy with import have gone down.
Mind's underground moths
grow filmy wings
and take a farewell flight
in the sunset sky.
The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.
My thoughts, like spark, ride on winged surprises,
carrying a single laughter.
The tree gazes in love at its own beautiful shadow
which yet it never can grasp.
Let my love, like sunlight, surround you
and yet give you illumined freedom.
Days are coloured vbubbles
that float upon the surface of fathomless night.
My offerings are too timid to claim your remembrance,
and therefore you may remember them.
Leave out my name from the gift
if it be a burden,
but keep my song.
April, like a child,
writes hieroglyphs on dust with flowers,
wipes them away and forgets.
Memory, the priestess,
kills the present
and offers its heart to the shrine of the dead past.
From the solemn gloom of the temple
children run out to sit in the dust,
God watches them play
and forgets the priest.
My mind starts up at some flash
on the flow of its thoughts
like a brook at a sudden liquid note of its own
that is never repeated.
In the mountain, stillness surges up
to explore its own height;
in the lake, movement stands still
to contemplate its own depth.
The departing night's one kiss
on the closed eyes of morning
glows in the star of dawn.
Maiden, thy beauty is like a fruit
which is yet to mature,
tense with an unyielding secret.
Sorrow that has lost its memory
is like the dumb dark hours
that have no bird songs
but only the cricket's chirp.
Bigotry tries to keep turth safe in its hand
with a grip that kills it.
Wishing to hearten a timid lamp
great night lights all her stars.
Though he holds in his arms the earth-bride,
the sky is ever immensely away.
God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
The soil in return for her service
keeps the tree tied to her,
the sky asks nothing and leaves it free.
Jewel-like immortal
does not boast of its length of years
but of the scintillating point of its moment.
The child ever dwells in the mystery of ageless time,
unobscured by the dust of history.
Alight laughter in the steps of creation
carries it swiftly across time.
One who was distant came near to me in the morning,
and still nearer when taken away by night.
White and pink oleanders meet
and make merry in different dialects.
When peace is active swepping its dirt, it is storm.
The lake lies low by the hill,
a tearful entreaty of love
at the foot of the inflexible.
There smiles the Divine Child
among his playthings of unmeaning clouds
and ephemeral lights and shadows.
The breeze whispers to the lotus,
"What is thy secret?"
"It is myself," says the lotus,
"Steal it and I disappear!"
The freedom of the storm and the bondage of the stem
join hands in the dance of swaying branches.
The jasmine's lisping of love to the sun is her flowers.
The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom
and yet to keep it for himself.
Gods, tired of their paradise, envy man.
Clouds are hills in vapour,
hills are clouds in stone,
a phantasy in time's dream.
While God waits for His temple to be built of love,
men bring stones.
I touch God in my song
as the hill touches the far-away sea
with its waterfall.
Light finds her treasure of colours
through the antagonism of clouds.
My heart to-day smiles at its past night of tears
like a wet tree glistening in the sun
after the rain is over.
I have thanked the trees that have made my life fruitflul,
but have failed to remember the grass
that has ever kept it green.
The one without second is emptiness,
the other one makes it true.
Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation
into a harmony with the whole.
They expect thanks for the banished nest
because their cage is shapely and secure.
In love I pay my endless debt to thee
for what thou art.
The pond sends up its lyrics from its dark in lilies,
and the sun says, they are good.
Your calumny against the great is impious,
it hurts yourself;
against the small it is mean,
for it hurts the victim.
The first flower that blossomed on this earth
was an invitation to the unborn song.
Dawnthe many-coloured flowerfades,
and then the simple light-fruit,
the sun appears.
The muscle that has a doubt if its wisdom
throttles the voice that would cry.
The wind tries to take the flame by storm
only to blow it out.
Life's play is swift,
Life's playthings fall behind one by one
and are forgotten.
My flower, seek not thy paradise
in a fool's buttonhole.
Thou hast risen late, my crescent moon,
but my night bird is still awake to greet thee.
Darkness is the veiled bride
silently waiting for the errant light
to return to her bosom.
Trees are the earth's endless effort to
speak to the listening heaven.
The burden of self is lightened
when I laugh at myself.
The weak can be terrible
because they try furiously to appear strong.
The wind of heaven blows,
The anchor desperately clutches the mud,
and my boat is beating its breast against the chain.
The spirit of death is one,
the spirit of life is many,
Whe God is dead religion becomes one.
The blue of the sky longs for the earth's green,
the wind between them sighs, "Alas."
Day's pain muffled by its own glare,
burns among stars in the night.
The stars crowd round the virgin night
in silent awe at her loneliness
that can never be touched.
The cloud gives all its gold
to the departing sun
and greets the rising moon
with only a pale smile.
He who does good comes to the temple gate,
he who loves reaches the shrine.
Flower, have pity for the worm,
it is not a bee,
its love is a blunder and a burden.
With the ruins of terror's triumph
children build their doll's house.
The lamp waits through the long day of neglect
for the flame's kiss in the night.
Feathers in the dust lying lazily content
have forgotten their sky.
The flowers which is single
need not envy the thorns
that are numerous.
The world suffers most from the disinterested tyranny
of its well-wisher.
We gain freedom whrn we have paid the full price
for our right to live.
Your careless gifts of a moment,
like the meteors of an autumn night,
catch fire in the depth of my being.
The faith waiting in the heart of a seed
promises a miracle of life
which it cannot prove at once.
Spring hesitates at winter's door,
but the mango blossom rashly runs our to him
before her time and meets her doom.
The world is the ever-changing foam
thet floats on the surface of a sea of silence.
The two separated shores mingle their voices
in a song of unfathomed tears.
As a river in the sea,
work finds its fulfilment
in the depth of leisure.
I lingered on my way till thy cherry tree lost ist bossom,
but the azalea brins to me, my love, thy forgiveness.
Thy shy little pomegranate bud,
blushing to-day behind her veil,
will burst into a passionate flower
to-morrow when I am away.
The clumsiness of power spoils the key,
and uses the pickaxe.
Birth is from the mystery of night
into the grerater mystery of day.
These paper boats of mine are meant to dance
on the ripples of hours,
and not to reach any destination.
Migratory songs wing from my heart
and seek their nests in your voice of love.
The sea of danger, doubt and denial
around man's little island of certainty
challenges him to dare the unknown.
Love punishes when it forgives,
and injured beauty by its awful silence.
You live alone and unrecompensed
because they are afraid of your great worth.
The same sun is newly born in new lands
in a ring of endless dawns.
God is world is ever renewed by death,
a Titan's ever crushed by its own existence.
The glow-worm while exploring the dust
never knows that stars are in the sky.
The tree is of to-day, the flower is old,
it brings with it the message
of the immemorial seed.
Each rose that comes brings me greetings
from the Rose of an eternal spring.
God honours me when I work,
He loves me when I sing.
My love of to-day finds no home
in the nest deserted by yesterday's love.
The fire of pain tracse for my soul
a luminous path across her sorrow.
The grass survives the hill
through its resurrections from countless deaths.
Thou hast vanished from my reach
leaving an impalpable touch in the blue of the sky,
an invisible image in the wind moving
among the shadows.
In pity for the desolate branch
spring leaves to it a kiss that fluttered in a lonely leaf.
The shy shadow in the farden
loves the sun in silence,
Flowers guess the secret, and mile,
while the leaves whisper.
I leave no trace of wings in the air,
but I am glad I have had my flight.
The fireflies, twinkling among leaves,
make the stars wonder.
The mountain remains unmoved
at its seeming defeat by the mist.
While the rose said to the sun,
"I shall ever remember thee,"
her petals fell to the dust.
Hills are the earth's gesture of despair
for the unreachable.
Though the thorn in thy flower pricked me,
O Beauty,
I am grateful.
The world knows that the few
are more than the many.
Let not my love be a burden on you, my friend,
know that it pays itself.
Dawn plays her lute before the gate of darkness,
and is content to vanish when the sun comes out.
Beauty is truth's smile
when she beholds her own face
in a perfect mirror.
The dew-drop knows the sun
only within its own tiny orb.
Forlorn thoughts from the forsaken hives of all ages,
swarming in the air, hum round my heart
and seek my voice.
The desert is imprisoned in the wall
of its unbounded barrenness.
In the thrill of little leaves
I see the air's invisible dance,
and in their glimmering
the secret heart-beats of the sky.
You are like a flowering tree,
amazed when I praise you for your gifts.
The earth's sacrifical fire
flames up in her trees,
scattering sparks in flowers.
Foretsts, the clouds of earth,
hold up to the sky their silence,
and clouds from above come down
in resonant showers.
The world speaks to me in pictures,
my soul answers in music.
The sky tells its beads all night
on the countless stars
in memory of the sun.
The darkness of night, like pain, is dumb,
the darkness of dawn, like peace, is silent.
Pride engraves his frowns in stones,
loe offers her surrender in flowers.
The obsequious brush curtails truth
in diference to the canvas which is narrow.
The hill in its longing for the far-away sky
wishes to be like the cloud
with its endless urge of seeking.
To justify their own spilling of ink
they spell the day as night.
Profit smiles on goodness
when the good is profitable.
In its swelling pride
the bubble doubts the turth of the sea,
and laughs and bursts into emptiness.
Love is an endless mystery,
for it has nothing else to explain its.
My clouds, sorrowing in the dark,
forget that they themselves
have hidden the sun.
Man discovers his own wealth
when God comes to ask gifts of him.
You leave your memory as a flame
to my lonely lamp of separation.
I came to offer thee a flower,
but thou must have all my garden,
It is thine.
The picturea memory of light
treasured by the shadow.
It is easy to make faces at the sun,
He is exposed by his own light in all
directions.
History slowly smothers its truth,
but hastily struggles to revive it
in the terrible penance of pain.
My work is rewarded in daily wages,
I wait for my final value in love.
Beauty knows to say, "Enough,"
barbarism clamours for still more.
God loves to see in me, not his servant,
but himself who serves all.
The darkness of night is in harmony with day,
the morning of mist is discordant.
In the bounteous time of roses love is wine,
it is food in the famished hour
when their petals are shed.
An unknown flower in a strange land
speaks to the poet:
"Are we not of the same soil, my lover?"
I am able to love my God
because He gives me freedom to deny Him.
My untuned strings beg for music
in their anguished cry of shame.
The worm thinks it strange and foolish
that man does not eat his books.
The clouded sky to-day bears the visior
of the shadow of a divine sadness
on the forehead of brooding eternity.
The shade of my tree is for passers-by,
its fruit for the one for whom I wait.
Flushed with the glow of sunset
earth seems like a ripe fruit
ready to be harvested by night.
Light accepts darkness for his spouse
for the sake of creation.
The reed waits for his master's breath,
the Master goes seeking for his reed.
To the blind pen the hand that writes is unreal,
its writing unmeaning.
The sea smites his own barren breast
because he has no flowers to offer to the moon.
The greed for fruit misses the flower.
God in His temple of stars
waits for man to bring him his lamp.
The fire restrained in the tree fashions flowers.
Released from bonds, the shameless flame
dies in barren ashes.
The sky sets no snare to capture the moon,
it is her own freedom which binds her.
The light that fills the sky
seeks its limit in a dew-drop on the grass.
Wealth is the burden of bigness,
Welfare the fulness of being.
The razor-blade is proud of its keenness
when it sneers at the sun.
The butterfly has leisure to love the lotus,
not the bee busily storing honey.
Child, thou bringest to my heart
the babble of the wind and the water,
the flower's speechless secrets, the clouds' dreams,
the mute gaze of wonder of the morning sky.
The rainbow among the clouds may be great
but the little butterfly among the bushes is greater.
The mist weaves her net round the morning,
captivates him, and makes him blind.
The Morning Star whispers to Dawn,
"Tell me that you are only for me."
"Yes," she answers,
"And also only for that nameless flower."
The sky remains infinitely vacant
for earth there to build its heaven with dreams.
Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt
at being told that it is a fragment
awaiting perfection.
Let the evening forgive the mistakes of the day
and thus win peace for herself.
Beauty smiles in the confinement of the bud,
in the heart of a sweet incompleteness.
Your flitting love lightly brushed with its wings
my sun-flower
and never asked if it was ready to surrender its honey.
Leaves are silences
around flowers which are their words.
The tree bears its thousand years
as one large majestic moment.
My offerings are not for the temple at the end of the road,
but for the wayside shrines
that surprise me at every bend.
Hour smile, my love, like the smell of a strange flower,
is simple and inexplicable.
Death laughs when the merit of the dead is exaggerated
for it swells his store with more than he can claim.
The sigh of the shore follows in vain
the breeze that hastens the ship across the sea.
Truth loves its limits,
for there it meets the beautiful.
Between the shores of Me and Thee
there is the loud ocean, my own surging self,
which I long to cross.
The right to possess boasts foolishly
of its right to enjoy.
The rose is a great deal more
than a blushing apology for the thorn.
Day offers to the silence of stars
his golden lute to be tuned
for the endless life.
The wise know how to teach,
the fool how to smite.
The centre is still and silent in the heart
of an enternal dance of circles.
The judge thinks that he is just when he compares
The oil of another's lamp
with the light of his own.
The captive flower in the King's wreath
smiles bitterly when the meadow-flower envies her.
Its store of snow is the hill's own burden,
its outpouring if streams is borne by all the world.
Listen to the prayer of the forest
for its freedom in flowers.
Let your love see me
even through the barrier of nearness.
The spirit of work in creation is there
to carry and help the spirit of play.
To carry the burden of the insturment,
count the cost of its material,
and never to know that it is for music,
is the tragedy of deaf life.
Faith is the bird that feels the light
and sings when the dawn is still dark.
I bring to thee, night, my day's empty cup,
to be cleansed with thy cool darkness
for a new morning's festival.
The mountain fir, in its rustling,
modulates the memory of its fights with the storm
into a hymn of peace.
God honoured me with his fight
when I was rebellious,
He ignored me when I was languid.
The sectarina thinks
that he has the sea
ladled into his private pond.
In the shady depth of life
are the lonely nests of memories
that shrink from words.
Let my love find its strength
in the service of day,
its peace in the union of night.
Life sends up in blades of grass
its silent hymn of praise
to the unnamed Light.
The stars of night are to me
the memorials of my day's faded flowers.
Open thy door to that which must go,
for the loss becomes unseemly when obstructed.
True end is not in the reaching of the limit,
but in a completion which is limitless.
The shore whispers to the sea:
"Write to me what thy waves struggle to say."
The sea writes in foam again and again
and wipes off the lines in a boisterous despair.
Let the touch ofthy finger thrill my life's strings
and make the music thine and mine.
The inner world rounded in my life like a fruit,
matured in joy and sorrow,
will drop into the darkness of the orogonal soil
for some further course of creation.
Form is in Matter, rhythm in Force,
meaning in the Person.
There are seekers of wisdom and seekers of wealth,
I seek thy company so that I may sing.
As the tree its leaves, I shed my words on the earth,
let my thoughts unuttered flower in thy silence.
My faith in truth, my vision of the perfect,
help thee, Master, in thy creation.
All the delights that I have felt
in life's fruits and flowers
let me offer to thee at the end of the feast,
in a perfect union of love.
Some have thought deeply and explored the
meaning of thy truth,
and they are great;
I have listened to catch the music of thy play,
and I am glad.
The tree is a winged spirit
released from the bondage of seed,
pursuing its adventure of life
across the unknown.
The lotus offers its beauty to the heaven,
the grass its service to the earth.
The sun's kiss mellows into abandonment
the miserliness of the green fruit clinging to its stem.
The flame met the earthen lamp in me,
and what a great marvel of light!
Mistakes live in the neighbourhood of truth
and therefore delude us.
The cloud laughed at the rainbow
saying that is was an upstart
gaudy in its emptiness.
The rainbow calmly answered,
"I am as inevitably real as tha sun himself."
Let me not grope in vain in the dark
but keep my mind still in the faith
that the day will break
and truth will appear
in its simplicity.
Through the silent night
I hear the returning vagrant hopes of the morning
knock at my heart.
My new love comes
bringing to me the eternal wealth of the old.
The earth gazes at the moon and wonders
that she sould have all her music in her smile.
Day with its glare of curiosity
puts the stars to flight.
My mind has itstrue union with thee, O sky,
at the window which is mine own,
and not in the open
where thou hast thy sole kingdom.
Man claims God's flowers as his own
when he weaves them in a garland.
The buried city, laid bare to the sun of a new age,
is ashamed that is has lost all its song.
Like my heart's pain that has long missed its meaning,
the sun's rays robed in dark
hide themselves under the ground.
Like my heart'spain at love's sudden touch,
they change their veil at the spring's call
and come out in the carnival of colours,
in flowers and leaves.
My life's empty flute
waits for its final music
like the primal darkness
before the stars came out.
Emancipation from the bondage of the soil
is no freedom for the tree.
The tapestry of life's story is woven
with the threads of life's ties
ever joining and breaking.
Those thoughts of mine that are never captured by words
perch upon my song and dance.
My soul to-night loses itself
in the silent heart of a tree
standing alone among the whispers of immensity.
Pearl shells cast up by the sea
on death's barren beach,
a magnificent wastefulness of creative life.
The sunlight opens for me the word's gate,
love's light its terasure.
My life like the reed with ist stops,
has its play od colours
through the gaps in its hopes and gains.
Let not my thanks to thee
rob my silence of its fuller homage.
Life's aspirations come
in the guise of children.
The faded flower sighs
that the spring has vanished for ever.
In my life's garden
my wealth has been of the shadows and lights
that are never gathered and stored.
The fruit that I Have gained for ever
is thet which thou hast accepted.
The jasmine knows the sun to be her brother
in the heaven.
Light is young, the ancient light;
shadows are of the moment, they are born old.
I feel that the ferry of my songs at the day's end
will brong me across to the other shore
from where I shall see.
The butterfly flitting from flower to flower
ever remains mine,
I lose the one that is netted by me.
Your voice, free bird, reaches my sleeping nest,
and my drowsy wings dream
of a voyage to the light
above the clouds.
I miss the meaning of my own part
in the play of life
because I know not of the parts
that others play.
The flower sheds all its petals
and finds the fruit.
I leave my songs behind me
to the bloom of the ever-returning honeysuckles
and the joy of the wind from the south.
Dead leaves when they lose themselves in soil
take part in the life of the forest.
The mind ever seeks its words
from its sounds and silence
as the sky from its darkness and light.
The unseen dark plays on his flute
and the rhythm of light
eddies into stars and suns,
into thoughts and reams.
My songs are to sing
that I have loved Thy singing.
When the voice of the Silent touches my words
I know him and therefore I know myself.
My last salutations are to them
who knew me imperfect and loved me.
Love's gift cannot be given,
it waits to be accepted.
When death comes and whispers to me,
"Thy days are ended,"
let me say to him, "I have lived in love
and not in mere time."
He will ask, "Will thy songs remain?"
I shall say, "I know not, but this I know
that often when I sang I found my eternity."
"Let me light my lamp,"
say the star,
'and never debate
if it will help to remove the darkness."
Before the end of my journey
may I reach within myself
the one which is the all,
leaving the outer shell
to float away with the drifting multitude
upon the current of chance and change.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies
,#NFDB
1173:Beachy Head
ON thy stupendous summit, rock sublime !
That o'er the channel rear'd, half way at sea
The mariner at early morning hails,
I would recline; while Fancy should go forth,
And represent the strange and awful hour
Of vast concussion; when the Omnipotent
Stretch'd forth his arm, and rent the solid hills,
Bidding the impetuous main flood rush between
The rifted shores, and from the continent
Eternally divided this green isle.
Imperial lord of the high southern coast !
From thy projecting head-land I would mark
Far in the east the shades of night disperse,
Melting and thinned, as from the dark blue wave
Emerging, brilliant rays of arrowy light
Dart from the horizon; when the glorious sun
Just lifts above it his resplendent orb.
Advances now, with feathery silver touched,
The rippling tide of flood; glisten the sands,
While, inmates of the chalky clefts that scar
Thy sides precipitous, with shrill harsh cry,
Their white wings glancing in the level beam,
The terns, and gulls, and tarrocks, seek their food,
And thy rough hollows echo to the voice
Of the gray choughs, and ever restless daws,
With clamour, not unlike the chiding hounds,
While the lone shepherd, and his baying dog,
Drive to thy turfy crest his bleating flock.
The high meridian of the day is past,
And Ocean now, reflecting the calm Heaven,
Is of cerulean hue; and murmurs low
The tide of ebb, upon the level sands.
The sloop, her angular canvas shifting still,
Catches the light and variable airs
That but a little crisp the summer sea.
Dimpling its tranquil surface.
Afar off,
17
And just emerging from the arch immense
Where seem to part the elements, a fleet
Of fishing vessels stretch their lesser sails;
While more remote, and like a dubious spot
Just hanging in the horizon, laden deep,
The ship of commerce richly freighted, makes
Her slower progress, on her distant voyage,
Bound to the orient climates, where the sun
Matures the spice within its odorous shell,
And, rivalling the gray worm's filmy toil,
Bursts from its pod the vegetable down;
Which in long turban'd wreaths, from torrid heat
Defends the brows of Asia's countless casts.
There the Earth hides within her glowing breast
The beamy adamant, and the round pearl
Enchased in rugged covering; which the slave,
With perilous and breathless toil, tears off
From the rough sea-rock, deep beneath the waves.
These are the toys of Nature; and her sport
Of little estimate in Reason's eye:
And they who reason, with abhorrence see
Man, for such gaudes and baubles, violate
The sacred freedom of his fellow man
Erroneous estimate ! As Heaven's pure air,
Fresh as it blows on this aërial height,
Or sound of seas upon the stony strand,
Or inland, the gay harmony of birds,
And winds that wander in the leafy woods;
Are to the unadulterate taste more worth
Than the elaborate harmony, brought out
From fretted stop, or modulated airs
Of vocal science.So the brightest gems,
Glancing resplendent on the regal crown,
Or trembling in the high born beauty's ear,
Are poor and paltry, to the lovely light
Of the fair star, that as the day declines,
Attendant on her queen, the crescent moon,
Bathes her bright tresses in the eastern wave.
For now the sun is verging to the sea,
18
And as he westward sinks, the floating clouds
Suspended, move upon the evening gale,
And gathering round his orb, as if to shade
The insufferable brightness, they resign
Their gauzy whiteness; and more warm'd, assume
All hues of purple. There, transparent gold
Mingles with ruby tints, and sapphire gleams,
And colours, such as Nature through her works
Shews only in the ethereal canopy.
Thither aspiring Fancy fondly soars,
Wandering sublime thro' visionary vales,
Where bright pavilions rise, and trophies, fann'd
By airs celestial; and adorn'd with wreaths
Of flowers that bloom amid elysian bowers.
Now bright, and brighter still the colours glow,
Till half the lustrous orb within the flood
Seems to retire: the flood reflecting still
Its splendor, and in mimic glory drest;
Till the last ray shot upward, fires the clouds
With blazing crimson; then in paler light,
Long lines of tenderer radiance, lingering yield
To partial darkness; and on the opposing side
The early moon distinctly rising, throws
Her pearly brilliance on the trembling tide.
The fishermen, who at set seasons pass
Many a league off at sea their toiling night,
Now hail their comrades, from their daily task
Returning; and make ready for their own,
With the night tide commencing:The night tide
Bears a dark vessel on, whose hull and sails
Mark her a coaster from the north. Her keel
Now ploughs the sand; and sidelong now she leans,
While with loud clamours her athletic crew
Unload her; and resounds the busy hum
Along the wave-worn rocks. Yet more remote,
Where the rough cliff hangs beetling o'er its base,
All breathes repose; the water's rippling sound
Scarce heard; but now and then the sea-snipe's cry
Just tells that something living is abroad;
And sometimes crossing on the moonbright line,
19
Glimmers the skiff, faintly discern'd awhile,
Then lost in shadow.
Contemplation here,
High on her throne of rock, aloof may sit,
And bid recording Memory unfold
Her scroll voluminousbid her retrace
The period, when from Neustria's hostile shore
The Norman launch'd his galleys, and the bay
O'er which that mass of ruin frowns even now
In vain and sullen menace, then received
The new invaders; a proud martial race,
Of Scandinavia the undaunted sons,
Whom Dogon, Fier-a-bras, and Humfroi led
To conquest: while Trinacria to their power
Yielded her wheaten garland; and when thou,
Parthenope ! within thy fertile bay
Receiv'd the victors
In the mailed ranks
Of Normans landing on the British coast
Rode Taillefer; and with astounding voice
Thunder'd the war song daring Roland sang
First in the fierce contention: vainly brave,
One not inglorious struggle England made
But failing, saw the Saxon heptarchy
Finish for ever.Then the holy pile,
Yet seen upon the field of conquest, rose,
Where to appease heaven's wrath for so much blood,
The conqueror bade unceasing prayers ascend,
And requiems for the slayers and the slain.
But let not modern Gallia form from hence
Presumptuous hopes, that ever thou again,
Queen of the isles ! shalt crouch to foreign arms.
The enervate sons of Italy may yield;
And the Iberian, all his trophies torn
And wrapp'd in Superstition's monkish weed,
May shelter his abasement, and put on
Degrading fetters. Never, never thou !
Imperial mistress of the obedient sea;
But thou, in thy integrity secure,
20
Shalt now undaunted meet a world in arms.
England ! 'twas where this promontory rears
Its rugged brow above the channel wave,
Parting the hostile nations, that thy fame,
Thy naval fame was tarnish'd, at what time
Thou, leagued with the Batavian, gavest to France
One day of triumphtriumph the more loud,
Because even then so rare. Oh ! well redeem'd,
Since, by a series of illustrious men,
Such as no other country ever rear'd,
To vindicate her cause. It is a list
Which, as Fame echoes it, blanches the cheek
Of bold Ambition; while the despot feels
The extorted sceptre tremble in his grasp.
From even the proudest roll by glory fill'd,
How gladly the reflecting mind returns
To simple scenes of peace and industry,
Where, bosom'd in some valley of the hills
Stands the lone farm; its gate with tawny ricks
Surrounded, and with granaries and sheds,
Roof'd with green mosses, and by elms and ash
Partially shaded; and not far remov'd
The hut of sea-flints built; the humble home
Of one, who sometimes watches on the heights,
When hid in the cold mist of passing clouds,
The flock, with dripping fleeces, are dispers'd
O'er the wide down; then from some ridged point
That overlooks the sea, his eager eye
Watches the bark that for his signal waits
To land its merchandize:Quitting for this
Clandestine traffic his more honest toil,
The crook abandoning, he braves himself
The heaviest snow-storm of December's night,
When with conflicting winds the ocean raves,
And on the tossing boat, unfearing mounts
To meet the partners of the perilous trade,
And share their hazard. Well it were for him,
If no such commerce of destruction known,
He were content with what the earth affords
21
To human labour; even where she seems
Reluctant most. More happy is the hind,
Who, with his own hands rears on some black moor,
Or turbary, his independent hut
Cover'd with heather, whence the slow white smoke
Of smouldering peat arisesA few sheep,
His best possession, with his children share
The rugged shed when wintry tempests blow;
But, when with Spring's return the green blades rise
Amid the russet heath, the household live
Joint tenants of the waste throughout the day,
And often, from her nest, among the swamps,
Where the gemm'd sun-dew grows, or fring'd buck-bean,
They scare the plover, that with plaintive cries
Flutters, as sorely wounded, down the wind.
Rude, and but just remov'd from savage life
Is the rough dweller among scenes like these,
(Scenes all unlike the poet's fabling dreams
Describing Arcady)But he is free;
The dread that follows on illegal acts
He never feels; and his industrious mate
Shares in his labour. Where the brook is traced
By crouding osiers, and the black coot hides
Among the plashy reeds, her diving brood,
The matron wades; gathering the long green rush
That well prepar'd hereafter lends its light
To her poor cottage, dark and cheerless else
Thro' the drear hours of Winter. Otherwhile
She leads her infant group where charlock grows
'Unprofitably gay,' or to the fields,
Where congregate the linnet and the finch,
That on the thistles, so profusely spread,
Feast in the desert; the poor family
Early resort, extirpating with care
These, and the gaudier mischief of the ground;
Then flames the high rais'd heap; seen afar off
Like hostile war-fires flashing to the sky.
Another task is theirs: On fields that shew
As angry Heaven had rain'd sterility,
Stony and cold, and hostile to the plough,
22
Where clamouring loud, the evening curlew runs
And drops her spotted eggs among the flints;
The mother and the children pile the stones
In rugged pyramids;and all this toil
They patiently encounter; well content
On their flock bed to slumber undisturb'd
Beneath the smoky roof they call their own.
Oh ! little knows the sturdy hind, who stands
Gazing, with looks where envy and contempt
Are often strangely mingled, on the car
Where prosperous Fortune sits; what secret care
Or sick satiety is often hid,
Beneath the splendid outside: He knows not
How frequently the child of Luxury
Enjoying nothing, flies from place to place
In chase of pleasure that eludes his grasp;
And that content is e'en less found by him,
Than by the labourer, whose pick-axe smooths
The road before his chariot; and who doffs
What was an hat; and as the train pass on,
Thinks how one day's expenditure, like this,
Would cheer him for long months, when to his toil
The frozen earth closes her marble breast.
