TERMS STARTING WITH
enthusiasm ::: great excitement for or interest in a subject or cause.
enthusiasm ::: n. --> Inspiration as if by a divine or superhuman power; ecstasy; hence, a conceit of divine possession and revelation, or of being directly subject to some divine impulse.
A state of impassioned emotion; transport; elevation of fancy; exaltation of soul; as, the poetry of enthusiasm.
Enkindled and kindling fervor of soul; strong excitement of feeling on behalf of a cause or a subject; ardent and imaginative zeal or interest; as, he engaged in his profession with
TERMS ANYWHERE
ardour ::: great warmth of feeling, passion or desire; zeal, fervour, eagerness, enthusiasm.
avega ::: enthusiasm. avega
cheer ::: n. --> The face; the countenance or its expression.
Feeling; spirit; state of mind or heart.
Gayety; mirth; cheerfulness; animation.
That which promotes good spirits or cheerfulness; provisions prepared for a feast; entertainment; as, a table loaded with good cheer.
A shout, hurrah, or acclamation, expressing joy enthusiasm, applause, favor, etc.
chill ::: adj. 1. Cold, often unpleasantly so; numbing. 2. Discouraging; dispiriting. 3. Unduly formal; unfriendly; unfeeling. v. 4. To lower in temperature; cool; make cold. 5. Fig. To depress (enthusiasm, etc.); discourage. chilled, chilling.
chill ::: n. --> A moderate but disagreeable degree of cold; a disagreeable sensation of coolness, accompanied with shivering.
A sensation of cold with convulsive shaking of the body, pinched face, pale skin, and blue lips, caused by undue cooling of the body or by nervous excitement, or forming the precursor of some constitutional disturbance, as of a fever.
A check to enthusiasm or warmth of feeling; discouragement; as, a chill comes over an assembly.
con slancio: with enthusiasm
contagion ::: n. --> The transmission of a disease from one person to another, by direct or indirect contact.
That which serves as a medium or agency to transmit disease; a virus produced by, or exhalation proceeding from, a diseased person, and capable of reproducing the disease.
The act or means of communicating any influence to the mind or heart; as, the contagion of enthusiasm.
Venom; poison.
crusade ::: n. --> Any one of the military expeditions undertaken by Christian powers, in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Mohammedans.
Any enterprise undertaken with zeal and enthusiasm; as, a crusade against intemperance.
A Portuguese coin. See Crusado. ::: v. i.
delirium ::: n. --> A state in which the thoughts, expressions, and actions are wild, irregular, and incoherent; mental aberration; a roving or wandering of the mind, -- usually dependent on a fever or some other disease, and so distinguished from mania, or madness.
Strong excitement; wild enthusiasm; madness.
dharmaprīti. (P. dhammapīti; T. chos la dga' ba; C. faxi; J. hoki; K. pophŭi 法喜). In Sanskrit, "joy of the dharma"; the uplifting feelings of joy or enthusiasm that derive from properly observing the precepts (i.e., to be morally "blameless" and thus harboring no regrets or shame) and from hearing, understanding, or practicing the dharma. Depending on its intensity, this joy may manifest itself in several different ways, ranging from a radiant complexion, horripilation (the body hair standing on end), and goose bumps, to ecstatic physical levitation. In the context of meditative training, such joy is said to be conducive to the development of concentration (SAMĀDHI) and serenity (PRAsRABDHI).
ecstasy ::: n. --> The state of being beside one&
elan ::: b. --> Ardor inspired by passion or enthusiasm.
Empiricists: (Early English) By the beginning of the 17th century, the wave of search for new foundations of knowledge reached England. The country was fast growing in power and territory. Old beliefs seemed inadequate, and vast new information brought from elsewhere by merchants and scholars had to be assimilated. The feeling was in the air that a new, more practicable and more tangible approach to reality was needed. This new approach was attempted by many thinkers, among whom two, Bacon and Hobbes, were the most outstanding. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), despite his busy political career, found enough enthusiasm and time to outline requirements for the study of natural phenomena. Like Descartes, his younger contemporary in France, he felt the importance of making a clean sweep of countless unverified assumptions obstructing then the progress of knowledge. As the first pre-requisite for the investigation of nature, he advocated, therefore, an overthrow of the idols of the mind, that is, of all the preconceptions and prejudices prevalent in theories, ideas and even language. Only when one's mind is thus prepared for the study of phenomena, can one commence gathering and tabulating facts. Bacon's works, particularly Novum Organum, is full of sagacious thoughts and observations, but he seldom goes beyond general advice. As we realize it today, it was a gross exaggeration to call him "the founder of inductive logic". Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an empiricist of an entirely different kind. He did not attempt to work out an inductive method of investigation, but decided to apply deductive logic to new facts. Like Bacon, he keenly understood the inadequacy of medieval doctrines, particularly of those of "form" and "final cause". He felt the need for taking the study of nature anew, particularly of its three most important aspects, Matter, Man and the State. According to Hobbes, all nature is corporeal and all events have but one cause, motion. Man, in his natural state, is dominated by passion which leads him to a "war of all against all". But, contrary to animals, he is capable of using reason which, in the course of time, made him, for self-protection, to choose a social form of existence. The resulting State is, therefore, built on an implicit social contract. -- R.B.W.
Enlightenment: When Kant, carried by the cultural enthusiasm of his time, explained "enlightenment" as man's coming of age from the state of infancy which rendered him incapable of using his reason without the aid of others, he gave only the subjective meaning of the term. Objectively, enlightenment is a cultural period distinguished by the fervent efforts of leading personalities to make reason the absolute ruler of human life, and to shed the light of knowledge upon the mind and conscience of any individual. Such attempts are not confined to a particular time, or nation, as history teaches; but the term is generally applied to the European enlightenment stretching from the early 17th to the beginning of the 19th century, especially fostered by English, Dutch, French, and German philosophers. It took its start in England from the empiricism of F. Bacon, Th. Hobbes, J. Locke, it found a religious version in the naturalism of Edw. H. Cherbury, J. Toland, M. Tindal, H. Bolingbroke, and the host of "freethinkers", while the Earl of Shaftesbury imparted to it a moral on the "light of reason". Not so constructive but radical in their sarcastic criticism of the past were the French enlighteners, showing that their philosophy got its momentum from the moral corruption at the royal court and abuse of kinglv power in France. Descartes' doctrine of the "clear and perspicuous ideas," Spinoza's critical attitude towards religion, and Leibniz-Wolff's "reasonable thinking" prepared the philosophy of P. Bayle, Ch. Montesquieu, F. M. Voltaire, and J. J. Rousseau. The French positive contribution to the subject was the "Encyclopedie ou Dictionaire raisonne des sciences, arts et metiers", 1751-72, in 28 volumes, edited by Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Holbach, J. L. Lagrane, etc. What, in England and France, remained on the stage of mere ideas and utopic dreams became reality in the new commonwealth of the U.S.A. The "fathers of the constitution" were enlightened, outstanding among them B. Franklin, Th. Jefferson, J. Adams, A. Hamilton, and Th. Paine their foremost literary propagandist.
enthean ::: a. --> Divinely inspired; wrought up to enthusiasm.
entheasm ::: n. --> Inspiration; enthusiasm.
enthusiasm ::: great excitement for or interest in a subject or cause.
enthusiasm ::: n. --> Inspiration as if by a divine or superhuman power; ecstasy; hence, a conceit of divine possession and revelation, or of being directly subject to some divine impulse.
A state of impassioned emotion; transport; elevation of fancy; exaltation of soul; as, the poetry of enthusiasm.
Enkindled and kindling fervor of soul; strong excitement of feeling on behalf of a cause or a subject; ardent and imaginative zeal or interest; as, he engaged in his profession with
enthusiastical ::: a. --> Filled with enthusiasm; characterized by enthusiasm; zealous; as, an enthusiastic lover of art.
enthusiast ::: n. --> One moved or actuated by enthusiasm; as: (a) One who imagines himself divinely inspired, or possessed of some special revelation; a religious madman; a fanatic. (b) One whose mind is wholly possessed and heated by what engages it; one who is influenced by a peculiar; fervor of mind; an ardent and imaginative person.
fanatic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or indicating, fanaticism; extravagant in opinions; ultra; unreasonable; excessively enthusiastic, especially on religious subjects; as, fanatic zeal; fanatic notions. ::: n. --> A person affected by excessive enthusiasm, particularly on religious subjects; one who indulges wild and extravagant notions of
fanaticism ::: n. --> Excessive enthusiasm, unreasoning zeal, or wild and extravagant notions, on any subject, especially religion; religious frenzy.
flame ::: n. --> A stream of burning vapor or gas, emitting light and heat; darting or streaming fire; a blaze; a fire.
Burning zeal or passion; elevated and noble enthusiasm; glowing imagination; passionate excitement or anger.
Ardor of affection; the passion of love.
A person beloved; a sweetheart.
To burn with a flame or blaze; to burn as gas emitted from bodies in combustion; to blaze.
furore ::: n. --> Excitement; commotion; enthusiasm.
fury ::: n. --> A thief.
Violent or extreme excitement; overmastering agitation or enthusiasm.
Violent anger; extreme wrath; rage; -- sometimes applied to inanimate things, as the wind or storms; impetuosity; violence.
pl. (Greek Myth.) The avenging deities, Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera; the Erinyes or Eumenides.
One of the Parcae, or Fates, esp. Atropos.
gush ::: v. i. --> To issue with violence and rapidity, as a fluid; to rush forth as a fluid from confinement; to flow copiously.
To make a sentimental or untimely exhibition of affection; to display enthusiasm in a silly, demonstrative manner. ::: v. t. --> A sudden and violent issue of a fluid from an inclosed
His portrayal of Zeus in different dramas is inconsistent, since there were two Zeuses: the abstract deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus. While the former represents the head of the hierarchy of divinities, the latter is, in man, the human soul or kama-manas. Prometheus, who steals fire from heaven and brings it to mankind in a fennel-stalk, is buddhi-manas, mankind’s savior. Zeus is the serpent, the intellectual tempter of humanity, which nevertheless begets in due time the man-savior, the solar Dionysus (SD 2:419-20). Harmony results from the equilibrium of contraries, and the drama of evolution as depicted in man shows the clash of descending and reascending cycles, the antimony of law and free will. These dramas have been immortalized for all generations by Aeschylus who, in his daring and self-sacrificing enthusiasm, may himself be styled a Prometheus offending the powers that be in order to bring light to mankind.
history ::: “History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” The Human Cycle etc.
intoxication ::: n. --> A poisoning, as by a spirituous or a narcotic substance.
The state of being intoxicated or drunk; inebriation; ebriety; drunkenness; the act of intoxicating or making drunk.
A high excitement of mind; an elation which rises to enthusiasm, frenzy, or madness.
Kerouac, Jack. (1922-1969). American novelist influenced by Buddhism. Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to a working-class Quebecois family. His first language was the Quebecois French dialect; he learned English from nuns at the local parish school. An outstanding student and athlete in high school, he accepted an athletic scholarship to Columbia University in 1940 and became a star football player, before a broken leg ended his career. Kerouac left the university and enlisted in the Navy but was discharged. He served as a merchant seaman before returning to Columbia in 1944, where he met ALLEN GINSBERG and began to gather a group of companions that Kerouac would later dub the "Beat Generation." His friend Neal Cassady's enthusiasm for the psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) prompted Kerouac to want to learn something about Asian religions. Finding DWIGHT GODDARD's A Buddhist Bible in the public library in San Jose, California, he studied the book carefully and memorized sections of it. Although Kerouac considered himself to be a Roman Catholic throughout his life, his interest in Buddhism grew, in part due to the influence of the poet GARY SNYDER, whom he met in San Francisco. At Snyder's urging, Kerouac wrote a Buddhist scripture, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, as well as a life of the Buddha. His best-known works, however, are On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958). Kerouac died in his mother's home in Florida at the age of forty-seven of complications resulting from alcoholism.
Main works: Tonpsychologie, 2 vols., 1883-90; Die Anfange der Musik, 1911; Empfindung u. Vorstellung, 1918; Gefühl u. Gefühlsempfindung, 1928; Erkenntnislehre, I, 1939. Sturm und Drang: (German, "Storm and Stress"), a period sweeping the German countries about 1770-1785, in which men like Hamann, Herder, the young Goethe, Schiller, Wagner, Christian Schubart, and Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (from whose play the movement got its name) advocated, in a flush of creative enthusiasm, the forces of native talent, the value of emotion, and the power of genius as a conscious reaction against the enlightenment which had spread from France. -- K.F.L.
marked by excessive enthusiasm for and intense devotion to a cause or idea.
mu 1. "networking" The {country code} for Mauritius. 2. "philosophy" /moo/ The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter the correct answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to mean "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions". Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies in language, and many have adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm. The word "mu" is actually from Chinese, meaning "nothing"; it is used in mainstream Japanese in that sense, but native speakers do not recognise the Discordian question-denying use. It almost certainly derives from overgeneralisation of the answer in the following well-known Rinzei Zen teaching riddle: A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha nature?" Joshu retorted, "Mu!" See also {has the X nature}, {AI Koan}. [Douglas Hofstadter, "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"]. [{Jargon File}] (2000-11-22)
nympholepsy ::: n. --> A species of demoniac enthusiasm or possession coming upon one who had accidentally looked upon a nymph; ecstasy.
Sagittarius (The Archer): The ninth sign of the zodiac. In Hindu astrology: Dhanus. Its symbol represents an arrow and a section of a bow, typifying aspiration. It is usually pictured as the Centaur: half horse, half man—representing the conflict between the philosophical mind and the carnal instinct of conquest; also aspiration supported by effort that aims at the stars. Said to have been named for the Babylonian god of war. The Sun is in Sagittarius annually from November 23 to December 21. Astrologically it is the thirty-degree arc immediately preceding the Sun’s passing over the Tropic of Capricorn, occupying a position along the Ecliptic from 240° to 270°. It is the “mutable” quality of the element Fire: positive, hot, dry, changeable, bicorporeal, obeying. Ruler: Jupiter. Detriment: Mercury. Symbolic interpretation: The centaur; an arrow with a short section of the bow, the symbol of enthusiasm and effort, aiming at the stars.
sobriety ::: n. --> Habitual soberness or temperance as to the use of spirituous liquors; as, a man of sobriety.
Habitual freedom from enthusiasm, inordinate passion, or overheated imagination; calmness; coolness; gravity; seriousness; as, the sobriety of riper years.
Sri Aurobindo: "History teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of changing institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this change and this continual streaming forward of human life in the channels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent phenomena, facile generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy, aristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism, imperialism and nationalism, the State and the commune, capitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today only to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and ardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that we have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century mankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter expense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without having fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is ready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new good. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it does not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and complete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life, of its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but the necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true law and aim.” *The Human Cycle etc.
"That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc., etc., are always wandering about (in thought-waves or otherwise), seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects — another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different, make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off saying, ‘O this unready animal!" and goes to another who promptly welcomes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, ‘I, I have done this". Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you like — nothing more.” Letters on Yoga
“That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc., etc., are always wandering about (in thought-waves or otherwise), seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejects—another takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different, make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off saying, ‘O this unready animal!’ and goes to another who promptly welcomes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, ‘I, I have done this’. Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you like—nothing more.” Letters on Yoga
Utsaha: Cheerfulness; enthusiasm.
verve ::: n. --> Excitement of imagination such as animates a poet, artist, or musician, in composing or performing; rapture; enthusiasm; spirit; energy.
vīrya. (P. viriya; T. brtson 'grus; C. jingjin; J. shojin; K. chongjin 精進). In Sanskrit, "energy," "effort"; an enthusiasm to perform virtuous acts, which serves as the antidote to laziness. Since, by definition, the term refers to a delight in virtue, striving for nonvirtuous ends would not be considered "energy." The connotations of the term include the willingness to undertake virtuous deeds, the delight in the performance of virtuous deeds, a lack of discouragement, a commitment to success, and a dissatisfaction with minimal virtues. Deemed essential to progress on the path, vīrya is a constituent of many numerical lists. Vīrya is the second of the five spiritual faculties (INDRIYA) and counters the hindrance (NĪVARAnA) of sloth and torpor (STYĀNA-MIDDHA). It is counted as one of the eleven wholesome mental concomitants (KUsALA-CAITTA) and constitutes the fourth of the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ).
warmth ::: n. --> The quality or state of being warm; gentle heat; as, the warmth of the sun; the warmth of the blood; vital warmth.
A state of lively and excited interest; zeal; ardor; fervor; passion; enthusiasm; earnestness; as, the warmth of love or piety; he replied with much warmth.
The glowing effect which arises from the use of warm colors; hence, any similar appearance or effect in a painting, or work of color.
whoop ::: n. --> The hoopoe.
A shout of pursuit or of war; a very of eagerness, enthusiasm, enjoyment, vengeance, terror, or the like; an halloo; a hoot, or cry, as of an owl.
A loud, shrill, prolonged sound or sonorous inspiration, as in whooping cough. ::: v. i.
Wine Used as an emblem of life and spirit, as in the Mysteries, where at one stage of the initiatory rites wine and bread were offered to the candidate as symbols of spirit and body, the meaning being the same as that conveyed elsewhere by fire and water, or blood and flesh. It was necessary for the aspirant to be perfected in both ways. The rite was very early adopted from the Dionysian Mysteries by the Christian churches in the sacrament of the Eucharist where wine represents the blood of Christ, and the bread his body. Wine is also connected in the same mystical manner with the Greek god Dionysos or Bacchus, for this divinity represented the Christos or initiator, teacher, and savior of mankind; and thus wine stands for inspiration and holy enthusiasm, varying from divine inspiration and spiritual quickening all down the scale to merely phrenetic exaltation, and even when grossly degenerate, orgiastic, and drunken excitement, such as marked the degraded forms of Bacchic worship.
zeal ::: n. --> Passionate ardor in the pursuit of anything; eagerness in favor of a person or cause; ardent and active interest; engagedness; enthusiasm; fervor.
A zealot. ::: v. i. --> To be zealous.
Zealot ::: (from Greek, to be enthusiastic). A general term for one who exhibits great enthusiasm and dedication to a cause. Specifically, a member of an early Jewish group or perspective that advocated Jewish independence (see theocracy) from Rome.
KEYS (10k)
8 The Mother
3 Sri Aurobindo
2 Swami Vivekananda
1 Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI
1 Giordano Bruno
1 Emil Cioran
1 Edgar Allan Poe
1 Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
1 Charlotte Brontë
1 Bessie Anderson Stanley
1 Benjamin Disraeli
1 Sri Ramakrishna
1 Aleister Crowley
1 ?
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
40 Paulo Coelho
24 Norman Vincent Peale
23 Dale Carnegie
14 Winston Churchill
14 Ralph Waldo Emerson
13 Eckhart Tolle
10 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
10 Anonymous
10 Alain de Botton
8 F Scott Fitzgerald
7 Sri Chinmoy
6 Ray Bradbury
6 David J Schwartz
6 Amy Cuddy
5 Rick Riordan
5 Neil Gaiman
5 Napoleon Hill
5 John Muir
5 Henry Ford
5 Harlan Coben
1:There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm." ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #KEYS
2:Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
~ Benjamin Disraeli,#KEYS
3:True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire wherever I see it." ~ Charlotte Brontë, #KEYS
4:Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with your might.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#KEYS
5:The worldy-minded person can never be fired with enthusiasm, though God be preached to him innumerable times. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
6:The whole world has been made by the energy of man, by the power of enthusiasm, by the power of faith. Arise and awake, the world is calling upon you. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
7:How should you practice these instructions? Be like a hungry yak, browsing on one tuft of grass with its eyes already fixed on the next. Practice with joy and enthusiasm, and never fall into laziness or apathy. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, #KEYS
8:If you, in a surge of initial enthusiasm, do japa and meditation indiscriminately for long hours, your head may get heated and many other problems may arise. That is why it is advised that one should learn these practices from a Satguru. ~ MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI, #KEYS
9:Fire and enthusiasm must be in our blood. I believe we have it. Intellect is great indeed, but it stops within certain bounds. It is through the heart, & the heart alone, that inspiration comes. It is through the feelings that the highest secrets are reached. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
10:Sincerity, Aspiration, Faith, Devotion and Self-Giving, Surrender to the Divine Will, Love, Openness and Receptivity, Purity and Humility, Gratitude and Faithfulness, Will and Perseverance, Enthusiasm, Hope and Straightforwardness, Happiness and Joy, Heroism and Bravery, Prudence and Balance, Truth and Speech ~ ?, toc, #KEYS
11:He who suffers himself to be transported by the love of things on high, who drinks at the sources of eternal beauty, who lives by the Infinite and combats for the ideal of all virtue and all knowledge, who shows for that cult an enthusiasm pushed to a very fury,-he is the hero. ~ Giordano Bruno, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
12:When the vital joins in the love for the Divine, it brings into it heroism, enthusiasm, intensity, absoluteness, exclusiveness, the spirit of self-sacrifice, the total and passionate self-giving of all the nature. It is the vital passion for the Divine that creates the spiritual heroes, conquerors or martyrs.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
13:The priestess of Artemis took hold of her almost with the violence of a lover, and whisked her away into a languid ecstasy of reverie. She communicated her own enthusiasm to the girl, and kept her mind occupied with dreams, faery-fervid, of uncharted seas of glory on which her galleon might sail, undiscovered countries of spice and sweetness, Eldorado and Utopia and the City of God. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
14:To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived~this is to have succeeded. ~ Bessie Anderson Stanley, #KEYS
15:Enthusiasm and Straightforwardness
Joyous enthusiasm: the best way of facing life.
*
True enthusiasm is full of a peaceful endurance.
*
Our courage and endurance must be as great as our hope and
our hope has no limits. 2 August 1954
*
A steady hope helps much on the way. 15 August 1954
*
Our hopes are never too great for manifestation.
We cannot conceive of any thing that cannot be. 22 August 1954
** *
Straightforwardness shows itself as it is, without compromising. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
16:I am the sort of man who has changed completely under the effect of suffering, even though this transformation may simply be the intensification of elements already there. Thus amplified, they gave an entirely new perspective on life. I believe frenetically and fanatically, in the virtues of suffering and of anxiety, and I believe in them especially since, though I've suffered greatly and despaired much, I nevertheless acquired through them a sense of my own destiny, a sort of weird enthusiasm for my mission. On the heights of the most terrifying despair, I experience the joy of having a destiny, of living a life of successive deaths and transfigurations, of turning every moment into a cross-road. And I am proud that my life begins with death, unlike the majority of people, who end with death. I feel as if my death were in the past, and the future looks to me like a sort of personal illumination.
~ Emil Cioran,#KEYS
17:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.
No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#KEYS
18:The Examiners
The integral yoga consists of an uninterrupted series of examinations that one has to undergo without any previous warning, thus obliging you to be constantly on the alert and attentive.
Three groups of examiners set us these tests. They appear to have nothing to do with one another, and their methods are so different, sometimes even so apparently contradictory, that it seems as if they could not possibly be leading towards the same goal. Nevertheless, they complement one another, work towards the same end, and are all indispensable to the completeness of the result.
The three types of examination are: those set by the forces of Nature, those set by spiritual and divine forces, and those set by hostile forces. These last are the most deceptive in their appearance and to avoid being caught unawares and unprepared requires a state of constant watchfulness, sincerity and humility.
The most commonplace circumstances, the events of everyday life, the most apparently insignificant people and things all belong to one or other of these three kinds of examiners. In this vast and complex organisation of tests, those events that are generally considered the most important in life are the easiest examinations to undergo, because they find you ready and on your guard. It is easier to stumble over the little stones in your path, because they attract no attention.
Endurance and plasticity, cheerfulness and fearlessness are the qualities specially needed for the examinations of physical nature.
Aspiration, trust, idealism, enthusiasm and generous self-giving, for spiritual examinations.
Vigilance, sincerity and humility for the examinations from hostile forces.
And do not imagine that there are on the one hand people who undergo the examinations and on the other people who set them. Depending on the circumstances and the moment we are all both examiners and examinees, and it may even happen that one is at the same time both examiner and examinee. And the benefit one derives from this depends, both in quality and in quantity, on the intensity of one's aspiration and the awakening of one's consciousness.
To conclude, a final piece of advice: never set yourself up as an examiner. For while it is good to remember constantly that one may be undergoing a very important examination, it is extremely dangerous to imagine that one is responsible for setting examinations for others. That is the open door to the most ridiculous and harmful kinds of vanity. It is the Supreme Wisdom which decides these things, and not the ignorant human will. ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
19:Evil
Hasten towards the good, leave behind all evil thoughts, for to do good without enthusiasm is to have a mind which delights in evil.
If one does an evil action, he should not persist in it, he should not delight in it. For full of suffering is the accumulation of evil.
If one does a good action, he should persist in it and take delight in it. Full of happiness is the accumulation of good.
As long as his evil action has not yet ripened, an evildoer may experience contentment. But when it ripens, the wrong-doer knows unhappiness.
As long as his good action has not yet ripened, one who does good may experience unhappiness. But when it ripens, the good man knows happiness.
Do not treat evil lightly, saying, "That will not touch me." A jar is filled drop by drop; even so the fool fills himself little by little with wickedness.
Do not treat good lightly, saying, "That will not touch me." A jar is filled drop by drop; even so the sage fills himself little by little with goodness.
The merchant who is carrying many precious goods and who has but few companions, avoids dangerous roads; and a man who loves his life is wary of poison. Even so should one act regarding evil.
A hand that has no wound can carry poison with impunity; act likewise, for evil cannot touch the righteous man.
If you offend one who is pure, innocent and defenceless, the insult will fall back on you, as if you threw dust against the wind.
Some are reborn here on earth, evil-doers go to the worlds of Niraya,1 the just go to the heavenly worlds, but those who have freed themselves from all desire attain Nirvana.
Neither in the skies, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor in the rocky caves, nowhere upon earth does there exist a place where a man can find refuge from his evil actions.
Neither in the skies, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor in the rocky caves, nowhere upon earth does there exist a place where a man can hide from death.
People have the habit of dealing lightly with thoughts that come. And the atmosphere is full of thoughts of all kinds which do not in fact belong to anybody in particular, which move perpetually from one person to another, very freely, much too freely, because there are very few people who can keep their thoughts under control.
When you take up the Buddhist discipline to learn how to control your thoughts, you make very interesting discoveries. You try to observe your thoughts. Instead of letting them pass freely, sometimes even letting them enter your head and establish themselves in a quite inopportune way, you look at them, observe them and you realise with stupefaction that in the space of a few seconds there passes through the head a series of absolutely improbable thoughts that are altogether harmful.
...?
Conversion of the aim of life from the ego to the Divine: instead of seeking one's own satisfaction, to have the service of the Divine as the aim of life.
*
What you must know is exactly the thing you want to do in life. The time needed to learn it does not matter at all. For those who wish to live according to Truth, there is always something to learn and some progress to make. 2 October 1969 ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
20:The true Mantra must come from within OR it must be given by a Guru
Nobody can give you the true mantra. It's not something that is given; it's something that wells up from within. It must spring from within all of a sudden, spontaneously, like a profound, intense need of your being - then it has power, because it's not something that comes from outside, it's your very own cry.
I saw, in my case, that my mantra has the power of immortality; whatever happens, if it is uttered, it's the Supreme that has the upper hand, it's no longer the lower law. And the words are irrelevant, they may not have any meaning - to someone else, my mantra is meaningless, but to me it's full, packed with meaning. And effective, because it's my cry, the intense aspiration of my whole being.
A mantra given by a guru is only the power to realize the experience of the discoverer of the mantra. The power is automatically there, because the sound contains the experience. I saw that once in Paris, at a time when I knew nothing of India, absolutely nothing, only the usual nonsense. I didn't even know what a mantra was. I had gone to a lecture given by some fellow who was supposed to have practiced "yoga" for a year in the Himalayas and recounted his experience (none too interesting, either). All at once, in the course of his lecture, he uttered the sound OM. And I saw the entire room suddenly fill with light, a golden, vibrating light.... I was probably the only one to notice it. I said to myself, "Well!" Then I didn't give it any more thought, I forgot about the story. But as it happened, the experience recurred in two or three different countries, with different people, and every time there was the sound OM, I would suddenly see the place fill with that same light. So I understood. That sound contains the vibration of thousands and thousands of years of spiritual aspiration - there is in it the entire aspiration of men towards the Supreme. And the power is automatically there, because the experience is there.
It's the same with my mantra. When I wanted to translate the end of my mantra, "Glory to You, O Lord," into Sanskrit, I asked for Nolini's help. He brought his Sanskrit translation, and when he read it to me, I immediately saw that the power was there - not because Nolini put his power into it (!), God knows he had no intention of "giving" me a mantra! But the power was there because my experience was there. We made a few adjustments and modifications, and that's the japa I do now - I do it all the time, while sleeping, while walking, while eating, while working, all the time.[[Mother later clarified: "'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't MY mantra, it's something I ADDED to it - my mantra is something else altogether, that's not it. When I say that my mantra has the power of immortality, I mean the other, the one I don't speak of! I have never given the words.... You see, at the end of my walk, a kind of enthusiasm rises, and with that enthusiasm, the 'Glory to You' came to me, but it's part of the prayer I had written in Prayers and Meditations: 'Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme' etc. (it's a long prayer). It came back suddenly, and as it came back spontaneously, I kept it. Moreover, when Sri Aurobindo read this prayer in Prayers and Meditations, he told me it was very strong. So I added this phrase as a kind of tail to my japa. But 'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't my spontaneous mantra - it came spontaneously, but it was something written very long ago. The two things are different."
And that's how a mantra has life: when it wells up all the time, spontaneously, like the cry of your being - there is no need of effort or concentration: it's your natural cry. Then it has full power, it is alive. It must well up from within.... No guru can give you that. ~ The Mother, Agenda, May 11 1963,#KEYS
21:
What is the exact way of feeling that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us?
You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that's something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling. Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the first thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (pointing to the heart), with a flame which pushes you to realise it. But if you want it to be truly the thing, well, you must feel it.
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: "Oh, look, how strange it is!"...
How can we reach that state?
Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selfish, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of - how to put it? - luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body. The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer. And nothing but the Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.
That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards - that is very rare but may happen. If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Sufi mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Sufis there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books. It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to "Something" which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.
Is this the end of self-progress?
There is never any end to progress - never any end, you can never put a full stop there. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
22: Sri Aurobindo writes here: "...Few and brief in their visits are the Bright Ones who are willing or permitted to succour." Why?
(1 "The Way", Cent. Vol. 17, p. 40.)
One must go and ask them! But there is a conclusion, the last sentences give a very clear explanation. It is said: "Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling?" This comes back to the question why the adverse forces have the right to interfere, to harass you. But this is precisely the test necessary for your sincerity. If the way were very easy, everybody would start on the way, and if one could reach the goal without any obstacle and without any effort, everybody would reach the goal, and when one has come to the end, the situation would be the same as when one started, there would be no change. That is, the new world would be exactly what the old has been. It is truly not worth the trouble! Evidently a process of elimination is necessary so that only what is capable of manifesting the new life remains. This is the reason and there is no other, this is the best of reasons. And, you see, it is a tempering, it is the ordeal of fire, only that which can stand it remains absolutely pure; when everything has burnt down, there remains only the little ingot of pure gold. And it is like that. What puts things out very much in all this is the religious idea of fault, sin, redemption. But there is no arbitrary decision! On the contrary, for each one it is the best and most favourable conditions which are given. We were saying the other day that it is only his friends whom God treats with severity; you thought it was a joke, but it is true. It is only to those who are full of hope, who will pass through this purifying flame, that the conditions for attaining the maximum result are given. And the human mind is made in such a way that you may test this; when something extremely unpleasant happens to you, you may tell yourself, "Well, this proves I am worth the trouble of being given this difficulty, this proves there is something in me which can resist the difficulty", and you will notice that instead of tormenting yourself, you rejoice - you will be so happy and so strong that even the most unpleasant things will seem to you quite charming! This is a very easy experiment to make. Whatever the circumstance, if your mind is accustomed to look at it as something favourable, it will no longer be unpleasant for you. This is quite well known; as long as the mind refuses to accept a thing, struggles against it, tries to obstruct it, there are torments, difficulties, storms, inner struggles and all suffering. But the minute the mind says, "Good, this is what has to come, it is thus that it must happen", whatever happens, you are content. There are people who have acquired such control of their mind over their body that they feel nothing; I told you this the other day about certain mystics: if they think the suffering inflicted upon them is going to help them cross the stages in a moment and give them a sort of stepping stone to attain the Realisation, the goal they have put before them, union with the Divine, they no longer feel the suffering at all. Their body is as it were galvanised by the mental conception. This has happened very often, it is a very common experience among those who truly have enthusiasm. And after all, if one must for some reason or other leave one's body and take a new one, is it not better to make of one's death something magnificent, joyful, enthusiastic, than to make it a disgusting defeat? Those who cling on, who try by every possible means to delay the end even by a minute or two, who give you an example of frightful anguish, show that they are not conscious of their soul.... After all, it is perhaps a means, isn't it? One can change this accident into a means; if one is conscious one can make a beautiful thing of it, a very beautiful thing, as of everything. And note, those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness are those who never think about it, who are not haunted all the time by this "horror" facing them which they must escape and which they try to push as far away from them as they can. These, when the occasion comes, can lift their head, smile and say, "Here I am."