Ah ! who is happy ? Happiness ! a word
That like false fire, from marsh effluvia born,
Misleads the wanderer, destin'd to contend
In the world's wilderness, with want or woe
Yet they are happy, who have never ask'd
What good or evil means. The boy
That on the river's margin gaily plays,
Has heard that Death is thereHe knows not Death,
And therefore fears it not; and venturing in
He gains a bullrush, or a minnowthen,
At certain peril, for a worthless prize,
A crow's, or raven's nest, he climbs the boll,
Of some tall pine; and of his prowess proud,
Is for a moment happy. Are your cares,
Ye who despise him, never worse applied ?
The village girl is happy, who sets forth
23
To distant fair, gay in her Sunday suit,
With cherry colour'd knots, and flourish'd shawl,
And bonnet newly purchas'd. So is he
Her little brother, who his mimic drum
Beats, till he drowns her rural lovers' oaths
Of constant faith, and still increasing love;
Ah ! yet a while, and half those oaths believ'd,
Her happiness is vanish'd; and the boy
While yet a stripling, finds the sound he lov'd
Has led him on, till he has given up
His freedom, and his happiness together.
I once was happy, when while yet a child,
I learn'd to love these upland solitudes,
And, when elastic as the mountain air,
To my light spirit, care was yet unknown
And evil unforeseen:Early it came,
And childhood scarcely passed, I was condemned,
A guiltless exile, silently to sigh,
While Memory, with faithful pencil, drew
The contrast; and regretting, I compar'd
With the polluted smoky atmosphere
And dark and stifling streets, the southern hills
That to the setting Sun, their graceful heads
Rearing, o'erlook the frith, where Vecta breaks
With her white rocks, the strong impetuous tide,
When western winds the vast Atlantic urge
To thunder on the coastHaunts of my youth !
Scenes of fond day dreams, I behold ye yet !
Where 'twas so pleasant by thy northern slopes
To climb the winding sheep-path, aided oft
By scatter'd thorns: whose spiny branches bore
Small woolly tufts, spoils of the vagrant lamb
There seeking shelter from the noon-day sun;
And pleasant, seated on the short soft turf,
To look beneath upon the hollow way
While heavily upward mov'd the labouring wain,
And stalking slowly by, the sturdy hind
To ease his panting team, stopp'd with a stone
The grating wheel.
Advancing higher still
24
The prospect widens, and the village church
But little, o'er the lowly roofs around
Rears its gray belfry, and its simple vane;
Those lowly roofs of thatch are half conceal'd
By the rude arms of trees, lovely in spring,
When on each bough, the rosy-tinctur'd bloom
Sits thick, and promises autumnal plenty.
For even those orchards round the Norman farms,
Which, as their owners mark the promis'd fruit,
Console them for the vineyards of the south,
Surpass not these.
Where woods of ash, and beech,
And partial copses, fringe the green hill foot,
The upland shepherd rears his modest home,
There wanders by, a little nameless stream
That from the hill wells forth, bright now and clear,
Or after rain with chalky mixture gray,
But still refreshing in its shallow course,
The cottage garden; most for use design'd,
Yet not of beauty destitute. The vine
Mantles the little casement; yet the briar
Drops fragrant dew among the July flowers;
And pansies rayed, and freak'd and mottled pinks
Grow among balm, and rosemary and rue:
There honeysuckles flaunt, and roses blow
Almost uncultured: Some with dark green leaves
Contrast their flowers of pure unsullied white;
Others, like velvet robes of regal state
Of richest crimson, while in thorny moss
Enshrined and cradled, the most lovely, wear
The hues of youthful beauty's glowing cheek.
With fond regret I recollect e'en now
In Spring and Summer, what delight I felt
Among these cottage gardens, and how much
Such artless nosegays, knotted with a rush
By village housewife or her ruddy maid,
Were welcome to me; soon and simply pleas'd.
An early worshipper at Nature's shrine;
I loved her rudest sceneswarrens, and heaths,
25
And yellow commons, and birch-shaded hollows,
And hedge rows, bordering unfrequented lanes
Bowered with wild roses, and the clasping woodbine
Where purple tassels of the tangling vetch
With bittersweet, and bryony inweave,
And the dew fills the silver bindweed's cups
I loved to trace the brooks whose humid banks
Nourish the harebell, and the freckled pagil;
And stroll among o'ershadowing woods of beech,
Lending in Summer, from the heats of noon
A whispering shade; while haply there reclines
Some pensive lover of uncultur'd flowers,
Who, from the tumps with bright green mosses clad,
Plucks the wood sorrel, with its light thin leaves,
Heart-shaped, and triply folded; and its root
Creeping like beaded coral; or who there
Gathers, the copse's pride, anémones,
With rays like golden studs on ivory laid
Most delicate: but touch'd with purple clouds,
Fit crown for April's fair but changeful brow.
Ah ! hills so early loved ! in fancy still
I breathe your pure keen air; and still behold
Those widely spreading views, mocking alike
The Poet and the Painter's utmost art.
And still, observing objects more minute,
Wondering remark the strange and foreign forms
Of sea-shells; with the pale calcareous soil
Mingled, and seeming of resembling substance.
Tho' surely the blue Ocean (from the heights
Where the downs westward trend, but dimly seen)
Here never roll'd its surge. Does Nature then
Mimic, in wanton mood, fantastic shapes
Of bivalves, and inwreathed volutes, that cling
To the dark sea-rock of the wat'ry world ?
Or did this range of chalky mountains, once
Form a vast bason, where the Ocean waves
Swell'd fathomless ? What time these fossil shells,
Buoy'd on their native element, were thrown
Among the imbedding calx: when the huge hill
Its giant bulk heaved, and in strange ferment
26
Grew up a guardian barrier, 'twixt the sea
And the green level of the sylvan weald.
Ah ! very vain is Science' proudest boast,
And but a little light its flame yet lends
To its most ardent votaries; since from whence
These fossil forms are seen, is but conjecture,
Food for vague theories, or vain dispute,
While to his daily task the peasant goes,
Unheeding such inquiry; with no care
But that the kindly change of sun and shower,
Fit for his toil the earth he cultivates.
As little recks the herdsman of the hill,
Who on some turfy knoll, idly reclined,
Watches his wether flock; that deep beneath
Rest the remains of men, of whom is left
No traces in the records of mankind,
Save what these half obliterated mounds
And half fill'd trenches doubtfully impart
To some lone antiquary; who on times remote,
Since which two thousand years have roll'd away,
Loves to contemplate. He perhaps may trace,
Or fancy he can trace, the oblong square
Where the mail'd legions, under Claudius, rear'd,
The rampire, or excavated fossé delved;
What time the huge unwieldy Elephant
Auxiliary reluctant, hither led,
From Afric's forest glooms and tawny sands,
First felt the Northern blast, and his vast frame
Sunk useless; whence in after ages found,
The wondering hinds, on those enormous bones
Gaz'd; and in giants dwelling on the hills
Believed and marvell'd
Hither, Ambition, come !
Come and behold the nothingness of all
For which you carry thro' the oppressed Earth,
War, and its train of horrorssee where tread
The innumerous hoofs of flocks above the works
By which the warrior sought to register
His glory, and immortalize his name
27
The pirate Dane, who from his circular camp
Bore in destructive robbery, fire and sword
Down thro' the vale, sleeps unremember'd here;
And here, beneath the green sward, rests alike
The savage native, who his acorn meal
Shar'd with the herds, that ranged the pathless woods;
And the centurion, who on these wide hills
Encamping, planted the Imperial Eagle.
All, with the lapse of Time, have passed away,
Even as the clouds, with dark and dragon shapes,
Or like vast promontories crown'd with towers,
Cast their broad shadows on the downs: then sail
Far to the northward, and their transient gloom
Is soon forgotten.
But from thoughts like these,
By human crimes suggested, let us turn
To where a more attractive study courts
The wanderer of the hills; while shepherd girls
Will from among the fescue bring him flowers,
Of wonderous mockery; some resembling bees
In velvet vest, intent on their sweet toil,
While others mimic flies, that lightly sport
In the green shade, or float along the pool,
But here seem perch'd upon the slender stalk,
And gathering honey dew. While in the breeze
That wafts the thistle's plumed seed along,
Blue bells wave tremulous. The mountain thyme
Purples the hassock of the heaving mole,
And the short turf is gay with tormentil,
And bird's foot trefoil, and the lesser tribes
Of hawkweed; spangling it with fringed stars.
Near where a richer tract of cultur'd land
Slopes to the south; and burnished by the sun,
Bend in the gale of August, floods of corn;
The guardian of the flock, with watchful care,
Repels by voice and dog the encroaching sheep
While his boy visits every wired trap
That scars the turf; and from the pit-falls takes
The timid migrants, who from distant wilds,
Warrens, and stone quarries, are destined thus
28
To lose their short existence. But unsought
By Luxury yet, the Shepherd still protects
The social bird, who from his native haunts
Of willowy current, or the rushy pool,
Follows the fleecy croud, and flirts and skims,
In fellowship among them.
Where the knoll
More elevated takes the changeful winds,
The windmill rears its vanes; and thitherward
With his white load, the master travelling,
Scares the rooks rising slow on whispering wings,
While o'er his head, before the summer sun
Lights up the blue expanse, heard more than seen,
The lark sings matins; and above the clouds
Floating, embathes his spotted breast in dew.
Beneath the shadow of a gnarled thorn,
Bent by the sea blast, from a seat of turf
With fairy nosegays strewn, how wide the view !
Till in the distant north it melts away,
And mingles indiscriminate with clouds:
But if the eye could reach so far, the mart
Of England's capital, its domes and spires
Might be perceivedYet hence the distant range
Of Kentish hills, appear in purple haze;
And nearer, undulate the wooded heights,
And airy summits, that above the mole
Rise in green beauty; and the beacon'd ridge
Of Black-down shagg'd with heath, and swelling rude
Like a dark island from the vale; its brow
Catching the last rays of the evening sun
That gleam between the nearer park's old oaks,
Then lighten up the river, and make prominent
The portal, and the ruin'd battlements
Of that dismantled fortress; rais'd what time
The Conqueror's successors fiercely fought,
Tearing with civil feuds the desolate land.
But now a tiller of the soil dwells there,
And of the turret's loop'd and rafter'd halls
Has made an humbler homesteadWhere he sees,
29
Instead of armed foemen, herds that graze
Along his yellow meadows; or his flocks
At evening from the upland driv'n to fold
In such a castellated mansion once
A stranger chose his home; and where hard by
In rude disorder fallen, and hid with brushwood
Lay fragments gray of towers and buttresses,
Among the ruins, often he would muse
His rustic meal soon ended, he was wont
To wander forth, listening the evening sounds
Of rushing milldam, or the distant team,
Or night-jar, chasing fern-flies: the tir'd hind
Pass'd him at nightfall, wondering he should sit
On the hill top so late: they from the coast
Who sought bye paths with their clandestine load,
Saw with suspicious doubt, the lonely man
Cross on their way: but village maidens thought
His senses injur'd; and with pity say
That he, poor youth ! must have been cross'd in love
For often, stretch'd upon the mountain turf
With folded arms, and eyes intently fix'd
Where ancient elms and firs obscured a grange,
Some little space within the vale below,
They heard him, as complaining of his fate,
And to the murmuring wind, of cold neglect
And baffled hope he told.The peasant girls
These plaintive sounds remember, and even now
Among them may be heard the stranger's songs.
Were I a Shepherd on the hill
And ever as the mists withdrew
Could see the willows of the rill
Shading the footway to the mill
Where once I walk'd with you
And as away Night's shadows sail,
And sounds of birds and brooks arise,
Believe, that from the woody vale
I hear your voice upon the gale
In soothing melodies;
And viewing from the Alpine height,
30
The prospect dress'd in hues of air,
Could say, while transient colours bright
Touch'd the fair scene with dewy light,
'Tis, that her eyes are there !
I think, I could endure my lot
And linger on a few short years,
And then, by all but you forgot,
Sleep, where the turf that clothes the spot
May claim some pitying tears.
For 'tis not easy to forget
One, who thro' life has lov'd you still,
And you, however late, might yet
With sighs to Memory giv'n, regret
The Shepherd of the Hill.
Yet otherwhile it seem'd as if young Hope
Her flattering pencil gave to Fancy's hand,
And in his wanderings, rear'd to sooth his soul
Ideal bowers of pleasureThen, of Solitude
And of his hermit life, still more enamour'd,
His home was in the forest; and wild fruits
And bread sustain'd him. There in early spring
The Barkmen found him, e'er the sun arose;
There at their daily toil, the Wedgecutters
Beheld him thro' the distant thicket move.
The shaggy dog following the truffle hunter,
Bark'd at the loiterer; and perchance at night
Belated villagers from fair or wake,
While the fresh night-wind let the moonbeams in
Between the swaying boughs, just saw him pass,
And then in silence, gliding like a ghost
He vanish'd ! Lost among the deepening gloom.
But near one ancient tree, whose wreathed roots
Form'd a rude couch, love-songs and scatter'd rhymes,
Unfinish'd sentences, or half erased,
And rhapsodies like this, were sometimes found
Let us to woodland wilds repair
While yet the glittering night-dews seem
To wait the freshly-breathing air,
31
Precursive of the morning beam,
That rising with advancing day,
Scatters the silver drops away.
An elm, uprooted by the storm,
The trunk with mosses gray and green,
Shall make for us a rustic form,
Where lighter grows the forest scene;
And far among the bowery shades,
Are ferny lawns and grassy glades.
Retiring May to lovely June
Her latest garland now resigns;
The banks with cuckoo-flowers are strewn,
The woodwalks blue with columbines,
And with its reeds, the wandering stream
Reflects the flag-flower's golden gleam.
There, feathering down the turf to meet,
Their shadowy arms the beeches spread,
While high above our sylvan seat,
Lifts the light ash its airy head;
And later leaved, the oaks between
Extend their bows of vernal green.
The slender birch its paper rind
Seems offering to divided love,
And shuddering even without a wind
Aspins, their paler foliage move,
As if some spirit of the air
Breath'd a low sigh in passing there.
The Squirrel in his frolic mood,
Will fearless bound among the boughs;
Yaffils laugh loudly thro' the wood,
And murmuring ring-doves tell their vows;
While we, as sweetest woodscents rise,
Listen to woodland melodies.
And I'll contrive a sylvan room
Against the time of summer heat,
Where leaves, inwoven in Nature's loom,
Shall canopy our green retreat;
And gales that 'close the eye of day'
Shall linger, e'er they die away.
32
And when a sear and sallow hue
From early frost the bower receives,
I'll dress the sand rock cave for you,
And strew the floor with heath and leaves,
That you, against the autumnal air
May find securer shelter there.
The Nightingale will then have ceas'd
To sing her moonlight serenade;
But the gay bird with blushing breast,
And Woodlarks still will haunt the shade,
And by the borders of the spring
Reed-wrens will yet be carolling.
The forest hermit's lonely cave
None but such soothing sounds shall reach,
Or hardly heard, the distant wave
Slow breaking on the stony beach;
Or winds, that now sigh soft and low,
Now make wild music as they blow.
And then, before the chilling North
The tawny foliage falling light,
Seems, as it flits along the earth,
The footfall of the busy Sprite,
Who wrapt in pale autumnal gloom,
Calls up the mist-born Mushroom.
Oh ! could I hear your soft voice there,
And see you in the forest green
All beauteous as you are, more fair
You'ld look, amid the sylvan scene,
And in a wood-girl's simple guise,
Be still more lovely in mine eyes.
Ye phantoms of unreal delight,
Visions of fond delirium born !
Rise not on my deluded sight,
Then leave me drooping and forlorn
To know, such bliss can never be,
Unless loved like me.
The visionary, nursing dreams like these,
Is not indeed unhappy. Summer woods
Wave over him, and whisper as they wave,
33
Some future blessings he may yet enjoy.
And as above him sail the silver clouds,
He follows them in thought to distant climes,
Where, far from the cold policy of this,
Dividing him from her he fondly loves,
He, in some island of the southern sea,
May haply build his cane-constructed bower
Beneath the bread-fruit, or aspiring palm,
With long green foliage rippling in the gale.
Oh ! let him cherish his ideal bliss
For what is life, when Hope has ceas'd to strew
Her fragile flowers along its thorny way ?
And sad and gloomy are his days, who lives
Of Hope abandon'd !
Just beneath the rock
Where Beachy overpeers the channel wave,
Within a cavern mined by wintry tides
Dwelt one, who long disgusted with the world
And all its ways, appear'd to suffer life
Rather than live; the soul-reviving gale,
Fanning the bean-field, or the thymy heath,
Had not for many summers breathed on him;
And nothing mark'd to him the season's change,
Save that more gently rose the placid sea,
And that the birds which winter on the coast
Gave place to other migrants; save that the fog,
Hovering no more above the beetling cliffs
Betray'd not then the little careless sheep
On the brink grazing, while their headlong fall
Near the lone Hermit's flint-surrounded home,
Claim'd unavailing pity; for his heart
Was feelingly alive to all that breath'd;
And outraged as he was, in sanguine youth,
By human crimes, he still acutely felt
For human misery.
Wandering on the beach,
He learn'd to augur from the clouds of heaven,
And from the changing colours of the sea,
And sullen murmurs of the hollow cliffs,
34
Or the dark porpoises, that near the shore
Gambol'd and sported on the level brine
When tempests were approaching: then at night
He listen'd to the wind; and as it drove
The billows with o'erwhelming vehemence
He, starting from his rugged couch, went forth
And hazarding a life, too valueless,
He waded thro' the waves, with plank or pole
Towards where the mariner in conflict dread
Was buffeting for life the roaring surge;
And now just seen, now lost in foaming gulphs,
The dismal gleaming of the clouded moon
Shew'd the dire peril. Often he had snatch'd
From the wild billows, some unhappy man
Who liv'd to bless the hermit of the rocks.
But if his generous cares were all in vain,
And with slow swell the tide of morning bore
Some blue swol'n cor'se to land; the pale recluse
Dug in the chalk a sepulchreabove
Where the dank sea-wrack mark'd the utmost tide,
And with his prayers perform'd the obsequies
For the poor helpless stranger.
One dark night
The equinoctial wind blew south by west,
Fierce on the shore; the bellowing cliffs were shook
Even to their stony base, and fragments fell
Flashing and thundering on the angry flood.
At day-break, anxious for the lonely man,
His cave the mountain shepherds visited,
Tho' sand and banks of weeds had choak'd their way
He was not in it; but his drowned cor'se
By the waves wafted, near his former home
Receiv'd the rites of burial. Those who read
Chisel'd within the rock, these mournful lines,
Memorials of his sufferings, did not grieve,
That dying in the cause of charity
His spirit, from its earthly bondage freed,
Had to some better region fled for ever.
35
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
1174:Scene. Wrzburg; a garden in the environs. 1512.
Festus, Paracelsus, Michal.
Paracelsus.
Come close to me, dear friends; still closer; thus!
Close to the heart which, though long time roll by
Ere it again beat quicker, pressed to yours,
As now it beatsperchance a long, long time
At least henceforth your memories shall make
Quiet and fragrant as befits their home.
Nor shall my memory want a home in yours
Alas, that it requires too well such free
Forgiving love as shall embalm it there!
For if you would remember me aright,
As I was born to be, you must forget
All fitful strange and moody waywardness
Which e'er confused my better spirit, to dwell
Only on moments such as these, dear friends!
My heart no truer, but my words and ways
More true to it: as Michal, some months hence,
Will say, "this autumn was a pleasant time,"
For some few sunny days; and overlook
Its bleak wind, hankering after pining leaves.
Autumn would fain be sunny; I would look
Liker my nature's truth: and both are frail,
And both beloved, for all our frailty.
Michal.
Aureole!
Paracelsus.
Drop by drop! she is weeping like a child!
Not so! I am contentmore than content;
Nay, autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay:
Look up, sweet Michal, nor esteem the less
Your stained and drooping vines their grapes bow down,
Nor blame those creaking trees bent with their fruit,
That apple-tree with a rare after-birth
Of peeping blooms sprinkled its wealth among!
Then for the windswhat wind that ever raved
Shall vex that ash which overlooks you both,
So proud it wears its berries? Ah, at length,
The old smile meet for her, the lady of this
Sequestered nest!this kingdom, limited
Alone by one old populous green wall
Tenanted by the ever-busy flies,
Grey crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders,
Each family of the silver-threaded moss
Which, look through near, this way, and it appears
A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh
Of bulrush whitening in the sun: laugh now!
Fancy the crickets, each one in his house,
Looking out, wondering at the worldor best,
Yon painted snail with his gay shell of dew,
Travelling to see the glossy balls high up
Hung by the caterpillar, like gold lamps.
Michal.
In truth we have lived carelessly and well.
Paracelsus.
And shall, my perfect pair!each, trust me, born
For the other; nay, your very hair, when mixed,
Is of one hue. For where save in this nook
Shall you two walk, when I am far away,
And wish me prosperous fortune? Stay: that plant
Shall never wave its tangles lightly and softly,
As a queen's languid and imperial arm
Which scatters crowns among her lovers, but you
Shall be reminded to predict to me
Some great success! Ah see, the sun sinks broad
Behind Saint Saviour's: wholly gone, at last!
Festus.
Now, Aureole, stay those wandering eyes awhile!
You are ours to-night, at least; and while you spoke
Of Michal and her tears, I thought that none
Could willing leave what he so seemed to love:
But that last look destroys my dreamthat look
As if, where'er you gazed, there stood a star!
How far was Wrzburg with its church and spire
And garden-walls and all things they contain,
From that look's far alighting?
Paracelsus.
I but spoke
And looked alike from simple joy to see
The beings I love best, shut in so well
From all rude chances like to be my lot,
That, when afar, my weary spirit,disposed
To lose awhile its care in soothing thoughts
Of them, their pleasant features, looks and words,
Needs never hesitate, nor apprehend
Encroaching trouble may have reached them too,
Nor have recourse to fancy's busy aid
And fashion even a wish in their behalf
Beyond what they possess already here;
But, unobstructed, may at once forget
Itself in them, assured how well they fare.
Beside, this Festus knows he holds me one
Whom quiet and its charms arrest in vain,
One scarce aware of all the joys I quit,
Too filled with airy hopes to make account
Of soft delights his own heart garners up:
Whereas behold how much our sense of all
That's beauteous proves alike! When Festus learns
That every common pleasure of the world
Affects me as himself; that I have just
As varied appetite for joy derived
From common things; a stake in life, in short,
Like his; a stake which rash pursuit of aims
That life affords not, would as soon destroy;
He may convince himself that, this in view,
I shall act well advised. And last, because,
Though heaven and earth and all things were at stake,
Sweet Michal must not weep, our parting eve.
Festus.
True: and the eve is deepening, and we sit
As little anxious to begin our talk
As though to-morrow I could hint of it
As we paced arm-in-arm the cheerful town
At sun-dawn; or could whisper it by fits
(Trithemius busied with his class the while)
In that dim chamber where the noon-streaks peer
Half-frightened by the awful tomes around;
Or in some grassy lane unbosom all
From even-blush to midnight: but, to-morrow!
Have I full leave to tell my inmost mind?
We have been brothers, and henceforth the world
Will rise between us:all my freest mind?
'T is the last night, dear Aureole!
Paracelsus.
Oh, say on!
Devise some test of love, some arduous feat
To be performed for you: say on! If night
Be spent the while, the better! Recall how oft
My wondrous plans and dreams and hopes and fears
Havenever wearied you, oh no!as I
Recall, and never vividly as now,
Your true affection, born when Einsiedeln
And its green hills were all the world to us;
And still increasing to this night which ends
My further stay at Wrzburg. Oh, one day
You shall be very proud! Say on, dear friends!
Festus.
In truth? 'T is for my proper peace, indeed,
Rather than yours; for vain all projects seem
To stay your course: I said my latest hope
Is fading even now. A story tells
Of some far embassy despatched to win
The favour of an eastern king, and how
The gifts they offered proved but dazzling dust
Shed from the ore-beds native to his clime.
Just so, the value of repose and love,
I meant should tempt you, better far than I
You seem to comprehend; and yet desist
No whit from projects where repose nor love
Has part.
Paracelsus.
Once more? Alas! As I foretold.
Festus.
A solitary briar the bank puts forth
To save our swan's nest floating out to sea.
Paracelsus.
Dear Festus, hear me. What is it you wish?
That I should lay aside my heart's pursuit,
Abandon the sole ends for which I live,
Reject God's great commission, and so die!
You bid me listen for your true love's sake:
Yet how has grown that love? Even in a long
And patient cherishing of the self-same spirit
It now would quell; as though a mother hoped
To stay the lusty manhood of the child
Once weak upon her knees. I was not born
Informed and fearless from the first, but shrank
From aught which marked me out apart from men:
I would have lived their life, and died their death,
Lost in their ranks, eluding destiny:
But you first guided me through doubt and fear,
Taught me to know mankind and know myself;
And now that I am strong and full of hope,
That, from my soul, I can reject all aims
Save those your earnest words made plain to me,
Now that I touch the brink of my design,
When I would have a triumph in their eyes,
A glad cheer in their voicesMichal weeps,
And Festus ponders gravely!
Festus.
When you deign
To hear my purpose . . .
Paracelsus.
Hear it? I can say
Beforehand all this evening's conference!
'T is this way, Michal, that he uses: first,
Or he declares, or I, the leading points
Of our best scheme of life, what is man's end
And what God's will; no two faiths e'er agreed
As his with mine. Next, each of us allows
Faith should be acted on as best we may;
Accordingly, I venture to submit
My plan, in lack of better, for pursuing
The path which God's will seems to authorize.
Well, he discerns much good in it, avows
This motive worthy, that hope plausible,
A danger here to be avoided, there
An oversight to be repaired: in fine
Our two minds go togetherall the good
Approved by him, I gladly recognize,
All he counts bad, I thankfully discard,
And nought forbids my looking up at last
For some stray comfort in his cautious brow.
When, lo! I learn that, spite of all, there lurks
Some innate and inexplicable germ
Of failure in my scheme; so that at last
It all amounts to thisthe sovereign proof
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were;
A life which, prompted by the sad and blind
Folly of man, Festus abhors the most;
But which these tenets sanctify at once,
Though to less subtle wits it seems the same,
Consider it how they may.
Michal.
Is it so, Festus
He speaks so calmly and kindly: is it so?
Paracelsus.
Reject those glorious visions of God's love
And man's design; laugh loud that God should send
Vast longings to direct us; say how soon
Power satiates these, or lust, or gold; I know
The world's cry well, and how to answer it.
But this ambiguous warfare . . .
Festus.
. . . Wearies so
That you will grant no last leave to your friend
To urge it?for his sake, not yours? I wish
To send my soul in good hopes after you;
Never to sorrow that uncertain words
Erringly apprehended, a new creed
Ill understood, begot rash trust in you,
Had share in your undoing.
Paracelsus.
Choose your side,
Hold or renounce: but meanwhile blame me not
Because I dare to act on your own views,
Nor shrink when they point onward, nor espy
A peril where they most ensure success.
Festus.
Prove that to mebut that! Prove you abide
Within their warrant, nor presumptuous boast
God's labour laid on you; prove, all you covet
A mortal may expect; and, most of all,
Prove the strange course you now affect, will lead
To its attainmentand I bid you speed,
Nay, count the minutes till you venture forth!
You smile; but I had gathered from slow thought
Much musing on the fortunes of my friend
Matter I deemed could not be urged in vain;
But it all leaves me at my need: in shreds
And fragments I must venture what remains.
Michal.
Ask at once, Festus, wherefore he should scorn . . .
Festus.
Stay, Michal: Aureole, I speak guardedly
And gravely, knowing well, whate'er your error,
This is no ill-considered choice of yours,
No sudden fancy of an ardent boy.
Not from your own confiding words alone
Am I aware your passionate heart long since
Gave birth to, nourished and at length matures
This scheme. I will not speak of Einsiedeln,
Where I was born your elder by some years
Only to watch you fully from the first:
In all beside, our mutual tasks were fixed
Even then't was mine to have you in my view
As you had your own soul and those intents
Which filled it when, to crown your dearest wish,
With a tumultuous heart, you left with me
Our childhood's home to join the favoured few
Whom, here, Trithemius condescends to teach
A portion of his lore: and not one youth
Of those so favoured, whom you now despise,
Came earnest as you came, resolved, like you,
To grasp all, and retain all, and deserve
By patient toil a wide renown like his.
Now, this new ardour which supplants the old
I watched, too; 't was significant and strange,
In one matched to his soul's content at length
With rivals in the search for wisdom's prize,
To see the sudden pause, the total change;
From contest, the transition to repose
From pressing onward as his fellows pressed,
To a blank idleness, yet most unlike
The dull stagnation of a soul, content,
Once foiled, to leave betimes a thriveless quest.
That careless bearing, free from all pretence
Even of contempt for what it ceased to seek
Smiling humility, praising much, yet waiving
What it professed to praisethough not so well
Maintained but that rare outbreaks, fierce and brief,
Revealed the hidden scorn, as quickly curbed.
That ostentatious show of past defeat,
That ready acquiescence in contempt,
I deemed no other than the letting go
His shivered sword, of one about to spring
Upon his foe's throat; but it was not thus:
Not that way looked your brooding purpose then.
For after-signs disclosed, what you confirmed,
That you prepared to task to the uttermost
Your strength, in furtherance of a certain aim
Whichwhile it bore the name your rivals gave
Their own most puny effortswas so vast
In scope that it included their best flights,
Combined them, and desired to gain one prize
In place of many,the secret of the world,
Of man, and man's true purpose, path and fate.
That you, not nursing as a mere vague dream
This purpose, with the sages of the past,
Have struck upon a way to this, if all
You trust be true, which following, heart and soul,
You, if a man may, dare aspire to know:
And that this aim shall differ from a host
Of aims alike in character and kind,
Mostly in this,that in itself alone
Shall its reward be, not an alien end
Blending therewith; no hope nor fear nor joy
Nor woe, to elsewhere move you, but this pure
Devotion to sustain you or betray:
Thus you aspire.
Paracelsus.
You shall not state it thus:
I should not differ from the dreamy crew
You speak of. I profess no other share
In the selection of my lot, than this
My ready answer to the will of God
Who summons me to be his organ. All
Whose innate strength supports them shall succeed
No better than the sages.
Festus.
Such the aim, then,
God sets before you; and't is doubtless need
That he appoint no less the way of praise
Than the desire to praise; for, though I hold
With you, the setting forth such praise to be
The natural end and service of a man,
And hold such praise is best attained when man
Attains the general welfare of his kind
Yet this, the end, is not the instrument.
Presume not to serve God apart from such
Appointed channel as he wills shall gather
Imperfect tributes, for that sole obedience
Valued perchance! He seeks not that his altars
Blaze, careless how, so that they do but blaze.
Suppose this, then; that God selected you
To know (heed well your answers, for my faith
Shall meet implicitly what they affirm)
I cannot think you dare annex to such
Selection aught beyond a steadfast will,
An intense hope; nor let your gifts create
Scorn or neglect of ordinary means
Conducive to success, make destiny
Dispense with man's endeavour. Now, dare you search
Your inmost heart, and candidly avow
Whether you have not rather wild desire
For this distinction than security
Of its existence? whether you discern
The path to the fulfilment of your purpose
Clear as that purposeand again, that purpose
Clear as your yearning to be singled out
For its pursuer. Dare you answer this?
Paracelsus
[after a pause].
No, I have nought to fear! Who will may know
The secret'st workings of my soul. What though
It be so?if indeed the strong desire
Eclipse the aim in me?if splendour break
Upon the outset of my path alone,
And duskest shade succeed? What fairer seal
Shall I require to my authentic mission
Than this fierce energy?this instinct striving
Because its nature is to strive?enticed
By the security of no broad course,
Without success forever in its eyes!
How know I else such glorious fate my own,
But in the restless irresistible force
That works within me? Is it for human will
To institute such impulses?still less,
To disregard their promptings! What should I
Do, kept among you all; your loves, your cares,
Your lifeall to be mine? Be sure that God
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart!
Ask the geier-eagle why she stoops at once
Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
What full-grown power informs her from the first,
Why she not marvels, strenuously beating
The silent boundless regions of the sky!
Be sure they sleep not whom God needs! Nor fear
Their holding light his charge, when every hour
That finds that charge delayed, is a new death.
This for the faith in which I trust; and hence
I can abjure so well the idle arts
These pedants strive to learn and teach; Black Arts,
Great Works, the Secret and Sublime, forsooth
Let others prize: too intimate a tie
Connects me with our God! A sullen fiend
To do my bidding, fallen and hateful sprites
To help mewhat are these, at best, beside
God helping, God directing everywhere,
So that the earth shall yield her secrets up,
And every object there be charged to strike,
Teach, gratify her master God appoints?
And I am young, my Festus, happy and free!
I can devote myself; I have a life
To give; I, singled out for this, the One!
Think, think! the wide East, where all Wisdom sprung;
The bright South, where she dwelt; the hopeful North,
All are passed o'erit lights on me! 'T is time
New hopes should animate the world, new light
Should dawn from new revealings to a race
Weighed down so long, forgotten so long; thus shall
The heaven reserved for us at last receive
Creatures whom no unwonted splendours blind,
But ardent to confront the unclouded blaze.
Whose beams not seldom blessed their pilgrimage,
Not seldom glorified their life below.
Festus.
My words have their old fate and make faint stand
Against your glowing periods. Call this, truth
Why not pursue it in a fast retreat,
Some one of Learning's many palaces,
After approved example?seeking there
Calm converse with the great dead, soul to soul,
Who laid up treasure with the like intent
So lift yourself into their airy place,
And fill out full their unfulfilled careers,
Unravelling the knots their baffled skill
Pronounced inextricable, true!but left
Far less confused. A fresh eye, a fresh hand,
Might do much at their vigour's waning-point;
Succeeding with new-breathed new-hearted force,
As at old games the runner snatched the torch
From runner still: this way success might be.
But you have coupled with your enterprise,
An arbitrary self-repugnant scheme
Of seeking it in strange and untried paths.
What books are in the desert? Writes the sea
The secret of her yearning in vast caves
Where yours will fall the first of human feet?
Has wisdom sat there and recorded aught
You press to read? Why turn aside from her
To visit, where her vesture never glanced,
Nowsolitudes consigned to barrenness
By God's decree, which who shall dare impugn?
Nowruins where she paused but would not stay,
Old ravaged cities that, renouncing her,
She called an endless curse on, so it came:
Or worst of all, nowmen you visit, men,
Ignoblest troops who never heard her voice
Or hate it, men without one gift from Rome
Or Athens,these shall Aureole's teachers be!
Rejecting past example, practice, precept,
Aidless'mid these he thinks to stand alone:
Thick like a glory round the Stagirite
Your rivals throng, the sages: here stand you!
Whatever you may protest, knowledge is not
Paramount in your love; or for her sake
You would collect all help from every source
Rival, assistant, friend, foe, all would merge
In the broad class of those who showed her haunts,
And those who showed them not.
Paracelsus.
What shall I say?
Festus, from childhood I have been possessed
By a fireby a true fire, or faint or fierce,
As from without some master, so it seemed,
Repressed or urged its current: this but ill
Expresses what would I convey: but rather
I will believe an angel ruled me thus,
Than that my soul's own workings, own high nature,
So became manifest. I knew not then
What whispered in the evening, and spoke out
At midnight. If some mortal, born too soon,
Were laid away in some great trancethe ages
Coming and going all the whiletill dawned
His true time's advent; and could then record
The words they spoke who kept watch by his bed,
Then I might tell more of the breath so light
Upon my eyelids, and the fingers light
Among my hair. Youth is confused; yet never
So dull was I but, when that spirit passed,
I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turns
A water-snake when fairies cross his sleep.
And having this within me and about me
While Einsiedeln, its mountains, lakes and woods
Confined mewhat oppressive joy was mine
When life grew plain, and I first viewed the thronged,
The everlasting concourse of mankind!
Believe that ere I joined them, ere I knew
The purpose of the pageant, or the place
Consigned me in its rankswhile, just awake,
Wonder was freshest and delight most pure
'T was then that least supportable appeared
A station with the brightest of the crowd,
A portion with the proudest of them all.
And from the tumult in my breast, this only
Could I collect, that I must thenceforth die
Or elevate myself far, far above
The gorgeous spectacle. I seemed to long
At once to trample on, yet save mankind,
To make some unexampled sacrifice
In their behalf, to wring some wondrous good
From heaven or earth for them, to perish, winning
Eternal weal in the act: as who should dare
Pluck out the angry thunder from its cloud,
That, all its gathered flame discharged on him,
No storm might threaten summer's azure sleep:
Yet never to be mixed with men so much
As to have part even in my own work, share
In my own largess. Once the feat achieved,
I would withdraw from their officious praise,
Would gently put aside their profuse thanks.
Like some knight traversing a wilderness,
Who, on his way, may chance to free a tribe
Of desert-people from their dragon-foe;
When all the swarthy race press round to kiss
His feet, and choose him for their king, and yield
Their poor tents, pitched among the sand-hills, for
His realm: and he points, smiling, to his scarf
Heavy with riveled gold, his burgonet
Gay set with twinkling stonesand to the East,
Where these must be displayed!
Festus.
Good: let us hear
No more about your nature, "which first shrank
"From all that marked you out apart from men!"
Paracelsus.
I touch on that; these words but analyse
The first mad impulse: 't was as brief as fond,
For as I gazed again upon the show,
I soon distinguished here and there a shape
Palm-wreathed and radiant, forehead and full eye.
Well pleased was I their state should thus at once
Interpret my own thoughts:"Behold the clue
"To all," I rashly said, "and what I pine
"To do, these have accomplished: we are peers.
"They know and therefore rule: I, too, will know!"
You were beside me, Festus, as you say;
You saw me plunge in their pursuits whom fame
Is lavish to attest the lords of mind,
Not pausing to make sure the prize in view
Would satiate my cravings when obtained,
But since they strove I strove. Then came a slow
And strangling failure. We aspired alike,
Yet not the meanest plodder, Tritheim counts
A marvel, but was all-sufficient, strong,
Or staggered only at his own vast wits;
While I was restless, nothing satisfied,
Distrustful, most perplexed. I would slur over
That struggle; suffice it, that I loathed myself
As weak compared with them, yet felt somehow
A mighty power was brooding, taking shape
Within me; and this lasted till one night
When, as I sat revolving it and more,
A still voice from without said"Seest thou not,
"Desponding child, whence spring defeat and loss?
"Even from thy strength. Consider: hast thou gazed
"Presumptuously on wisdom's countenance,
"No veil between; and can thy faltering hands,
"Unguided by the brain the sight absorbs,
"Pursue their task as earnest blinkers do
"Whom radiance ne'er distracted? Live their life
"If thou wouldst share their fortune, choose their eyes
"Unfed by splendour. Let each task present
"Its petty good to thee. Waste not thy gifts
"In profitless waiting for the gods' descent,
"But have some idol of thine own to dress
"With their array. Know, not for knowing's sake,
"But to become a star to men for ever;
"Know, for the gain it gets, the praise it brings,
"The wonder it inspires, the love it breeds:
"Look one step onward, and secure that step!"
And I smiled as one never smiles but once,
Then first discovering my own aim's extent,
Which sought to comprehend the works of God,
And God himself, and all God's intercourse
With the human mind; I understood, no less,
My fellows' studies, whose true worth I saw,
But smiled not, well aware who stood by me.
And softer came the voice"There is a way:
"'T is hard for flesh to tread therein, imbued
"With frailtyhopeless, if indulgence first
"Have ripened inborn germs of sin to strength:
"Wilt thou adventure for my sake and man's,
"Apart from all reward?" And last it breathed
"Be happy, my good soldier; I am by thee,
"Be sure, even to the end!"I answered not,
Knowing him. As he spoke, I was endued
With comprehension and a steadfast will;
And when he ceased, my brow was sealed his own.
If there took place no special change in me,
How comes it all things wore a different hue
Thenceforward?pregnant with vast consequence,
Teeming with grand result, loaded with fate?
So that when, quailing at the mighty range
Of secret truths which yearn for birth, I haste
To contemplate undazzled some one truth,
Its bearings and effects aloneat once
What was a speck expands into a star,
Asking a life to pass exploring thus,
Till I near craze. I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time!
Michal.
Vex him no further, Festus; it is so!
Festus.
Just thus you help me ever. This would hold
Were it the trackless air, and not a path
Inviting you, distinct with footprints yet
Of many a mighty marcher gone that way.
You may have purer views than theirs, perhaps,
But they were famous in their daythe proofs
Remain. At least accept the light they lend.
Paracelsus.
Their light! the sum of all is briefly this:
They laboured and grew famous, and the fruits
Are best seen in a dark and groaning earth
Given over to a blind and endless strife
With evils, what of all their lore abates?
No; I reject and spurn them utterly
And all they teach. Shall I still sit beside
Their dry wells, with a white lip and filmed eye,
While in the distance heaven is blue above
Mountains where sleep the unsunned tarns?
Festus.
And yet
As strong delusions have prevailed ere now.
Men have set out as gallantly to seek
Their ruin. I have heard of such: yourself
Avow all hitherto have failed and fallen.
Michal.
Nay, Festus, when but as the pilgrims faint
Through the drear way, do you expect to see
Their city dawn amid the clouds afar?
Paracelsus.
Ay, sounds it not like some old well-known tale?
For me, I estimate their works and them
So rightly, that at times I almost dream
I too have spent a life the sages' way,
And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance
I perished in an arrogant self-reliance
Ages ago; and in that act, a prayer
For one more chance went up so earnest, so
Instinct with better light let in by death,
That life was blotted outnot so completely
But scattered wrecks enough of it remain,
Dim memories, as now, when once more seems
The goal in sight again. All which, indeed,
Is foolish, and only meansthe flesh I wear,
The earth I tread, are not more clear to me
Than my belief, explained to you or no.
Festus.
And who am I, to challenge and dispute
That clear belief? I will divest all fear.
Michal.
Then Aureole is God's commissary! he shall
Be great and grandand all for us!
Paracelsus.
No, sweet!
Not great and grand. If I can serve mankind
'T is well; but there our intercourse must end:
I never will be served by those I serve.
Festus.
Look well to this; here is a plague-spot, here,
Disguise it how you may! 'T is true, you utter
This scorn while by our side and loving us;
'T is but a spot as yet: but it will break
Into a hideous blotch if overlooked.
How can that course be safe which from the first
Produces carelessness to human love?
It seems you have abjured the helps which men
Who overpass their kind, as you would do,
Have humbly sought; I dare not thoroughly probe
This matter, lest I learn too much. Let be
That popular praise would little instigate
Your efforts, nor particular approval
Reward you; put reward aside; alone
You shall go forth upon your arduous task,
None shall assist you, none partake your toil,
None share your triumph: still you must retain
Some one to cast your glory on, to share
Your rapture with. Were I elect like you,
I would encircle me with love, and raise
A rampart of my fellows; it should seem
Impossible for me to fail, so watched
By gentle friends who made my cause their own.
They should ward off fate's envythe great gift,
Extravagant when claimed by me alone,
Being so a gift to them as well as me.
If danger daunted me or ease seduced,
How calmly their sad eyes should gaze reproach!
Michal.
O Aureole, can I sing when all alone,
Without first calling, in my fancy, both
To listen by my sideeven I! And you?
Do you not feel this? Say that you feel this!
Paracelsus.
I feel't is pleasant that my aims, at length
Allowed their weight, should be supposed to need
A further strengthening in these goodly helps!
My course allures for its own sake, its sole
Intrinsic worth; and ne'er shall boat of mine
Adventure forth for gold and apes at once.
Your sages say, "if human, therefore weak:"
If weak, more need to give myself entire
To my pursuit; and by its side, all else . . .
No matter! I deny myself but little
In waiving all assistance save its own.
Would there were some real sacrifice to make!
Your friends the sages threw their joys away,
While I must be content with keeping mine.
Festus.
But do not cut yourself from human weal!
You cannot thrivea man that dares affect
To spend his life in service to his kind
For no reward of theirs, unbound to them
By any tie; nor do so, Aureole! No
There are strange punishments for such. Give up
(Although no visible good flow thence) some part
Of the glory to another; hiding thus,
Even from yourself, that all is for yourself.
Say, say almost to God"I have done all
"For her, not for myself!"
Paracelsus.
And who but lately
Was to rejoice in my success like you?
Whom should I love but both of you?
Festus.
I know not:
But know this, you, that't is no will of mine
You should abjure the lofty claims you make;
And this the causeI can no longer seek
To overlook the truth, that there would be
A monstrous spectacle upon the earth,
Beneath the pleasant sun, among the trees:
A being knowing not what love is. Hear me!
You are endowed with faculties which bear
Annexed to them as't were a dispensation
To summon meaner spirits to do their will
And gather round them at their need; inspiring
Such with a love themselves can never feel,
Passionless'mid their passionate votaries.
I know not if you joy in this or no,
Or ever dream that common men can live
On objects you prize lightly, but which make
Their heart's sole treasure: the affections seem
Beauteous at most to you, which we must taste
Or die: and this strange quality accords,
I know not how, with you; sits well upon
That luminous brow, though in another it scowls
An eating brand, a shame. I dare not judge you.
The rules of right and wrong thus set aside,
There's no alternativeI own you one
Of higher order, under other laws
Than bind us; therefore, curb not one bold glance!
'T is best aspire. Once mingled with us all . . .
Michal.
Stay with us, Aureole! cast those hopes away,
And stay with us! An angel warns me, too,
Man should be humble; you are very proud:
And God, dethroned, has doleful plagues for such!
Warns me to have in dread no quick repulse,
No slow defeat, but a complete success:
You will find all you seek, and perish so!
Paracelsus
[after a pause].
Are these the barren firstfruits of my quest?
Is love like this the natural lot of all?
How many years of pain might one such hour
O'erbalance? Dearest Michal, dearest Festus,
What shall I say, if not that I desire
To justify your love; and will, dear friends,
In swerving nothing from my first resolves.
See, the great moon! and ere the mottled owls
Were wide awake, I was to go. It seems
You acquiesce at last in all save this
If I am like to compass what I seek
By the untried career I choose; and then,
If that career, making but small account
Of much of life's delight, will yet retain
Sufficient to sustain my soul: for thus
I understand these fond fears just expressed.
And first; the lore you praise and I neglect,
The labours and the precepts of old time,
I have not lightly disesteemed. But, friends,
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perceptionwhich is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly
The demonstration of a truth, its birth,
And you trace back the effluence to its spring
And source within us; where broods radiance vast,
To be elicited ray by ray, as chance
Shall favour: chancefor hitherto, your sage
Even as he knows not how those beams are born,
As little knows he what unlocks their fount:
And men have oft grown old among their books
To die case-hardened in their ignorance,
Whose careless youth had promised what long years
Of unremitted labour ne'er performed:
While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day,
To autumn loiterers just as fancy-free
As the midges in the sun, gives birth at last
To truthproduced mysteriously as cape
Of cloud grown out of the invisible air.
Hence, may not truth be lodged alike in all,
The lowest as the highest? some slight film
The interposing bar which binds a soul
And makes the idiot, just as makes the sage
Some film removed, the happy outlet whence
Truth issues proudly? See this soul of ours!
How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed
In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled
By age and waste, set free at last by death:
Why is it, flesh enthrals it or enthrones?
What is this flesh we have to penetrate?
Oh, not alone when life flows still, do truth
And power emerge, but also when strange chance
Ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture,
When sickness breaks the bodyhunger, watching,
Excess or languoroftenest death's approach,
Peril, deep joy or woe. One man shall crawl
Through life surrounded with all stirring things,
Unmoved; and he goes mad: and from the wreck
Of what he was, by his wild talk alone,
You first collect how great a spirit he hid.
Therefore, set free the soul alike in all,
Discovering the true laws by which the flesh
Accloys the spirit! We may not be doomed
To cope with seraphs, but at least the rest
Shall cope with us. Make no more giants, God,
But elevate the race at once! We ask
To put forth just our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted
See if we cannot beat thine angels yet!
Such is my task. I go to gather this
The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed
About the world, long lost or never found.
And why should I be sad or lorn of hope?
Why ever make man's good distinct from God's,
Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust?
Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me?
Mine is no mad attempt to build a world
Apart from his, like those who set themselves
To find the nature of the spirit they bore,
And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous dreams
Were only born to vanish in this life,
Refused to fit them to its narrow sphere,
But chose to figure forth another world
And other frames meet for their vast desires,
And all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life
Shall yet be crowned: twine amaranth! I am priest!
And all for yielding with a lively spirit
A poor existence, parting with a youth
Like those who squander every energy
Convertible to good, on painted toys,
Breath-bubbles, gilded dust! And though I spurn
All adventitious aims, from empty praise
To love's award, yet whoso deems such helps
Important, and concerns himself for me,
May know even these will follow with the rest
As in the steady rolling Mayne, asleep
Yonder, is mixed its mass of schistous ore.
My own affections laid to rest awhile,
Will waken purified, subdued alone
By all I have achieved. Till thentill then . . .
Ah, the time-wiling loitering of a page
Through bower and over lawn, till eve shall bring
The stately lady's presence whom he loves
The broken sleep of the fisher whose rough coat
Enwraps the queenly pearlthese are faint types!
See, see, they look on me: I triumph now!
But one thing, Festus, Michal! I have told
All I shall e'er disclose to mortal: say
Do you believe I shall accomplish this?
Festus.
I do believe!
Michal.
I ever did believe!
Paracelsus.
Those words shall never fade from out my brain!
This earnest of the end shall never fade!
Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal,
Two points in the adventure of the diver,
Onewhen, a beggar, he prepares to plunge,
Onewhen, a prince, he rises with his pearl?
Festus, I plunge!
Festus.
We wait you when you rise!
~ Robert Browning, Paracelsus - Part I - Paracelsus Aspires
,#NFDB
1175:Avon's Harvest
Fear, like a living fire that only death
Might one day cool, had now in Avon’s eyes
Been witness for so long of an invasion
That made of a gay friend whom we had known
Almost a memory, wore no other name
As yet for us than fear. Another man
Than Avon might have given to us at least
A futile opportunity for words
We might regret. But Avon, since it happened,
Fed with his unrevealing reticence
The fire of death we saw that horribly
Consumed him while he crumbled and said nothing.
So many a time had I been on the edge,
And off again, of a foremeasured fall
Into the darkness and discomfiture
Of his oblique rebuff, that finally
My silence honored his, holding itself
Away from a gratuitous intrusion
That likely would have widened a new distance
Already wide enough, if not so new.
But there are seeming parallels in space
That may converge in time; and so it was
I walked with Avon, fought and pondered with him,
While he made out a case for So-and-so,
Or slaughtered What’s-his-name in his old way,
With a new difference. Nothing in Avon lately
Was, or was ever again to be for us,
Like him that we remembered; and all the while
We saw that fire at work within his eyes
And had no glimpse of what was burning there.
So for a year it went; and so it went
For half another year—when, all at once,
At someone’s tinkling afternoon at home
I saw that in the eyes of Avon’s wife
The fire that I had met the day before
In his had found another living fuel.
To look at her and then to think of him,
29
And thereupon to contemplate the fall
Of a dim curtain over the dark end
Of a dark play, required of me no more
Clairvoyance than a man who cannot swim
Will exercise in seeing that his friend
Off shore will drown except he save himself.
To her I could say nothing, and to him
No more than tallied with a long belief
That I should only have it back again
For my chagrin to ruminate upon,
Ingloriously, for the still time it starved;
And that would be for me as long a time
As I remembered Avon—who is yet
Not quite forgotten. On the other hand,
For saying nothing I might have with me always
An injured and recriminating ghost
Of a dead friend. The more I pondered it
The more I knew there was not much to lose,
Albeit for one whose delving hitherto
Had been a forage of his own affairs,
The quest, however golden the reward,
Was irksome—and as Avon suddenly
And soon was driven to let me see, was needless.
It seemed an age ago that we were there
One evening in the room that in the days
When they could laugh he called the Library.
“He calls it that, you understand,” she said,
“Because the dictionary always lives here.
He’s not a man of books, yet he can read,
And write. He learned it all at school.”—He smiled,
And answered with a fervor that rang then
Superfluous: “Had I learned a little more
At school, it might have been as well for me.”
And I remember now that he paused then,
Leaving a silence that one had to break.
But this was long ago, and there was now
No laughing in that house. We were alone
This time, and it was Avon’s time to talk.
I waited, and anon became aware
That I was looking less at Avon’s eyes
Than at the dictionary, like one asking
30
Already why we make so much of words
That have so little weight in the true balance.
“Your name is Resignation for an hour,”
He said; “and I’m a little sorry for you.
So be resigned. I shall not praise your work,
Or strive in any way to make you happy.
My purpose only is to make you know
How clearly I have known that you have known
There was a reason waited on your coming,
And, if it’s in me to see clear enough,
To fish the reason out of a black well
Where you see only a dim sort of glimmer
That has for you no light.”
“I see the well,”
I said, “but there’s a doubt about the glimmer—
Say nothing of the light. I’m at your service;
And though you say that I shall not be happy,
I shall be if in some way I may serve.
To tell you fairly now that I know nothing
Is nothing more than fair.”—“You know as much
As any man alive—save only one man,
If he’s alive. Whether he lives or not
Is rather for time to answer than for me;
And that’s a reason, or a part of one,
For your appearance here. You do not know him,
And even if you should pass him in the street
He might go by without your feeling him
Between you and the world. I cannot say
Whether he would, but I suppose he might.”
“And I suppose you might, if urged,” I said,
“Say in what water it is that we are fishing.
You that have reasons hidden in a well,
Not mentioning all your nameless friends that walk
The streets and are not either dead or living
For company, are surely, one would say
To be forgiven if you may seem distraught—
I mean distrait. I don’t know what I mean.
I only know that I am at your service,
Always, yet with a special reservation
That you may deem eccentric. All the same
31
Unless your living dead man comes to life,
Or is less indiscriminately dead,
I shall go home.”
“No, you will not go home,”
Said Avon; “or I beg that you will not.”
So saying, he went slowly to the door
And turned the key. “Forgive me and my manners,
But I would be alone with you this evening.
The key, as you observe, is in the lock;
And you may sit between me and the door,
Or where you will. You have my word of honor
That I would spare you the least injury
That might attend your presence here this evening.”
“I thank you for your soothing introduction,
Avon,” I said. “Go on. The Lord giveth,
The Lord taketh away. I trust myself
Always to you and to your courtesy.
Only remember that I cling somewhat
Affectionately to the old tradition.”—
“I understand you and your part,” said Avon;
“And I dare say it’s well enough, tonight,
We play around the circumstance a little.
I’ve read of men that half way to the stake
Would have their little joke. It’s well enough;
Rather a waste of time, but well enough.”
I listened as I waited, and heard steps
Outside of one who paused and then went on;
And, having heard, I might as well have seen
The fear in his wife’s eyes. He gazed away,
As I could see, in helpless thought of her,
And said to me: “Well, then, it was like this.
Some tales will have a deal of going back .
In them before they are begun. But this one
Begins in the beginning—when he came.
I was a boy at school, sixteen years old,
And on my way, in all appearances,
To mark an even-tempered average
Among the major mediocrities
Who serve and earn with no especial noise
32
Or vast reward. I saw myself, even then,
A light for no high shining; and I feared
No boy or man—having, in truth, no cause.
I was enough a leader to be free,
And not enough a hero to be jealous.
Having eyes and ears, I knew that I was envied,
And as a proper sort of compensation
Had envy of my own for two or three—
But never felt, and surely never gave,
The wound of any more malevolence
Than decent youth, defeated for a day,
May take to bed with him and kill with sleep.
So, and so far, my days were going well,
And would have gone so, but for the black tiger
That many of us fancy is in waiting,
But waits for most of us in fancy only.
For me there was no fancy in his coming,
Though God knows I had never summoned him,
Or thought of him. To this day I’m adrift
And in the dark, out of all reckoning,
To find a reason why he ever was,
Or what was ailing Fate when he was born
On this alleged God-ordered earth of ours.
Now and again there comes one of his kind—
By chance, we say. I leave all that to you.
Whether it was an evil chance alone,
Or some invidious juggling of the stars,
Or some accrued arrears of ancestors
Who throve on debts that I was here to pay,
Or sins within me that I knew not of,
Or just a foretaste of what waits in hell
For those of us who cannot love a worm,—
Whatever it was, or whence or why it was,
One day there came a stranger to the school.
And having had one mordacious glimpse of him
That filled my eyes and was to fill my life,
I have known Peace only as one more word
Among the many others we say over
That have an airy credit of no meaning.
One of these days, if I were seeing many
To live, I might erect a cenotaph
To Job’s wife. I assume that you remember;
33
If you forget, she’s extant in your Bible.”
Now this was not the language of a man
Whom I had known as Avon, and I winced
Hearing it—though I knew that in my heart
There was no visitation of surprise.
Unwelcome as it was, and off the key
Calamitously, it overlived a silence
That was itself a story and affirmed
A savage emphasis of honesty
That I would only gladly have attuned
If possible, to vinous innovation.
But his indifferent wassailing was always
Too far within the measure of excess
For that; and then there were those eyes of his.
Avon indeed had kept his word with me,
And there was not much yet to make me happy.
“So there we were,” he said, “we two together,
Breathing one air. And how shall I go on
To say by what machinery the slow net
Of my fantastic and increasing hate
Was ever woven as it was around us?
I cannot answer; and you need not ask
What undulating reptile he was like,
For such a worm as I discerned in him
Was never yet on earth or in the ocean,
Or anywhere else than in my sense of him.
Had all I made of him been tangible,
The Lord must have invented long ago
Some private and unspeakable new monster
Equipped for such a thing’s extermination;
Whereon the monster, seeing no other monster
Worth biting, would have died with his work done.
There’s a humiliation in it now,
As there was then, and worse than there was then;
For then there was the boy to shoulder it
Without the sickening weight of added years
Galling him to the grave. Beware of hate
That has no other boundary than the grave
Made for it, or for ourselves. Beware, I say;
And I’m a sorry one, I fear, to say it,
34
Though for the moment we may let that go
And while I’m interrupting my own story
I’ll ask of you the favor of a look
Into the street. I like it when it’s empty.
There’s only one man walking? Let him walk.
I wish to God that all men might walk always,
And so, being busy, love one another more.”
“Avon,” I said, now in my chair again,
“Although I may not be here to be happy,
If you are careless, I may have to laugh.
I have disliked a few men in my life,
But never to the scope of wishing them
To this particular pedestrian hell
Of your affection. I should not like that.
Forgive me, for this time it was your fault.”