It is they who have the will to make the best possible use of their life, it is they who say, "I shall remain here as long as it is necessary, to the last second, and I shall not lose one moment to realise my goal"; these, when the necessity comes, put up the best show. Why? - It is very simple, because they live in their ideal, the truth of their ideal; because that is the real thing for them, the very reason of their being, and in all things they can see this ideal, this reason of existence, and never do they come down into the sordidness of material life.
So, the conclusion:
One must never wish for death.
One must never will to die.
One must never be afraid to die.
And in all circumstances one must will to exceed oneself. ~ The Mother, Question and Answers, Volume-4, page no.353-355,#KEYS
23:Mother, how to change one's consciousness?
Naturally, there are many ways, but each person must do it by the means accessible to him; and the indication of the way usually comes spontaneously, through something like an unexpected experience. And for each one, it appears a little differently.
For instance, one may have the perception of the ordinary consciousness which is extended on the surface, horizontally, and works on a plane which is simultaneously the surface of things and has a contact with the superficial outer side of things, people, circumstances; and then, suddenly, for some reason or other - as I say for each one it is different - there is a shifting upwards, and instead of seeing things horizontally, of being at the same level as they are, you suddenly dominate them and see them from above, in their totality, instead of seeing a small number of things immediately next to yourself; it is as though something were drawing you above and making you see as from a mountain-top or an aeroplane. And instead of seeing each detail and seeing it on its own level, you see the whole as one unity, and from far above.
There are many ways of having this experience, but it usually comes to you as if by chance, one fine day.
Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superficial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances.
Or else, suddenly also, the sense of limitation disappears and one enters the perception of a kind of indefinite duration beginningless and endless, of something which has always been and always will be.
These experiences come to you suddenly in a flash, for a second, a moment in your life, you don't know why or how.... There are other ways, other experiences - they are innumerable, they vary according to people; but with this, with one minute, one second of such an existence, one catches the tail of the thing. So one must remember that, try to relive it, go to the depths of the experience, recall it, aspire, concentrate. This is the startingpoint, the end of the guiding thread, the clue. For all those who are destined to find their inner being, the truth of their being, there is always at least one moment in life when they were no longer the same, perhaps just like a lightning-flash - but that is enough. It indicates the road one should take, it is the door that opens on this path. And so you must pass through the door, and with perseverance and an unfailing steadfastness seek to renew the state which will lead you to something more real and more total.
Many ways have always been given, but a way you have been taught, a way you have read about in books or heard from a teacher, does not have the effective value of a spontaneous experience which has come without any apparent reason, and which is simply the blossoming of the soul's awakening, one second of contact with your psychic being which shows you the best way for you, the one most within your reach, which you will then have to follow with perseverance to reach the goal - one second which shows you how to start, the beginning.... Some have this in dreams at night; some have it at any odd time: something one sees which awakens in one this new consciousness, something one hears, a beautiful landscape, beautiful music, or else simply a few words one reads, or else the intensity of concentration in some effort - anything at all, there are a thousand reasons and thousands of ways of having it. But, I repeat, all those who are destined to realise have had this at least once in their life. It may be very fleeting, it may have come when they were very young, but always at least once in one's life one has the experience of what true consciousness is. Well, that is the best indication of the path to be followed.
One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.
First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will find, you do find it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.
Indeed, the starting-point is to observe oneself, not to live in a perpetual nonchalance, a perpetual apathy; one must be attentive.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, [T6],#KEYS
24:Depression, unless one has a strong will, suggests, "This is not worth while, one may have to wait a lifetime." As for enthusiasm, it expects to see the vital transformed overnight: "I am not going to have any difficulty henceforth, I am going to advance rapidly on the path of yoga, I am going to gain the divine consciousness without any difficulty." There are some other difficulties.... One needs a little time, much perseverance. So the vital, after a few hours - perhaps a few days, perhaps a few months - says to itself: "We haven't gone very far with our enthusiasm, has anything been really done? Doesn't this movement leave us just where we were, perhaps worse than we were, a little troubled, a little disturbed? Things are no longer what they were, they are not yet what they ought to be. It is very tiresome, what I am doing." And then, if one pushes a little more, here's this gentleman saying, "Ah, no! I have had enough of it, leave me alone. I don't want to move, I shall stay in my corner, I won't trouble you, but don't bother me!" And so one has not gone very much farther than before.
This is one of the big obstacles which must be carefully avoided. As soon as there is the least sign of discontentment, of annoyance, the vital must be spoken to in this way, "My friend, you are going to keep calm, you are going to do what you are asked to do, otherwise you will have to deal with me." And to the other, the enthusiast who says, "Everything must be done now, immediately", your reply is, "Calm yourself a little, your energy is excellent, but it must not be spent in five minutes. We shall need it for a long time, keep it carefully and, as it is wanted, I shall call upon your goodwill. You will show that you are full of goodwill, you will obey, you won't grumble, you will not protest, you will not revolt, you will say 'yes, yes', you will make a little sacrifice when asked, you will say 'yes' wholeheartedly."
So we get started on the path. But the road is very long. Many things happen on the way. Suddenly one thinks one has overcome an obstacle; I say "thinks", because though one has overcome it, it is not totally overcome. I am going to take a very obvious instance, of a very simple observation. Someone has found that his vital is uncontrollable and uncontrolled, that it gets furious for nothing and about nothing. He starts working to teach it not to get carried away, not to flare up, to remain calm and bear the shocks of life without reacting violently. If one does this cheerfully, it goes quite quickly. (Note this well, it is very important: when you have to deal with your vital take care to remain cheerful, otherwise you will get into trouble.) One remains cheerful, that is, when one sees the fury rise, one begins to laugh. Instead of being depressed and saying, "Ah! In spite of all my effort it is beginning all over again", one begins to laugh and says, "Well, well! One hasn't yet seen the end of it. Look now, aren't you ridiculous, you know quite well that you are being ridiculous! Is it worthwhile getting angry?" One gives it this lesson cheerfully. And really, after a while it doesn't get angry again, it is quiet - and one relaxes one's attention. One thinks the difficulty has been overcome, one thinks a result has at last been reached: "My vital does not trouble me any longer, it does not get angry now, everything is going fine." And the next day, one loses one's temper. It is then one must be careful, it is then one must not say, "Here we are, it's no use, I shall never achieve anything, all my efforts are futile; all this is an illusion, it is impossible." On the contrary, one must say, "I wasn't vigilant enough." One must wait long, very long, before one can say, "Ah! It is done and finished." Sometimes one must wait for years, many years....
I am not saying this to discourage you, but to give you patience and perseverance - for there is a moment when you do arrive. And note that the vital is a small part of your being - a very important part, we have said that it is the dynamism, the realising energy, it is very important; but it is only a small part. And the mind!... which goes wandering, which must be pulled back by all the strings to be kept quiet! You think this can be done overnight? And your body?... You have a weakness, a difficulty, sometimes a small chronic illness, nothing much, but still it is a nuisance, isn't it? You want to get rid of it. You make efforts, you concentrate; you work upon it, establish harmony, and you think it is finished, and then.... Take, for instance, people who have the habit of coughing; they can't control themselves or almost can't. It is not serious but it is bothersome, and there seems to be no reason why it should ever stop. Well, one tells oneself, "I am going to control this." One makes an effort - a yogic effort, not a material one - one brings down consciousness, force, and stops the cough. And one thinks, "The body has forgotten how to cough." And it is a great thing when the body has forgotten, truly one can say, "I am cured." But unfortunately it is not always true, for this goes down into the subconscient and, one day, when the balance of forces is not so well established, when the strength is not the same, it begins again. And one laments, "I believed that it was over! I had succeeded and told myself, 'It is true that spiritual power has an action upon the body, it is true that something can be done', and there! it is not true. And yet it was a small thing, and I who want to conquer immortality! How will I succeed?... For years I have been free from this small thing and here it is beginning anew!" It is then that you must be careful. You must arm yourself with an endless patience and endurance. You do a thing once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times if necessary, but you do it till it gets done. And not done only here and there, but everywhere and everywhere at the same time. This is the great problem one sets oneself. That is why, to those who come to tell me very light-heartedly, "I want to do yoga", I reply, "Think it over, one may do the yoga for a number of years without noticing the least result. But if you want to do it, you must persist and persist with such a will that you should be ready to do it for ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to succeed." I do not say it will be like that, but the attitude must be like that. Nothing must discourage you; for there are all the difficulties of ignorance of the different states of being, to which are added the endless malice and the unbounded cunning of the hostile forces in the world.... They are there, do you know why? They have been.... ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1950-1951,#KEYS
25:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Enthusiasm is the fever of reason. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 2:Mere enthusiasm is the all in all. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 3:Everything good proceeds from enthusiasm. ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove 4:Enthusiasm is the great hill-climber. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 5:Enthusiasm is the breath of genius. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 6:You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 7:Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 8:Enthusiasm is like having two right hands. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 9:The purpose of Art is to create enthusiasm. ~ pablo-picasso, @wisdomtrove 10:Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 11:Cash can buy, but it takes enthusiasm to sell. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 12:Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 13:Enthusiasm is the steam that drives the engine. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 14:Enthusiasm is the DNA of making things happen. ~ danielle-laporte, @wisdomtrove 15:Nothing dispels enthusiasm like a small admission fee. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 16:Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm. ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 17:Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 18:Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others. ~ h-jackson-brown-jr, @wisdomtrove 19:Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 20:Nothing good or great can be done in the absence of enthusiasm. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 21:Be fired with enthusiasm or you'll be fired with enthusiasm. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 22:Enthusiasm brushes off upon those with whom you come in contact. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 23:The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 24:Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 25:Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 26:Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 27:If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 28:If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 29:If you aren't fired up with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with enthusiasm. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 30:Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove 31:If we want to make friends, let's greet people with animation and enthusiasm. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 32:Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 33:Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 34:The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek root entheos, “having the god within.” ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 35:Mere enthusiasm is the all in all... / Passion and expression are beauty itself. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 36:Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 37:Enthusiasm is the electric current that keeps the engine of life going at top speed. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 38:Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understanding is warped with enthusiasm. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 39:Daring enthusiasm And abiding cheerfulness Can accomplish everything on earth Without fail. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 40:Let a man once see himself as others see him, and all enthusiasm vanishes from his heart. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 41:Optimism generates hope... hope releases dreams... dreams set goals... enthusiasm follows ~ martin-seligman, @wisdomtrove 42:To succeed in any field, Our enthusiasm-eyes must sparkle and our enthusiasm-hearts Must dance. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 43:Say goodbye to the energy vampires in your life (the negative souls who steal your enthusiasm). ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 44:Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you; this will diminish his enthusiasm ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 45:It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-sr, @wisdomtrove 46:Without enthusiasm you are doomed to a life of mediocrity, but with it you can accomplish miracles. ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 47:If you have zest and enthusiasm you attract zest and enthusiasm. Life does give back in kind. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 48:Progress can be slow and gradual. Continue putting in effort with patience, enthusiasm and faith. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 49:Enthusiasm is a heightened state of consciousness, and it's one of the best feelings there is to feel. ~ danielle-laporte, @wisdomtrove 50:Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 51:You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 52:Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 53:There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 54:When we can identify a problem and face the problem with confidence and enthusiasm, the solution is on the way. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 55:Enthusiasm, if fuelled by inspiration and perseverance, travels with passion and its destination is excellence. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 56:Enthusiasm is contagious, and the person who has it, under control, is generally welcome in any group of people. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 57:Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do is ‘ride the wave’. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 58:Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 59:Enthusiasm Rules his inner world. Determination Rules his outer world. Therefore Happiness has become His real name. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 60:In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance. ~ johann-wolfgang-von-goethe, @wisdomtrove 61:But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 62:The happiest people are those who have learned to mix play with their work and to bind the two together with enthusiasm. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 63:Stand fully in the now moment with gratitude, enthusiasm, openness, and readiness to respond to Life as it greets you. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 64:There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 65:The four great motives for writing prose are sheer egoism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 66:Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 67:My day begins with gratitude and joy. I look forward with enthusiasm to the adventures of the day, knowing that in my life, All is good. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 68:When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 69:Ridicule has even been the most powerful enemy of enthusiasm, and properly the only antagonist that can be opposed to it with success. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 70:Every tomorrow has two handles. You can take hold of the handle of anxiety or the handle of enthusiasm. Upon your choice so will be the day. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 71:I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 72:Is enthusiasm important in selling? Yes, genuine, heartfelt enthusiasm is one of the most potent factors of success in almost any undertaking. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 73:Enthusiasm is that ingredient of vitality mixed with a firm belief in what you are doing that ensures the success of any project you undertake. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 74:There's nothing clinically wrong with me, only an emotional imbalance - I pass too quickly from the wildest enthusiasm to the blackest despair. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 75:Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 76:Thirty& 77:Reverence, enthusiasm, and a sense of guardianship, these three are actually the panacea, the magical remedy, in the soul of the educator and teacher. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 78:Don't look back‚Äîforward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience‚Äîthen alone can great deeds be accomplished. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 79:Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 80:Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 81:I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 82:If you're bringing up kids, you just want to smother them with love and praise and enthusiasm. So I don't think you can mollycoddle your kids too much really. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 83:If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 84:Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 85:What we need is a world full of miracles, like the miracle of seeing the young child seeking work and independence, and manifesting a wealth of enthusiasm and love. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 86:Work for god, love god alone, and be wise with god. When an ordinary man puts the necessary rime and enthusiasm into meditation and prayer, he becomes a divine man. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 87:That youthful fervor, which is sometimes called enthusiasm, but which is a heat of imagination subsequently discovered to be inconsistent with the experience of actual life. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 88:the person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 89:In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 90:Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 91:I am impressed with just the enthusiasm for life and the fact that some of these people are in their 80's, even 90's, and they're absolutely determined to get out there and make a difference. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 92:Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 93:Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 94:Enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty; as superstition,on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 95:One of the main reasons that we lose our enthusiasm in life is because we become ungrateful..we let what was once a miracle become common to us. We get so accustomed to his goodness it becomes a routine. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 96:Enthusiasm produces the most cruel disorders in human society; but its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust themselves in a little time, and leave the air more calm and serene than before. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 97:Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 98:Only one who bursts with enthusiasm do I instruct; Only one who bubbles with excitement do I enlighten. If I hold up one corner and you do not come back to me with the other three, I do not continue the lesson. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 99:Those who are fired with an enthusiastic idea and who allow it to take hold and dominate their thoughts find that new worlds open for them. As long as enthusiasm holds out, so will new opportunities. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 100:Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 101:And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 102:The child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope that humanity can develop in a new direction. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 103:I think anyone's success depends on working hard, Industriousness and Enthusiasm, enjoying what you are doing. You can't work your best if you're not enjoying what you are doing. No way you can force yourself to. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 104:The best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 105:Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 106:Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity and fear of others. Never decide to do nothing just because you can only do little. Do what you can. You would be surprised at what "little" acts have done for our world. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 107:That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 108:Don't get stuck where you are, keep growing. It's a decision you have to make because it is easy to get stuck. Make a decision to develop better habits, to have better relationships and just to keep the enthusiasm for life. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 109:As a leader, you must be filled with energy and eagerness, joy and love for what you do. If you lack enthusiasm for your job, you cannot perform to the best of your ability. Industriousness is unattainable without Enthusiasm. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 110:If you love what you do and if you believe in what you do, others will share your enthusiasm. Passionate people find their way to the Virgin Group, and when they do, we snap them up and try to keep them within the family. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 111:Fear is a great robber of power. It paralyzes the thinking faculties, ruins spontaneity, enthusiasm, and self confidence. It has a blighting effect upon all one's thoughts, moods, and efforts. It destroys ambition and efficiency. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 112:I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 113:Whenever you complete a task of any size or importance, you feel a surge of energy, enthusiasm, and self-esteem. The more important the completed task, the happier, more confident, and more powerful you feel about yourself and your world. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 114:Others may have more ability than you, they may be larger, faster, quicker, better jumpers ... but no one should be your superior in respect to team spirit, loyalty, enthusiasm, cooperation, determination, industriousness, fight effort, and character. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 115:How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means & 116:George Bernard Shaw of England stopped over just long enough to make one speech in Bombay, India, started a war and 100 Indians killed each other. That's what I call good speech-making. The only enthusiasm any of our speakers can rouse is a demand to kill the speaker. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 117:Forget all the conventional & 118:Passion always trumps excuses! Passion is the inner excitement of being on the right path, doing what feels good to you and what you know you are meant to do. It’s my contention that the mere presence of passion within you—and the enthusiasm that comes with it—is all you need to fulfil your dreams. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 119:You must bring every particle of your energy, unanswerable resolution, your best efforts, your persistent industry to your task or the best will not come out of you. You must back up your ambition by your whole nature, by unbounded enthusiasm and a determination to win which knows no failure. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 120:There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 121:The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from, the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 122:When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose and meaning. Life is rich and full. We have no thoughts of bitterness. We have no memory of fear. We are joyously and intimately engaged with our world. This is the experience of authentic power ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 123:A people may prefer a free government, but if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers to subvert their institutions, in all these cases they are unfit for liberty. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 124:Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove 125:Every memorable act in the history of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it because it gives any challenge or any occupation, no mater how frightening or difficult, a new meaning. Without enthusiasm you are doomed to a life of mediocrity but with it you can accomplish miracles ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 126:Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 127:It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger. ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 128:The life of the spirit is the expression of Infinity and, as such, knows no artificial limits. True spirituality is not to be mistaken for an exclusive enthusiasm for some fad. It is not concerned with any "ism." When people seek spirituality apart from life, as if it had nothing to do with the material world, their search is futile. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove 129:The world is for newness, not for oldness. New, new things we have to create. Then only the world will progress. If not, we will come to feel that there is nothing new under the sun. We have to create new things to keep our joy. If there is no newness, how can we have enthusiasm? And if there is no enthusiasm, do we make any progress? ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 130:But I noted with real satisfaction how well ex-footballers seemed to have leadership qualifications . . . I believe that football, perhaps more than any other sport, tends to instill in men the feeling that victory comes through hard - almost slavish - work, team play, self-confidence, and an enthusiasm that amounts to dedication. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 131:No building is better than its structural foundation, and no man (woman) is better than his (her) mental foundation. When I prepared my original Success Pyramid years ago, I put industriousness and enthusiasm as the two cornerstones with LOYALTY right in the middle of the pyramid - Loyalty to yourself and to all those dependent upon you. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 132:If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain?moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 133:A love of flowers would beget early rising, industry, habits of close observation, and of reading. It would incline the mind to notice natural phenomena, and to reason upon them. It would occupy the mind with pure thoughts, and inspire a sweet and gentle enthusiasm; maintain simplicity of taste; and ... unfold in the heart an enlarged, unstraightened, ardent piety. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 134:Enthusiasm is the dynamics of your personality. Without it, whatever abilities you may possess lie dormant; and it is safe to say that nearly every man has more latent power than he ever learns to use. You may have knowledge, sound judgment, good reasoning faculties; but no one-not even yourself-will know it until you discover how to put your heart into thought and action. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 135:But we say you can vacillate in your range of positive energy from ecstasy to peacefulness, from exhilaration to joy, from out of your mind outrageous orgasmic enthusiasm for life, to subtle appreciation of life. But you never have to fall onto the negative side of the equation in order to find that balance you see. You can find perfect balance all within the positive range of things. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 136:The only thing you have to know is that opening allows energy in, and closing blocks it out. Now you have to decide whether or not you want this energy. How high do you want to get? How much love do you want to feel? How much enthusiasm do you want to have for the things you do? If enjoying a full life means experiencing high energy, love, and enthusiasm all the time, then don’t ever close. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 137:What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow. During the past decade that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis. As & 138:It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives ... thank you. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 139:I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy. In my excitement, I routinely take on more that I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion. You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart. This will be unbelievably tedious. I apologize in advance. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 140:This is to be observed of the Bishop of London, that, though apparently of a spirit somewhat austere, there is in his idiosyncrasy a strange fund of enthusiasm, a quality which ought never to be possessed by an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Prime Minister of England. The Bishop of London sympathies with everything that is earnest; but what is earnest is not always true; on the contrary error is often more earnest than truth. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 141:From the first days of my career as an entrepreneur, I have always used my own and my team's lack of experience to our advantage. In fact, at our first venture, Student magazine, we used our newcomer status to secure great interviews and generate publicity - people were excited about our new project and wanted to get involved. Our inexperience fed our restless enthusiasm for trying new things, which became part of our core mission. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 142:Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. Just as long as there is the enthusiasm of the chase they enjoy it; but when they begin to look around, and think of settling down, they find that that part by which joy enters is dead in them. They have spent their lives in heaping up colossal piles of treasure, which stand, at the end, like the pyramids in the desert sands, holding only the dust of kings. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 143:I am not a speaker nor a preacher. I have no mission to change the world. I have no original words or teaching to give anyone. I reflect only what I've seen and heard - most ordinary, very common. I have no fascination for fresh ideas and activity. All enthusiasm for worldly endeavours and strivings have all but gone. For me, thoughts, words and deeds- the activities of life, are merely the utensils for serving out the & 144:You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. Enthusiasm is the spark in your eye, the swing in your gait, the grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of your will and your energy to execute your ideas. Enthusiasts are fighters, they have fortitude, they have strong qualities. Enthusiasm is at the bottom of all progress. With it there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 145:Enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward. When you add a goal to the enjoyment of what you do, the energy- field or vibrational frequency changes. A certain degree of what we might call structural tension is now added to enjoyment, and so it turns into enthusiasm. At the height of creative activity fueled by enthusiasm, there will be enormous intensity and energy behind what you do. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 146:Positive self-expectancy is the first, most outwardly identifiable quality of a top-achieving, winning human being. Positive self-expectancy is pure and simple optimism: real enthusiasm for everything you do... [while] expecting the most favorable result from your own actions. There never was a winner who didn't expect to win in advance. Winners understand that life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And they know that you usually get what you expect in the long run. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 147:You know of the disease in Central Africa called sleeping sickness. . . . There also exists a sleeping sickness of the soul. Its most dangerous aspect is that one is unaware of its coming. That is why you have to be careful. As soon as you notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take it as a warning. You should realize your soul suffers if you live superficially. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 148:I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people, said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 149:You can tell by the way you feel if you are in alignment. When you feel eagerness, you’re on your path. When you feel enthusiasm, you’re on your path. When you feel anger, you’re off your path. When you feel frustration, you’re off your path. When you feel despair; when you feel depression, you’re really off your path. The Art of Allowing is deliberately choosing thoughts that cause me to offer a vibration that causes me to allow myself to receive the things that I’ve been asking for. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 150:The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question "Do you see the same truth?" would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 151:We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 152:A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~ john-muir, @wisdomtrove 153:If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings. In sum, our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstances in which we find themselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace, and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person. ~ sonja-lyubomirsky, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Sabrina’s enthusiasm ~ Elizabeth Lennox, #NFDB
2:His enthusiasm was adorable. ~ John Green, #NFDB
3:Enthusiasm moves the world. ~ Arthur Balfour, #NFDB
4:I'm guided by my enthusiasm. ~ Jonathan Demme, #NFDB
5:Enthusiasm is caught, not taught. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
6:Enthusiasm isn’t really my thing. ~ Susan Juby, #NFDB
7:I just have an enthusiasm for life. ~ Lou Holtz, #NFDB
8:My strength is my enthusiasm. ~ Placido Domingo, #NFDB
9:Enthusiasm is the fever of reason. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
10:Mere enthusiasm is the all in all. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
11:What I do best is share my enthusiasm. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
12:Ashok is composed largely of enthusiasm. ~ Tim Pratt, #NFDB
13:Enthusiasm is a divine possession. ~ Margaret Sanger, #NFDB
14:Everything good proceeds from enthusiasm. ~ Brian Eno, #NFDB
15:Enthusiasm and the ego cannot coexist. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
16:Enthusiasm is something so positive. ~ Carine Roitfeld, #NFDB
17:Enthusiasm is the great hill-climber. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
18:Nothing is won without enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
19:the word enthusiasm is “the God within. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
20:Enthusiasm is contagious. Start an epidemic. ~ Don Ward, #NFDB
21:Enthusiasm is the breath of genius. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
22:I shall die tepid, without enthusiasm. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
23:pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
24:There is nothing greater than enthusiasm. ~ Henry Moore, #NFDB
25:Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm. ~ Arnold J Toynbee, #NFDB
26:Enthusiasm is a form of social courage. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
27:You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
28:Depression Is Anger Without Enthusiasm. A ~ Mario Acevedo, #NFDB
29:Enthusiasm is common,Endurance is rare ~ Angela Duckworth, #NFDB
30:I don't have a problem with enthusiasm. ~ Jason Scott Lee, #NFDB
31:We bond over our shared lukewarm enthusiasm. ~ Mira T Lee, #NFDB
32:Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
33:Enthusiasm is the engine of success. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
34:Love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
35:There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
36:Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare. ~ Angela Duckworth, #NFDB
37:Enthusiasm is like having two right hands. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
38:Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
39:Nothing great comes without enthusiasm. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
40:Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
41:The purpose of Art is to create enthusiasm. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
42:The real secret of success is enthusiasm. ~ Walter Chrysler, #NFDB
43:Charisma is the transference of enthusiasm. ~ Ralph Archbold, #NFDB
44:Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
45:love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
46:Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
47:Genius is always accompanied by enthusiasm. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
48:...love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
49:Amateurs believe their enthusiasm will suffice. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
50:Cash can buy, but it takes enthusiasm to sell. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
51:Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. ~ Steven Wright, #NFDB
52:Enthusiasm is the steam that drives the engine. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
53:Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting. ~ Bela Lugosi, #NFDB
54:Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
55:You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm! ~ Colette, #NFDB
56:You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. ~ Colette, #NFDB
57:Enthusiasm is the first step, Artfulness comes later. ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
58:I guess my enthusiasm kind of rubs off on people. ~ Margaret Murray, #NFDB
59:Put life into living, and do it with enthusiasm! ~ Vinnie Tortorich, #NFDB
60:Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life. ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
61:Results come in proportion to enthusiasm applied. ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
62:The currency in the developer community is enthusiasm. ~ Erik Naggum, #NFDB
63:Attack each day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. ~ Jim Harbaugh, #NFDB
64:Enthusiasm and misplaced belief can take you a long way. ~ John Otway, #NFDB
65:Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
66:Nothing great ever happened without enthusiasm. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
67:T-Trust
E-Enthusiasm
A-Adjustment
M-Memories ~ Deepak Chopra,#NFDB
68:What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
69:Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment. ~ William Howard Taft, #NFDB
70:Enthusiasm is the intoxication of earnestness. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, #NFDB
71:Enthusiasm is the most beautiful word on earth. ~ Christian Morgenstern, #NFDB
72:Good work requires enthusiasm, ethics, and excellence. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
73:I promote my value to others with passion and enthusiasm. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
74:Love without reverence and enthusiasm is only friendship. ~ George Sand, #NFDB
75:I think enthusiasm counts for a lot in dancing and in life. ~ Susan Juby, #NFDB
76:Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
77:The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
78:The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm. ~ Huston Smith, #NFDB
79:All you had were pigs and enthusiasm. It’s not your fault. ~ T Kingfisher, #NFDB
80:Enthusiasm is contagious and so is the lack of it. ~ Suzanne Woods Fisher, #NFDB
81:Follow your enthusiasm. It's something I've always believed ~ Jim Henson, #NFDB
82:I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill. ~ Edward Victor Appleton, #NFDB
83:I think enthusiasm is the answer to passionate writing. ~ Jerome Lawrence, #NFDB
84:I was overcome with an attack of pathological enthusiasm. ~ Robert Lowell, #NFDB
85:Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
86:Enthusiasm is intensified enjoyment of what you are doing. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
87:Enthusiasm is the force that leads us to the final victory. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
88:Everything I've done I've done with enthusiasm and passion. ~ Kevin Keegan, #NFDB
89:Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer. ~ James Salter, #NFDB
90:Revolutions usually start with enthusiasm and end in tears. ~ George Soros, #NFDB
91:Without enthusiasm nothing great can be effected in art. ~ Robert Schumann, #NFDB
92:Alas! How enthusiasm decreases, as our experience increases! ~ Louise Colet, #NFDB
93:Enthusiasm cannot be a continuous state. It comes in waves. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
94:From the glow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven, #NFDB
95:I couldn't even muster the enthusiasm to hate myself anymore. ~ Allie Brosh, #NFDB
96:I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
97:Never stop challenging yourself! Never loose enthusiasm! ~ Haider Ackermann, #NFDB
98:pragmatist that I am, I always meet necessity with enthusiasm. ~ Jane Fonda, #NFDB
99:The fellow who isn't fired with enthusiasm is apt to be fired. ~ B C Forbes, #NFDB
100:Enthusiasm is a kind of faith that has been set afire ~ George Matthew Adams, #NFDB
101:Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
102:I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
103:None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
104:Nothing good or great can be done in the absence of enthusiasm. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
105:He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
106:NO ONE GIVES ADVICE WITH MORE ENTHUSIASM THAN AN IGNORANT PERSON. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
107:enthusiasm delights me, makes me laugh. “Yes, it’s an antebellum ~ Maris Black, #NFDB
108:Enthusiasm is not contrary to reason; it is reason - on fire. ~ Peter Marshall, #NFDB
109:Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
110:If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. ~ Bruce Barton, #NFDB
111:It's enthusiasm, not apathy, that makes the world go 'round. ~ Tony Alessandra, #NFDB
112:Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm. ~ Robert Schumann, #NFDB
113:A man who lacks enthusiasm never develops it in another. But ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
114:Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
115:The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
116:I have always tried to live my life with enthusiasm and pleasure. ~ Joan Collins, #NFDB
117:I like American black soul music, that was my first big enthusiasm. ~ Bill Nighy, #NFDB
118:In Hollywood, between enthusiasm and money lies the Sahara Desert. ~ Rex Pickett, #NFDB
119:I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
120:Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of missionary enthusiasm! ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
121:The years wrinkle our skin, but lack of enthusiasm wrinkles our soul. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