He drummed with all his fingers on his chair,
And, after a made smile of acquiescence,
Took up again the theme of his aversion,
Which now had flown along with him alone
For twenty years, like Io’s evil insect,
To sting him when it would. The decencies
Forbade that I should look at him for ever,
Yet many a time I found myself ashamed
Of a long staring at him, and as often
Essayed the dictionary on the table,
Wondering if in its interior
There was an uncompanionable word
To say just what was creeping in my hair,
At which my scalp would shrink,—at which, again,
I would arouse myself with a vain scorn,
Remembering that all this was in New York—
As if that were somehow the banishing
For ever of all unseemly presences—
And listen to the story of my friend,
Who, as I feared, was not for me to save,
And, as I knew, knew also that I feared it.
“Humiliation,” he began again,
“May be or not the best of all bad names
I might employ; and if you scent remorse,
35
There may be growing such a flower as that
In the unsightly garden where I planted,
Not knowing the seed or what was coming of it.
I’ve done much wondering if I planted it;
But our poor wonder, when it comes too late,
Fights with a lath, and one that solid fact
Breaks while it yawns and looks another way
For a less negligible adversary.
Away with wonder, then; though I’m at odds
With conscience, even tonight, for good assurance
That it was I, or chance and I together,
Did all that sowing. If I seem to you
To be a little bitten by the question,
Without a miracle it might be true;
The miracle is to me that I’m not eaten
Long since to death of it, and that you sit
With nothing more agreeable than a ghost.
If you had thought a while of that, you might,
Unhappily, not have come; and your not coming
Would have been desolation—not for you,
God save the mark!—for I would have you here.
I shall not be alone with you to listen;
And I should be far less alone tonight
With you away, make what you will of that.
“I said that we were going back to school,
And we may say that we are there—with him.
This fellow had no friend, and, as for that,
No sign of an apparent need of one,
Save always and alone—myself. He fixed
His heart and eyes on me, insufferably,—
And in a sort of Nemesis-like way,
Invincibly. Others who might have given
A welcome even to him, or I’ll suppose so—
Adorning an unfortified assumption
With gold that might come off with afterthought—
Got never, if anything, more out of him
Than a word flung like refuse in their faces,
And rarely that. For God knows what good reason,
He lavished his whole altered arrogance
On me; and with an overweening skill,
Which had sometimes almost a cringing in it,
36
Found a few flaws in my tight mail of hate
And slowly pricked a poison into me
In which at first I failed at recognizing
An unfamiliar subtle sort of pity.
But so it was, and I believe he knew it;
Though even to dream it would have been absurd—
Until I knew it, and there was no need
Of dreaming. For the fellow’s indolence,
And his malignant oily swarthiness
Housing a reptile blood that I could see
Beneath it, like hereditary venom
Out of old human swamps, hardly revealed
Itself the proper spawning-ground of pity.
But so it was. Pity, or something like it,
Was in the poison of his proximity;
For nothing else that I have any name for
Could have invaded and so mastered me
With a slow tolerance that eventually
Assumed a blind ascendency of custom
That saw not even itself. When I came in,
Often I’d find him strewn along my couch
Like an amorphous lizard with its clothes on,
Reading a book and waiting for its dinner.
His clothes were always odiously in order,
Yet I should not have thought of him as clean—
Not even if he had washed himself to death
Proving it. There was nothing right about him.
Then he would search, never quite satisfied,
Though always in a measure confident,
My eyes to find a welcome waiting in them,
Unwilling, as I see him now, to know
That it would never be there. Looking back,
I am not sure that he would not have died
For me, if I were drowning or on fire,
Or that I would not rather have let myself
Die twice than owe the debt of my survival
To him, though he had lost not even his clothes.
No, there was nothing right about that fellow;
And after twenty years to think of him
I should be quite as helpless now to serve him
As I was then. I mean—without my story.
Be patient, and you’ll see just what I mean—
37
Which is to say, you won’t. But you can listen,
And that’s itself a large accomplishment
Uncrowned; and may be, at a time like this,
A mighty charity. It was in January
This evil genius came into our school,
And it was June when he went out of it—
If I may say that he was wholly out
Of any place that I was in thereafter.
But he was not yet gone. When we are told
By Fate to bear what we may never bear,
Fate waits a little while to see what happens;
And this time it was only for the season
Between the swift midwinter holidays
And the long progress into weeks and months
Of all the days that followed—with him there
To make them longer. I would have given an eye,
Before the summer came, to know for certain
That I should never be condemned again
To see him with the other; and all the while
There was a battle going on within me
Of hate that fought remorse—if you must have it—
Never to win,… never to win but once,
And having won, to lose disastrously,
And as it was to prove, interminably—
Or till an end of living may annul,
If so it be, the nameless obligation
That I have not the Christian revenue
In me to pay. A man who has no gold,
Or an equivalent, shall pay no gold
Until by chance or labor or contrivance
He makes it his to pay; and he that has
No kindlier commodity than hate,
Glossed with a pity that belies itself
In its negation and lacks alchemy
To fuse itself to—love, would you have me say?
I don’t believe it. No, there is no such word.
If I say tolerance, there’s no more to say.
And he who sickens even in saying that—
What coin of God has he to pay the toll
To peace on earth? Good will to men—oh, yes!
That’s easy; and it means no more than sap,
Until we boil the water out of it
38
Over the fire of sacrifice. I’ll do it;
And in a measurable way I’ve done it—
But not for him. What are you smiling at?
Well, so it went until a day in June.
We were together under an old elm,
Which now, I hope, is gone—though it’s a crime
In me that I should have to wish the death
Of such a tree as that. There were no trees
Like those that grew at school—until he came.
We stood together under it that day,
When he, by some ungovernable chance,
All foreign to the former crafty care
That he had used never to cross my favor,
Told of a lie that stained a friend of mine
With a false blot that a few days washed off.
A trifle now, but a boy’s honor then—
Which then was everything. There were some words
Between us, but I don’t remember them.
All I remember is a bursting flood
Of half a year’s accumulated hate,
And his incredulous eyes before I struck him.
He had gone once too far; and when he knew it,
He knew it was all over; and I struck him.
Pound for pound, he was the better brute;
But bulking in the way then of my fist
And all there was alive in me to drive it,
Three of him misbegotten into one
Would have gone down like him—and being larger,
Might have bled more, if that were necessary.
He came up soon; and if I live for ever,
The vengeance in his eyes, and a weird gleam
Of desolation—it I make you see it—
Will be before me as it is tonight.
I shall not ever know how long it was
I waited his attack that never came;
It might have been an instant or an hour
That I stood ready there, watching his eyes,
And the tears running out of them. They made
Me sick, those tears; for I knew, miserably,
They were not there for any pain he felt.
I do not think he felt the pain at all.
He felt the blow.… Oh, the whole thing was bad—
39
So bad that even the bleaching suns and rains
Of years that wash away to faded lines,
Or blot out wholly, the sharp wrongs and ills
Of youth, have had no cleansing agent in them
To dim the picture. I still see him going
Away from where I stood; and I shall see him
Longer, sometime, than I shall see the face
Of whosoever watches by the bed
On which I die—given I die that way.
I doubt if he could reason his advantage
In living any longer after that
Among the rest of us. The lad he slandered,
Or gave a negative immunity
No better than a stone he might have thrown
Behind him at his head, was of the few
I might have envied; and for that being known,
My fury became sudden history,
And I a sudden hero. But the crown
I wore was hot; and I would happily
Have hurled it, if I could, so far away
That over my last hissing glimpse of it
There might have closed an ocean. He went home
The next day, and the same unhappy chance
That first had fettered me and my aversion
To his unprofitable need of me
Brought us abruptly face to face again
Beside the carriage that had come for him.
We met, and for a moment we were still—
Together. But I was reading in his eyes
More than I read at college or at law
In years that followed. There was blankly nothing
For me to say, if not that I was sorry;
And that was more than hate would let me say—
Whatever the truth might be. At last he spoke,
And I could see the vengeance in his eyes,
And a cold sorrow—which, if I had seen
Much more of it, might yet have mastered me.
But I would see no more of it. ‘Well, then,’
He said, ‘have you thought yet of anything
Worth saying? If so, there’s time. If you are silent,
I shall know where you are until you die.’
I can still hear him saying those words to me
40
Again, without a loss or an addition;
I know, for I have heard them ever since.
And there was in me not an answer for them
Save a new roiling silence. Once again
I met his look, and on his face I saw
There was a twisting in the swarthiness
That I had often sworn to be the cast
Of his ophidian mind. He had no soul.
There was to be no more of him—not then.
The carriage rolled away with him inside,
Leaving the two of us alive together
In the same hemisphere to hate each other.
I don’t know now whether he’s here alive,
Or whether he’s here dead. But that, of course,
As you would say, is only a tired man’s fancy.
You know that I have driven the wheels too fast
Of late, and all for gold I do not need.
When are we mortals to be sensible,
Paying no more for life than life is worth?
Better for us, no doubt, we do not know
How much we pay or what it is we buy.”
He waited, gazing at me as if asking
The worth of what the universe had for sale
For one confessed remorse. Avon, I knew,
Had driven the wheels too fast, and not for gold.
“If you had given him then your hand,” I said,
“And spoken, though it strangled you, the truth,
I should not have the melancholy honor
Of sitting here alone with you this evening.
If only you had shaken hands with him,
And said the truth, he would have gone his way.
And you your way. He might have wished you dead,
But he would not have made you miserable.
At least,” I added, indefensibly,
“That’s what I hope is true.”
He pitied me,
But had the magnanimity not to say so.
“If only we had shaken hands,” he said,
“And I had said the truth, we might have been
In half a moment rolling on the gravel.
41
If I had said the truth, I should have said
That never at any moment on the clock
Above us in the tower since his arrival
Had I been in a more proficient mood
To throttle him. If you had seen his eyes
As I did, and if you had seen his face
At work as I did, you might understand.
I was ashamed of it, as I am now,
But that’s the prelude to another theme;
For now I’m saying only what had happened
If I had taken his hand and said the truth.
The wise have cautioned us that where there’s hate
There’s also fear. The wise are right sometimes.
There may be now, but there was no fear then.
There was just hatred, hauled up out of hell
For me to writhe in; and I writhed in it.”
I saw that he was writhing in it still;
But having a magnanimity myself,
I waited. There was nothing else to do
But wait, and to remember that his tale,
Though well along, as I divined it was,
Yet hovered among shadows and regrets
Of twenty years ago. When he began
Again to speak, I felt them coming nearer.
“Whenever your poet or your philosopher
Has nothing richer for us,” he resumed,
“He burrows among remnants, like a mouse
In a waste-basket, and with much dry noise
Comes up again, having found Time at the bottom
And filled himself with its futility.
‘Time is at once,’ he says, to startle us,
‘A poison for us, if we make it so,
And, if we make it so, an antidote
For the same poison that afflicted us.’
I’m witness to the poison, but the cure
Of my complaint is not, for me, in Time.
There may be doctors in eternity
To deal with it, but they are not here now.
There’s no specific for my three diseases
That I could swallow, even if I should find it,
42
And I shall never find it here on earth.”
“Mightn’t it be as well, my friend,” I said,
“For you to contemplate the uncompleted
With not such an infernal certainty?”
“And mightn’t it be as well for you, my friend,”
Said Avon, “to be quiet while I go on?
When I am done, then you may talk all night—
Like a physician who can do no good,
But knows how soon another would have his fee
Were he to tell the truth. Your fee for this
Is in my gratitude and my affection;
And I’m not eager to be calling in
Another to take yours away from you,
Whatever it’s worth. I like to think I know.
Well then, again. The carriage rolled away
With him inside; and so it might have gone
For ten years rolling on, with him still in it,
For all it was I saw of him. Sometimes
I heard of him, but only as one hears
Of leprosy in Boston or New York
And wishes it were somewhere else. He faded
Out of my scene—yet never quite out of it:
‘I shall know where you are until you die,’
Were his last words; and they are the same words
That I received thereafter once a year,
Infallibly on my birthday, with no name;
Only a card, and the words printed on it.
No, I was never rid of him—not quite;
Although on shipboard, on my way from here
To Hamburg, I believe that I forgot him.
But once ashore, I should have been half ready
To meet him there, risen up out of the ground,
With hoofs and horns and tail and everything.
Believe me, there was nothing right about him,
Though it was not in Hamburg that I found him.
Later, in Rome, it was we found each other,
For the first time since we had been at school.
There was the same slow vengeance in his eyes
When he saw mine, and there was a vicious twist
On his amphibious face that might have been
43
On anything else a smile—rather like one
We look for on the stage than in the street.
I must have been a yard away from him
Yet as we passed I felt the touch of him
Like that of something soft in a dark room.
There’s hardly need of saying that we said nothing,
Or that we gave each other an occasion
For more than our eyes uttered. He was gone
Before I knew it, like a solid phantom;
And his reality was for me some time
In its achievement—given that one’s to be
Convinced that such an incubus at large
Was ever quite real. The season was upon us
When there are fitter regions in the world—
Though God knows he would have been safe enough—
Than Rome for strayed Americans to live in,
And when the whips of their itineraries
Hurry them north again. I took my time,
Since I was paying for it, and leisurely
Went where I would—though never again to move
Without him at my elbow or behind me.
My shadow of him, wherever I found myself,
Might horribly as well have been the man—
Although I should have been afraid of him
No more than of a large worm in a salad.
I should omit the salad, certainly,
And wish the worm elsewhere. And so he was,
In fact; yet as I go on to grow older,
I question if there’s anywhere a fact
That isn’t the malevolent existence
Of one man who is dead, or is not dead,
Or what the devil it is that he may be.
There must be, I suppose, a fact somewhere,
But I don’t know it. I can only tell you
That later, when to all appearances
I stood outside a music-hall in London,
I felt him and then saw that he was there.
Yes, he was there, and had with him a woman
Who looked as if she didn’t know. I’m sorry
To this day for that woman—who, no doubt,
Is doing well. Yes, there he was again;
There were his eyes and the same vengeance in them
44
That I had seen in Rome and twice before—
Not mentioning all the time, or most of it,
Between the day I struck him and that evening.
That was the worst show that I ever saw,
But you had better see it for yourself
Before you say so too. I went away,
Though not for any fear that I could feel
Of him or of his worst manipulations,
But only to be out of the same air
That made him stay alive in the same world
With all the gentlemen that were in irons
For uncommendable extravagances
That I should reckon slight compared with his
Offence of being. Distance would have made him
A moving fly-speck on the map of life,—
But he would not be distant, though his flesh
And bone might have been climbing Fujiyama
Or Chimborazo—with me there in London,
Or sitting here. My doom it was to see him,
Be where I might. That was ten years ago;
And having waited season after season
His always imminent evil recrudescence,
And all for nothing, I was waiting still,
When the Titanic touched a piece of ice
And we were for a moment where we are,
With nature laughing at us. When the noise
Had spent itself to names, his was among them;
And I will not insult you or myself
With a vain perjury. I was far from cold.
It seemed as for the first time in my life
I knew the blessedness of being warm;
And I remember that I had a drink,
Having assuredly no need of it.
Pity a fool for his credulity,
If so you must. But when I found his name
Among the dead, I trusted once the news;
And after that there were no messages
In ambush waiting for me on my birthday.
There was no vestige yet of any fear,
You understand—if that’s why you are smiling.”
I said that I had not so much as whispered
45
The name aloud of any fear soever,
And that I smiled at his unwonted plunge
Into the perilous pool of Dionysus.
“Well, if you are so easily diverted
As that,” he said, drumming his chair again,
“You will be pleased, I think, with what is coming;
And though there be divisions and departures,
Imminent from now on, for your diversion
I’ll do the best I can. More to the point,
I know a man who if his friends were like him
Would live in the woods all summer and all winter,
Leaving the town and its iniquities
To die of their own dust. But having his wits,
Henceforth he may conceivably avoid
The adventure unattended. Last October
He took me with him into the Maine woods,
Where, by the shore of a primeval lake,
With woods all round it, and a voyage away
From anything wearing clothes, he had reared somehow
A lodge, or camp, with a stone chimney in it,
And a wide fireplace to make men forget
Their sins who sat before it in the evening,
Hearing the wind outside among the trees
And the black water washing on the shore.
I never knew the meaning of October
Until I went with Asher to that place,
Which I shall not investigate again
Till I be taken there by other forces
Than are innate in my economy.
‘You may not like it,’ Asher said, ‘but Asher
Knows what is good. So put your faith in Asher,
And come along with him. He’s an odd bird,
Yet I could wish for the world’s decency
There might be more of him. And so it was
I found myself, at first incredulous,
Down there with Asher in the wilderness,
Alive at last with a new liberty
And with no sore to fester. He perceived
In me an altered favor of God’s works,
And promptly took upon himself the credit,
Which, in a fashion, was as accurate
As one’s interpretation of another
46
Is like to be. So for a frosty fortnight
We had the sunlight with us on the lake,
And the moon with us when the sun was down.
‘God gave his adjutants a holiday,’
Asher assured me, ‘when He made this place’;
And I agreed with him that it was heaven,—
Till it was hell for me for then and after.
“There was a village miles away from us
Where now and then we paddled for the mail
And incidental small commodities
That perfect exile might require, and stayed
The night after the voyage with an antique
Survival of a broader world than ours
Whom Asher called The Admiral. This time,
A little out of sorts and out of tune
With paddling, I let Asher go alone,
Sure that his heart was happy. Then it was
That hell came. I sat gazing over there
Across the water, watching the sun’s last fire
Above those gloomy and indifferent trees
That might have been a wall around the world,
When suddenly, like faces over the lake,
Out of the silence of that other shore
I was aware of hidden presences
That soon, no matter how many of them there were,
Would all be one. I could not look behind me,
Where I could hear that one of them was breathing,
For, if I did, those others over there
Might all see that at last I was afraid;
And I might hear them without seeing them,
Seeing that other one. You were not there;
And it is well for you that you don’t know
What they are like when they should not be there.
And there were chilly doubts of whether or not
I should be seeing the rest that I should see
With eyes, or otherwise. I could not be sure;
And as for going over to find out,
All I may tell you now is that my fear
Was not the fear of dying, though I knew soon
That all the gold in all the sunken ships
That have gone down since Tyre would not have paid
47
For me the ferriage of myself alone
To that infernal shore. I was in hell,
Remember; and if you have never been there
You may as well not say how easy it is
To find the best way out. There may not be one.
Well, I was there; and I was there alone—
Alone for the first time since I was born;
And I was not alone. That’s what it is
To be in hell. I hope you will not go there.
All through that slow, long, desolating twilight
Of incoherent certainties, I waited;
Never alone—never to be alone;
And while the night grew down upon me there,
I thought of old Prometheus in the story
That I had read at school, and saw mankind
All huddled into clusters in the dark,
Calling to God for light. There was a light
Coming for them, but there was none for me
Until a shapeless remnant of a moon
Rose after midnight over the black trees
Behind me. I should hardly have confessed
The heritage then of my identity
To my own shadow; for I was powerless there,
As I am here. Say what you like to say
To silence, but say none of it to me
Tonight. To say it now would do no good,
And you are here to listen. Beware of hate,
And listen. Beware of hate, remorse, and fear,
And listen. You are staring at the damned,
But yet you are no more the one than he
To say that it was he alone who planted
The flower of death now growing in his garden.
Was it enough, I wonder, that I struck him?
I shall say nothing. I shall have to wait
Until I see what’s coming, if it comes,
When I’m a delver in another garden—
If such an one there be. If there be none,
All’s well—and over. Rather a vain expense,
One might affirm—yet there is nothing lost.
Science be praised that there is nothing lost.”
I’m glad the venom that was on his tongue
48
May not go down on paper; and I’m glad
No friend of mine alive, far as I know,
Has a tale waiting for me with an end
Like Avon’s. There was here an interruption,
Though not a long one—only while we heard,
As we had heard before, the ghost of steps
Faintly outside. We knew that she was there
Again; and though it was a kindly folly,
I wished that Avon’s wife would go to sleep.
“I was afraid, this time, but not of man—
Or man as you may figure him,” he said.
“It was not anything my eyes had seen
That I could feel around me in the night,
There by that lake. If I had been alone,
There would have been the joy of being free,
Which in imagination I had won
With unimaginable expiation—
But I was not alone. If you had seen me,
Waiting there for the dark and looking off
Over the gloom of that relentless water,
Which had the stillness of the end of things
That evening on it, I might well have made
For you the picture of the last man left
Where God, in his extinction of the rest,
Had overlooked him and forgotten him.
Yet I was not alone. Interminably
The minutes crawled along and over me,
Slow, cold, intangible, and invisible,
As if they had come up out of that water.
How long I sat there I shall never know,
For time was hidden out there in the black lake,
Which now I could see only as a glimpse
Of black light by the shore. There were no stars
To mention, and the moon was hours away
Behind me. There was nothing but myself,
And what was coming. On my breast I felt
The touch of death, and I should have died then.
I ruined good Asher’s autumn as it was,
For he will never again go there alone,
If ever he goes at all. Nature did ill
To darken such a faith in her as his,
49
Though he will have it that I had the worst
Of her defection, and will hear no more
Apologies. If it had to be for someone,
I think it well for me it was for Asher.
I dwell on him, meaning that you may know him
Before your last horn blows. He has a name
That’s like a tree, and therefore like himself—
By which I mean you find him where you leave him.
I saw him and The Admiral together
While I was in the dark, but they were far—
Far as around the world from where I was;
And they knew nothing of what I saw not
While I knew only I was not alone.
I made a fire to make the place alive,
And locked the door. But even the fire was dead,
And all the life there was was in the shadow
It made of me. My shadow was all of me;
The rest had had its day, and there was night
Remaining—only night, that’s made for shadows,
Shadows and sleep and dreams, or dreams without it.
The fire went slowly down, and now the moon,
Or that late wreck of it, was coming up;
And though it was a martyr’s work to move,
I must obey my shadow, and I did.
There were two beds built low against the wall,
And down on one of them, with all my clothes on,
Like a man getting into his own grave,
I lay—and waited. As the firelight sank,
The moonlight, which had partly been consumed
By the black trees, framed on the other wall
A glimmering window not far from the ground.
The coals were going, and only a few sparks
Were there to tell of them; and as they died
The window lightened, and I saw the trees.
They moved a little, but I could not move,
More than to turn my face the other way;
And then, if you must have it so, I slept.
We’ll call it so—if sleep is your best name
For a sort of conscious, frozen catalepsy
Wherein a man sees all there is around him
As if it were not real, and he were not
Alive. You may call it anything you please
50
That made me powerless to move hand or foot,
Or to make any other living motion
Than after a long horror, without hope,
To turn my face again the other way.
Some force that was not mine opened my eyes,
And, as I knew it must be,—it was there.”
Avon covered his eyes—whether to shut
The memory and the sight of it away,
Or to be sure that mine were for the moment
Not searching his with pity, is now no matter.
My glance at him was brief, turning itself
To the familiar pattern of his rug,
Wherein I may have sought a consolation—
As one may gaze in sorrow on a shell,
Or a small apple. So it had come, I thought;
And heard, no longer with a wonderment,
The faint recurring footsteps of his wife,
Who, knowing less than I knew, yet knew more.
Now I could read, I fancied, through the fear
That latterly was living in her eyes,
To the sure source of its authority.
But he went on, and I was there to listen:
“And though I saw it only as a blot
Between me and my life, it was enough
To make me know that he was watching there—
Waiting for me to move, or not to move,
Before he moved. Sick as I was with hate
Reborn, and chained with fear that was more than fear,
I would have gambled all there was to gain
Or lose in rising there from where I lay
And going out after it. ‘Before the dawn,’
I reasoned, ‘there will be a difference here.
Therefore it may as well be done outside.’
And then I found I was immovable,
As I had been before; and a dead sweat
Rolled out of me as I remembered him
When I had seen him leaving me at school.
‘I shall know where you are until you die,’
Were the last words that I had heard him say;
And there he was. Now I could see his face,
51
And all the sad, malignant desperation
That was drawn on it after I had struck him,
And on my memory since that afternoon.
But all there was left now for me to do
Was to lie there and see him while he squeezed
His unclean outlines into the dim room,
And half erect inside, like a still beast
With a face partly man’s, came slowly on
Along the floor to the bed where I lay,
And waited. There had been so much of waiting,
Through all those evil years before my respite—
Which now I knew and recognized at last
As only his more venomous preparation
For the vile end of a deceiving peace—
That I began to fancy there was on me
The stupor that explorers have alleged
As evidence of nature’s final mercy
When tigers have them down upon the earth
And wild hot breath is heavy on their faces.
I could not feel his breath, but I could hear it;
Though fear had made an anvil of my heart
Where demons, for the joy of doing it,
Were sledging death down on it. And I saw
His eyes now, as they were, for the first time—
Aflame as they had never been before
With all their gathered vengeance gleaming in them,
And always that unconscionable sorrow
That would not die behind it. Then I caught
The shadowy glimpse of an uplifted arm,
And a moon-flash of metal. That was all.…
“When I believed I was alive again
I was with Asher and The Admiral,
Whom Asher had brought with him for a day
With nature. They had found me when they came;
And there was not much left of me to find.
I had not moved or known that I was there
Since I had seen his eyes and felt his breath;
And it was not for some uncertain hours
After they came that either would say how long
That might have been. It should have been much longer.
All you may add will be your own invention,
52
For I have told you all there is to tell.
Tomorrow I shall have another birthday,
And with it there may come another message—
Although I cannot see the need of it,
Or much more need of drowning, if that’s all
Men drown for—when they drown. You know as much
As I know about that, though I’ve a right,
If not a reason, to be on my guard;
And only God knows what good that will do.
Now you may get some air. Good night!—and thank you.”
He smiled, but I would rather he had not.
I wished that Avon’s wife would go to sleep,
But whether she found sleep that night or not
I do not know. I was awake for hours,
Toiling in vain to let myself believe
That Avon’s apparition was a dream,
And that he might have added, for romance,
The part that I had taken home with me
For reasons not in Avon’s dictionary.
But each recurrent memory of his eyes,
And of the man himself that I had known
So long and well, made soon of all my toil
An evanescent and a vain evasion;
And it was half as in expectancy
That I obeyed the summons of his wife
A little before dawn, and was again
With Avon in the room where I had left him,
But not with the same Avon I had left.
The doctor, an august authority,
With eminence abroad as well as here,
Looked hard at me as if I were the doctor
And he the friend. “I have had eyes on Avon
For more than half a year,” he said to me,
“And I have wondered often what it was
That I could see that I was not to see.
Though he was in the chair where you are looking,
I told his wife—I had to tell her something—
It was a nightmare and an aneurism;
And so, or partly so, I’ll say it was.
The last without the first will be enough
For the newspapers and the undertaker;
53
Yet if we doctors were not all immune
From death, disease, and curiosity,
My diagnosis would be sorry for me.
He died, you know, because he was afraid—
And he had been afraid for a long time;
And we who knew him well would all agree
To fancy there was rather more than fear.
The door was locked inside—they broke it in
To find him—but she heard him when it came.
There are no signs of any visitors,
Or need of them. If I were not a child
Of science, I should say it was the devil.
I don’t believe it was another woman,
And surely it was not another man.”
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
1176:Obiit Mdcccxxxiii (Entire)
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
414
Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
What seem’d my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
I.
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro’ time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
‘Behold the man that loved and lost,
But all he was is overworn.’
II.
415
Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the under-lying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
The seasons bring the flower again,
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.
O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom:
And gazing on thee, sullen tree,
Sick for thy stubborn hardihood,
I seem to fail from out my blood
And grow incorporate into thee.
III.
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
‘The stars,’ she whispers, ‘blindly run;
A web is wov’n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
‘And all the phantom, Nature, stands–
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,–
A hollow form with empty hands.’
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
416
IV.
To Sleep I give my powers away;
My will is bondsman to the dark;
I sit within a helmless bark,
And with my heart I muse and say:
O heart, how fares it with thee now,
That thou should’st fail from thy desire,
Who scarcely darest to inquire,
‘What is it makes me beat so low?’
Something it is which thou hast lost,
Some pleasure from thine early years.
Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief hath shaken into frost!
Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
All night below the darken’d eyes;
With morning wakes the will, and cries,
‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’
V.
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
417
VI.
One writes, that ‘Other friends remain,’
That ‘Loss is common to the race’–
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
O father, wheresoe’er thou be,
Who pledgest now thy gallant son;
A shot, ere half thy draught be done,
Hath still’d the life that beat from thee.
O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor,–while thy head is bow’d,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
Ye know no more than I who wrought
At that last hour to please him well;
Who mused on all I had to tell,
And something written, something thought;
Expecting still his advent home;
And ever met him on his way
With wishes, thinking, ‘here to-day,’
Or ‘here to-morrow will he come.’
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove,
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father’s chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking ‘this will please him best,’
She takes a riband or a rose;
418
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turn’d, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown’d in passing thro’ the ford,
Or kill’d in falling from his horse.
O what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her, perpetual maidenhood,
And unto me no second friend.
VII.
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,
A hand that can be clasp’d no more–
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
VIII.
A happy lover who has come
To look on her that loves him well,
Who ’lights and rings the gateway bell,
And learns her gone and far from home;
419
He saddens, all the magic light
Dies off at once from bower and hall,
And all the place is dark, and all
The chambers emptied of delight:
So find I every pleasant spot
In which we two were wont to meet,
The field, the chamber and the street,
For all is dark where thou art not.
Yet as that other, wandering there
In those deserted walks, may find
A flower beat with rain and wind,
Which once she foster'd up with care;
So seems it in my deep regret,
O my forsaken heart, with thee
And this poor flower of poesy
Which little cared for fades not yet.
But since it pleased a vanish’d eye,
I go to plant it on his tomb,
That if it can it there may bloom,
Or dying, there at least may die.
IX.
Fair ship, that from the Italian shore
Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur’s loved remains,
Spread thy full wings, and waft him o’er.
So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favourable speed
Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead
Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.
All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright
As our pure love, thro’ early light
Shall glimmer on the dewy decks.
420
Sphere all your lights around, above;
Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow;
Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now,
My friend, the brother of my love;
My Arthur, whom I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run;
Dear as the mother to the son,
More than my brothers are to me.
X.
I hear the noise about thy keel;
I hear the bell struck in the night:
I see the cabin-window bright;
I see the sailor at the wheel.
Thou bring’st the sailor to his wife,
And travell’d men from foreign lands;
And letters unto trembling hands;
And, thy dark freight, a vanish’d life.
So bring him: we have idle dreams:
This look of quiet flatters thus
Our home-bred fancies: O to us,
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God;
Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine;
And hands so often clasp’d in mine,
Should toss with tangle and with shells.
XI.
421
Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro’ the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:
Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:
Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:
Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:
Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.
XII.
Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro’ Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;
Like her I go; I cannot stay;
I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind,
And leave the cliffs, and haste away
O’er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
And reach the glow of southern skies,
And see the sails at distance rise,
And linger weeping on the marge,
422
And saying; ‘Comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?’
And circle moaning in the air:
‘Is this the end? Is this the end?’
And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn
That I have been an hour away.
XIII.
Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;
Which weep a loss for ever new,
A void where heart on heart reposed;
And, where warm hands have prest and closed,
Silence, till I be silent too.
Which weeps the comrade of my choice,
An awful thought, a life removed,
The human-hearted man I loved,
A Spirit, not a breathing voice.
Come Time, and teach me, many years,
I do not suffer in a dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears;
My fancies time to rise on wing,
And glance about the approaching sails,
As tho’ they brought but merchants’ bales,
And not the burthen that they bring.
XIV.
423
If one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touch’d the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port;
And standing, muffled round with woe,
Should see thy passengers in rank
Come stepping lightly down the plank,
And beckoning unto those they know;
And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;
And
And
And
And
I should tell him all my pain,
how my life had droop’d of late,
he should sorrow o’er my state
marvel what possess’d my brain;
And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same,
I should not feel it to be strange.
XV.
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl’d away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash’d on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
424
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
XVI.
What words are these have fall’n from me?
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
Or doth she only seem to take
The touch of change in calm or storm;
But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake
That holds the shadow of a lark
Hung in the shadow of a heaven?
Or has the shock, so harshly given,
Confused me like the unhappy bark
That strikes by night a craggy shelf,
And staggers blindly ere she sink?
And stunn’d me from my power to think
And all my knowledge of myself;
And made me that delirious man
Whose fancy fuses old and new,
And flashes into false and true,
And mingles all without a plan?
XVII.
425
Thou comest, much wept for: such a breeze
Compell’d thy canvas, and my prayer
Was as the whisper of an air
To breathe thee over lonely seas.
For I in spirit saw thee move
Thro’ circles of the bounding sky,
Week after week: the days go by:
Come quick, thou bringest all I love.
Henceforth, wherever thou may’st roam,
My blessing, like a line of light,
Is on the waters day and night,
And like a beacon guards thee home.
So may whatever tempest mars
Mid-ocean, spare thee, sacred bark;
And balmy drops in summer dark
Slide from the bosom of the stars.
So kind an office hath been done,
Such precious relics brought by thee;
The dust of him I shall not see
Till all my widow’d race be run.
XVIII.
’Tis well; ’tis something; we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid,
And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.
’Tis little; but it looks in truth
As if the quiet bones were blest
Among familiar names to rest
And in the places of his youth.
Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.
426
Ah yet, ev’n yet, if this might be,
I, falling on his faithful heart,
Would breathing thro’ his lips impart
The life that almost dies in me;
That dies not, but endures with pain,
And slowly forms the the firmer mind,
Treasuring the look it cannot find,
The words that are not heard again.
XIX.
The Danube to the Severn gave
The darken’d heart that beat no more;
They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills;
That salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush’d nor moved along,
And hush’d my deepest grief of all,
When fill’d with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave again
Is vocal in its wooded walls;
My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.
XX.
The lesser griefs that may be said,
That breathe a thousand tender vows,
Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead;
427
Who speak their feeling as it is,
And weep the fulness from the mind:
‘It will be hard,’ they say, ‘to find
Another service such as this.’
My lighter moods are like to these,
That out of words a comfort win;
But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;
For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:
But open converse is there none,
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think,
‘How good! how kind! and he is gone.’
XXI.
I sing to him that rests below,
And, since the grasses round me wave,
I take the grasses of the grave,
And make them pipes whereon to blow.
The traveller hears me now and then,
And sometimes harshly will he speak:
‘This fellow would make weakness weak,
And melt the waxen hearts of men.’
Another answers, ‘Let him be,
He loves to make parade of pain,
That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.’
A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour
For private sorrow’s barren song,
When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?
428
‘A time to sicken and to swoon,
When Science reaches forth her arms
To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?’
Behold, ye speak an idle thing:
Ye never knew the sacred dust:
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing:
And one is glad; her note is gay,
For now her little ones have ranged;
And one is sad; her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol’n away.
XXII.
The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
And we with singing cheer’d the way,
And, crown’d with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
But where the path we walk’d began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear’d of man;
Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dull’d the murmur on thy lip,
And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, tho’ I walk in haste,
And think, that somewhere in the waste
429
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
XXIII.
Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,
Or breaking into song by fits,
Alone, alone, to where he sits,
The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot,
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,
I wander, often falling lame,
And looking back to whence I came,
Or on to where the pathway leads;
And crying, How changed from where it ran
Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb;
But all the lavish hills would hum
The murmur of a happy Pan:
When each by turns was guide to each,
And Fancy light from Fancy caught,
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech;
And all we met was fair and good,
And all was good that Time could bring,
And all the secret of the Spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood;
And many an old philosophy
On Argive heights divinely sang,
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.
XXIV.
And was the day of my delight
As pure and perfect as I say?
The very source and fount of Day
430
Is dash’d with wandering isles of night.
If all was good and fair we met,
This earth had been the Paradise
It never look’d to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.
And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?
Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not, when we moved therein?
XXV.
I know that this was Life,–the track
Whereon with equal feet we fared;
And then, as now, the day prepared
The daily burden for the back.
But this it was that made me move
As light as carrier-birds in air;
I loved the weight I had to bear,
Because it needed help of Love:
Nor could I weary, heart or limb,
When mighty Love would cleave in twain
The lading of a single pain,
And part it, giving half to him.
XXVI.
Still onward winds the dreary way;
I with it; for I long to prove
No lapse of moons can canker Love,
Whatever fickle tongues may say.
431
And if that eye which watches guilt
And goodness, and hath power to see
Within the green the moulder’d tree,
And towers fall’n as soon as built–
Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,
Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
XXVII.
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
XXVIII.
432
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish’d no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:
But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll’d me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
XXIX.
With such compelling cause to grieve
As daily vexes household peace,
And chains regret to his decease,
How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;
Which brings no more a welcome guest
To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower’d largess of delight
In dance and song and game and jest?
Yet go, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont,
That guard the portals of the house;
433
Old sisters of a day gone by,
Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
Why should they miss their yearly due
Before their time? They too will die.
XXX.
With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess’d the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.
At our old pastimes in the hall
We gambol’d, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.
We paused: the winds were in the beech:
We heard them sweep the winter land;
And in a circle hand-in-hand
Sat silent, looking each at each.
Then echo-like our voices rang;
We sung, tho’ every eye was dim,
A merry song we sang with him
Last year: impetuously we sang:
We ceased: a gentler feeling crept
Upon us: surely rest is meet:
‘They rest,’ we said, ‘their sleep is sweet,’
And silence follow’d, and we wept.
Our voices took a higher range;
Once more we sang: ‘They do not die
Nor lose their mortal sympathy,
Nor change to us, although they change;
‘Rapt from the fickle and the frail
With gather’d power, yet the same,
Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil.’
434
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
XXXI.
When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
And home to Mary’s house return’d,
Was this demanded–if he yearn’d
To hear her weeping by his grave?
‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’
There lives no record of reply,
Which telling what it is to die
Had surely added praise to praise.
From every house the neighbours met,
The streets were fill’d with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness even crown’d
The purple brows of Olivet.
Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal’d;
He told it not; or something seal’d
The lips of that Evangelist.
XXXII.
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.
Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother’s face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.
435
All subtle thought, all curious fears,
Borne down by gladness so complete,
She bows, she bathes the Saviour’s feet
With costly spikenard and with tears.
Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
Whose loves in higher love endure;
What souls possess themselves so pure,
Or is there blessedness like theirs?
XXXIII.
O thou that after toil and storm
Mayst seem to have reach’d a purer air,
Whose faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,
Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow’d hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Her faith thro’ form is pure as thine,
Her hands are quicker unto good:
Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
To which she links a truth divine!
See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev’n for want of such a type.
XXXIV.
My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;
This round of green, this orb of flame,
436
Fantastic beauty; such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.
What then were God to such as I?
’Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A little patience ere I die;
’Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.
XXXV.
Yet if some voice that man could trust
Should murmur from the narrow house,
‘The cheeks drop in; the body bows;
Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:’
Might I not say? ‘Yet even here,
But for one hour, O Love, I strive
To keep so sweet a thing alive:’
But I should turn mine ears and hear
The moanings of the homeless sea,
The sound of streams that swift or slow
Draw down Æonian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be;
And Love would answer with a sigh,
‘The sound of that forgetful shore
Will change my sweetness more and more,
Half-dead to know that I shall die.’
O me, what profits it to put
And idle case? If Death were seen
At first as Death, Love had not been,
Or been in narrowest working shut,
437
Mere fellowship of sluggish moods,
Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape
Had bruised the herb and crush’d the grape,
And bask’d and batten’d in the woods.
XXXVI.
Tho’ truths in manhood darkly join,
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the name
Of Him that made them current coin;
For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought;
Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
XXXVII.
Urania speaks with darken’d brow:
‘Thou pratest here where thou art least;
This faith has many a purer priest,
And many an abler voice than thou.
‘Go down beside thy native rill,
On thy Parnassus set thy feet,
And hear thy laurel whisper sweet
About the ledges of the hill.’
And my Melpomene replies,
438
A touch of shame upon her cheek:
‘I am not worthy ev’n to speak
Of thy prevailing mysteries;
‘For I am but an earthly Muse,
And owning but a little art
To lull with song an aching heart,
And render human love his dues;
‘But brooding on the dear one dead,
And all he said of things divine,
(And dear to me as sacred wine
To dying lips is all he said),
‘I murmur’d, as I came along,
Of comfort clasp’d in truth reveal’d;
And loiter’d in the master’s field,
And darken’d sanctities with song.’
XXXVIII.
With weary steps I loiter on,
Tho’ always under alter’d skies
The purple from the distance dies,
My prospect and horizon gone.
No joy the blowing season gives,
The herald melodies of spring,
But in the songs I love to sing
A doubtful gleam of solace lives.
If any care for what is here
Survive in spirits render’d free,
Then are these songs I sing of thee
Not all ungrateful to thine ear.
XXXIX.
Old warder of these buried bones,
439
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But Sorrow–fixt upon the dead,
And darkening the dark graves of men,–
What whisper’d from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,
And passes into gloom again.
XL.
Could we forget the widow’d hour
And look on Spirits breathed away,
As on a maiden in the day
When first she wears her orange-flower!
When crown’d with blessing she doth rise
To take her latest leave of home,
And hopes and light regrets that come
Make April of her tender eyes;
And doubtful joys the father move,
And tears are on the mother’s face,
As parting with a long embrace
She enters other realms of love;
Her office there to rear, to teach,
Becoming as is meet and fit
A link among the days, to knit
The generations each with each;
And, doubtless, unto thee is given
A life that bears immortal fruit
In those great offices that suit
The full-grown energies of heaven.
Ay me, the difference I discern!
440
How often shall her old fireside
Be cheer’d with tidings of the bride,
How often she herself return,
And tell them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss’d her most
Shall count new things as dear as old:
But thou and I have shaken hands,
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover’d lands.
XLI.
The spirit ere our fatal loss
Did ever rise from high to higher;
As mounts the heavenward altar-fire,
As flies the lighter thro’ the gross.
But thou art turn’d to something strange,
And I have lost the links that bound
Thy changes; here upon the ground,
No more partaker of thy change.
Deep folly! yet that this could be–
That I could wing my will with might
To leap the grades of life and light,
And flash at once, my friend, to thee.
For tho’ my nature rarely yields
To that vague fear implied in death;
Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath,
The howlings from forgotten fields;
Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor
An inner trouble I behold,
A spectral doubt which makes me cold,
That I shall be thy mate no more,
441
Tho’ following with an upward mind
The wonders that have come to thee,
Thro’ all the secular to-be,
But evermore a life behind.
XLII.
I vex my heart with fancies dim:
He still outstript me in the race;
It was but unity of place
That made me dream I rank’d with him.
And so may Place retain us still,
And he the much-beloved again,
A lord of large experience, train
To riper growth the mind and will:
And what delights can equal those
That stir the spirit’s inner deeps,
When one that loves but knows not, reaps
A truth from one that loves and knows?
XLIII.
If Sleep and Death be truly one,
And every spirit’s folded bloom
Thro’ all its intervital gloom
In some long trance should slumber on;
Unconscious of the sliding hour,
Bare of the body, might it last,
And silent traces of the past
Be all the colour of the flower:
So then were nothing lost to man;
So that still garden of the souls
In many a figured leaf enrolls
The total world since life began;
And love will last as pure and whole
442
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul.
XLIV.
How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish’d, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
May some dim touch of earthly things
Surprise thee ranging with thy peers.
If such a dreamy touch should fall,
O turn thee round, resolve the doubt;
My guardian angel will speak out
In that high place, and tell thee all.
XLV.
The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ‘this is I:’
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of ‘I,’ and ‘me,’
And finds ‘I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.’
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
443
As thro’ the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
This use may lie in blood and breath,
Which else were fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of Death.
XLVI.
We ranging down this lower track,
The path we came by, thorn and flower,
Is shadow’d by the growing hour,
Lest life should fail in looking back.
So be it: there no shade can last
In that deep dawn behind the tomb,
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom
The eternal landscape of the past;
A lifelong tract of time reveal’d;
The fruitful hours of still increase;
Days order’d in a wealthy peace,
And those five years its richest field.
O Love, thy province were not large,
A bounded field, nor stretching far;
Look also, Love, a brooding star,
A rosy warmth from marge to marge.
XLVII.
That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside;
444
And I shall know him when we meet:
And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other’s good:
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth? He seeks at least
Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,
Some landing-place, to clasp and say,
‘Farewell! We lose ourselves in light.’
XLVIII.
If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,
Were taken to be such as closed
Grave doubts and answers here proposed,
Then these were such as men might scorn:
Her care is not to part and prove;
She takes, when harsher moods remit,
What slender shade of doubt may flit,
And makes it vassal unto love:
And hence, indeed, she sports with words,
But better serves a wholesome law,
And holds it sin and shame to draw
The deepest measure from the chords:
Nor dare she trust a larger lay,
But rather loosens from the lip
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away.
XLIX.
From art, from nature, from the schools,
Let random influences glance,
Like light in many a shiver’d lance
445
That breaks about the dappled pools:
The lightest wave of thought shall lisp,
The fancy’s tenderest eddy wreathe,
The slightest air of song shall breathe
To make the sullen surface crisp.
And look thy look, and go thy way,
But blame not thou the winds that make
The seeming-wanton ripple break,
The tender-pencil’d shadow play.
Beneath all fancied hopes and fears
Ay me, the sorrow deepens down,
Whose muffled motions blindly drown
The bases of my life in tears.
L.
Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.
Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.
Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.
Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.
LI.
446
Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?
Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen’d in his love?
I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
The dead shall look me thro’ and thro’.
Be near us when we climb or fall:
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all.
LII.
I cannot love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.
‘Yet blame not thou thy plaintive song,’
The Spirit of true love replied;
‘Thou canst not move me from thy side,
Nor human frailty do me wrong.
‘What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears?
What record? not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue:
‘So fret not, like an idle girl,
That life is dash’d with flecks of sin.
Abide: thy wealth is gather’d in,
When Time hath sunder’d shell from pearl.’
447
LIII.
How many a father have I seen,
A sober man, among his boys,
Whose youth was full of foolish noise,
Who wears his manhood hale and green:
And dare we to this fancy give,
That had the wild oat not been sown,
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown
The grain by which a man may live?
Or, if we held the doctrine sound
For life outliving heats of youth,
Yet who would preach it as a truth
To those that eddy round and round?
Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.
LIV.
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
448
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last–far off–at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
LV.
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
LVI.
449
‘So careful of the type?’ but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.’ And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law–
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
LVII.
Peace; come away: the song of woe
Is after all an earthly song:
Peace; come away: we do him wrong
To sing so wildly: let us go.
450
Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
But half my life I leave behind:
Methinks my friend is richly shrined;
But I shall pass; my work will fail.
Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,
One set slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look’d with human eyes.
I hear it now, and o’er and o’er,
Eternal greetings to the dead;
And ‘Ave, Ave, Ave,’ said,
‘Adieu, adieu’ for evermore.
LVIII.
In those sad words I took farewell:
Like echoes in sepulchral halls,
As drop by drop the water falls
In vaults and catacombs, they fell;
And, falling, idly broke the peace
Of hearts that beat from day to day,
Half-conscious of their dying clay,
And those cold crypts where they shall cease.
The high Muse answer’d: ‘Wherefore grieve
Thy brethren with a fruitless tear?
Abide a little longer here,
And thou shalt take a nobler leave.’
LIX.
O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me
No casual mistress, but a wife,
My bosom-friend and half of life;
As I confess it needs must be;
O Sorrow, wilt thou rule my blood,
451
Be sometimes lovely like a bride,
And put thy harsher moods aside,
If thou wilt have me wise and good.
My centred passion cannot move,
Nor will it lessen from to-day;
But I’ll have leave at times to play
As with the creature of my love;
And set thee forth, for thou art mine,
With so much hope for years to come,
That, howsoe’er I know thee, some
Could hardly tell what name were thine.
LX.
He past; a soul of nobler tone:
My spirit loved and loves him yet,
Like some poor girl whose heart is set
On one whose rank exceeds her own.
He mixing with his proper sphere,
She finds the baseness of her lot,
Half jealous of she knows not what,
And envying all that meet him there.
The little village looks forlorn;
She sighs amid her narrow days,
Moving about the household ways,
In that dark house where she was born.
The foolish neighbours come and go,
And tease her till the day draws by:
At night she weeps, ‘How vain am I!
How should he love a thing so low?’
LXI.
If, in thy second state sublime,
452
Thy ransom’d reason change replies
With all the circle of the wise,
The perfect flower of human time;
And if thou cast thine eyes below,
How dimly character’d and slight,
How dwarf’d a growth of cold and night,
How blanch'd with darkness must I grow!
Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore,
Where thy first form was made a man:
I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can
The soul of Shakespeare love thee more.
LXII.
Tho’ if an eye that’s downward cast
Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,
Then be my love an idle tale,
And fading legend of the past;
And thou, as one that once declined,
When he was little more than boy,
On some unworthy heart with joy,
But lives to wed an equal mind;
And breathes a novel world, the while
His other passion wholly dies,
Or in the light of deeper eyes
Is matter for a flying smile.
LXIII.
Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven,
And love in which my hound has part,
Can hang no weight upon my heart
In its assumptions up to heaven;
And I am so much more than these,
As thou, perchance, art more than I,
And yet I spare them sympathy,
453
And I would set their pains at ease.
So mayst thou watch me where I weep,
As, unto vaster motions bound,
The circuits of thine orbit round
A higher height, a deeper deep.
LXIV.
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;
Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state’s decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope
The pillar of a people’s hope,
The centre of a world’s desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He play’d at counsellors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labour of his hands,
454
Or in the furrow musing stands;
‘Does my old friend remember me?’
LXV.
Sweet soul, do with me as thou wilt;
I lull a fancy trouble-tost
With ‘Love’s too precious to be lost,
A little grain shall not be spilt.’
And in that solace can I sing,
Till out of painful phases wrought
There flutters up a happy thought,
Self-balanced on a lightsome wing:
Since we deserved the name of friends,
And thine effect so lives in me,
A part of mine may live in thee
And move thee on to noble ends.
LXVI.
You thought my heart too far diseased;
You wonder when my fancies play
To find me gay among the gay,
Like one with any trifle pleased.
The shade by which my life was crost,
Which makes a desert in the mind,
Has made me kindly with my kind,
And like to him whose sight is lost;
Whose feet are guided thro’ the land,
Whose jest among his friends is free,
Who takes the children on his knee,
And winds their curls about his hand:
He plays with threads, he beats his chair
For pastime, dreaming of the sky;
His inner day can never die,
455
His night of loss is always there.
LXVII.
When on my bed the moonlight falls,
I know that in thy place of rest
By that broad water of the west,
There comes a glory on the walls:
Thy marble bright in dark appears,
As slowly steals a silver flame
Along the letters of thy name,
And o’er the number of thy years.
The mystic glory swims away;
From off my bed the moonlight dies;
And closing eaves of wearied eyes
I sleep till dusk is dipt in gray:
And then I know the mist is drawn
A lucid veil from coast to coast,
And in the dark church like a ghost
Thy tablet glimmers to the dawn.
LXVIII.
When in the down I sink my head,
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, times my breath;
Sleep, Death’s twin-brother, knows not Death,
Nor can I dream of thee as dead:
I walk as ere I walk’d forlorn,
When all our path was fresh with dew,
And all the bugle breezes blew
Reveillée to the breaking morn.
But what is this? I turn about,
I find a trouble in thine eye,
Which makes me sad I know not why,
Nor can my dream resolve the doubt:
456
But ere the lark hath left the lea
I wake, and I discern the truth;
It is the trouble of my youth
That foolish sleep transfers to thee.
LXIX.
I dream’d there would be Spring no more,
That Nature’s ancient power was lost:
The streets were black with smoke and frost,
They chatter’d trifles at the door:
I wander’d from the noisy town,
I found a wood with thorny boughs:
I took the thorns to bind my brows,
I wore them like a civic crown:
I met with scoffs, I met with scorns
From youth and babe and hoary hairs:
They call’d me in the public squares
The fool that wears a crown of thorns:
They call’d me fool, they call’d me child:
I found an angel of the night;
The voice was low, the look was bright;
He look’d upon my crown and smiled:
He reach’d the glory of a hand,
That seem’d to touch it into leaf:
The voice was not the voice of grief,
The words were hard to understand.
LXX.
I cannot see the features right,
When on the gloom I strive to paint
The face I know; the hues are faint
And mix with hollow masks of night;
457
Cloud-towers by ghostly masons wrought,
A gulf that ever shuts and gapes,
A hand that points, and palled shapes
In shadowy thoroughfares of thought;
And crowds that stream from yawning doors,
And shoals of pucker’d faces drive;
Dark bulks that tumble half alive,
And lazy lengths on boundless shores;
Till all at once beyond the will
I hear a wizard music roll,
And thro’ a lattice on the soul
Looks thy fair face and makes it still.
LXXI.
Sleep, kinsman thou to death and trance
And madness, thou hast forged at last
A night-long Present of the Past
In which we went thro’ summer France.
Hadst thou such credit with the soul?
Then bring an opiate trebly strong,
Drug down the blindfold sense of wrong
That so my pleasure may be whole;
While now we talk as once we talk’d
Of men and minds, the dust of change,
The days that grow to something strange,
In walking as of old we walk’d
Beside the river’s wooded reach,
The fortress, and the mountain ridge,
The cataract flashing from the bridge,
The breaker breaking on the beach.
LXXII.
458
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
And howlest, issuing out of night,
With blasts that blow the poplar white,
And lash with storm the streaming pane?
Day, when my crown’d estate begun
To pine in that reverse of doom,
Which sicken’d every living bloom,
And blurr’d the splendour of the sun;
Who usherest in the dolorous hour
With thy quick tears that make the rose
Pull sideways, and the daisy close
Her crimson fringes to the shower;
Who might’st have heaved a windless flame
Up the deep East, or, whispering, play’d
A chequer-work of beam and shade
Along the hills, yet look’d the same.
As wan, as chill, as wild as now;
Day, mark’d as with some hideous crime,
When the dark hand struck down thro’ time,
And cancell’d nature’s best: but thou,
Lift as thou may’st thy burthen’d brows
Thro’ clouds that drench the morning star,
And whirl the ungarner’d sheaf afar,
And sow the sky with flying boughs,
And up thy vault with roaring sound
Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day;
Touch thy dull goal of joyless gray,
And hide thy shame beneath the ground.
LXXIII.
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be,
How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?
459
The fame is quench’d that I foresaw,
The head hath miss’d an earthly wreath:
I curse not nature, no, nor death;
For nothing is that errs from law.
We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God.
O hollow wraith of dying fame,
Fade wholly, while the soul exults,
And self-infolds the large results
Of force that would have forged a name.
LXXIV.
As sometimes in a dead man’s face,
To those that watch it more and more,
A likeness, hardly seen before,
Comes out–to some one of his race:
So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.
But there is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee.
LXXV.
I leave thy praises unexpress’d
In verse that brings myself relief,
And by the measure of my grief
I leave thy greatness to be guess’d;
What practice howsoe’er expert
460
In fitting aptest words to things,
Or voice the richest-toned that sings,
Hath power to give thee as thou wert?
I care not in these fading days
To raise a cry that lasts not long,
And round thee with the breeze of song
To stir a little dust of praise.
Thy leaf has perish’d in the green,
And, while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world which credits what is done
Is cold to all that might have been.
So here shall silence guard thy fame;
But somewhere, out of human view,
Whate’er thy hands are set to do
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.
LXXVI.
Take wings of fancy, and ascend,
And in a moment set thy face
Where all the starry heavens of space
Are sharpen’d to a needle’s end;
Take wings of foresight; lighten thro’
The secular abyss to come,
And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb
Before the mouldering of a yew;
And if the matin songs, that woke
The darkness of our planet, last,
Thine own shall wither in the vast,
Ere half the lifetime of an oak.
Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers
With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain;
And what are they when these remain
The ruin’d shells of hollow towers?
461
LXXVII.
What hope is here for modern rhyme
To him, who turns a musing eye
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie
Foreshorten’d in the tract of time?
These mortal lullabies of pain
May bind a book, may line a box,
May serve to curl a maiden’s locks;
Or when a thousand moons shall wane
A man upon a stall may find,
And, passing, turn the page that tells
A grief, then changed to something else,
Sung by a long-forgotten mind.
But what of that? My darken’d ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise.
LXXVIII.
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess’d the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture’s breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show’d a token of distress?
462
No single tear, no mark of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, regret can die!
No–mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.
LXXIX.
‘More than my brothers are to me,’–
Let this not vex thee, noble heart!
I know thee of what force thou art
To hold the costliest love in fee.
But thou and I are one in kind,
As moulded like in Nature’s mint;
And hill and wood and field did print
The same sweet forms in either mind.
For us the same cold streamlet curl’d
Thro’ all his eddying coves; the same
All winds that roam the twilight came
In whispers of the beauteous world.
At one dear knee we proffer’d vows,
One lesson from one book we learn’d,
Ere childhood’s flaxen ringlet turn’d
To black and brown on kindred brows.
And so my wealth resembles thine,
But he was rich where I was poor,
And he supplied my want the more
As his unlikeness fitted mine.
LXXX.
If any vague desire should rise,
463
That holy Death ere Arthur died
Had moved me kindly from his side,
And dropt the dust on tearless eyes;
Then fancy shapes, as fancy can,
The grief my loss in him had wrought,
A grief as deep as life or thought,
But stay’d in peace with God and man.
I make a picture in the brain;
I hear the sentence that he speaks;
He bears the burthen of the weeks
But turns his burthen into gain.
His credit thus shall set me free;
And, influence-rich to soothe and save,
Unused example from the grave
Reach out dead hands to comfort me.
LXXXI.
Could I have said while he was here,
‘My love shall now no further range;
There cannot come a mellower change,
For now is love mature in ear.’
Love, then, had hope of richer store:
What end is here to my complaint?
This haunting whisper makes me faint,
‘More years had made me love thee more.’
But Death returns an answer sweet:
‘My sudden frost was sudden gain,
And gave all ripeness to the grain,
It might have drawn from after-heat.’
LXXXII.
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
464
No lower life that earth’s embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter’d stalks,
Or ruin’d chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
LXXXIII.
Dip down upon the northern shore,
O sweet new-year delaying long;
Thou doest expectant nature wrong;
Delaying long, delay no more.
What stays thee from the clouded noons,
Thy sweetness from its proper place?
Can trouble live with April days,
Or sadness in the summer moons?
Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell’s darling blue,
Deep tulips dash’d with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.
O thou, new-year, delaying long,
Delayest the sorrow in my blood,
That longs to burst a frozen bud
And flood a fresher throat with song.
465
LXXXIV.
When I contemplate all alone
The life that had been thine below,
And fix my thoughts on all the glow
To which thy crescent would have grown;
I see thee sitting crown’d with good,
A central warmth diffusing bliss
In glance and smile, and clasp and kiss,
On all the branches of thy blood;
Thy blood, my friend, and partly mine;
For now the day was drawing on,
When thou should’st link thy life with one
Of mine own house, and boys of thine
Had babbled ‘Uncle’ on my knee;
But that remorseless iron hour
Made cypress of her orange flower,
Despair of Hope, and earth of thee.