122:I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
123:My mate, your enthusiasm will leave me so spent I will be bedridden. ~ Ruby Dixon, #NFDB
124:There is nothing more contagious on this planet than enthusiasm. ~ Carlos Santana, #NFDB
125:As long as enthusiasm holds out, so will new opportunities. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
126:Enthusiasm is a good engine, but it needs intelligence for a driver. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
127:If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
128:Never lose your childish enthusiasm and things will come your way. ~ Frances Mayes, #NFDB
129:SEEK THOSE WITH A FIRE-IN-THE-BELLY ENTHUSIASM FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION ~ John Wooden, #NFDB
130:Curtis, where was that enthusiasm in the match? You might have won. ~ Dolph Ziggler, #NFDB
131:It takes struggle, a goal and enthusiasm to make a champion. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
132:one should only do that which truly fills our hearts with enthusiasm ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
133:Success is going from failure to failure with great enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
134:Whatever you choose, do it fully-with passion and childlike enthusiasm. ~ Mehmet Oz, #NFDB
135:What I bring to the table is a huge enthusiasm and love for this stuff. ~ Ted Allen, #NFDB
136:Enthusiasm attracts more passengers and energizes them during the ride. ~ Jon Gordon, #NFDB
137:Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
138:The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
139:Youth and enthusiasm can be fatiguing to those who have lost both. ~ Dorothy Whipple, #NFDB
140:You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, #NFDB
141:Her lack of enthusiasm for life was finally catching up to her. ~ Mimi Jean Pamfiloff, #NFDB
142:Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
143:There's a great enthusiasm for good country music all over the world. ~ Willie Nelson, #NFDB
144:When enthusiasm runs in the front door, worry runs out the back door. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
145:Common sense is compelled to make its way without the enthusiasm of anyone. ~ E W Howe, #NFDB
146:Courage, enthusiasm, awareness -- if only one can keep these to the end. ~ Ruth Draper, #NFDB
147:Enthusiasm is like a fire that needs an occasional poke with a stick. ~ Janice Thompson, #NFDB
148:Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
~ Benjamin Disraeli,#NFDB
149:He has no enthusiasm whatever for his subject. Ego, yes. Enthusiasm, no. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
150:He will need to learn that love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
151:Loneliness is not intolerable when enthusiasm for a quest fills the mind. ~ David Grann, #NFDB
152:The key to success is not through achievement, but through enthusiasm. ~ Malcolm Forbes, #NFDB
153:There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB
154:Enthusiasm is very catching, especially when it is very eloquent. ~ Mary Russell Mitford, #NFDB
155:He was laughing that silent and hard laugh reserved for true enthusiasm. ~ Carrie Fisher, #NFDB
156:How can one not feel enthusiasm for the man who never said anything vague? ~ Paul Val ry, #NFDB
157:If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. ~ Vince Lombardi, #NFDB
158:Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
159:The pursuit of dreams creates passion, energy, enthusiasm, and vitality. ~ Matthew Kelly, #NFDB
160:Years may wrinkle your skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles your soul. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
161:You can succeed at almost anything for which you have unbridled enthusiasm. ~ Zig Ziglar, #NFDB
162:Courage is the ability to go from failure to failure with enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
163:Enthusiasm is a volcano on whose top never grows the grass of hesitation. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
164:If we want to make friends, let’s greet people with animation and enthusiasm. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
165:We were young, but we had good advice and good ideas and lots of enthusiasm. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
166:When it comes to casual clothing, my enthusiasm for clothes starts to waver. ~ Bill Nighy, #NFDB
167:My feeling was that I simply didn't have the enthusiasm to do reinvention. ~ Roger Daltrey, #NFDB
168:Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
169:Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
170:Excessive caution can sometimes lead one as far astray as rash enthusiasm. ~ Donald Griffin, #NFDB
171:If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. ~ Vince Lombardi Jr, #NFDB
172:Loneliness is not intolerable when enthusiasm for a quest fills the mind,” he ~ David Grann, #NFDB
173:Someone to whom jokes are never told soon contracts enthusiasm deficiency. ~ Hanif Kureishi, #NFDB
174:Defeat is for those who, despite their fears, live with enthusiasm and faith. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
175:Enthusiasm for one's goal lessens the disagreeableness of working toward it. ~ Thomas Eakins, #NFDB
176:If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. ~ Vince Lombardi Jr, #NFDB
177:In fact, self-assured enthusiasm is an impressively useful indicator of success. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
178:Enthusiasm is one of the key ingredients for a lifetime of successful living ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
179:Humor, however broad and genial, takes a narrower view than enthusiasm. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
180:If we want to make friends, let's greet people with animation and enthusiasm. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
181:If we want to make friends, let’s greet people with animation and enthusiasm. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
182:Indeed, there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
183:One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
184:Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, enthusiasm is the true part of genius. ~ Isaac D Israeli, #NFDB
185:Success is going from one failure to the next without losing enthusiasm ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
186:The definition of courage is going from defeat to defeat with enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
187:True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
188:Approach every film with the same enthusiasm, regardless of its budget. ~ Lou Diamond Phillips, #NFDB
189:Enthusiasm spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
190:Her enthusiasm, her optimism, her hope? They were all so far from where he was. ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
191:Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
192:True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it. ~ Charlotte Bronte, #NFDB
193:We shared an explosive enthusiasm that we blasted out of our bodies with alcohol. ~ Ariel Levy, #NFDB
194:When you have the enthusiasm and the passion, you end up figuring how to excel. ~ Deena Kastor, #NFDB
195:A unique, personal music that lights up the stage with its joy and enthusiasm. ~ Mason Jennings, #NFDB
196:Catch on fire with enthusiasm, and people will come for miles to watch you burn ~ Jo Ann Butler, #NFDB
197:I don't know what I'm doing, but my incompetence has never stopped my enthusiasm. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
198:By looking on the bright side, we'll activate enthusiasm and turn on the go system. ~ Adam Grant, #NFDB
199:Enthusiasm is the nature of life. Become one whose enthusiasm never dies. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
200:I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm, than a man who knows everything. ~ John D Rockefeller, #NFDB
201:Mere enthusiasm is the all in all... / Passion and expression are beauty itself. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
202:What a man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm. ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
203:But the future is uncertain, and he can't get up enough enthusiasm even to masurbate. ~ M R Carey, #NFDB
204:Dogs have boundless enthusiasm but no sense of shame. I should have a dog as a life coach. ~ Moby, #NFDB
205:God has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
206:I live on a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Nikolai ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
207:Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
208:But the future is uncertain, and he can’t get up enough enthusiasm even to masturbate. ~ M R Carey, #NFDB
209:Enthusiasm is a vital element toward the individual success of every man or woman. ~ Conrad Hilton, #NFDB
210:His enthusiasm was adorable. I couldn’t resist leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. ~ John Green, #NFDB
211:It's that enthusiasm, that passion for what you're doing, that is most important. ~ Charles Kuralt, #NFDB
212:Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius. ~ Isaac D Israeli, #NFDB
213:The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
214:I have no enthusiasm for nature which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy. ~ George Sand, #NFDB
215:science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. ~ Patricia S Churchland, #NFDB
216:She ate life with unapologetic enthusiasm and took as many helpings as she wanted. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
217:Success and happiness spring from facing failure after failure with enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
218:Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
219:in modern times nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
220:I rarely acquire any enthusiasm for the opposite sex outside of being drunk. ~ Claire Louise Bennett, #NFDB
221:Keep up your enthusiasm! There is nothing more contagious than exuberant enthusiasm. ~ Harry Houdini, #NFDB
222:The enthusiasm you have for a new idea is not an accurate indicator of its true worth. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
223:Without enthusiasm then what we have surrounded ourselves with becomes worthless. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
224:Not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one, an excitement burning with a cold flame. ~ Patrick S skind, #NFDB
225:Not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one, an excitement burning with a cold flame. ~ Patrick Suskind, #NFDB
226:Speeches made to the people are essential to the arousing of enthusiasm for a war. ~ Benito Mussolini, #NFDB
227:The hatred of truth is a vice [...] From it comes pride and an enthusiasm for disorder. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
228:And as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
229:Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the human to the divine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
230:She bounces off with all the enthusiasm of someone rushing toward cake, not corpses. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
231:Success comes from continuing to strive, fail and learn without losing enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
232:Excitement, like enthusiasm, sometimes renders us unconscious to the things of earth. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
233:Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
234:There is a melancholy which accompanies all enthusiasm. ~ Anthony Ashley Cooper 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, #NFDB
235:Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understanding is warped with enthusiasm. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
236:Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means, "God in us." ~ Ken Burns, #NFDB
237:Enthusiasm is the power that transfers the mental blueprint into the physical dimension. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
238:Exaggerated passion combined with enthusiasm has the ingredients to make a prolific artist. ~ Don Watson, #NFDB
239:Flying is the only active profession I could ever continue with enthusiasm after the War. ~ Wilfred Owen, #NFDB
240:Optimism generates hope...hope releases dreams...dreams set goals...enthusiasm follows ~ Martin Seligman, #NFDB
241:Phlegmatic natures can be inspired to enthusiasm only by being made into fanatics. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
242:Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
243:Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
244:Anything where there's great enthusiasm, and a place to come share what you think is cool. ~ Keanu Reeves, #NFDB
245:Daring enthusiasm And abiding cheerfulness Can accomplish everything on earth Without fail. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
246:To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully. ~ Tryon Edwards, #NFDB
247:You had to hand it to the devil: long odds never dampened his enthusiasm one bit. David ~ Scott Nicholson, #NFDB
248:Youth culture adopts Armani and adapts it in its own way, as befits youthful enthusiasm. ~ Giorgio Armani, #NFDB
249:It's always harder to maintain raw enthusiasm or joy than to go into a really dark place. ~ Carey Mulligan, #NFDB
250:I would rather have one man with enthusiasm working with me than ten who are complacent. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
251:Let a man once see himself as others see him, and all enthusiasm vanishes from his heart. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
252:Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.-Adam Smith ~ Massimo Pigliucci, #NFDB
253:the world had gone too far in its enthusiasm for moderation and the thing had to be stopped ~ Rebecca West, #NFDB
254:Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
255:Enthusiasm is the energy and force that builds literal momentum of the human soul and mind. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
256:Life's blows cannot break a person whose spirit is warmed at the fire of enthusiasm. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
257:No one can do the same job, requiring the same tasks, with perpetual interest and enthusiasm. ~ David Niven, #NFDB
258:Being Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm was the best thing to happen to Larry David in life. ~ Larry David, #NFDB
259:Develop an enthusiasm for life, create a need for more life, and you will receive more life. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
260:Experience and enthusiasm are two fine business attributes seldom found in one individual. ~ William Feather, #NFDB
261:It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
262:The most valuable commodity in business today, if people would only recognize it, is enthusiasm ~ Rona Jaffe, #NFDB
263:We must see to it that enthusiasm for the future does not give rise to contempt for the past. ~ Pope Paul VI, #NFDB
264:Enthusiasm comes from the Greek word entheos, which means ‘inspired’ or ‘filled with the divine. ~ Jon Gordon, #NFDB
265:Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius. ~ Isaac D Israeli, #NFDB
266:Enthusiasm is the energy and force that builds literal momentum of the human soul and mind. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
267:Look at World War II, at Hitler's cruelty. The more cruelty, the more enthusiasm for revolution. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
268:No one creates a great life without reconnecting to the enthusiasm experienced in childhood. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
269:Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” ― Winston S. Churchill ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
270:There was not ... universal enthusiasm at the prospect of treating Humans as Significant beings. ~ Ann Leckie, #NFDB
271:To succeed in any field, Our enthusiasm-eyes must sparkle and our enthusiasm-hearts Must dance. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
272:If you enjoy what you do, don't be afraid of expressing your enthusiasm. Enjoyment is infectious. ~ Alan Sugar, #NFDB
273:Say goodbye to the energy vampires in your life (the negative souls who steal your enthusiasm). ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
274:"Aphrodite," she said. "Venus?" Hazel asked in amazement. "Mom," Piper said, with no enthusiasm. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
275:Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you; this will diminish his enthusiasm ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
276:Enthusiasm comes from the Greek word entheos, which means, "inspired" or "filled with the divine." ~ Jon Gordon, #NFDB
277:Enthusiasm — real grassroots enthusiasm — trumps money, trumps endorsements, trumps everything. ~ Eric Garcetti, #NFDB
278:It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, #NFDB
279:With Star Wars fans, there's so much enthusiasm, and it's a completely different generation now. ~ Peter Mayhew, #NFDB
280:A convert's enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born in it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
281:A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one. ~ Mary Kay Ash, #NFDB
282:Aziraphale felt an icy pit opening under his enthusiasm, and tried to pretend it wasn't happening. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
283:Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm. ~ Murray Gell Mann, #NFDB
284:Turn your fears into excitement.
Your anxieties into enthusiasm.
Your passion into energy. ~ Sanober Khan,#NFDB
285:Without enthusiasm you are doomed to a life of mediocrity, but with it you can accomplish miracles. ~ Og Mandino, #NFDB
286:Any music can be healing if it inspires, relaxes, encourages or creates enthusiasm for life in you. ~ David Simon, #NFDB
287:At times I fake my enthusiasm. At others, I fear I am incapable of communicating the depth of it. ~ Maggie Nelson, #NFDB
288:He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I could have looked at him forever. ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
289:It cannot take decades to resurrect, we must act immediately with purpose and enthusiasm to rebuild. ~ Alan Autry, #NFDB
290:One nice thing that I have discovered about Los Angeles is the enthusiasm with which people dress. ~ Ellie Kemper, #NFDB
291:The things that are worthwhile are usually accomplished by someone with enthusiasm and drive... ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
292:If you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
293:Success in life is the ability to move from one mistake to another without loosing enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
294:Whenever you are engaged in something and there is an outpouring of energy, you are in enthusiasm. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
295:And enthusiasm should not be quashed,’ Daniel told me, returning the kiss with compound interest. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB
296:Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
297:Daring enthusiasm
And abiding cheerfulness
Can accomplish everything on earth
Without fail. ~ Sri Chinmoy,#NFDB
298:I love the Broadway audiences, who relish live drama and don't hesitate to display their enthusiasm. ~ Ian Mckellen, #NFDB
299:I'm looking for players who make their teammates better. You do that with enthusiasm and passion. ~ Mike Krzyzewski, #NFDB
300:Improvement of one's economic position is helped more by cool persistence than by hot enthusiasm. ~ William Feather, #NFDB
301:The Church needs you, your enthusiasm, your creativity and the joy that is so characteristic of you. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
302:Aphrodite," she said.
"Venus?" Hazel asked in amazement.
"Mom," Piper said, with no enthusiasm. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
303:Glory to that Homer of painting, to that father of warmth and enthusiasm... he really paints men. ~ Eugene Delacroix, #NFDB
304:If you have zest and enthusiasm you attract zest and enthusiasm. Life does give back in kind. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
305:Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
306:Enthusiasm releases the drive to carry you over obstacles and adds significance to all you do. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
307:In the end it all comes down to enthusiasm. Your creativity is basically your expression of God-force. ~ Stuart Wilde, #NFDB
308:I suggested back in 1980 to do a chronological live album, but there wasn't that much enthusiasm for it. ~ Jimmy Page, #NFDB
309:I have no idea what I am doing but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
310:I must have good genes from my parents because I feel no slowdown of energy, enthusiasm or even memory. ~ Nancy Pelosi, #NFDB
311:I've never seen the kind of enthusiasm at the grassroots that I see campaigning with or for Donald Trump. ~ Mike Pence, #NFDB
312:To succeed in any field,
Our enthusiasm-eyes must sparkle
And our enthusiasm-hearts
Must dance. ~ Sri Chinmoy,#NFDB
313:Enthusiasm, excitement, and determination won't get you anywhere if you don't know where you are going. ~ Crystal Paine, #NFDB
314:I love talking to all the kids, and have enjoyed the enthusiasm and response from their teachers as well. ~ Scott Cohen, #NFDB
315:It has been said that people never do evil with more enthusiasm than when they do it in the name of God. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
316:Success is often nothing more than moving from one failure to another with undiminished enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
317:The enthusiasm for [Donald] Trump had gone up. The net result was it made people more supportive of him. ~ Mara Liasson, #NFDB
318:The main purpose of a significance test is to inhibit the natural enthusiasm of the investigator. ~ Frederick Mosteller, #NFDB
319:To have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation - this to to have succeeded. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
320:Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit. ~ Gordon Parks, #NFDB
321:Ignorance and fear create the gods, enthusiasm and deceit adorn them, and human weakness worships them. ~ Graham McNeill, #NFDB
322:I'm not really looking for theater work. But if somebody approaches me with enthusiasm, I might respond. ~ David Hockney, #NFDB
323:I was already sort of mixing my science physics enthusiasm with entertainment and directing and puppetry. ~ Brian Henson, #NFDB
324:Progress can be slow and gradual. Continue putting in effort with patience, enthusiasm and faith. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi, #NFDB
325:He gathered enthusiasm when he thought of the goal, and not the means by which he had accomplished it. ~ Harry Turtledove, #NFDB
326:Maintain your rage and enthusiasm for the campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day. ~ Gough Whitlam, #NFDB
327:Ridicule has always been the enemy of enthusiasm, and the only worthy opponent to ridicule is success. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
328:You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
329:Gratitude for the many blessings that recovery has brought even further heightens our enthusiasm for living. ~ Karen Casey, #NFDB
330:I fairly sizzle with zeal, energy, and enthusiasm; eager to do that which ought to be done by me today. ~ Charles Fillmore, #NFDB
331:IF PARENTS PASS ENTHUSIASM ALONG TO THEIR CHILDREN, THEY WILL LEAVE THEM AN ESTATE OF INCALCULABLE VALUE ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
332:If you are not getting as much from life as you want to, then examine the state of your enthusiasm. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
333:Life that only a few hours before had glowed with enthusiasm and exultation, suddenly paled and sickened. ~ Fritz Kreisler, #NFDB
334:Only someone authentic, with a deep love of art, will radiate the enthusiasm needed to keep them engaged ~ Lisa Desrochers, #NFDB
335:Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. —WINSTON CHURCHILL ~ Alan W Hirshfeld, #NFDB
336:Tiny personality changes here and there inspire growth in us constantly. Inspiration leads to enthusiasm. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
337:Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
338:Bernadette and her enthusiasm were like a hippo and water: get between them and you’ll be trampled to death. ~ Maria Semple, #NFDB
339:Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act
enthusiastic until you make it a habit. ~ Gordon Parks,#NFDB
340:I wouldn't want the pressure of a Six Feet Under or the pressure of improvising like Curb Your Enthusiasm. ~ Robert Englund, #NFDB
341:Success,” as Winston Churchill once said, “is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. ~ Amanda Ripley, #NFDB
342:There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
343:Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
344:Go into something because you really like it, and then do it with a drive and enthusiasm so that it isn't work. ~ John Kluge, #NFDB
345:I don't think you lead by pessimism and cynicism. I think you lead by optimism and enthusiasm and energy. ~ Patricia Ireland, #NFDB
346:Scapegrace went to roll his eyes, but lost his enthusiasm halfway through and ended up looking at the ceiling. ~ Derek Landy, #NFDB
347:The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm. ~ Joyce Cary, #NFDB
348:Training was a time where resolutions made in the enthusiasm of an inspired moment were put to personal test. ~ Herb Elliott, #NFDB
349:Winston Churchill’s great remark that “success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
350:You can buy a person's hands but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
351:Go at life every day with passion and enthusiasm... and when challenges arrive, simply do not give up. ~ G Richard Wagoner Jr, #NFDB
352:Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
353:She, on the other hand, had blatantly exhibited the Sagittarius traits of excessive enthusiasm and bluntness. Mr. ~ Nina Lane, #NFDB
354:There is a sort of human paste that when it comes near the fire of enthusiasm is only baked into harder shape. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
355:Wil ate without enthusiasm. His bacon tasted like nothing. Like a dead animal, fried. His eggs, aborted chickens. ~ Max Barry, #NFDB
356:As Winston Churchill once said, “The trick is to go from one failure65 to another, with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Warren Berger, #NFDB
357:Doggedness depends on emotional traits - enthusiasm and persistence in the face of setbacks - above all else. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
358:Enthusiasm does not always speak for those who arouse it, but always for those who experience it. ~ Marie von Ebner Eschenbach, #NFDB
359:Enthusiasm, if fueled by inspiration and perseverance, travels with passion and its destination is excellence. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
360:Even in my stand-up, there's a lot more positivity and enthusiasm rather than negative, I-hate-everything vibes. ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
361:If we venture beyond the pale of Scripture, we are...exposed to all the illusions of imagination and enthusiasm. ~ John Newton, #NFDB
362:My attitude is always one of sensuality, aggressive enthusiasm and a kind of outrageousness in my expression. ~ Sally Kirkland, #NFDB
363:My belief is that what comes across on the television is a capture of my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife. ~ Steve Irwin, #NFDB
364:No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
365:The enthusiasm, the swell of sweet courage he heard in her voice, filled him with Seattle-grunge levels of despair. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
366:Enthusiasm is contagious - so is a lack of it. Joyless Christians are a greater assault on the gospel than atheism. ~ Mark Hart, #NFDB
367:Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with your might.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
368:How can we harness the enthusiasm and curiosity in our new hires to make sure that existing SREs benefit from it? ~ Betsy Beyer, #NFDB
369:Persuasive communication involves enthusiasm, animation, audience participation, authenticity and spontaneity. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
370:The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
371:Enthusiasm is contagious, and the person who has it, under control, is generally welcome in any group of people. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
372:Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
373:I am painting with the same enthusiasm as a Marseillaise eats bouillabaisse ... I am painting big sunflowers. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
374:I suppose that if one is ever to have boundless enthusiasm and endless energy one has them at seventeen, eighteen. ~ Norah Lofts, #NFDB
375:Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do is 'ride the wave'. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
376:When someone compliments me on my physique, positive attitude, or enthusiasm, I walk on air the rest of the day. ~ Robert Cheeke, #NFDB
377:You can make yourself enthusiastic by affirming enthusiasm and by thinking, talking, acting enthusiastic. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
378:Enthusiasm is a wonderful thing. In South America they throw flowers to you. In Greece Greeks throw themselves. ~ Melina Mercouri, #NFDB
379:Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
380:Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
381:As a kid, you await holidays with a wide-eyed, passionate, almost maniacal enthusiasm. Heavy breathing is involved. ~ Gina Barreca, #NFDB
382:Enthusiasm Rules his inner world. Determination Rules his outer world. Therefore Happiness has become His real name. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
383:I'd...bet enthusiasm for 'ethnic cleansing' will wane if only sticks and rocks are available for the warring parties. ~ Bill Hicks, #NFDB
384:In your life, did you know enthusiasm?' If the answer is yes you enter the sky. If no, you fall to burn in the pit. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
385:I've dated attractive people and I don't find a correlation between amorous enthusiasm and beauty and public figure status. ~ Moby, #NFDB
386:No one slaughters a coreligionist with quite as much enthusiasm as a Christian, my dear. Look at their history. ~ Elizabeth Peters, #NFDB
387:She would tell him that his enthusiasm for life had given her the courage to do as much as she had with her life, ~ Barbara Demick, #NFDB
388:The strongest predictors of who got the money were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
389:To become a fan of something, to open and change, is a move of deliberate optimism, curiosity, and enthusiasm. ~ Carrie Brownstein, #NFDB
390:Too much empty enthusiasm can even be demotivating, if not supported by the right skills and a lot of elbow grease. ~ Derek Murphy, #NFDB
391:We rely more on enthusiasm than actual skill. Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically and people will like it more. ~ Chris Martin, #NFDB
392:I dedicate the love, enthusiasm, welcome and respect given to me to the feet of 125 crore children of Mother India. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
393:In our enthusiasm to dominate nature and to produce more material good - goods - we have transformed means into ends. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
394:In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
395:As Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
396:Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
397:Great happiness, and mingled therefor with bitter sorrow. It is not by enthusiasm but by tactics that we defeat a foe. ~ Georg Ebers, #NFDB
398:I do have a childlike enthusiasm at times. I certainly enjoy life and get pleasure sometimes in childish things. ~ Brian Baumgartner, #NFDB
399:If unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are present, praise isn't necessary. If they're absent, praise won't help. ~ Alfie Kohn, #NFDB
400:That youthful enthusiasm for the Resistance was killed off quick in new recruits, if they were not killed off first. ~ Dean F Wilson, #NFDB
401:and my editor, Tom Dupree, for his patience, enthusiasm, and shared good taste for loving Mystery Science Theater 3000. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
402:As Winston Churchill so aptly explained, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
403:Never forget that all the enthusiasm you need is in your mind. Let it out - let it live - let it motivate you. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
404:think I have sort of an odd aversion, almost like a chemical sensitivity, when it comes to other people’s enthusiasm. ~ Wendy McClure, #NFDB
405:What's amazing about doing movies, compared to television, there's an ending you can see. There's an enthusiasm to it. ~ Jim Gaffigan, #NFDB
406:When a person applies enthusiasm to his job, the job will itself become alive with exciting new possibilities. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
407:When we're infused with either enthusiasm or awe or fondness ... it changes what we see. It changes what we remember. ~ Robert Legato, #NFDB
408:don't even leap to actions and decisions before you've found that sense of natural calm, well-being, or enthusiasm. ~ Frederick Dodson, #NFDB
409:if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm of childhood–it makes no sense to go on living ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
410:The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
411:They all employed lots of skinny, bored teenagers who stocked shelves with the enthusiasm of a eunuch at an orgy. There ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
412:You see the crowds. I mean, you don't see enthusiasm like that at a Hillary [Clinton] rally. People are falling asleep. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
413:But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
414:In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm. ... In the real world, all rests on perseverance. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
415:There are very few good examples of effective, nurturing leadership that unlocks people's potential or even enthusiasm. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
416:Try to improve. Don't expect too much, but don't feel discouraged either; keep up your enthusiasm; you will make progress. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
417:What a lot of fun you could have if you made unimportant things seem important and went about them with enthusiasm. ~ Carol Ryrie Brink, #NFDB
418:A lot of bands have the enthusiasm kicked out of them by playing really dreary pub venues that just churn bands through. ~ Alex Kapranos, #NFDB
419:everything which causes us to lose our enthusiasm and self respect, is harmful; even if it means power, money or success. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
420:The gap between enthusiasm and indifference is filled with failures. The great man is he that does not lose his child's heart. ~ Mencius, #NFDB
421:The happiest people are those who have learned to mix play with their work and to bind the two together with enthusiasm. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
422:There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
423:The rest of the rebels were recruited from the ranks of the young and excitable and had rather more enthusiasm than skill. ~ John Scalzi, #NFDB
424:Young people can be annoying, let's face it. But they can also be really refreshing to be around and full of enthusiasm. ~ John C Reilly, #NFDB
425:At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important. ~ M C Escher, #NFDB
426:Can you dance?
Of course, I said, even though I can’t really. I think enthusiasm counts for a lot in dancing and in life. ~ Susan Juby,#NFDB
427:Fill the day with enthusiasm. Give the day all you've got and it will give you all it's got, which will be plenty. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
428:Stand fully in the now moment with gratitude, enthusiasm, openness, and readiness to respond to Life as it greets you. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
429:There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
430:The worst crimes are committed out of enthusiasm, a morbid state responsible for almost all public and private disasters. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
431:Colonel Vivian had convinced himself that Ivor Montagu's enthusiasm for Ping-Pong was a cover for something more sinister. ~ Ben Macintyre, #NFDB
432:I still enjoy the company of most dogs more than that of most people, because dogs are capable of uncomplicated enthusiasm. ~ John Gierach, #NFDB
433:No person is ever good for much, that hasn't been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty ~ James Anthony Froude, #NFDB
434:Stay true to your brand and true to your voice and audiences will respond to that authenticity with enthusiasm and passion. ~ Kevin Spacey, #NFDB
435:The four great motives for writing prose are sheer egoism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
436:The Government's enthusiasm for 24 hour drinking puzzles me... We want people to be responsible, yet we urge them to drink. ~ Frank Dobson, #NFDB
437:You have to live spherically - in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm - and things will come your way. ~ Federico Fellini, #NFDB
438:Your enthusiasm becomes their enthusiasm; your lukewarm presentation becomes their lukewarm interest in what you're offering. ~ Bill Walsh, #NFDB
439:enthusiasm for Communism in theory was characteristically present in inverse proportion to direct experience of it in practice. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
440:Every page should explode, either because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography. ~ Tristan Tzara, #NFDB
441:false enthusiasm does not come easily to six-year-olds … although, sad to say, it’s a skill most of us learn fairly rapidly. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
442:It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth. ~ Arthur Balfour, #NFDB
443:One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm. ~ Ella Maillart, #NFDB
444:Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire; it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini, #NFDB
445:The man’s oral skills were off the chart. Such attention to detail. And the enthusiasm—the man was starving and I was his meal. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
446:Cushion the painful effects of hard blows by keeping the enthusiasm going strong, even if doing so requires struggle. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
447:However, you could have conveyed your enthusiasm for this idea with the use of only one exclamation point. Three is overkill. ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
448:Earn by your efficiency and enthusiasm, The right to play higher and higher roles ,That is the meaning and purpose of life. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
449:Enthusiasm for conservation can be fashioned into a nasty weapon for those who dislike business on general principles. ~ William F Buckley Jr, #NFDB
450:Enthusiasm is the key not only to the achievement of great things but to the accomplishment of any thing that is worthwhile. ~ Samuel Goldwyn, #NFDB
451:The thing that I really look for in people is enthusiasm and excitement and, not to sound really sappy, that fire in their eyes. ~ Rachel Zoe, #NFDB
452:Trying to get pregnant is one of my very favorite things to do. We’ll have to practice frequently, and with great enthusiasm. ~ Thea Harrison, #NFDB
453:Do not try to pull people to your path! All you have to do is to travel on your own path with great enthusiasm and faith! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
454:Focus on the core problem your business solves & put out lots of content & enthusiasm, & ideas about how to solve that problem. ~ Laura Fitton, #NFDB
455:I can't afford to slow down, but I suppose it really depends. As long as there's enough enthusiasm, then one wants to continue. ~ Sean Connery, #NFDB
456:It is not easy to find something that will intrigue and bind your interest and enthusiasm. This you must seek for yourself. ~ Walter Annenberg, #NFDB
457:Let us remember the past with gratitude, live the present with enthusiasm, and look forward to the future with confidence. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
458:We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
459:While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
460:Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
461:Enthusiasm is the electric current that keeps the engine of life going at top speed. Enthusiasm is the very propeller of progress. ~ B C Forbes, #NFDB
462:I feel that my main responsibility as a teacher isn’t to convey facts, but to rekindle that lost enthusiasm for asking questions. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
463:If you don't love what you're doing with unbridled passion and enthusiasm, you're not going to succeed when you hit obstacles. ~ Howard Schultz, #NFDB
464:O lovely Sisters! is it true That they are all inspired by you, And write by inward magic charm'd, And high enthusiasm warm'd? ~ Joanna Baillie, #NFDB
465:One may speak about anything on earth with fire, with enthusiasm, with ecstasy, but one only speaks about oneself with avidity. ~ Ivan Turgenev, #NFDB
466:The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm. ~ Teju Cole, #NFDB
467:The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm ~ Leonard Bernstein, #NFDB
468:while enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
469:I was under no illusions as to my physical attractiveness. It was not such that it would inspire propriety-overwhelming enthusiasm. ~ Ann Leckie, #NFDB
470:Many (Christians) have zeal without knowledge, enthusiasm without enlightenment. In more modern jargon, they are keen but clueless. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
471:The original Greek word for enthusiasm meant "to be filled with God." When we are "filled with God" we tend to lead on purpose. ~ Richard Leider, #NFDB
472:Enthusiasm, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
473:In every painting a whole is mysteriously enclosed, a whole life of tortures, doubts, of hours of enthusiasm and inspiration. ~ Wassily Kandinsky, #NFDB
474:The roof leaked and the toilet flushed with the kind of diminished enthusiasm that often precedes serious septic difficulties. She ~ David Rhodes, #NFDB
475:Americans’ enthusiasm for apocalyptic fantasy probably owes more to movies like The Exorcist and The Omen than to the Bible itself. ~ Susan Jacoby, #NFDB
476:Every reformation must have its victims. You can’t expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal’s return. ~ Saki, #NFDB
477:Productivity is effectively stewarding my gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God. ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
478:She smiled and feigned enthusiasm, although she cared little for the game. Sometimes that's what you did for the people you loved. ~ Julie Klassen, #NFDB
479:She waded through the letter like a guilty pleasure, torn between annoyance and enchantment with Miss Aster's obvious enthusiasm. ~ Scott Wilbanks, #NFDB
480:Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit. GORDON PARKS, PHOTOGRAPHER ~ Mike Robbins, #NFDB
481:I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message. ~ Steve Irwin, #NFDB
482:I hope you weren't looking to me to be the voice of reason. I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
483:I hope you weren’t looking to me to be the voice of reason. I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
484:Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
485:Bix looked at Alleyn with all the enthusiasm of a smart Labrador offered the chance of a long walk and a good many rabbits
Pg 172 ~ Stella Duffy,#NFDB
486:I'm an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
487:Our author warns us that inspiration, enthusiasm, earnestness, even honesty about what one believes is no guarantee of truth. ~ Ben Witherington III, #NFDB
488:Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God. ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
489:Starbucks was delivering more value than just coffee; they were delivering a sense of sophistication and enthusiasm about life. They ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
490:When you burn out, you lose enthusiasm. I always loved computers. All of a sudden I just didn’t care. It was, all of a sudden, a job. ~ Tracy Kidder, #NFDB
491:As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later ~ Alistair Cooke, #NFDB
492:I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm. ~ Robert Farrar Capon, #NFDB
493:My day begins with gratitude and joy. I look forward with enthusiasm to the adventures of the day, knowing that in my life, All is good. ~ Louise Hay, #NFDB
494:A drow and a dwarf, a dwarf and a drow, a hunnerd times better’n a fox and a cow! Bwahaha!” Athrogate added with unbridled enthusiasm. ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB
495:If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the "enthusiasm for truth and justice" using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
496:Nothing great or new can be done without enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the fly-wheel which carries your saw through the knots in the log. ~ Harvey Cushing, #NFDB
497:Accordingly the Northern races of Europe found their inspiration in the Bible; and the enthusiasm for it has not yet quite faded away. ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
498:Enthusiasm is by far the highest paid quality on earth, probably because it is one of the rarest; yet it is one of the most contagious. ~ Frank Bettger, #NFDB
499:excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
500:She complied while yet another dark-suited man in sunglasses frisked her with so much enthusiasm Kat almost asked for a penicillin shot. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
501:The language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
502:When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. ~ W Clement Stone, #NFDB
503:Cynicism is more than a pose; it's also a handy time saver. By deflating your companion's enthusiasm, you can cut conversations in half. ~ Lisa Birnbach, #NFDB
504:I have a lot of respect for Ovechkin as a player. I like his enthusiasm. I know the kid has a zest for life and a joy for the game. ~ Alexander Ovechkin, #NFDB
505:I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work.
Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,#NFDB
506:Felix ignored her for the entire time she was there, breaking off only to wash his bottom with what seemed like almost insulting enthusiasm. ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
507:Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
508:Ridicule has even been the most powerful enemy of enthusiasm, and properly the only antagonist that can be opposed to it with success. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
509:They’d had no interest in proving themselves. They just did what they loved—with tremendous drive and enthusiasm—and it led where it led. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
510:Well, that’s a relief. You know that I have the greatest possible enthusiasm for this mission.” “I’m sure of it. Now please let me have ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
511:For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
512:I sat there thinking this had to be the pits. I was afraid that I had become fed up with life, that I would never ever feel enthusiasm again. ~ Erlend Loe, #NFDB
513:One of the reasons we do history, in fact, is because it acts as a brake, a control, on our otherwise unbridled enthusiasm for our own ideas. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
514:Still, though reading absorbed her, what the Queen had not expected was the degree to which it drained her of enthusiasm for anything else. ~ Alan Bennett, #NFDB
515:...whenever there is inspiration...and enthusiasm...there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
516:Enthusiasm! this is the sign that the creative fountain is in you. “Enthusiasm is the All in All,” said Blake. I must tell you this often.] ~ Brenda Ueland, #NFDB
517:Fantastic,” I said without an ounce of enthusiasm. “I’m just one more embarrassing confession away from taking over the world.” --Spencer Nye ~ Jason Letts, #NFDB
518:Good news does more than get attention; good news pleases people. Good news develops enthusiasm. Good news even promotes good digestion. ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
519:I wept because I was re-experiencing the enthusiasm of my childhood; I was once again a child, and nothing in the world could cause me harm. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
520:No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
521:The one thing that fills me with enthusiasm is to try, despite everything, to get nearer to those visions that seem so hard to express. ~ Alberto Giacometti, #NFDB
522:Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
523:Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Earliest reference to the madness or divine inspiration of poets. ~ Democritus, #NFDB
524:His friends say: ‘Look, he’s lost all enthusiasm.’ But he pays no attention to such remarks because his friends do not understand his tactics. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
525:In the first days of mobilization there was of course a lot of enthusiasm,” recalled Robert Poustis, who was a French student at the time. ~ Russell Freedman, #NFDB
526:Ive always enjoyed the enthusiasm of the best studio musicians and, over the years, have collected so many inspired contributions from them. ~ Michael Franks, #NFDB
527:men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. Now ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
528:Po's [Kung Fu Panda] unending enthusiasm is something we wish we could have. We can't help but root for him because of his geek energy. ~ Jennifer Yuh Nelson, #NFDB
529:There should be a dash of the amateur in criticism. For the amateur is a man of enthusiasm who has not settled down and is not habit bound. ~ Brooks Atkinson, #NFDB
530:Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
531:To the young man a kind of worship of some power outside himself is essential. one has strength and enthusiasm and wants gods to worship. ~ Sherwood Anderson, #NFDB
532:Well, you don’t snore like bathwater going down the plughole.’ We listened some more. ‘It’s very – loud.’ ‘He certainly sleeps with enthusiasm. ~ Jodi Taylor, #NFDB
533:I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
534:I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win. ~ Michael Jordan, #NFDB
535:Is enthusiasm important in selling? Yes, genuine, heartfelt enthusiasm is one of the most potent factors of success in almost any undertaking. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
536:It was dangerous to overflow, because we might end up flooding areas occupied by our loved ones and drowning them with our love and enthusiasm. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
537:It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
538:That is like throwing two virgins into a bed. Enthusiasm, passion, and ignorance are not a good combination. Someone is likely to get hurt. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
539:There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
540:Thirty--the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
541:This was Maude's legacy; she left Alice with her heart weakened, its chambers bruised. She was no longer up to the enthusiasm required by love. ~ Carol Anshaw, #NFDB
542:Your enthusiasm will be infectious, stimulating and attractive to others. They will love you for it They will go for you and with you ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
543:Adventure is just about doing something you’ve never done— doing it with enthusiasm and curiosity: doing something difficult with passion. ~ Alastair Humphreys, #NFDB
544:Enthusiasm is that ingredient of vitality mixed with a firm belief in what you are doing that ensures the success of any project you undertake. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
545:Every reformation must have its victims. You can’t expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal’s return. ~ Hector Hugh Munro, #NFDB
546:Halloween’s about enthusiasm – without it, there ain’t nothing there. That, and a little imagination, and a good sense of fun is all you need. ~ Gregory Miller, #NFDB
547:Homosexuality is not because of our sexual orientation, but our eagerness and enthusiasm for experiencing something new, different and unusual. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
548:Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
549:Some of you in this room support higher taxes. I welcome your enthusiasm and am glad to report that the IRS takes both money orders and checks. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
550:The most attractive thing that I've seen in the creative realm is the enthusiasm in people that does not seem to burn out. That's what I'm after. ~ Blake Mills, #NFDB
551:There's nothing clinically wrong with me, only an emotional imbalance - I pass too quickly from the wildest enthusiasm to the blackest despair. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
552:Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: It comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
553:Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
554:Musical acts that feign enthusiasm for what they're doing the guitarist who jumps up and down, like it's choreographed are so transparently vacuous. ~ John Maus, #NFDB
555:Success is Ability to go from One Failure to Another. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
556:I admire many entrepreneurs. They bring energy, excitement, youthful enthusiasm. What they lack in process, they make up for in gumption. ~ Michael J Silverstein, #NFDB
557:If we keep our little flame alive, our first feeling of enthusiasm of who we are, without the influence or intervention of others, we will prevail. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
558:Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
559:Thank you for your enthusiasm. Earlier today I told another student I was getting new encyclopedias - he asked me how long I'd be in the hospital! ~ Chris Colfer, #NFDB
560:he had not been in Coralio long enough for his enthusiasm to cool in the heat of the tropics—a paradox that may be allowed between Cancer and Capricorn. ~ O Henry, #NFDB
561:Nothing is more misleading than to call Hitler a Fascist. Fascism is upper-class rule, buttressed by artificially manufactured mass enthusiasm ~ Sebastian Haffner, #NFDB
562:Saints, Alina. I hope you weren’t looking to me to be the voice of reason. I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
563:You could take the Internet enthusiasm that was happening in 1999 and 2000 here in the U.S., and in China it was three-to-five times more ebullient. ~ Mary Meeker, #NFDB
564:You must realize that men make war as much with the enthusiasm of those who want it as with the despair of those who reject it with all their soul. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
565:Your defeats in life's battlefield
Will soon be ending,
Because your mind is no longer indifferent
To your heart's spontaneous enthusiasm. ~ Sri Chinmoy,#NFDB
566:Youth, enthusiasm, and tenderness are like the days of spring. Instead of complaining, O my heart, of their brief duration, try to enjoy them. ~ Friedrich Ruckert, #NFDB
567:Even with a great vision, people lose their enthusiasm and fail to accomplish what they’re capable of doing if their leaders are dropping the ball. ~ Mark Goulston, #NFDB
568:Fortune would be in a hard mood indeed if it allowed such a combination of knowledge, experience, ability, and enthusiasm to achieve nothing. ~ Robert Falcon Scott, #NFDB
569:...it was dangerous to overflow because we might end up finding ourselves occupied by our loved ones and drowning them with our love and enthusiasm. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
570:You should live fully and with enthusiasm, the commands of your faith, but it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else. ~ Tim Kaine, #NFDB
571:Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is due to the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
572:He looked at me again and his eyes shone in the lamplight, or with the inner light of delighted anticipation.
His enthusiasm made him beautiful. ~ Rachel Hartman,#NFDB
573:Positive thoughts: joy, happiness, fulfillment, achievement, worthiness, have positive results: enthusiasm, calm, well-being, ease, energy, love. ~ Peter McWilliams, #NFDB
574:Put yourself into life and never lose your openness, your childish enthusiasm throughout the journey that is life, and things will come your way. ~ Federico Fellini, #NFDB
575:The warrior of light knows that everything around him - his victories, his defeats, his enthusiasm and his despondency - form part of his Good Fight. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
576:Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
577:Don't look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
578:Enthusiasm is the divine particle in our composition: with it we are great, generous, and true; without it, we are little, false, and mean. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon, #NFDB
579:The most profound sentence ever written, Temple said with enthusiasm, is the sentence at the end of the zoology. Reproduction is the beginning of death. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
580:Both of them are overjoyed to see me, which is one of the best parts of owning a dog. Unconditional love and enthusiasm, even when you don’t deserve it. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
581:It's relatively easy to generate a lot of enthusiasm for Puget Sound in the short term. Sustaining the effort to clean it up is somewhat tougher. ~ William Ruckelshaus, #NFDB
582:It takes sharper axes to chops bigger trees just as it takes deeper enthusiasm to overcome stronger challenges. Timidity only increases your fears. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
583:Religion, too, he warned, especially when “kindled into enthusiasm,” is a “force like that of other passions” and “may become a motive to oppression. ~ Edward J Larson, #NFDB
584:Reverence, enthusiasm, and a sense of guardianship, these three are actually the panacea, the magical remedy, in the soul of the educator and teacher. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
585:He saw at once that the crowd “was filled with whooping enthusiasm and every kind of whiskey,” and that a riot might ensue if either camp felt slighted. ~ Edmund Morris, #NFDB
586:I've survived quite a few generations. That's because I never lost my enthusiasm. I wake up every morning like on Christmas Day, waiting for the gifts. ~ Karl Lagerfeld, #NFDB
587:Like simplicity and candor, and other much-commented qualities, enthusiasm is charming until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
588:The Department of Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins was founded and directed by Tom Pollard, an engaging young scientist with remarkable energy and enthusiasm. ~ Peter Agre, #NFDB
589:As long as I can do something that I am passionate about and that I can really enjoy and the audience can enjoy. That is where my enthusiasm comes from. ~ Dwayne Johnson, #NFDB
590:Everyone remembers Stuart Pearce as a determined, aggressive player, who played with great heart and enthusiasm that gave him a great career in the game. ~ Alex Ferguson, #NFDB
591:I'd like to learn to meditate with more enthusiasm. I can sit down and get quiet for 20 minutes, but it just has not been a part of my Christianity at all. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
592:I'll keep on acting 'til they wipe the drool. I like the business. I like to do different parts and diverse characters. I haven't lost my enthusiasm yet! ~ Robert Duvall, #NFDB
593:Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
594:Our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm and shrewdly relapsing into repose. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
595:There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never. Ever. Never. ~ Ryan Adams, #NFDB
596:Children are a house's enemy. They don't mean to be - they just can't help it. It's their enthusiasm, their energy, their naturally destructive tendencies. ~ Delia Ephron, #NFDB
597:Enthusiasm: If you don’t FEEL enthusiastic, ACT enthusiastic. Soon, you’ll BE enthusiastic. Double your enthusiasm and you’ll probably double your income. ~ Frank Bettger, #NFDB
598:I love music so much, and as long as I got all this enthusiasm and ambition, and passion for this music; as long as I'm having' fun - I'm gonna keep doin' it. ~ Paul Wall, #NFDB
599:I think the U.S. is falling behind. There's massive government initiatives going around the world and you see that there's a real enthusiasm for genetics. ~ Anne Wojcicki, #NFDB
600:One of the best lovers in Hollywood. What would a title like that encompass exactly? she wondered. Technique? Enthusiasm? Or was it more about equipment? ~ Sarah Mayberry, #NFDB
601:The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's. To her, the hand-writing itself, independent of any thing it may convey, is a blessedness. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
602:The other thing that I love too is the enthusiasm of the QVC customer. She loves fashion, she loves looking great, and she loves discovering something new. ~ Brad Goreski, #NFDB
603:When the old faith is gone, and the enthusiasm for the gospel is extinct, it is no wonder that people seek something else in the way of delight. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
604:I think it is more a cautiousness that protects me from enthusiasm about things. I tend not to get excited. People perceive it as a scowl, which is fair enough. ~ Jack Dee, #NFDB
605:She rose. Lindsey was pretty in a way that only the young are, with that enthusiasm and smile that belong exclusively to the innocent or the cult recruiter. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
606:The whole thing of this business is to retain your enthusiasm and, in a sense, retain your innocence and try to practice as much humility as possible. ~ John Frankenheimer, #NFDB
607:When I was younger I always thought, 'If I were ever a comedian I'd make it like a rock concert.' I wanted to generate that type of enthusiasm and excitement. ~ Carrot Top, #NFDB
608:With the innocence of the dead, who no longer mind being observed, the people in the photographs gazed out on the professors' barely contained enthusiasm. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
609:Hope is the motivation that empowers the unemployed, enabling them to get out of bed every single morning with unbounded enthusiasm as they look for work. ~ Emanuel Cleaver, #NFDB
610:Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
611:Mastery does not come from dabbling. We have to be prepared to pay the price. We need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
612:Place before your eyes two Precepts, and two only. One is, Preach the Gospel; and the other is--Put down enthusiasm!The Church of England in a nutshell. ~ Mary Augusta Ward, #NFDB
613:182. "You must constantly nourish openness, breadth of vision, willingness, enthusiasm, and reverence, that will change the whole atmosphere of your mind." ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, #NFDB
614:Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
615:Rich people are almost always excellent promoters. They can are willing to promote their products, their services, and their ideas with passion and enthusiasm. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
616:The American casualties continued to be staggering, in no small part because among the AEF’s junior officers enthusiasm generally outran their experience. ~ Joseph E Persico, #NFDB
617:The ongoing successful treatment of my depression is the single most important positive step I have taken in my life, hence my enthusiasm for the subject. ~ Peter McWilliams, #NFDB
618:What is an argument for the defense that neither torments nor troubles — what is a eulogy that fails to kill? Every apology should be a murder by enthusiasm. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
619:Why had he said, ‘Some combination of pride and terror’? Did he still think it was uncool to admit to any enthusiasm, even in front of his greatest friend? ~ Edward St Aubyn, #NFDB
620:You may accuse a dog of eating without grace or of exhibiting a misplaced enthusiasm for the tossing of sticks, but you may never accuse one of giving up hope. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
621:I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
622:I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of women in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
623:Inside the pub, Richard's friends continued to celebrate his forthcoming departure with an enthusiasm that, to Richard, was beginning to border on the sinister. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
624:I smoked five joints one evening and ended up wetting myself where I sat because I couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm to go to the toilet. And it felt amazing. ~ Michael Logan, #NFDB
625:Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object dearer than self? ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
626:Positive thinking is how you think about a problem. Enthusiasm is how you feel about a problem. The two together determine what you do about a problem. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
627:When we radiate warmth and acceptance, conversations just seem to flow. When we enter a room with a level of comfort and enthusiasm, we attract people toward us. ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
628:Act upon your love... Breathe romance back into your relationship… Let your enthusiasm break the monotony… You deserve a love that is alive… Bring it to life! ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
629:And being but two-and-twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, ‘I will devote my life to this. This is worth while.’