I seem to meet their least desire,
To clap their cheeks, to call them mine.
I see their unborn faces shine
Beside the never-lighted fire.
I see myself an honour’d guest,
Thy partner in the flowery walk
Of letters, genial table-talk,
Or deep dispute, and graceful jest;
While now thy prosperous labour fills
The lips of men with honest praise,
And sun by sun the happy days
Descend below the golden hills
With promise of a morn as fair;
And all the train of bounteous hours
Conduct by paths of growing powers,
To reverence and the silver hair;
Till slowly worn her earthly robe,
466
Her lavish mission richly wrought,
Leaving great legacies of thought,
Thy spirit should fail from off the globe;
What time mine own might also flee,
As link’d with thine in love and fate,
And, hovering o’er the dolorous strait
To the other shore, involved in thee,
Arrive at last the blessed goal,
And He that died in Holy Land
Would reach us out the shining hand,
And take us as a single soul.
What reed was that on which I leant?
Ah, backward fancy, wherefore wake
The old bitterness again, and break
The low beginnings of content.
LXXXV.
This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrow’d most,
’Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all–
O true in word, and tried in deed,
Demanding, so to bring relief
To this which is our common grief,
What kind of life is that I lead;
And whether trust in things above
Be dimm’d of sorrow, or sustain’d;
And whether love for him have drain’d
My capabilities of love;
Your words have virtue such as draws
A faithful answer from the breast,
Thro’ light reproaches, half exprest,
And loyal unto kindly laws.
467
My blood an even tenor kept,
Till on mine ear this message falls,
That in Vienna’s fatal walls
God’s finger touch’d him, and he slept.
The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state,
In circle round the blessed gate,
Received and gave him welcome there;
And led him thro’ the blissful climes,
And show'd him in the fountain fresh
All knowledge that the sons of flesh
Shall gather in the cycled times.
But I remained, whose hopes were dim,
Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,
To wander on a darkened earth,
Where all things round me breathed of him.
friendship, equal poised control,
heart, with kindliest motion warm,
sacred essence, other form,
solemn ghost, O crowned soul!
Yet none could better know than I,
How much of act at human hands
The sense of human will demands
By which we dare to live or die.
Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho’ left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine;
A life that all the Muses decked
With gifts of grace, that might express
All comprehensive tenderness,
All-subtilising intellect:
And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
468
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved.
Likewise the imaginative woe,
That loved to handle spiritual strife,
Diffused the shock thro’ all my life,
But in the present broke the blow.
My pulses therefore beat again
For other friends that once I met;
Nor can it suit me to forget
The mighty hopes that make us men.
I woo your love: I count it crime
To mourn for any overmuch;
I, the divided half of such
A friendship as had master’d Time;
Which masters Time indeed, and is
Eternal, separate from fears:
The all-assuming months and years
Can take no part away from this:
But Summer on the steaming floods,
And Spring that swells the narrow brooks,
And Autumn, with a noise of rooks,
That gather in the waning woods,
And every pulse of wind and wave
Recalls, in change of light or gloom,
My old affection of the tomb,
And my prime passion in the grave:
My old affection of the tomb,
A part of stillness, yearns to speak:
‘Arise, and get thee forth and seek
A friendship for the years to come.
‘I watch thee from the quiet shore;
Thy spirit up to mine can reach;
But in dear words of human speech
We two communicate no more.’
469
And I, ‘Can clouds of nature stain
The starry clearness of the free?
How is it? Canst thou feel for me
Some painless sympathy with pain?’
And lightly does the whisper fall;
‘’Tis hard for thee to fathom this;
I triumph in conclusive bliss,
And that serene result of all.’
So hold I commerce with the dead;
Or so methinks the dead would say;
Or so shall grief with symbols play
And pining life be fancy-fed.
Now looking to some settled end,
That these things pass, and I shall prove
A meeting somewhere, love with love,
I crave your pardon, O my friend;
If not so fresh, with love as true,
I, clasping brother-hands aver
I could not, if I would, transfer
The whole I felt for him to you.
For which be they that hold apart
The promise of the golden hours?
First love, first friendship, equal powers,
That marry with the virgin heart.
Still mine, that cannot but deplore,
That beats within a lonely place,
That yet remembers his embrace,
But at his footstep leaps no more,
My heart, tho’ widow’d, may not rest
Quite in the love of what is gone,
But seeks to beat in time with one
That warms another living breast.
Ah, take the imperfect gift I bring,
470
Knowing the primrose yet is dear,
The primrose of the later year,
As not unlike to that of Spring.
LXXXVI.
Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,
That rollest from the gorgeous gloom
Of evening over brake and bloom
And meadow, slowly breathing bare
The round of space, and rapt below
Thro’ all the dewy-tassell’d wood,
And shadowing down the horned flood
In ripples, fan my brows and blow
The fever from my cheek, and sigh
The full new life that feeds thy breath
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,
Ill brethren, let the fancy fly
From belt to belt of crimson seas
On leagues of odour streaming far,
To where in yonder orient star
A hundred spirits whisper ‘Peace.’
LXXXVII.
I past beside the reverend walls
In which of old I wore the gown;
I roved at random thro’ the town,
And saw the tumult of the halls;
And heard one more in college fanes
The storm their high-built organs make,
And thunder-music, rolling, shake
The prophet blazon’d on the panes;
And caught one more the distant shout,
The measured pulse of racing oars
471
Among the willows; paced the shores
And many a bridge, and all about
The same gray flats again, and felt
The same, but not the same; and last
Up that long walk of limes I past
To see the rooms in which he dwelt.
Another name was on the door:
I linger’d; all within was noise
Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys
That crash’d the glass and beat the floor;
Where once we held debate, a band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art,
And labour, and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land;
When one would aim an arrow fair,
But send it slackly from the string;
And one would pierce an outer ring,
And one an inner, here and there;
And last the master-bowman, he,
Would cleave the mark. A willing ear
We lent him. Who, but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point, with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face,
And seem to lift the form, and glow
In azure orbits heavenly wise;
And over those ethereal eyes
The bar of Michael Angelo.
LXXXVIII.
472
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,
Rings Eden thro’ the budded quicks,
O tell me where the senses mix,
O tell me where the passions meet,
Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ
Thy spirits in the darkening leaf,
And in the midmost heart of grief
Thy passion clasps a secret joy:
And I–my harp would prelude woe–
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
Will flash along the chords and go.
LXXXIX.
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;
And thou, with all thy breadth and height
Of foliage, towering sycamore;
How often, hither wandering down,
My Arthur found your shadows fair,
And shook to all the liberal air
The dust and din and steam of town:
He brought an eye for all he saw;
He mixt in all our simple sports;
They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts
And dusty purlieus of the law.
O joy to him in this retreat,
Immantled in ambrosial dark,
To drink the cooler air, and mark
The landscape winking thro’ the heat:
O sound to rout the brood of cares,
The sweep of scythe in morning dew,
The gust that round the garden flew,
And tumbled half the mellowing pears!
473
O bliss, when all in circle drawn
About him, heart and ear were fed
To hear him, as he lay and read
The Tuscan poets on the lawn:
Or in the all-golden afternoon
A guest, or happy sister, sung,
Or here she brought the harp and flung
A ballad to the brightening moon:
Nor less it pleased in livelier moods,
Beyond the bounding hill to stray,
And break the livelong summer day
With banquet in the distant woods;
Whereat we glanced from theme to theme,
Discuss’d the books to love or hate,
Or touch’d the changes of the state,
Or threaded some Socratic dream;
But if I praised the busy town,
He loved to rail against it still,
For ‘ground in yonder social mill
We rub each other’s angles down,
‘And merge’ he said ‘in form and gloss
The picturesque of man and man.’
We talk’d: the stream beneath us ran,
The wine-flask lying couch’d in moss,
Or cool’d within the glooming wave;
And last, returning from afar,
Before the crimson-circled star
Had fall’n into her father’s grave,
And brushing ankle-deep in flowers,
We heard behind the woodbine veil
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And buzzings of the honied hours.
474
XC.
He tasted love with half his mind,
Nor ever drank the inviolate spring
Where nighest heaven, who first could fling
This bitter seed among mankind;
That could the dead, whose dying eyes
Were closed with wail, resume their life,
They would but find in child and wife
An iron welcome when they rise:
’Twas well, indeed, when warm with wine,
To pledge them with a kindly tear,
To talk them o’er, to wish them here,
To count their memories half divine;
But if they came who past away,
Behold their brides in other hands;
The hard heir strides about their lands,
And will not yield them for a day.
Yea, tho’ their sons were none of these,
Not less the yet-loved sire would make
Confusion worse than death, and shake
The pillars of domestic peace.
Ah dear, but come thou back to me:
Whatever change the years have wrought,
I find not yet one lonely thought
That cries against my wish for thee.
XCI.
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,
And rarely pipes the mounted thrush;
Or underneath the barren bush
Flits by the sea-blue bird of March;
Come, wear the form by which I know
Thy spirit in time among thy peers;
The hope of unaccomplish’d years
475
Be large and lucid round thy brow.
When summer’s hourly-mellowing change
May breathe, with many roses sweet,
Upon the thousand waves of wheat,
That ripple round the lonely grange;
Come: not in watches of the night,
But where the sunbeam broodeth warm,
Come, beauteous in thine after form,
And like a finer light in light.
XCII.
If any vision should reveal
Thy likeness, I might count it vain
As but the canker of the brain;
Yea, tho’ it spake and made appeal
To chances where our lots were cast
Together in the days behind,
I might but say, I hear a wind
Of memory murmuring the past.
Yea, tho’ it spake and bared to view
A fact within the coming year;
And tho’ the months, revolving near,
Should prove the phantom-warning true,
They might not seem thy prophecies,
But spiritual presentiments,
And such refraction of events
As often rises ere they rise.
XCIII.
I shall not see thee. Dare I say
No spirit ever brake the band
That stays him from the native land
476
Where first he walk’d when claspt in clay?
No visual shade of some one lost,
But he, the Spirit himself, may come
Where all the nerve of sense is numb;
Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost.
O, therefore from thy sightless range
With gods in unconjectured bliss,
O, from the distance of the abyss
Of tenfold-complicated change,
Descend, and touch, and enter; hear
The wish too strong for words to name;
That in this blindness of the frame
My Ghost may feel that thine is near.
XCIV.
How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour’s communion with the dead.
In vain shalt thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say,
My spirit is at peace with all.
They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest:
But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits,
They can but listen at the gates,
And hear the household jar within.
XCV.
477
By night we linger’d on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o’er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirr’d:
The brook alone far-off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn:
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel’d or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes;
While now we sang old songs that peal’d
From knoll to knoll, where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field.
But when those others, one by one,
Withdrew themselves from me and night,
And in the house light after light
Went out, and I was all alone,
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fall’n leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead:
And strangely on the silence broke
The silent-speaking words, and strange
Was love’s dumb cry defying change
To test his worth; and strangely spoke
The faith, the vigour, bold to dwell
On doubts that drive the coward back,
And keen thro’ wordy snares to track
Suggestion to her inmost cell.
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch’d me from the past,
478
And all at once it seem’d at last
The living soul was flash’d on mine,
And mine in this was wound, and whirl’d
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,
Æonian music measuring out
The steps of Time–the shocks of Chance–
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev’n for intellect to reach
Thro’ memory that which I became:
Till now the doubtful dusk reveal’d
The knolls once more where, couch’d at ease,
The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field:
And suck’d from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o’er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock’d the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said
‘The dawn, the dawn,’ and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.
XCVI.
479
You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch’d a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gather’d strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinaï’s peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.
XCVII.
My love has talk’d with rocks and trees;
He finds on misty mountain-ground
His own vast shadow glory-crown’d;
He sees himself in all he sees.
Two partners of a married life–
I look’d on these and thought of thee
In vastness and in mystery,
And of my spirit as of a wife.
480
These two–they dwelt with eye on eye,
Their hearts of old have beat in tune,
Their meetings made December June,
Their every parting was to die.
Their love has never past away;
The days she never can forget
Are earnest that he loves her yet,
Whate’er the faithless people say.
Her life is lone, he sits apart,
He loves her yet, she will not weep,
Tho’ rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.
He
He
He
He
thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
reads the secret of the star,
seems so near and yet so far,
looks so cold: she thinks him kind.
She keeps the gift of years before,
A wither’d violet is her bliss:
She knows not what his greatness is,
For that, for all, she loves him more.
For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things.
Her faith is fixt and cannot move,
She darkly feels him great and wise,
She dwells on him with faithful eyes,
‘I cannot understand: I love.’
XCVIII.
You leave us: you will see the Rhine,
And those fair hills I sail’d below,
When I was there with him; and go
481
By summer belts of wheat and vine
To where he breathed his latest breath,
That City. All her splendour seems
No livelier than the wisp that gleams
On Lethe in the eyes of Death.
Let her great Danube rolling fair
Enwind her isles, unmark’d of me:
I have not seen, I will not see
Vienna; rather dream that there,
A treble darkness, Evil haunts
The birth, the bridal; friend from friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend
Above more graves, a thousand wants
Gnarr at the heels of men, and prey
By each cold hearth, and sadness flings
Her shadow on the blaze of kings:
And yet myself have heard him say,
That not in any mother town
With statelier progress to and fro
The double tides of chariots flow
By park and suburb under brown
Of lustier leaves; nor more content,
He told me, lives in any crowd,
When all is gay with lamps, and loud
With sport and song, in booth and tent,
Imperial halls, or open plain;
And wheels the circled dance, and breaks
The rocket molten into flakes
Of crimson or in emerald rain.
XCIX.
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,
So loud with voices of the birds,
482
So thick with lowings of the herds,
Day, when I lost the flower of men;
Who tremblest thro’ thy darkling red
On yon swoll’n brook that bubbles fast
By meadows breathing of the past,
And woodlands holy to the dead;
Who murmurest in the foliaged eaves
A song that slights the coming care,
And Autumn laying here and there
A fiery finger on the leaves;
Who wakenest with thy balmy breath
To myriads on the genial earth,
Memories of bridal, or of birth,
And unto myriads more, of death.
O wheresoever those may be,
Betwixt the slumber of the poles,
To-day they count as kindred souls;
They know me not, but mourn with me.
C.
I climb the hill: from end to end
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend;
No gray old grange, or lonely fold,
Or low morass and whispering reed,
Or simple stile from mead to mead,
Or sheepwalk up the windy wold;
Nor hoary knoll of ash and haw
That hears the latest linnet trill,
Nor quarry trench’d along the hill
And haunted by the wrangling daw;
Nor runlet tinkling from the rock;
Nor pastoral rivulet that swerves
483
To left and right thro’ meadowy curves,
That feed the mothers of the flock;
But each has pleased a kindred eye,
And each reflects a kindlier day;
And, leaving these, to pass away,
I think once more he seems to die.
CI.
Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway,
The tender blossom flutter down,
Unloved, that beech will gather brown,
This maple burn itself away;
Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair,
Ray round with flames her disk of seed,
And many a rose-carnation feed
With summer spice the humming air;
Unloved, by many a sandy bar,
The brook shall babble down the plain,
At noon or when the lesser wain
Is twisting round the polar star;
Uncared for, gird the windy grove,
And flood the haunts of hern and crake;
Or into silver arrows break
The sailing moon in creek and cove;
Till from the garden and the wild
A fresh association blow,
And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger’s child;
As year by year the labourer tills
His wonted glebe, or lops the glades;
And year by year our memory fades
From all the circle of the hills.
484
CII.
We leave the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky;
The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,
Will shelter one of stranger race.
We go, but ere we go from home,
As down the garden-walks I move,
Two spirits of a diverse love
Contend for loving masterdom.
One whispers, ‘Here thy boyhood sung
Long since its matin song, and heard
The low love-language of the bird
In native hazels tassel-hung.’
The other answers, ‘Yea, but here
Thy feet have stray’d in after hours
With thy lost friend among the bowers,
And this hath made them trebly dear.’
These two have striven half the day,
And each prefers his separate claim,
Poor rivals in a losing game,
That will not yield each other way.
I turn to go: my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and farms;
They mix in one another’s arms
To one pure image of regret.
CIII.
On that last night before we went
From out the doors where I was bred,
I dream’d a vision of the dead,
Which left my after-morn content.
Methought I dwelt within a hall,
And maidens with me: distant hills
485
From hidden summits fed with rills
A river sliding by the wall.
The hall with harp and carol rang.
They sang of what is wise and good
And graceful. In the centre stood
A statue veil’d, to which they sang;
And which, tho’ veil’d, was known to me,
The shape of him I loved, and love
For ever: then flew in a dove
And brought a summons from the sea:
And when they learnt that I must go
They wept and wail’d, but led the way
To where a little shallop lay
At anchor in the flood below;
And on by many a level mead,
And shadowing bluff that made the banks,
We glided winding under ranks
Of iris, and the golden reed;
And still as vaster grew the shore
And roll’d the floods in grander space,
The maidens gather’d strength and grace
And presence, lordlier than before;
And I myself, who sat apart
And watch’d them, wax’d in every limb;
I felt the thews of Anakim,
The pulses of a Titan’s heart;
As one would sing the death of war,
And one would chant the history
Of that great race, which is to be,
And one the shaping of a star;
Until the forward-creeping tides
Began to foam, and we to draw
From deep to deep, to where we saw
A great ship lift her shining sides.
486
The man we loved was there on deck,
But thrice as large as man he bent
To greet us. Up the side I went,
And fell in silence on his neck:
Whereat those maidens with one mind
Bewail’d their lot; I did them wrong:
‘We served thee here’ they said, ‘so long,
And wilt thou leave us now behind?’
So rapt I was, they could not win
An answer from my lips, but he
Replying, ‘Enter likewise ye
And go with us:’ they enter’d in.
And while the wind began to sweep
A music out of sheet and shroud,
We steer’d her toward a crimson cloud
That landlike slept along the deep.
CIV.
The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist.
A single peal of bells below,
That wakens at this hour of rest
A single murmur in the breast,
That these are not the bells I know.
Like strangers’ voices here they sound,
In lands where not a memory strays,
Nor landmark breathes of other days,
But all is new unhallow’d ground.
CV.
487
To-night ungather’d let us leave
This laurel, let this holly stand:
We live within the stranger’s land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.
Our father’s dust is left alone
And silent under other snows:
There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.
No more shall wayward grief abuse
The genial hour with mask and mime;
For change of place, like growth of time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.
Let cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.
But let no footstep beat the floor,
Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;
For who would keep an ancient form
Thro’ which the spirit breathes no more?
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast;
Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown;
No dance, no motion, save alone
What lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.
Long sleeps the summer in the seed;
Run out your measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good.
CVI.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
488
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring
Ring
Ring
Ring
out old shapes of foul disease;
out the narrowing lust of gold;
out the thousand wars of old,
in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
CVII.
It is the day when he was born,
A bitter day that early sank
489
Behind a purple-frosty bank
Of vapour, leaving night forlorn.
The time admits not flowers or leaves
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen’d eaves,
And bristles all the brakes and thorns
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs
Above the wood which grides and clangs
Its leafless ribs and iron horns
Together, in the drifts that pass
To darken on the rolling brine
That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine,
Arrange the board and brim the glass;
Bring in great logs and let them lie,
To make a solid core of heat;
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
Of all things ev’n as he were by;
We keep the day. With festal cheer,
With books and music, surely we
Will drink to him, whate’er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.
CVIII.
I will not shut me from my kind,
And, lest I stiffen into stone,
I will not eat my heart alone,
Nor feed with sighs a passing wind:
What profit lies in barren faith,
And vacant yearning, tho’ with might
To scale the heaven’s highest height,
Or dive below the wells of Death?
What find I in the highest place,
But mine own phantom chanting hymns?
490
And on the depths of death there swims
The reflex of a human face.
I'll rather take what fruit may be
Of sorrow under human skies:
’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise,
Whatever wisdom sleep with thee.
CIX.
Heart-affluence in discursive talk
From household fountains never dry;
The critic clearness of an eye,
That saw thro’ all the Muses’ walk;
Seraphic intellect and force
To seize and throw the doubts of man;
Impassion’d logic, which outran
The hearer in its fiery course;
High nature amorous of the good,
But touch’d with no ascetic gloom;
And passion pure in snowy bloom
Thro’ all the years of April blood;
A love of freedom rarely felt,
Of freedom in her regal seat
Of England; not the schoolboy heat,
The blind hysterics of the Celt;
And manhood fused with female grace
In such a sort, the child would twine
A trustful hand, unask’d, in thine,
And find his comfort in thy face;
All these have been, and thee mine eyes
Have look’d on: if they look’d in vain,
My shame is greater who remain,
Nor let thy wisdom make me wise.
491
CX.
Thy converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years:
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight.
On thee the loyal-hearted hung,
The proud was half disarm’d of pride,
Nor cared the serpent at thy side
To flicker with his double tongue.
The stern were mild when thou wert by,
The flippant put himself to school
And heard thee, and the brazen fool
Was soften’d, and he knew not why;
While I, thy nearest, sat apart,
And felt thy triumph was as mine;
And loved them more, that they were thine,
The graceful tact, the Christian art;
Nor mine the sweetness or the skill,
But mine the love that will not tire,
And, born of love, the vague desire
That spurs an imitative will.
CXI.
The churl in spirit, up or down
Along the scale of ranks, thro’ all,
To him who grasps a golden ball,
By blood a king, at heart a clown;
The churl in spirit, howe’er he veil
His want in forms for fashion’s sake,
Will let his coltish nature break
At seasons thro’ the gilded pale:
For who can always act? but he,
To whom a thousand memories call,
492
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seem’d to be,
Best seem’d the thing he was, and join’d
Each office of the social hour
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind;
Nor ever narrowness or spite,
Or villain fancy fleeting by,
Drew in the expression of an eye,
Where God and Nature met in light;
And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soil’d with all ignoble use.
CXII.
High wisdom holds my wisdom less,
That I, who gaze with temperate eyes
On glorious insufficiencies,
Set light by narrower perfectness.
But thou, that fillest all the room
Of all my love, art reason why
I seem to cast a careless eye
On souls, the lesser lords of doom.
For what wert thou? some novel power
Sprang up for ever at a touch,
And hope could never hope too much,
In watching thee from hour to hour,
Large elements in order brought,
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world-wide fluctuation sway’d
In vassal tides that follow’d thought.
493
CXIII.
’Tis held that sorrow makes us wise;
Yet how much wisdom sleeps with thee
Which not alone had guided me,
But served the seasons that may rise;
For can I doubt, who knew thee keen
In intellect, with force and skill
To strive, to fashion, to fulfil–
I doubt not what thou wouldst have been:
life in civic action warm,
soul on highest mission sent,
potent voice of Parliament,
pillar steadfast in the storm,
Should licensed boldness gather force,
Becoming, when the time has birth,
A lever to uplift the earth
And roll it in another course,
With thousand shocks that come and go,
With agonies, with energies,
With overthrowings, and with cries,
And undulations to and fro.
CXIV.
Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
But on her forehead sits a fire:
She sets her forward countenance
And leaps into the future chance,
Submitting all things to desire.
Half-grown as yet, a child, and vain–
She cannot fight the fear of death.
494
What is she, cut from love and faith,
But some wild Pallas from the brain
Of Demons? fiery-hot to burst
All barriers in her onward race
For power. Let her know her place;
She is the second, not the first.
A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger child:
For she is earthly of the mind,
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.
O, friend, who camest to thy goal
So early, leaving me behind,
I would the great world grew like thee,
Who grewest not alone in power
And knowledge, but by year and hour
In reverence and in charity.
CXV.
Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown’d in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;
Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
495
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives
From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.
CXVI.
Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime?
Not all: the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,
Cry thro’ the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.
Not all regret: the face will shine
Upon me, while I muse alone;
And that dear voice, I once have known,
Still speak to me of me and mine:
Yet less of sorrow lives in me
For days of happy commune dead;
Less yearning for the friendship fled,
Than some strong bond which is to be.
CXVII.
O days and hours, your work is this
To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from his embrace
For fuller gain of after bliss:
That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet;
496
And unto meeting when we meet,
Delight a hundredfold accrue,
For every grain of sand that runs,
And every span of shade that steals,
And every kiss of toothed wheels,
And all the courses of the suns.
CXVIII.
Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature’s earth and lime;
But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
Who throve and branch’d from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crown’d with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly
497
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
CXIX.
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, not as one that weeps
I come once more; the city sleeps;
I smell the meadow in the street;
I hear a chirp of birds; I see
Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,
And think of early days and thee,
And bless thee, for thy lips are bland,
And bright the friendship of thine eye;
And in my thoughts with scarce a sigh
I take the pressure of thine hand.
CXX.
I trust I have not wasted breath:
I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;
Not only cunning casts in clay:
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me? I would not stay.
Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.
498
CXXI.
Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen’d from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken’d in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world’s great work is heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light:
The market boat is on the stream,
And voices hail it from the brink;
Thou hear’st the village hammer clink,
And see’st the moving of the team.
Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name
For what is one, the first, the last,
Thou, like my present and my past,
Thy place is changed; thou art the same.
CXXII.
Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then,
While I rose up against my doom,
And yearn’d to burst the folded gloom,
To bare the eternal Heavens again,
To feel once more, in placid awe,
The strong imagination roll
A sphere of stars about my soul,
In all her motion one with law;
If thou wert with me, and the grave
Divide us not, be with me now,
And enter in at breast and brow,
499
Till all my blood, a fuller wave,
Be quicken’d with a livelier breath,
And like an inconsiderate boy,
As in the former flash of joy,
I slip the thoughts of life and death;
And all the breeze of Fancy blows,
And every dew-drop paints a bow,
The wizard lightnings deeply glow,
And every thought breaks out a rose.
CXXIII.
There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For tho’ my lips may breathe adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
CXXIV.
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
Nor thro’ the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
500
If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,
I heard a voice ‘believe no more’
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer’d ‘I have felt.’
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.
CXXV.
Whatever I have said or sung,
Some bitter notes my harp would give,
Yea, tho’ there often seem’d to live
A contradiction on the tongue,
Yet Hope had never lost her youth;
She did but look through dimmer eyes;
Or Love but play’d with gracious lies,
Because he felt so fix’d in truth:
And if the song were full of care,
He breathed the spirit of the song;
And if the words were sweet and strong
He set his royal signet there;
Abiding with me till I sail
To seek thee on the mystic deeps,
And this electric force, that keeps
501
A thousand pulses dancing, fail.
CXXVI.
Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.
Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, tho’ as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep
Encompass’d by his faithful guard,
And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well.
CXXVII.
And all is well, tho’ faith and form
Be sunder’d in the night of fear;
Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm,
Proclaiming social truth shall spread,
And justice, ev’n tho’ thrice again
The red fool-fury of the Seine
Should pile her barricades with dead.
But ill for him that wears a crown,
And him, the lazar, in his rags:
They tremble, the sustaining crags;
The spires of ice are toppled down,
And molten up, and roar in flood;
The fortress crashes from on high,
The brute earth lightens to the sky,
And the great Æon sinks in blood,
502
And compass’d by the fires of Hell;
While thou, dear spirit, happy star,
O’erlook’st the tumult from afar,
And smilest, knowing all is well.
CXXVIII.
The love that rose on stronger wings,
Unpalsied when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith
That sees the course of human things.
No doubt vast eddies in the flood
Of onward time shall yet be made,
And throned races may degrade;
Yet O ye mysteries of good,
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,
If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new;
If this were all your mission here,
To
To
To
To
draw, to sheathe a useless sword,
fool the crowd with glorious lies,
cleave a creed in sects and cries,
change the bearing of a word,
To shift an arbitrary power,
To cramp the student at his desk,
To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower;
Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours. I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil coöperant to an end.
CXXIX.
503
Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;
Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;
Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.
CXXX.
Thy voice is on the rolling air;
I hear thee where the waters run;
Thou standest in the rising sun,
And in the setting thou art fair.
What art thou then? I cannot guess;
But tho’ I seem in star and flower
To feel thee some diffusive power,
I do not therefore love thee less:
My love involves the love before;
My love is vaster passion now;
Tho’ mix’d with God and Nature thou,
I seem to love thee more and more.
Far off thou art, but ever nigh;
I have thee still, and I rejoice;
I prosper, circled with thy voice;
I shall not lose thee tho’ I die.
CXXXI.
504
O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro’ our deeds and make them pure,
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer’d years
To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.
_________
O true and tried, so well and long,
Demand not thou a marriage lay;
In that it is thy marriage day
Is music more than any song.
Nor have I felt so much of bliss
Since first he told me that he loved
A daughter of our house; nor proved
Since that dark day a day like this;
Tho’ I since then have number’d o’er
Some thrice three years: they went and came,
Remade the blood and changed the frame,
And yet is love not less, but more;
No longer caring to embalm
In dying songs a dead regret,
But like a statue solid-set,
And moulded in colossal calm.
Regret is dead, but love is more
Than in the summers that are flown,
For I myself with these have grown
To something greater than before;
Which makes appear the songs I made
505
As echoes out of weaker times,
As half but idle brawling rhymes,
The sport of random sun and shade.
But where is she, the bridal flower,
That must he made a wife ere noon?
She enters, glowing like the moon
Of Eden on its bridal bower:
On me she bends her blissful eyes
And then on thee; they meet thy look
And brighten like the star that shook
Betwixt the palms of paradise.
O when her life was yet in bud,
He too foretold the perfect rose.
For thee she grew, for thee she grows
For ever, and as fair as good.
And thou art worthy; full of power;
As gentle; liberal-minded, great,
Consistent; wearing all that weight
Of learning lightly like a flower.
But now set out: the noon is near,
And I must give away the bride;
She fears not, or with thee beside
And me behind her, will not fear.
For I that danced her on my knee,
That watch’d her on her nurse’s arm,
That shielded all her life from harm
At last must part with her to thee;
Now waiting to be made a wife,
Her feet, my darling, on the dead;
Their pensive tablets round her head,
And the most living words of life
Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,
The ‘wilt thou’ answer’d, and again
The ‘wilt thou’ ask’d, till out of twain
506
Her sweet ‘I will’ has made you one.
Now sign your names, which shall be read,
Mute symbols of a joyful morn,
By village eyes as yet unborn;
The names are sign’d, and overhead
Begins the clash and clang that tells
The joy to every wandering breeze;
The blind wall rocks, and on the trees
The dead leaf trembles to the bells.
O happy hour, and happier hours
Await them. Many a merry face
Salutes them–maidens of the place,
That pelt us in the porch with flowers.
O happy hour, behold the bride
With him to whom her hand I gave.
They leave the porch, they pass the grave
That has to-day its sunny side.
To-day the grave is bright for me,
For them the light of life increased,
Who stay to share the morning feast,
Who rest to-night beside the sea.
Let all my genial spirits advance
To meet and greet a whiter sun;
My drooping memory will not shun
The foaming grape of eastern France.
It circles round, and fancy plays,
And hearts are warm’d and faces bloom,
As drinking health to bride and groom
We wish them store of happy days.
Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance, perchance, among the rest,
And, tho’ in silence, wishing joy.
507
But they must go, the time draws on,
And those white-favour’d horses wait;
They rise, but linger; it is late;
Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.
A shade falls on us like the dark
From little cloudlets on the grass,
But sweeps away as out we pass
To range the woods, to roam the park,
Discussing how their courtship grew,
And talk of others that are wed,
And how she look’d, and what he said,
And back we come at fall of dew.
Again the feast, the speech, the glee,
The shade of passing thought, the wealth
Of words and wit, the double health,
The crowning cup, the three-times-three,
And last the dance;–till I retire:
Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,
And high in heaven the streaming cloud,
And on the downs a rising fire:
And rise, O moon, from yonder down,
Till over down and over dale
All night the shining vapour sail
And pass the silent-lighted town,
The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,
And catch at every mountain head,
And o’er the friths that branch and spread
Their sleeping silver thro’ the hills;
And touch with shade the bridal doors,
With tender gloom the roof, the wall;
And breaking let the splendour fall
To spangle all the happy shores
By which they rest, and ocean sounds,
And, star and system rolling past,
508
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
And, moved thro’ life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race
Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;
No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer’d, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;
Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,#NFDB
1177:A Lyrical Drama, In Four Acts.
Audisne haec amphiarae, sub terram abdite?
ACT I
Scene.A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea andIone are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.
Prometheus.
Monarch of Gods and Dmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.
Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,
O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn and despair,these are mine empire:
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains
Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
Heaven's wingd hound, polluting from thy lips
His beak in poison not his own, tears up
My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
When the rocks split and close again behind:
While from their loud abysses howling throng
The genii of the storm, urging the rage
Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
And yet to me welcome is day and night,
Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,
Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead
The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom
As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim
Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood
From these pale feet, which then might trample thee
If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.
Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin
Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!
How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
Not exultation, for I hate no more,
As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
Whose many-voicd Echoes, through the mist
Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!
Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,
Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisd wings
Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
The orbd world! If then my words had power,
Though I am changed so that aught evil wish
Is dead within; although no memory be
Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!
What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.
First Voice
(from the Mountains).
Thrice three hundred thousand years
O'er the Earthquake's couch we stood:
Oft, as men convulsed with fears,
We trembled in our multitude.
Second Voice
(from the Springs).
Thunderbolts had parched our water,
We had been stained with bitter blood,
And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter,
Thro' a city and a solitude.
Third Voice
(from the Air).
I had clothed, since Earth uprose,
Its wastes in colours not their own,
And oft had my serene repose
Been cloven by many a rending groan.
Fourth Voice
(from the Whirlwinds).
We had soared beneath these mountains
Unresting ages; nor had thunder,
Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains,
Nor any power above or under
Ever made us mute with wonder.
First Voice.
But never bowed our snowy crest
As at the voice of thine unrest.
Second Voice.
Never such a sound before
To the Indian waves we bore.
A pilot asleep on the howling sea
Leaped up from the deck in agony,
And heard, and cried, 'Ah, woe is me!'
And died as mad as the wild waves be.
Third Voice.
By such dread words from Earth to Heaven
My still realm was never riven:
When its wound was closed, there stood
Darkness o'er the day like blood.
Fourth Voice.
And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin
To frozen caves our flight pursuing
Made us keep silencethusand thus
Though silence is as hell to us.
The Earth.
The tongueless Caverns of the craggy hills
Cried, 'Misery!' then; the hollow Heaven replied,
'Misery!' And the Ocean's purple waves,
Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,
And the pale nations heard it, 'Misery!'
Prometheus.
I heard a sound of voices: not the voice
Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou
Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,
Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,
The Titan? He who made his agony
The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?
Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams,
Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,
Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once
With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, now
To commune with me? me alone, who checked,
As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:
Why answer ye not, still? Brethren!
The Earth.
They dare not.
Prometheus.
Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!
'Tis scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice
I only know that thou art moving near
And love. How cursed I him?
The Earth.
How canst thou hear
Who knowest not the language of the dead?
Prometheus.
Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.
The Earth.
I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King
Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
More torturing than the one whereon I roll.
Subtle thou art and good, and though the Gods
Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.
Prometheus.
Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,
Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel
Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
Yet 'tis not pleasure.
The Earth.
No, thou canst not hear:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
Only to those who die.
Prometheus.
And what art thou,
O, melancholy Voice?
The Earth.
I am the Earth,
Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,
And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.
Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll
Around us: their inhabitants beheld
My spherd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;
Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;
Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads
Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled:
When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,
And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds
Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained
With the contagion of a mother's hate
Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard
Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,
Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
And the inarticulate people of the dead,
Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
But dare not speak them.
Prometheus.
Venerable mother!
All else who live and suffer take from thee
Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,
And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.
But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.
The Earth.
They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know there are two worlds of life and death:
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live
Till death unite them and they part no more;
Dreams and the light imaginings of men,
And all that faith creates or love desires,
Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.
There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,
'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods
Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds,
Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;
And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne
Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter
The curse which all remember. Call at will
Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,
Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods
From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin
Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.
Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge
Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,
As rainy wind through the abandoned gate
Of a fallen palace.
Prometheus.
Mother, let not aught
Of that which may be evil, pass again
My lips, or those of aught resembling me.
Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!
Ione.
My wings are folded o'er mine ears:
My wings are crossd o'er mine eyes:
Yet through their silver shade appears,
And through their lulling plumes arise,
A Shape, a throng of sounds;
May it be no ill to thee
O thou of many wounds!
Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake,
Ever thus we watch and wake.
Panthea.
The sound is of whirlwind underground,
Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;
The shape is awful like the sound,
Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
A sceptre of pale gold
To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud
His veind hand doth hold.
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
Like one who does, not suffers wrong.
Phantasm of Jupiter.
Why have the secret powers of this strange world
Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither
On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds
Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice
With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk
In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?
Prometheus.
Tremendous Image, as thou art must be
He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,
The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,
Although no thought inform thine empty voice.
The Earth.
Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,
Gray mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,
Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,
Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak.
Phantasm.
A spirit seizes me and speaks within:
It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.
Panthea.
See, how he lifts his mighty looks, the Heaven
Darkens above.
Ione.
He speaks! O shelter me!
Prometheus.
I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,
And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,
And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,
Written as on a scroll: yet speak: Oh, speak!
Phantasm.
Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Human-kind,
One only being shalt thou not subdue.
Rain then thy plagues upon me here,
Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear;
And let alternate frost and fire
Eat into me, and be thine ire
Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.
Ay, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent.
O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,
And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent
To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.
Let thy malignant spirit move
In darkness over those I love:
On me and mine I imprecate
The utmost torture of thy hate;
And thus devote to sleepless agony,
This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.
But thou, who art the God and Lord: O, thou,
Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,
To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow
In fear and worship: all-prevailing foe!
I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse
Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;
Till thine Infinity shall be
A robe of envenomed agony;
And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,
To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.
Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,
Ill deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good;
Both infinite as is the universe,
And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude.
An awful image of calm power
Though now thou sittest, let the hour
Come, when thou must appear to be
That which thou art internally;
And after many a false and fruitless crime
Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time.
Prometheus.
Were these my words, O Parent?
The Earth.
They were thine.
Prometheus.
It doth repent me: words are quick and vain;
Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.
I wish no living thing to suffer pain.
The Earth.
Misery, Oh misery to me,
That Jove at length should vanquish thee.
Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,
The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye.
Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead,
Your refuge, your defence lies fallen and vanquishd.
First Echo.
Lies fallen and vanquishd!
Second Echo.
Fallen and vanquishd!
Ione.
Fear not: 'tis but some passing spasm,
The Titan is unvanquished still.
But see, where through the azure chasm
Of yon forked and snowy hill
Trampling the slant winds on high
With golden-sandalled feet, that glow
Under plumes of purple dye,
Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
A Shape comes now,
Stretching on high from his right hand
A serpent-cinctured wand.
Panthea.
'Tis Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury.
Ione.
And who are those with hydra tresses
And iron wings that climb the wind,
Whom the frowning God represses
Like vapours steaming up behind,
Clanging loud, an endless crowd
Panthea.
These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,
Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
When charioted on sulphurous cloud
He bursts Heaven's bounds.
Ione.
Are they now led, from the thin dead
On new pangs to be fed?
Panthea.
The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud.
First Fury.
Ha! I scent life!
Second Fury.
Let me but look into his eyes!
Third Fury.
The hope of torturing him smells like a heap
Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle.
First Fury.
Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds
Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon
Should make us food and sportwho can please long
The Omnipotent?
Mercury.
Back to your towers of iron,
And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
Chimra, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine,
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate:
These shall perform your task.
First Fury.
Oh, mercy! mercy!
We die with our desire: drive us not back!
Mercury.
Crouch then in silence.
Awful Sufferer!
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
I come, by the great Father's will driven down,
To execute a doom of new revenge.
Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
So thy worn form pursues me night and day,
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
That measure and divide the weary years
From which there is no refuge, long have taught
And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
With the strange might of unimagined pains
The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,
And my commission is to lead them here,
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends
People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
Be it not so! there is a secret known
To thee, and to none else of living things,
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart:
For benefits and meek submission tame
The fiercest and the mightiest.
Prometheus.
Evil minds
Change good to their own nature. I gave all
He has; and in return he chains me here
Years, ages, night and day: whether the Sun
Split my parched skin, or in the moony night
The crystal-wingd snow cling round my hair:
Whilst my belovd race is trampled down
By his thought-executing ministers.
Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis just:
He who is evil can receive no good;
And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,
He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude:
He but requites me for his own misdeed.
Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks
With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.
Submission, thou dost know I cannot try:
For what submission but that fatal word,
The death-seal of mankind's captivity,
Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword,
Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,
Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
In brief Omnipotence: secure are they:
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.
But hark, the hell-hounds clamour: fear delay:
Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.
Mercury.
Oh, that we might be spared: I to inflict
And thou to suffer! Once more answer me:
Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?
Prometheus.
I know but this, that it must come.
Mercury.
Alas!
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?
Prometheus.
They last while Jove must reign: nor more, nor less
Do I desire or fear.
Mercury.
Yet pause, and plunge
Into Eternity, where recorded time,
Even all that we imagine, age on age,
Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind
Flags wearily in its unending flight,
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;
Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?
Prometheus.
Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.
Mercury.
If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while
Lapped in voluptuous joy?
Prometheus.
I would not quit
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.
Mercury.
Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.
Prometheus.
Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,
As light in the sun, throned: how vain is talk!
Call up the fiends.
Ione.
O, sister, look! White fire
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!
Mercury.
I must obey his words and thine: alas!
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!
Panthea.
See where the child of Heaven, with wingd feet,
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.
Ione.
Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
Lest thou behold and die: they come: they come
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
And hollow underneath, like death.
First Fury.
Prometheus!
Second Fury.
Immortal Titan!
Third Fury.
Champion of Heaven's slaves!
Prometheus.
He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
What and who are ye? Never yet there came
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.
First Fury.
We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue
Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
When the great King betrays them to our will.
Prometheus.
Oh! many fearful natures in one name,
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
The darkness and the clangour of your wings.
But why more hideous than your loathd selves
Gather ye up in legions from the deep?
Second Fury.
We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice, rejoice!
Prometheus.
Can aught exult in its deformity?
Second Fury.
The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
Gazing on one another: so are we.
As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
To gather for her festal crown of flowers
The areal crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
So from our victim's destined agony
The shade which is our form invests us round,
Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.
Prometheus.
I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.
First Fury.
Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?
Prometheus.
Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
Ye rend me now: I care not.
Second Fury.
Dost imagine
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?
Prometheus.
I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
You, or aught else so wretched, into light.
Third Fury.
Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,
Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude
Vexing the self-content of wisest men:
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins
Crawling like agony?
Prometheus.
Why, ye are thus now;
Yet am I king over myself, and rule
The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.
Chorus of Furies.
From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
Come, come, come!
Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track,
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
Come, come, come!
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
Fire is left for future burning:
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning:
Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery's yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer; cruel
More than ye can be with hate
Is he with fear.
Come, come, come!
We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate
And we burthen the blast of the atmosphere,
But vainly we toil till ye come here.
Ione.
Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.
Panthea.
These solid mountains quiver with the sound
Even as the tremulous air: their shadows make
The space within my plumes more black than night.
First Fury.
Your call was as a wingd car
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
It rapped us from red gulfs of war.
Second Fury.
From wide cities, famine-wasted;
Third Fury.
Groans half heard, and blood untasted;
Fourth Fury.
Kingly conclaves stern and cold,
Where blood with gold is bought and sold;
Fifth Fury.
From the furnace, white and hot,
In which
A Fury.
Speak not: whisper not:
I know all that ye would tell,
But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the Invincible,
The stern of thought;
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.
A Fury.
Tear the veil!
Another Fury.
It is torn.
Chorus.
The pale stars of the morn
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne.
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst for man?
Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran
Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever.
One came forth of gentle worth
Smiling on the sanguine earth;
His words outlived him, like swift poison
Withering up truth, peace, and pity.
Look! where round the wide horizon
Many a million-peopled city
Vomits smoke in the bright air.
Hark that outcry of despair!
'Tis his mild and gentle ghost
Wailing for the faith he kindled:
Look again, the flames almost
To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled:
The survivors round the embers
Gather in dread.
Joy, joy, joy!
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,
And the future is dark, and the present is spread
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.
Semichorus I.
Drops of bloody agony flow
From his white and quivering brow.
Grant a little respite now:
See a disenchanted nation
Springs like day from desolation;
To Truth its state is dedicate,
And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;
A legioned band of linkd brothers
Whom Love calls children
Semichorus II.
'Tis another's:
See how kindred murder kin:
'Tis the vintage-time for death and sin:
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within:
Till Despair smothers
The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.
[All the Furies vanish, except one.
Ione.
Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan
Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart
Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,
And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.
Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?
Panthea.
Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.
Ione.
What didst thou see?
Panthea.
A woful sight: a youth
With patient looks nailed to a crucifix.
Ione.
What next?
Panthea.
The heaven around, the earth below
Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,
All horrible, and wrought by human hands,
And some appeared the work of human hearts,
For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles:
And other sights too foul to speak and live
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear
By looking forth: those groans are grief enough.
Fury.
Behold an emblem: those who do endure
Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap
Thousandfold torment on themselves and him.
Prometheus.
Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;
Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow
Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!
Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
O, horrible! Thy name I will not speak,
It hath become a curse. I see, I see,
The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,
Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,
Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home,
An early-chosen, late-lamented home;
As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;
Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells:
SomeHear I not the multitude laugh loud?
Impaled in lingering fire: and mighty realms
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,
Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood
By the red light of their own burning homes.
Fury.
Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans;
Worse things, unheard, unseen, remain behind.
Prometheus.
Worse?
Fury.
In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Many are strong and rich, and would be just,
But live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none felt: they know not what they do.
Prometheus.
Thy words are like a cloud of wingd snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.
Fury.
Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!
[Vanishes.
Prometheus.
Ah woe!
Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumd mind,
Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.
The grave hides all things beautiful and good:
I am a God and cannot find it there,
Nor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,
This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.
The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
With new endurance, till the hour arrives
When they shall be no types of things which are.
Panthea.
Alas! what sawest thou more?
Prometheus.
There are two woes:
To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.
Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;
The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.
This was the shadow of the truth I saw.
The Earth.
I felt thy torture, son; with such mixed joy
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,
Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,
Its world-surrounding aether: they behold
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
The future: may they speak comfort to thee!
Panthea.
Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air!
Ione.
And see! more come,
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
And, hark! is it the music of the pines?
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?
Panthea.
'Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.
Chorus of Spirits.
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of heaven-oppressed mortality;
And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought:
Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o'er by dying gleams;
Be it bright as all between
Cloudless skies and windless streams,
Silent, liquid, and serene;
As the birds within the wind,
As the fish within the wave,
As the thoughts of man's own mind
Float through all above the grave;
We make there our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element:
Thence we bear the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee!
Ione.
More yet come, one by one: the air around them
Looks radiant as the air around a star.
First Spirit.
On a battle-trumpet's blast
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
'Mid the darkness upward cast.
From the dust of creeds outworn,
From the tyrant's banner torn,
Gathering 'round me, onward borne,
There was mingled many a cry
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
Till they faded through the sky;
And one sound, above, around,
One sound beneath, around, above,
Was moving; 'twas the soul of Love;
'Twas the hope, the prophecy,
Which begins and ends in thee.
Second Spirit.
A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,
Which rocked beneath, immovably;
And the triumphant storm did flee,
Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
Between, with many a captive cloud,
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
Each by lightning riven in half:
I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh:
Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
And spread beneath a hell of death
O'er the white waters. I alit
On a great ship lightning-split,
And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy
His plank, then plunged aside to die.
Third Spirit.
I sate beside a sage's bed,
And the lamp was burning red
Near the book where he had fed,
When a Dream with plumes of flame,
To his pillow hovering came,
And I knew it was the same
Which had kindled long ago
Pity, eloquence, and woe;
And the world awhile below
Wore the shade, its lustre made.
It has borne me here as fleet
As Desire's lightning feet:
I must ride it back ere morrow,
Or the sage will wake in sorrow.
Fourth Spirit.
On a poet's lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the areal kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!
One of these awakened me,
And I sped to succour thee.
Ione.
Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west
Come, as two doves to one belovd nest,
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air
On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
And, hark! their sweet, sad voices! 'tis despair
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.
Panthea.
Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.
Ione.
Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float
On their sustaining wings of skiey grain,
Orange and azure deepening into gold:
Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.
Chorus of Spirits.
Hast thou beheld the form of Love?
Fifth Spirit.
As over wide dominions
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's wildernesses,
That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:
His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading,
And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,
Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness,
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.
Sixth Spirit.
Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
But treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
Dream visions of areal joy, and call the monster, Love,
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.
Chorus.
Though Ruin now Love's shadow be,
Following him, destroyingly,
On Death's white and wingd steed,
Which the fleetest cannot flee,
Trampling down both flower and weed,
Man and beast, and foul and fair,
Like a tempest through the air;
Thou shalt quell this horseman grim,
Woundless though in heart or limb.
Prometheus.
Spirits! how know ye this shall be?
Chorus.
In the atmosphere we breathe,
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,
From Spring gathering up beneath,
Whose mild winds shake the elder brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
That the white-thorn soon will blow:
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
When they struggle to increase,
Are to us as soft winds be
To shepherd boys, the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee.
Ione.
Where are the Spirits fled?
Panthea.
Only a sense
Remains of them, like the omnipotence
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute,
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.
Prometheus.
How fair these airborn shapes! and yet I feel
Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,
Asia! who, when my being overflowed,
Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.
All things are still: alas! how heavily
This quiet morning weighs upon my heart;
Though I should dream I could even sleep with grief
If slumber were denied not. I would fain
Be what it is my destiny to be,
The saviour and the strength of suffering man,
Or sink into the original gulf of things:
There is no agony, and no solace left;
Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more.
Panthea.
Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee
The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when
The shadow of thy spirit falls on her?
Prometheus.
I said all hope was vain but love: thou lovest.
Panthea.
Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white,
And Asia waits in that far Indian vale,
The scene of her sad exile; rugged once
And desolate and frozen, like this ravine;
But now invested with fair flowers and herbs,
And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow
Among the woods and waters, from the aether
Of her transforming presence, which would fade
If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!
END OF THE FIRST ACT.
ACT II
Scene I.
Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. Asia alone.
Asia.
From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended:
Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,
And beatings haunt the desolated heart,
Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descended
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!
O child of many winds! As suddenly
Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
Like genius, or like joy which riseth up
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
The desert of our life.
This is the season, this the day, the hour;
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,
Too long desired, too long delaying, come!
How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains. through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:
'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow
The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not
The olian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn?
[Panthea enters.
I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
Belovd and most beautiful, who wearest
The shadow of that soul by which I live,
How late thou art! the spherd sun had climbed
The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before
The printless air felt thy belated plumes.
Panthea.
Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint
With the delight of a remembered dream,
As are the noontide plumes of summer winds
Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep
Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm
Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy
Unhappy love, had made, through use and pity,
Both love and woe familiar to my heart
As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept
Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean
Within dim bowers of green and purple moss,
Our young Ione's soft and milky arms
Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,
While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within
The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:
But not as now, since I am made the wind
Which fails beneath the music that I bear
Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved
Into the sense with which love talks, my rest
Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours
Too full of care and pain.
Asia.
Lift up thine eyes,
And let me read thy dream.
Panthea.
As I have said
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
From the keen ice shielding our linkd sleep.
Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
Grew radiant with the glory of that form
Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
'Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
With lovelinessmore fair than aught but her,
Whose shadow thou artlift thine eyes on me.'
I lifted them: the overpowering light
Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er
By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,
And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,
Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere
Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power,
As the warm aether of the morning sun
Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.
I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt
His presence flow and mingle through my blood
Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
And I was thus absorbed, until it passed,
And like the vapours when the sun sinks down,
Gathering again in drops upon the pines,
And tremulous as they, in the deep night
My being was condensed; and as the rays
Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
Like footsteps of weak melody: thy name
Among the many sounds alone I heard
Of what might be articulate; though still
I listened through the night when sound was none.
Ione wakened then, and said to me:
'Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night?
I always knew what I desired before,
Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.
But now I cannot tell thee what I seek;
I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet
Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;
Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,
Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept
And mingled it with thine: for when just now
We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips
The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth
Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,
Quivered between our intertwining arms.'
I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,
But fled to thee.
Asia.
Thou speakest, but thy words
Are as the air: I feel them not: Oh, lift
Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul!
Panthea.
I lift them though they droop beneath the load
Of that they would express: what canst thou see
But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?
Asia.
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
Contracted to two circles underneath
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.
Panthea.
Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed?
Asia.
There is a change: beyond their inmost depth
I see a shade, a shape: 'tis He, arrayed
In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread
Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.
Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!
Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
Within that bright pavilion which their beams
Shall build o'er the waste world? The dream is told.
What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard
Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air,
For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew
Whose stars the noon has quenched not.
Dream.
Follow! Follow!
Panthea.
It is mine other dream.
Asia.
It disappears.
Panthea.
It passes now into my mind. Methought
As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds
Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond-tree,
When swift from the white Scythian wilderness
A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost:
I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief,
O, follow, follow!
Asia.
As you speak, your words
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
With shapes. Methought among these lawns together
We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;
And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently;
And there was more which I remember not:
But on the shadows of the morning clouds,
Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written
Follow, O, follow! as they vanished by;
And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen,
The like was stamped, as with a withering fire;
A wind arose among the pines; it shook
The clinging music from their boughs, and then
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,
Were heard: O, follow, follow, follow me!
And then I said: 'Panthea, look on me.'
But in the depth of those belovd eyes
Still I saw, follow, follow!
Echo.
Follow, follow!
Panthea.
The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices
As they were spirit-tongued.
Asia.
It is some being
Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! O, list!
Echoes
(unseen).
Echoes we: listen!
We cannot stay:
As dew-stars glisten
Then fade away
Child of Ocean!
Asia.
Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses
Of their areal tongues yet sound.
Panthea.
I hear.
Echoes.
O, follow, follow,
As our voice recedeth
Through the caverns hollow,
Where the forest spreadeth; (More distant.)
O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
Where the wild bee never flew,
Through the noontide darkness deep,
By the odour-breathing sleep
Of faint night flowers, and the waves
At the fountain-lighted caves,
While our music, wild and sweet,
Mocks thy gently falling feet,
Child of Ocean!
Asia.
Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint And distant.
Panthea.
List! the strain floats nearer now.
Echoes.
In the world unknown
Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone
Can its rest be broken;
Child of Ocean!
Asia.
How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!
Echoes.
O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
By the woodland noontide dew;
By the forest, lakes, and fountains,
Through the many-folded mountains;
To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,
Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
On the day when He and thou
Parted, to commingle now;
Child of Ocean!
Asia.
Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,
And follow, ere the voices fade away.
Scene II.
A Forest, intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. Asia and Panthea pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock listening.
Semichorus I. of Spirits.
The path through which that lovely twain
Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,
And each dark tree that ever grew,
Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue;
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
Of the green laurel, blown anew;
And bends, and then fades silently,
One frail and fair anemone:
Or when some star of many a one
That climbs and wanders through steep night,
Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon
Ere it is borne away, away,
By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,
It scatters drops of golden light,
Like lines of rain that ne'er unite:
And the gloom divine is all around,
And underneath is the mossy ground.
Semichorus II.
There the voluptuous nightingales,
Are awake through all the broad noonday.
When one with bliss or sadness fails,
And through the windless ivy-boughs,
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away
On its mate's music-panting bosom;
Another from the swinging blossom,
Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain, then lifts on high
The wings of the weak melody,
'Till some new strain of feeling bear
The song, and all the woods are mute;
When there is heard through the dim air
The rush of wings, and rising there
Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
Sounds overflow the listener's brain
So sweet, that joy is almost pain.
Semichorus I.
There those enchanted eddies play
Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,
By Demogorgon's mighty law,
With melting rapture, or sweet awe,
All spirits on that secret way;
As inland boats are driven to Ocean
Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw:
And first there comes a gentle sound
To those in talk or slumber bound,
And wakes the destined soft emotion,
Attracts, impels them; those who saw
Say from the breathing earth behind
There steams a plume-uplifting wind
Which drives them on their path, while they
Believe their own swift wings and feet
The sweet desires within obey:
And so they float upon their way,
Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,
The storm of sound is driven along,
Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet
Behind, its gathering billows meet
And to the fatal mountain bear
Like clouds amid the yielding air.
First Faun.
Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
Which make such delicate music in the woods?
We haunt within the least frequented caves
And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,
Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:
Where may they hide themselves?
Second Faun.
'Tis hard to tell:
I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,
The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float
Under the green and golden atmosphere
Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves;
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,
The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,
They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire
Under the waters of the earth again.
First Faun.
If such live thus, have others other lives,
Under pink blossoms or within the bells
Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,
Or on their dying odours, when they die,
Or in the sunlight of the spherd dew?
Second Faun.
Ay, many more which we may well divine.
But, should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,
And Love, and the chained Titan's woful doom,
And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer
Our solitary twilights, and which charm
To silence the unenvying nightingales.
Scene III.
A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains.
Asia and Panthea.
Panthea.
Hither the sound has borne usto the realm
Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,
Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm,
Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up
Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,
And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,
That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain
To deep intoxication; and uplift,
Like Mnads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
The voice which is contagion to the world.
Asia.
Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!
How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
Though evil stain its work, and it should be
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,
I could fall down and worship that and thee.
Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!
Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain:
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,
As a lake, paving in the morning sky,
With azure waves which burst in silver light,
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on
Under the curdling winds, and islanding
The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,
Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,
Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumd caves,
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling
The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,
From some Atlantic islet scattered up,
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops.
The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl
Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines,
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
Panthea.
Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises
As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon
Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.
Asia.
The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;
The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;
Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain
Grows dizzy; see'st thou shapes within the mist?
Panthea.
A countenance with beckoning smiles: there burns
An azure fire within its golden locks!
Another and another: hark! they speak!
Song of Spirits.
To the deep, to the deep,
Down, down!
Through the shade of sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;
Through the veil and the bar
Of things which seem and are
Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
Down, down!
While the sound whirls around,
Down, down!
As the fawn draws the hound,
As the lightning the vapour,
As a weak moth the taper;
Death, despair; love, sorrow;
Time both; to-day, to-morrow;
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
Down, down!
Through the gray, void abysm,
Down, down!
Where the air is no prism,
And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern-crags wear not
The radiance of Heaven,
Nor the gloom to Earth given,
Where there is One pervading, One alone,
Down, down!
In the depth of the deep,
Down, down!
Like veiled lightning asleep,
Like the spark nursed in embers,
The last look Love remembers,
Like a diamond, which shines
On the dark wealth of mines,
A spell is treasured but for thee alone.
Down, down!
We have bound thee, we guide thee;
Down, down!
With the bright form beside thee;
Resist not the weakness,
Such strength is in meekness
That the Eternal, the Immortal,
Most unloose through life's portal
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne
By that alone.
Scene IV.
The Cave of Demogorgon.
Asia and Panthea.
Panthea.
What viled form sits on that ebon throne?
Asia.
The veil has fallen.
Panthea.
I see a mighty darkness
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun.
Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,
Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
A living Spirit.
Demogorgon.
Ask what thou wouldst know.
Asia.
What canst thou tell?
Demogorgon.
All things thou dar'st demand.
Asia.
Who made the living world?
Demogorgon.
God.
Asia.
Who made all
That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will, Imagination?
Demogorgon.
God: Almighty God.
Asia.
Who made that sense which, when the winds of Spring
In rarest visitation, or the voice
Of one belovd heard in youth alone,
Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim
The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
And leaves this peopled earth a solitude
When it returns no more?
Demogorgon.
Merciful God.
Asia.
And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,
Which from the links of the great chain of things,
To every thought within the mind of man
Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels
Under the load towards the pit of death;
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;
And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;
Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech
Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;
And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia.
Utter his name: a world pining in pain
Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia.
I feel, I know it: who?
Demogorgon.
He reigns.
Asia.
Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first,
And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne
Time fell, an envious shadow: such the state
Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway,
As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves
Before the wind or sun has withered them
And semivital worms; but he refused
The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,
The skill which wields the elements, the thought
Which pierces this dim universe like light,
Self-empire, and the majesty of love;
For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus
Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
And with this law alone, 'Let man be free,'
Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.
To know nor faith, nor love, nor law; to be
Omnipotent but friendless is to reign;
And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man
First famine, and then toil, and then disease,
Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,
Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove
With alternating shafts of frost and fire,
Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves:
And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle
Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,
So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,
Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,
That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings
The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
The disunited tendrils of that vine
Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;
And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath
The frown of man; and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
And music lifted up the listening spirit
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine;
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.
He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven
Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun
Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea:
He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
The tempest-wingd chariots of the Ocean,
And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then
Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
The warm winds, and the azure aether shone,
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
Such, the alleviations of his state,
Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs
Withering in destined pain: but who rains down
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
Man looks on his creation like a God
And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,
The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,
The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
Not Jove: while yet his frown shook Heaven, ay, when
His adversary from adamantine chains
Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare
Who is his master? Is he too a slave?
Demogorgon.
All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil:
Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no.
Asia.
Whom calledst thou God?
Demogorgon.
I spoke but as ye speak,
For Jove is the supreme of living things.
Asia.
Who is the master of the slave?
Demogorgon.
If the abysm
Could vomit forth its secrets. . . But a voice
Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;
For what would it avail to bid thee gaze
On the revolving world? What to bid speak
Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these
All things are subject but eternal Love.
Asia.
So much I asked before, and my heart gave
The response thou hast given; and of such truths
Each to itself must be the oracle.
One more demand; and do thou answer me
As mine own soul would answer, did it know
That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise
Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world:
When shall the destined hour arrive?
Demogorgon.
Behold!
Asia.
The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night
I see cars drawn by rainbow-wingd steeds
Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they all
Sweep onward.
Demogorgon.
These are the immortal Hours,
Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee.
Asia.
A spirit with a dreadful countenance
Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf.
Unlike thy brethren, ghastly charioteer,
Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak!
Spirit.
I am the shadow of a destiny
More dread than is my aspect: ere yon planet
Has set, the darkness which ascends with me
Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne.
Asia.
What meanest thou?
Panthea.
That terrible shadow floats
Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke
Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea.
Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly
Terrified: watch its path among the stars
Blackening the night!
Asia.
Thus I am answered: strange!
Panthea.
See, near the verge, another chariot stays;
An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire,
Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim
Of delicate strange tracery; the young spirit
That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope;
How its soft smiles attract the soul! as light
Lures wingd insects through the lampless air.
Spirit.
My coursers are fed with the lightning,
They drink of the whirlwind's stream,
And when the red morning is bright'ning
They bathe in the fresh sunbeam;
They have strength for their swiftness I deem,
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.
I desire: and their speed makes night kindle;
I fear: they outstrip the Typhoon;
Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle
We encircle the earth and the moon:
We shall rest from long labours at noon:
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.
Scene V.
The Car pauses within a Cloud on the top of a snowy Mountain. Asia, Panthea, and the Spirit of the Hour.
Spirit.
On the brink of the night and the morning
My coursers are wont to respire;
But the Earth has just whispered a warning
That their flight must be swifter than fire:
They shall drink the hot speed of desire!
Asia.
Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath
Would give them swifter speed.
Spirit.
Alas! it could not.
Panthea.
Oh Spirit! pause, and tell whence is the light
Which fills this cloud? the sun is yet unrisen.
Spirit.
The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo
Is held in heaven by wonder; and the light
Which fills this vapour, as the areal hue
Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water,
Flows from thy mighty sister.
Panthea.
Yes, I feel
Asia.
What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale.
Panthea.
How thou art changed! I dare not look on thee;
I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure
The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change
Is working in the elements, which suffer
Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell
That on the day when the clear hyaline
Was cloven at thine uprise, and thou didst stand
Within a veind shell, which floated on
Over the calm floor of the crystal sea,
Among the gean isles, and by the shores
Which bear thy name; love, like the atmosphere
Of the sun's fire filling the living world,
Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven
And the deep ocean and the sunless caves
And all that dwells within them; till grief cast
Eclipse upon the soul from which it came:
Such art thou now; nor is it I alone,
Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one,
But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.
Hearest thou not sounds i' the air which speak the love
Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not
The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List!
[Music.
Asia.
Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his
Whose echoes they are: yet all love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
It makes the reptile equal to the God:
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still, after long sufferings,
As I shall soon become.
Panthea.
List! Spirits speak.
Voice in the Air, singing.
Life of Life! thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
Fair are others; none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour,
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!
Asia.
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:
Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music's most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.
We have passed Age's icy caves,
And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
A paradise of vaulted bowers,
Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
And watery paths that wind between
Wildernesses calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!
END OF THE SECOND ACT.
ACT III
Scene I.
Heaven. Jupiter on his Throne; Thetis and the other Deities assembled.
Jupiter.
Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share
The glory and the strength of him ye serve,
Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.
All else had been subdued to me; alone
The soul of man, like unextinguished fire,
Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,
And lamentation, and reluctant prayer,
Hurling up insurrection, which might make
Our antique empire insecure, though built
On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear;
And though my curses through the pendulous air,
Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,
And cling to it; though under my wrath's night
It climbs the crags of life, step after step,
Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet,
It yet remains supreme o'er misery,
Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall:
Even now have I begotten a strange wonder,
That fatal child, the terror of the earth,
Who waits but till the destined hour arrive,
Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne
The dreadful might of ever-living limbs
Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,
To redescend, and trample out the spark.
Pour forth heaven's wine, Idan Ganymede,
And let it fill the Ddal cups like fire,
And from the flower-inwoven soil divine
Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise,
As dew from earth under the twilight stars:
Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins
The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,
Till exultation burst in one wide voice
Like music from Elysian winds.
And thou
Ascend beside me, veild in the light
Of the desire which makes thee one with me,
Thetis, bright image of eternity!
When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might!
God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,
The penetrating presence; all my being,
Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw
Into a dew with poison, is dissolved,
Sinking through its foundations:' even then
Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third
Mightier than either, which, unbodied now,
Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld,
Waiting the incarnation, which ascends,
(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels
Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon's throne.
Victory! victory! Feel'st thou not, O world,
The earthquake of his chariot thundering up
Olympus?
[The Car of the Hour arrives. Demogorgon descends, and moves towards the Throne of Jupiter.
Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!
Demogorgon.
Eternity. Demand no direr name.
Descend, and follow me down the abyss.
I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child;
Mightier than thee: and we must dwell together
Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.
The tyranny of heaven none may retain,
Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee:
Yet if thou wilt, as 'tis the destiny
Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead,
Put forth thy might.
Jupiter.
Detested prodigy!
Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons
I trample thee! thou lingerest?
Mercy! mercy!
No pity, no release, no respite! Oh,
That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge,
Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,
On Caucasus! he would not doom me thus.
Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not
The monarch of the world? What then art thou?
No refuge! no appeal!
Sink with me then,
We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
Even as a vulture and a snake outspent
Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,
Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock
Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,
And whelm on them into the bottomless void
This desolated world, and thee, and me,
The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck
Of that for which they combated.
Ai! Ai!
The elements obey me not. I sink
Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down.
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above
Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!
Scene II.
The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis.Ocean is discovered reclining near the Shore; Apollo stands beside him.
Ocean.
He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror's frown?
Apollo.
Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim
The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,
The terrors of his eye illumined heaven
With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts
Of the victorious darkness, as he fell:
Like the last glare of day's red agony,
Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,
Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.
Ocean.
He sunk to the abyss? To the dark void?
Apollo.
An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud
On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings
Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes
Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded
By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail
Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length
Prone, and the areal ice clings over it.
Ocean.
Henceforth the fields of heaven-reflecting sea
Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn
Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow
Round many-peopled continents, and round
Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones
Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark
The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see
The floating bark of the light-laden moon
With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest,
Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea;
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,
And desolation, and the mingled voice
Of slavery and command; but by the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
And sweetest music, such as spirits love.
Apollo.
And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make
My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse
Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear
The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
That sits i' the morning star.
Ocean.
Thou must away;
Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell:
The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it
With azure calm out of the emerald urns
Which stand for ever full beside my throne.
Behold the Nereids under the green sea,
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,
Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,
Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy. [A sound of waves is heard.
It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.
Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.
Apollo.
Farewell.
Scene III.
Caucasus. Prometheus, Hercules, Ione, the Earth, Spirits, Asia, and Panthea, borne in the Car with the Spirit of the Hour. Hercules unbinds Prometheus, who descends.
Hercules.
Most glorious among Spirits, thus doth strength
To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,
And thee, who art the form they animate,
Minister like a slave.
Prometheus.
Thy gentle words
Are sweeter even than freedom long desired
And long delayed.
Asia, thou light of life,
Shadow of beauty unbeheld: and ye,
Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain
Sweet to remember, through your love and care:
Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,
All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,
Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,
And paved with veind emerald, and a fountain
Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.
From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears
Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,
Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light:
And there is heard the ever-moving air,
Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,
And bees; and all around are mossy seats,
And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;
A simple dwelling, which shall be our own;
Where we will sit and talk of time and change,
As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.
What can hide man from mutability?
And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,
Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,
Until I weep, when ye shal smile away
The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.
We will entangle buds and flowers and beams
Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make
Strange combinations out of common things,
Like human babes in their brief innocence;
And we will search, with looks and words of love,
For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,
Our unexhausted spirits; and like lutes
Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,
Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,
From difference sweet where discord cannot be;
And hither come, sped on the charmd winds,
Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees
From every flower areal Enna feeds,
At their known island-homes in Himera,
The echoes of the human world, which tell
Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,
And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music,
Itself the echo of the heart, and all
That tempers or improves man's life, now free;
And lovely apparitions,dim at first,
Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright
From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms
Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them
The gathered rays which are reality
Shall visit us, the progeny immortal
Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.
The wandering voices and the shadows these
Of all that man becomes, the mediators
Of that best worship love, by him and us
Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow
More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,
And, veil by veil, evil and error fall:
Such virtue has the cave and place around. [Turning to the Spirit of the Hour.
For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,
Give her that curvd shell, which Proteus old
Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it
A voice to be accomplished, and which thou
Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.
Ione.
Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely
Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell;
See the pale azure fading into silver
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light:
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?
Spirit.
It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:
Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.
Prometheus.
Go, borne over the cities of mankind
On whirlwind-footed coursers: once again
Outspeed the sun around the orbd world;
And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,
Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,
Loosening its mighty music; it shall be
As thunder mingled with clear echoes: then
Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.
And thou, O, Mother Earth!
The Earth.
I hear, I feel;
Thy lips are on me, and their touch runs down
Even to the adamantine central gloom
Along these marble nerves; 'tis life, 'tis joy,
And through my withered, old, and icy frame
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down
Circling. Henceforth the many children fair
Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants,
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,
And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,
Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,
Draining the poison of despair, shall take
And interchange sweet nutriment; to me
Shall they become like sister-antelopes
By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,
Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.
The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float
Under the stars like balm: night-folded flowers
Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose:
And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather
Strength for the coming day, and all its joy:
And death shall be the last embrace of her
Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother
Folding her child, says, 'Leave me not again.'
Asia.
Oh, mother! wherefore speak the name of death?
Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,
Who die?
The Earth.
It would avail not to reply:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
But to the uncommunicating dead.
Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile
In mild variety the seasons mild
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.
And thou! There is a cavern where my spirit
Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain
Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it
Became mad too, and built a temple there,
And spoke, and were oracular, and lured
The erring nations round to mutual war,
And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds
A violet's exhalation, and it fills
With a serener light and crimson air
Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;
It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,
And the dark linkd ivy tangling wild,
And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms
Which star the winds with points of coloured light,
As they rain through them, and bright golden globes
Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven,
And through their veind leaves and amber stems
The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls
Stand ever mantling with areal dew,
The drink of spirits: and it circles round,
Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,
Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,
Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.
Arise! Appear!
[A Spirit rises in the likeness of a winged child.
This is my torch-bearer;
Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing
On eyes from which he kindled it anew
With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,
For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,
And guide this company beyond the peak
Of Bacchic Nysa, Mnad-haunted mountain,
And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,
Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes
With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,
And up the green ravine, across the vale,
Beside the windless and crystalline pool,
Where ever lies, on unerasing waves,
The image of a temple, built above,
Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,
And palm-like capital, and over-wrought,
And populous with most living imagery,
Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.
It is deserted now, but once it bore
Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths
Bore to thy honour through the divine gloom
The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those
Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope
Into the grave, across the night of life,
As thou hast borne it most triumphantly
To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.
Beside that temple is the destined cave.
Scene IV.
A Forest. In the Background a Cave. Prometheus, Asia, Panthea, Ione, and the Spirit of the Earth.
Ione.
Sister, it is not earthly: how it glides
Under the leaves! how on its head there burns
A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams
Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,
The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass!
Knowest thou it?
Panthea.
It is the delicate spirit
That guides the earth through heaven. From afar
The populous constellations call that light
The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes
It floats along the spray of the salt sea,
Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud,
Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep,
Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the rivers,
Or through the green waste wilderness, as now,
Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned
It loved our sister Asia, and it came
Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light
Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted
As one bit by a dipsas, and with her
It made its childish confidence, and told her
All it had known or seen, for it saw much,
Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her
For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I
Mother, dear mother.
The Spirit of the Earth
(running to Asia).
Mother, dearest mother;
May I then talk with thee as I was wont?
May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,
After thy looks have made them tired of joy?
May I then play beside thee the long noons,
When work is none in the bright silent air?
Asia.
I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth
Can cherish thee unenvied: speak, I pray:
Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.
Spirit of the Earth.
Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;
And happier too; happier and wiser both.
Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,
And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs
That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever
An hindrance to my walks o'er the green world:
And that, among the haunts of humankind,
Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,
Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,
Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,
Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts
Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;
And women too, ugliest of all things evil,
(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,
When good and kind, free and sincere like thee),
When false or frowning made me sick at heart
To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.
Well, my path lately lay through a great city
Into the woody hills surrounding it:
A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:
When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook
The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet
Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;
A long, long sound, as it would never end:
And all the inhabitants leaped suddenly
Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,
Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet
The music pealed along. I hid myself
Within a fountain in the public square,
Where I lay like the reflex of the moon
Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon
Those ugly human shapes and visages
Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,
Passed floating through the air, and fading still
Into the winds that scattered them; and those
From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all
Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise
And greetings of delighted wonder, all
Went to their sleep again: and when the dawn
Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,
Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they were,
And that with little change of shape or hue:
All things had put their evil nature off:
I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake
Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,
With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;
So, with my thoughts full of these happy changes,
We meet again, the happiest change of all.
Asia.
And never will we part, till thy chaste sister
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon
Will look on thy more warm and equal light
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow
And love thee.
Spirit of the Earth.
What; as Asia loves Prometheus?
Asia.
Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.
Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill
With spherd fires the interlunar air?
Spirit of the Earth.
Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp
'Tis hard I should go darkling.
Asia.
Listen; look!
[The Spirit of the Hour enters.
Prometheus.
We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak.
Spirit of the Hour.
Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
There was a change: the impalpable thin air
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,
As if the sense of love dissolved in them
Had folded itself round the spherd world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
Into the mysteries of the universe:
Dizzy as with delight I floated down,
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,
My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,
Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire;
And where my moonlike car will stand within
A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,
And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel,
In memory of the tidings it has borne,
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,
And open to the bright and liquid sky.
Yoked to it by an amphisbaenic snake
The likeness of those wingd steeds will mock
The flight from which they find repose. Alas,
Whither has wandered now my partial tongue
When all remains untold which ye would hear?
As I have said, I floated to the earth:
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss
To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering went
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,
And first was disappointed not to see
Such mighty change as I had felt within
Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked
One with the other even as spirits do,
None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,
Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows
No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,
'All hope abandon ye who enter here;'
None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear
Gazed on another's eye of cold command,
Until the subject of a tyrant's will
Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,
Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.
None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart
The sparks of love and hope till there remained
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
And the wretch crept a vampire among men,
Infecting all with his own hideous ill;
None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy
With such a self-mistrust as has no name.
And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,
The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.
Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,
And beside which, by wretched men were borne
Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,
Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,
The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth
In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs
Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,
These imaged to the pride of kings and priests
A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide
As is the world it wasted, and are now
But an astonishment; even so the tools
And emblems of its last captivity,
Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,
Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,
Which, under many a name and many a form
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,
And slain amid men's unreclaiming tears,
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,
Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines:
The painted veil, by those who were, called life,
Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,
All men believed or hoped, is torn aside;
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man
Passionless?no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made or suffered them,
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
END OF THE THIRD ACT.
ACT IV
Scene.A Part of the Forest near the Cave of Prometheus.Panthea and Ione are sleeping: they awaken gradually during the first Song.
Voice of unseen Spirits.
The pale stars are gone!
For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fawns flee the leopard.
But where are ye?
A Train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly, singing.
Here, oh, here:
We bear the bier
Of the Father of many a cancelled year!
Spectres we
Of the dead Hours be,
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.
Strew, oh, strew
Hair, not yew!
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!
Be the faded flowers
Of Death's bare bowers
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours!
Haste, oh, haste!
As shades are chased,
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste.
We melt away,
Like dissolving spray,
From the children of a diviner day,
With the lullaby
Of winds that die
On the bosom of their own harmony!
Ione.
What dark forms were they?
Panthea.
The past Hours weak and gray,
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.
Ione.
Have they passed?
Panthea.
They have passed;
They outspeeded the blast,
While 'tis said, they are fled:
Ione.
Whither, oh, whither?
Panthea.
To the dark, to the past, to the dead.
Voice of unseen Spirits.
Bright clouds float in heaven,
Dew-stars gleam on earth,
Waves assemble on ocean,
They are gathered and driven
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!
They shake with emotion,
They dance in their mirth.
But where are ye?
The pine boughs are singing
Old songs with new gladness,
The billows and fountains
Fresh music are flinging,
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;
The storms mock the mountains
With the thunder of gladness.
But where are ye?
Ione.
What charioteers are these?
Panthea.
Where are their chariots?
Semichorus of Hours.
The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth
Have drawn back the figured curtain of sleep
Which covered our being and darkened our birth
In the deep.
A Voice.
In the deep?
Semichorus II.
Oh, below the deep.
Semichorus I.
An hundred ages we had been kept
Cradled in visions of hate and care,
And each one who waked as his brother slept,
Found the truth
Semichorus II.
Worse than his visions were!
Semichorus I.
We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep;
We have known the voice of Love in dreams;
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap
Semichorus II.
As the billows leap in the morning beams!
Chorus.
Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,
Pierce with song heaven's silent light,
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,
To check its flight ere the cave of Night.
Once the hungry Hours were hounds
Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,
And it limped and stumbled with many wounds
Through the nightly dells of the desert year.
But now, oh weave the mystic measure
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light,
Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite.
A Voice.
Unite!
Panthea.
See, where the Spirits of the human mind
Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.
Chorus of Spirits.
We join the throng
Of the dance and the song,
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along;
As the flying-fish leap
From the Indian deep,
And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep.
Chorus of Hours.
Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,
For sandals of lightning are on your feet,
And your wings are soft and swift as thought,
And your eyes are as love which is veild not?
Chorus of Spirits.
We come from the mind
Of human kind
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind,
Now 'tis an ocean
Of clear emotion,
A heaven of serene and mighty motion
From that deep abyss
Of wonder and bliss,
Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
From those skiey towers
Where Thought's crowned powers
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!
From the dim recesses
Of woven caresses,
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses
From the azure isles,
Where sweet Wisdom smiles,
Delaying your ships with her siren wiles.
From the temples high
Of Man's ear and eye,
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;
From the murmurings
Of the unsealed springs
Where Science bedews her Ddal wings.
Years after years,
Through blood, and tears,
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears;
We waded and flew,
And the islets were few
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.
Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm,
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm;
And, beyond our eyes,
The human love lies
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.
Chorus of Spirits and Hours.
Then weave the web of the mystic measure;
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth,
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,
Fill the dance and the music of mirth,
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by
To an ocean of splendour and harmony!
Chorus of Spirits.
Our spoil is won,
Our task is done,
We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
Beyond and around,
Or within the bound
Which clips the world with darkness round.
We'll pass the eyes
Of the starry skies
Into the hoar deep to colonize:
Death, Chaos, and Night,
From the sound of our flight,
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might.
And Earth, Air, and Light,
And the Spirit of Might,
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;
And Love, Thought, and Breath,
The powers that quell Death,
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.
And our singing shall build
In the void's loose field
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;
We will take our plan
From the new world of man,
And our work shall be called the Promethean.
Chorus of Hours.
Break the dance, and scatter the song;
Let some depart, and some remain.
Semichorus I.
We, beyond heaven, are driven along:
Semichorus II.
Us the enchantments of earth retain:
Semichorus I.
Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free,
With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,
And a heaven where yet heaven could never be.
Semichorus II.
Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,
Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night,
With the powers of a world of perfect light.
Semichorus I.
We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.
Semichorus II.
We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth,
And the happy forms of its death and birth
Change to the music of our sweet mirth.
Chorus of Hours and Spirits.
Break the dance, and scatter the song,
Let some depart, and some remain,
Wherever we fly we lead along
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,
The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.
Panthea.
Ha! they are gone!
Ione.
Yet feel you no delight
From the past sweetness?
Panthea.
As the bare green hill
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water
To the unpavilioned sky!
Ione.
Even whilst we speak
New notes arise. What is that awful sound?
Panthea.
'Tis the deep music of the rolling world
Kindling within the strings of the waved air
olian modulations.
Ione.
Listen too,
How every pause is filled with under-notes,
Clear, silver, icy, keen, awakening tones,
Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air
And gaze upon themselves within the sea.
Panthea.
But see where through two openings in the forest
Which hanging branches overcanopy,
And where two runnels of a rivulet,
Between the close moss violet-inwoven,
Have made their path of melody, like sisters
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,
Turning their dear disunion to an isle
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;
Two visions of strange radiance float upon
The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,
Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet
Under the ground and through the windless air.
Ione.
I see a chariot like that thinnest boat,
In which the Mother of the Months is borne
By ebbing light into her western cave,
When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;
O'er which is curved an orblike canopy
Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,
Distinctly seen through that dusk aery veil,
Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;
Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
Such as the genii of the thunderstorm
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
When the sun rushes under it; they roll
And move and grow as with an inward wind;
Within it sits a wingd infant, white
Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.
Its hair is white, the brightness of white light
Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens
Of liquid darkness, which the Deity
Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured
From jaggd clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,
Tempering the cold and radiant air around,
With fire that is not brightness; in its hand
It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point
A guiding power directs the chariot's prow
Over its wheeld clouds, which as they roll
Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,
Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew.
Panthea.
And from the other opening in the wood
Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,
A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,
Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass
Flow, as through empty space, music and light:
Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,
Purple and azure, white, and green, and golden,
Sphere within sphere; and every space between
Peopled with unimaginable shapes,
Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep,
Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl
Over each other with a thousand motions,
Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,
And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,
Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on,
Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,
Intelligible words and music wild.
With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb
Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist
Of elemental subtlety, like light;
And the wild odour of the forest flowers,
The music of the living grass and air,
The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams
Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed,
Seem kneaded into one areal mass
Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,
Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,
Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil,
On its own folded wings, and wavy hair,
The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,
And you can see its little lips are moving,
Amid the changing light of their own smiles,
Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.
Ione.
'Tis only mocking the orb's harmony.
Panthea.
And from a star upon its forehead, shoot,
Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
Embleming heaven and earth united now,
Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel
Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,
Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings,
And perpendicular now, and now transverse,
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,
Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;
Infinite mines of adamant and gold,
Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,
And caverns on crystalline columns poised
With vegetable silver overspread;
Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs
Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed,
Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops
With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on
And make appear the melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;
Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,
And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels
Of scythd chariots, and the emblazonry
Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,
Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems
Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!
The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
Whose population which the earth grew over
Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes
Huddled in gray annihilation, split,
Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
The anatomies of unknown wingd things,
And fishes which were isles of living scale,
And serpents, bony chains, twisted around
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
The jaggd alligator, and the might
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
Increased and multiplied like summer worms
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
Wrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God
Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,
'Be not!' And like my words they were no more.
The Earth.
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,
The vaporous exultation not to be confined!
Ha! ha! the animation of delight
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.
The Moon.
Brother mine, calm wanderer,
Happy globe of land and air,
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrates my frozen frame,
And passes with the warmth of flame,
With love, and odour, and deep melody
Through me, through me!
The Earth.
Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.
The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,
And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.
They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,
Who all our green and azure universe
Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending
A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones,
And splinter and knead down my children's bones,
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending,
Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,
Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,
My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire;
My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom
Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,
Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:
How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up
By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup
Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;
And from beneath, around, within, above,
Filling thy void annihilation, love
Burst in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball.
The Moon.
The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine:
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
It clothes with unexpected birth
My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine
On mine, on mine!
Gazing on thee I feel, I know
Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,
And living shapes upon my bosom move:
Music is in the sea and air,
Wingd clouds soar here and there,
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
'Tis love, all love!
The Earth.
It interpenetrates my granite mass,
Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;
Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread,
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,
They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers.
And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison
With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being:
With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver
Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever,
Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,
Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror,
Which could distort to many a shape of error,
This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;
Which over all his kind, as the sun's heaven
Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even,
Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:
Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left,
Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft
Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured;
Then when it wanders home with rosy smile,
Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile
It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.
Man, oh, not men! a chain of linkd thought,
Of love and might to be divided not,
Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;
As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze,
The unquiet republic of the maze
Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.
Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
Familiar acts are beautiful through love;
Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!
His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
Is as a tempest-wingd ship, whose helm
Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.
All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;
Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;
Language is a perpetual Orphic song,
Which rules with Ddal harmony a throng
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.
The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!
The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.
The Moon.
The shadow of white death has passed
From my path in heaven at last,
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep.
The Earth.
As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,
And crystalline, till it becomes a wingd mist,
And wanders up the vault of the blue day,
Outlives the moon, and on the sun's last ray
Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.
The Moon.
Thou art folded, thou art lying
In the light which is undying
Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;
All suns and constellations shower
On thee a light, a life, a power
Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
On mine, on mine!
The Earth.
I spin beneath my pyramid of night,
Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.
The Moon.
As in the soft and sweet eclipse,
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,
Full, oh, too full!
Thou art speeding round the sun
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom life and light is given;
I, thy crystal paramour
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise,
Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move
Gazing, an insatiate bride,
On thy form from every side
Like a Mnad, round the cup
Which Agave lifted up
In the weird Cadman forest.
Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl and follow
Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space,
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might,
As a lover or a chameleon
Grows like what it looks upon,
As a violet's gentle eye
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds,
As a gray and watery mist
Glows like solid amethyst
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,
When the sunset sleeps
Upon its snow
The Earth.
And the weak day weeps
That it should be so.
Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,
Through isles for ever calm;
Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.
Panthea.
I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
Out of the stream of sound.
Ione.
Ah me! sweet sister,
The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
And you pretend to rise out of its wave,
Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.
Panthea.
Peace! peace! A mighty Power, which is as darkness,
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,
Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone,
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.
Ione.
There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
Panthea.
An universal sound like words: Oh, list!
Demogorgon.
Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,
Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
The love which paves thy path along the skies:
The Earth.
I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.
Demogorgon.
Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;
Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:
The Moon.
I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!
Demogorgon.
Ye Kings of suns and stars, Dmons and Gods,
Aetherial Dominations, who possess
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:
A Voice from above.
Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and bless.
Demogorgon.
Ye happy Dead, whom beams of brightest verse
Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray,
Whether your nature is that universe
Which once ye saw and suffered
A Voice from beneath.
Or as they
Whom we have left, we change and pass away.
Demogorgon.
Ye elemental Genii, who have homes
From man's high mind even to the central stone
Of sullen lead; from heaven's star-fretted domes
To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:
A confused Voice.
We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.
Demogorgon.
Spirits, whose homes are flesh: ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves and buds;
Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:
A Voice.
Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.
Demogorgon.
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day:
All.
Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.
Demogorgon.
This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
Composed at Este, Sept., Oct., 1818 (Act I); at Rome, March - April 6, 1819 (Acts II, III); at Florence, close of 1819 (Act IV). Published by C. and J. Ollier, London, summer of 1820.
Note from Mrs. Shelley: 'On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return. His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. .....Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world. ....And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in their decay, or gaed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the Prometheus which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet must feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he wrote from Rome, ''My Prometheus Unbound is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts.'''
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
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