You know what fools we are at two-and-twenty? ~ H G Wells,#NFDB
630:It came as a surprise to find that a professional society and journal (Econometrica) were flourishing, and I entered this area of study with great enthusiasm. ~ Lawrence Klein, #NFDB
631:Though my father was a sirdar, he always carried loads. It is hard for someone who is walking unburdened to generate in others an enthusiasm for work. ~ Jamling Tenzing Norgay, #NFDB
632:To get high-quality work, be enthusiastic about the job you want done. Others will catch the enthusiasm you generate and you’ll get first-class performance. ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
633:If you're bringing up kids, you just want to smother them with love and praise and enthusiasm. So I don't think you can mollycoddle your kids too much really. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
634:I have never seen people who could do real work except under the stimulus of encouragement and enthusiasm and the approval of the people for whom they are working. ~ B C Forbes, #NFDB
635:I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur. ~ Edmund Hillary, #NFDB
636:Poor Tom did not know and could not learn that dissembling successfully is one of the creative joys of a businessman. To indicate enthusiasm was to be idiotic. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
637:The bilateral relationship is unshakable, but playing politics with that relationship could blunt Secretary Kerry's enthusiasm for being Israel's primary defender. ~ Ron Dermer, #NFDB
638:Thor nodded with enthusiasm, not entirely certain how he (Kvasir) had come to this conclusion from the ashes on the floor but happy to know where Loki was hiding. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
639:Dan Spainhour is a terrific coach and educator. I had the pleasure of working several years with him, and I know that his knowledge and enthusiasm are first-rate. ~ Tommy Amaker, #NFDB
640:Don't be taken in by the guff that critics are killing the theater. Commonly they sin on the side of enthusiasm. Too often they give their blessing to trash. ~ Tallulah Bankhead, #NFDB
641:He glanced over to the stage, where a nearly naked woman gyrated lifelessly around the pole. She could’ve been cleaning toilets for all the enthusiasm she showed. ~ Joanna Wylde, #NFDB
642:I cannot explain why they made that sequel to Secret of NIMH. Because they claim that it the original didn't make money, so what was the enthusiasm to make a sequel? ~ Don Bluth, #NFDB
643:I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
644:A vision not consistent with values that people live by day by day will not only fail to inspire genuine enthusiasm, it will often foster outright cynicism. These ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
645:Some people just shouldn't be disturbed in their inclinations, whether large or small. A reminder can instantly turn enthusiasm into aversion and spoil everything. ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
646:If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
647:I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
648:The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the below things. They are the ones who gave us one of the most beautiful words in our language, the word enthusiasm. ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
649:There was some enthusiasm for a Caliban village, but it quickly dissipated when people contemplated a future village school and what the mascot might look like. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
650:There were probably too many exclamation points, but I couldn’t bear to erase them. I wanted to take shelter behind their manic enthusiasm, their idiotic sparkle. ~ Rebecca Makkai, #NFDB
651:The speaker says one of the blessings of the family of God is that the enthusiasm of children influences their elders while experience seasons the younger members. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
652:War does not permit itself to be coordinated with reason and righteousness. It needs stimulated emotions, enthusiasm for its own cause and hatred for the adversary. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
653:We’ve already visited Alsace. Twice.” “Yes, but I did not tell you all there is to know of it.” “I can hardly wait to hear more,” he said with no enthusiasm. Cinderella ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
654:At the university the professors who genuinely loved their subjects were always the most interesting teachers. Enthusiasm for a topic made it enticing to others. ~ Ann Howard Creel, #NFDB
655:Entrepreneurs’ grounded enthusiasm is contagious, stimulating a high level of commitment, confidence, passion, and performance in the people who work for and with them. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
656:I've experienced a private doubt, something that I've kept deeply inside, and then eventually delivered a piece of work that people responded to with huge enthusiasm. ~ Trevor Nunn, #NFDB
657:Some of my enthusiasm for the [found] photograph was based on the fact that there was some residual illusion of reality in it always, no matter what I did to it. ~ Robert Heinecken, #NFDB
658:Thus, after finishing high school, I started with high expectations and enthusiasm to study chemistry at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. ~ Richard Ernst, #NFDB
659:Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
660:Few innovations have been as unclear in what they would become and what they could offer and yet been greeted with as much certainty and enthusiasm as digital media. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
661:Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning. Dream is also just a word until you decide to fight for it with all your enthusiasm and commitment ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
662:The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college. ~ Francis Ford Coppola, #NFDB
663:Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability, it turns out, because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
664:The successful man has enthusiasm. Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is needed for forge anything. Every great achievement is the story of a flaming heart. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
665:If we are desperate, though , if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
666:I get clarity through quiet time, reflection, reading, and meditation. Finding the space between thoughts gives me the energy to take on new challenges with enthusiasm. ~ Jaime Murray, #NFDB
667:What we need is a world full of miracles, like the miracle of seeing the young child seeking work and independence, and manifesting a wealth of enthusiasm and love. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
668:Her enthusiasm infected me. She was light, life, energy. Everything. What wouldn't I do for her, when she gave me so much? I would have married her in an instant. So I did. ~ C D Reiss, #NFDB
669:I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn't come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
670:I must be sincere towards what I am. ... Experimenting is the only thing that fills me with enthusiasm. ... It is the only sphere where I feel really honest and sincere. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
671:man of power and responsibility nevertheless needs somebody to tell him when he is being a bloody fool. Granny Aching fulfilled that task with commendable enthusiasm, ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
672:The people who wake up and jump out of bed with energy and enthusiasm are the people who will be smiling all day, go out of their way to help you, and call you by name. ~ Robert Cheeke, #NFDB
673:What it all boils down to for me is having the enthusiasm to do something for enjoyment and being stimulated by what's around you. That's what photography does for me. ~ Graeme Le Saux, #NFDB
674:This is a time where fashion and style go against what I would rather do myself. So I have to pick and choose from people that share my enthusiasm when it comes to certain things. ~ T I, #NFDB
675:From outside the tube I hear a sharp bark of surprise, and then a stream of what might be (okay, what certainly is) profanity of notable creativity and enthusiasm. “What? ~ April Daniels, #NFDB
676:It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
677:Academic disciplines are subject to being overtaken by attacks of "knowingness"- a state of mind and soul that prevents shudders of awe and makes one immune to enthusiasm. ~ Richard Rorty, #NFDB
678:Love and politics are the two great figures of social engagement. Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with love, two people. So love is the minimal form of communism. ~ Alain Badiou, #NFDB
679:The age can be impressed. Anything will be accepted by men if you will but preach it with tremendous enthusiasm, emotion, persuasionnergy and living earnestness. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
680:But I know also that still more interesting discoveries will be made that I have not the imagination to describe - and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm. ~ Linus Pauling, #NFDB
681:Don't listen to other people's advice unless it is rooted in irrepressible enthusiasm (e.g., "Be afraid but do it anyway"), or about the importance of being a good colleague. ~ Torill Kove, #NFDB
682:Every human being has a personal legend to be fulfilled, and this is our reason for being in the world. This personal legend manifests itself in our enthusiasm for the task. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
683:Funny creatures, women. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they do the sensible thing without hesitation. The hundredth time they do the other with the same enthusiasm. ~ John Christopher, #NFDB
684:LA runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy... It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weatherwise, socially and professionally. ~ Hugh Laurie, #NFDB
685:This is the way it was with Lockwood, his shifts were sometimes so sudden that they took your breath away. But his energy and enthusiasm were always impossible to resist. ~ Jonathan Stroud, #NFDB
686:Work for god, love god alone, and be wise with god. When an ordinary man puts the necessary rime and enthusiasm into meditation and prayer, he becomes a divine man. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
687:Worldliness in the church is a lot more pervasive than a lack of passion for evangelism. Nevertheless, one of the results of worldliness is a waning enthusiasm for evangelism. ~ Mark Dever, #NFDB
688:Enlist the interests of stern Morality and religious Enthusiasm in the cause of Political Liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
689:It is key to remember we can maintain a genuine enthusiasm and love for what IS, in the PRESENT moment, enjoy it with gratitude for all of the blessings in our lives. ~ Dashama Konah Gordon, #NFDB
690:Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm - that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm alive! ~ John Osborne, #NFDB
691:Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
692:Undeterred by his lack of enthusiasm, she leaned forward, flashing him a set of breasts that didn't so much defy gravity as flip it off, insult its mother, and piss on its shoes. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
693:Undeterred by his lack of enthusiasm, she leaned forward, flashing him a set of breasts that didn’t so much defy gravity as flip it off, insult its mother, and piss on its shoes. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
694:A man must be himself convinced if he is to convince others. The prophet must be his own disciple, or he will make none. Enthusiasm is contagious: belief creates belief. ~ George Henry Lewes, #NFDB
695:If you stay in your heart you will always be inspired and if you are inspired you will always be enthusiastic. There is nothing more contagious on this planet as enthusiasm. ~ Carlos Santana, #NFDB
696:One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world. ~ Hannah Szenes, #NFDB
697:your level of engagement and enthusiasm will skyrocket when you decide to participate only in projects you can be fully invested in and be a part of from beginning to end. ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
698:You see the unemployment rate is at a very, very low level. Job enthusiasm and manufacturing, business enthusiasm is at record levels; never been higher... We've got it going. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
699:Depression is an illness that robs one of the meaning of life. Heal the illness. As the depression heals, enthusiasm, well-being, and a sense of life's purpose will return. ~ Peter McWilliams, #NFDB
700:Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
701:She went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes to live with each of us one day and stays with us to the end. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
702:Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
703:If you want a mission, you need to first acquire capital. If you skip this step, you might end up like Sarah and Jane: with lots of enthusiasm but very little to show for it. Not ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
704:Your qualification for finding a place to belong is enthusiasm and passion, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. No one should feel lonely or embarrassed about liking something. ~ Felicia Day, #NFDB
705:But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy. ~ Ho Chi Minh, #NFDB
706:Enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability, it turns out, because the single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
707:I believe everyone should have an opportunity to search for truth their own way. Humility, peace, child-like enthusiasm, acceptance, and sincerity is the true infinity engine! ~ Akiane Kramarik, #NFDB
708:That youthful fervor, which is sometimes called enthusiasm, but which is a heat of imagination subsequently discovered to be inconsistent with the experience of actual life. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
709:When I was manic, I had passion and enthusiasm by the truckload. Things I had trouble with in normal life were a breeze for me. I felt perfect, better than at any time in my life. ~ Ken Dickson, #NFDB
710:You have to put the idea into action. If you don’t have the motivation and the enthusiasm, your great idea will simply sit on top of your desk or inside your head and go nowhere. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
711:Carrot started to clap.
It wasn't the clap used by middlings to encourage underlings to applaud overlings. It had genuine enthusiasm behind it which was, somehow, worse. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
712:Adventurers, however, were under no such moral obligations, and rushed into battle with the sort of enthusiasm one only finds in idiots, champions, and the unapologetically suicidal. ~ Drew Hayes, #NFDB
713:After I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I said yes to food, with great enthusiasm. . . . I vowed to taste everything I could eat, rather than focusing on what I could not. ~ Shauna James Ahern, #NFDB
714:Any act of intolerance, of ideological intransigence, or of proselytism exposes the beastly core of all enthusiasm….One can never stay far enough from the clutches of a prophet. ~ Robert D Kaplan, #NFDB
715:How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
716:If the most you can do right now is walk around the block, then do that, and you will be surprised how quickly you increase your endurance and enthusiasm for moving and breathing. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
717:On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country. ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
718:So if I said I didn’t like the whole sucking thing at all… ”
“I’d say based on the enthusiasm you showed by practically taking the skin off my cock you’re full of shit. ~ Annmarie McKenna,#NFDB
719:A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm. ~ E B White, #NFDB
720:But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm. ~ Edward Hirsch, #NFDB
721:No matter how many worries and anxieties harass you, remember always that they are removable. Enthusiasm with its immense mental and spiritual power can cancel out all fear. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
722:people do get carried away and make mistakes, but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely evidence of enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external environment ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
723:When you are fired because of laziness, dare to fire back with the spirit of enthusiasm. Rise up at the same time and at the same place that you have fallen. You can’t give up! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
724:Celebrity spouse was exactly the arena he could excel in; it required good looks, red-carpet skills and unwavering enthusiasm(both public and private). He was totally qualified. ~ Marshall Thornton, #NFDB
725:If I went around talking about these vortexes, even with some evidence, I was unlikely to be met with enthusiasm and praise. Sometimes people just believed what they wanted to believe. ~ B V Larson, #NFDB
726:In an idealized world, we would all be able to do what our English teachers told us to do, which is to write beautiful prose where enthusiasm is conveyed by word choice and grammar. ~ Will Schwalbe, #NFDB
727:just radiated curiosity and enthusiasm. Toward the end of our interview, he said, “The most important thing to me is probably, like, being kind and also trying to do something awesome. ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB
728:the person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
729:The problem is, of course, that these interest groups are all asking for changes, but their enthusiasm for change rapidly disappears when it affects the core of their own interests. ~ Angela Merkel, #NFDB
730:Americans were so enthusiastic on first meeting; I'd forgotten that enthusiasm didn't mean anything. The cliche among Europeans was that friendships with Americans didn't go anywhere. ~ Edmund White, #NFDB
731:Do not hope for motivation; choose an ambition to become motivated for. Fix on a dream and believe that it will see daylight and soon a great swell of enthusiasm will enliven you. ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
732:Gentlemen lacking substantial sympathy with their leader found it to be comfortable to deceive themselves, and raise their hearts at the same time by the easy enthusiasm of noise. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
733:I don't see politics as one or two people just making or delivering announcements - it's also about winning public support and the public enthusiasm. You've got to win public support. ~ Gordon Brown, #NFDB
734:It is not the Woman’s beauty that fills me with such enthusiasm; It is the Painter’s skill that I admire, it is the Divinity that I adore! Are not the passions dead in my bosom? Have ~ Matthew Lewis, #NFDB
735:Seventy-seven percent of the people that have given money to Bernie Sanders are people that have given less than 200 bucks. That's a lot of people, folks. That's a lot of enthusiasm. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
736:Thomas Henri Huxley often preached tolerance, but in practice he could not wait to go after religion and religious people in the most scornful of terms.
[Curb your enthusiasm,2016] ~ Michael Ruse,#NFDB
737:All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
738:He had a feeling this was one of those times when a male should express positive enthusiasm regardless of what he really thought—especially when he didn’t really know what was going on. ~ Anne Bishop, #NFDB
739:Introverted feeling types have a wealth of warmth and enthusiasm, but they may not show it until they know someone well. They wear their warm side inside, like a fur-lined coat. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers, #NFDB
740:Passion is the fire, enthusiasm and courage that an individual feels when she is doing something she loves while accomplishing worthy ends, something that satisfies her deepest needs. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
741:the person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people – that person is headed for higher earning power. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
742:The real secret of success is enthusiasm. Yes, more than enthusiasm, I would say excitement. I like to see men get excited. When they get excited they make a success of their lives. ~ Walter Chrysler, #NFDB
743:Your life's work is something you love to do, something your talents can find full expression through. If we enjoy our work, we are sure to bring our creativity and enthusiasm to it. ~ Laurence Boldt, #NFDB
744:He continues to give more than 100 per cent and his schoolboy-like enthusiasm for the game is something I envy and admire. For the team he is the best available coaching manual. ~ Mahendra Singh Dhoni, #NFDB
745:I'm so excited I had a seven-car police motorcycle escort. I've had escorts before, but nothing like this... I'm really in awe, coming here and seeing so many cars, so much enthusiasm. ~ Tommy Lasorda, #NFDB
746:Strange though it may seem, people rarely show such enthusiasm as when they are seeking the proof of a ghost story—the soul gathers all this sort of thing to its hungry bosom. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
747:But the person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
748:Every page must explode, whether through seriousness, profundity, turbulence, nausea, the new, the eternal, annihilating nonsense, enthusiasm for principles, or the way it is printed. ~ Francis Picabia, #NFDB
749:Good self-esteem comes from positive self-imaging. Positive self-image make you to resist wrong definitions others give about you, guiding you to live life with enthusiasm and will! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
750:I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching -that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
751:In life, if you have an enthusiasm for what they call 'good manners,' sometimes people don't quite believe you. I've had that once or twice before, where they assume you can't be for real. ~ Bill Nighy, #NFDB
752:Remember, the only way to get full power, to develop full go force, is to do what you want to do. Surrender to desire and gain energy, enthusiasm, mental zip, and even better health. ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
753:Undervaluations caused by neglect or prejudice may persist for an inconveniently long time, and the same applies to inflated prices caused by over-enthusiasm or artificial stimulants. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
754:If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your dreams then you must still regard America today with the same naive enthusiasm as the generations that discovered the New World. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
755:If you look at the polls - the conservatives are fine.I think there will be a fair amount of enthusiasm, or at least motivation. They very much want to remove President [Barack] Obama. ~ William Kristol, #NFDB
756:Singers can also get away with a lot based on youth, strength and enthusiasm, only to find ten years later that what was once just a niggling problem has brought their careers to an end. ~ Renee Fleming, #NFDB
757:Brazil has rediscovered itself, and this rediscovery is being expressed in its people's enthusiasm and their desire to mobilize to face the huge problems that lie ahead of us. ~ Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, #NFDB
758:Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith. ~ Sam Shoemaker, #NFDB
759:He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. All that was there, in the lids of his brown eyes, his smooth skin, his lower lip pushed out. There was coiled energy inside. ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
760:Life is good when you live from your roots. Your values are a critical source of energy, enthusiasm, and direction. Work is meaningful and fun when it's an expression of your true core. ~ Shoshana Zuboff, #NFDB
761:New Year is a spring time! Open up like a flower! Let the world see your energy! And when the world see your energy and enthusiasm, the previously locked doors will be opened to you! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
762:enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things; first, an ideal which takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for a carrying that ideal into practice. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
763:Ajit was an entrepreneur. He spoke with enthusiasm, with energy and passion and that’s what connected with the young audience. Shashank thought to himself, “Wow! I want to be like that guy. ~ Rashmi Bansal, #NFDB
764:Any informed conservative is reluctant to condense profound and intricate intellectual systems to a few pretentious phrases; he prefers to leave that technique to the enthusiasm of radicals. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
765:For me it is all symphonic, and I am so aroused by living—god, Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling of enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness, the fullness . ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
766:I am not talking about living dangerously. Such words are meaningless to me. The toreador does not stir me to enthusiasm. It is not danger I love. I know what I love. It is life. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
767:In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
768:Lesson for young men: if you want your eventual wife to be excited about sucking your dick for forty years, don't create a generation of women who think enthusiasm about sex is a bad thing. ~ Anna Kendrick, #NFDB
769:There is that American pastime known as "kidding" - with the result that everyone is ashamed and hangdog about showing the slightest enthusiasm or passion or sincere feeling about anything. ~ Brenda Ueland, #NFDB
770:Gratitude promotes consciousness, enthusiasm, joy, empathy, and tranquillity, while protecting from anxiety, sadness, loneliness, regret, and envy, with which it is fundamentally incompatible. ~ Neel Burton, #NFDB
771:Now is the time to recall the enthusiasm of our first fervor, the determination to offer ourselves unreservedly, and at the same time to let go of the craving for emotional consolation, ~ Monks of New Skete, #NFDB
772:reconnect you to the things you value most and keep you enthusiastic about all the things in your life. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
773:When people can see a vision and simultaneously recognize what can be done step by step in a concrete way to achieve it, they will begin to feel encouragement and enthusiasm instead of fright. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
774:and the Nazis. A real piece of work, old number XII, who wouldn’t intervene even so far as to tell his Polish cardinals to dampen the enthusiasm of the good Catholics running the camps and the ~ Paul Monette, #NFDB
775:I'm more interested in arousing enthusiasm in kids than in teaching the facts. The facts may change, but that enthusiasm for exploring the world will remain with them the rest of their lives. ~ Seymour Simon, #NFDB
776:I can't tell you how many people say they were turned off from science because of a science teacher that completely sucked out all the inspiration and enthusiasm they had for the course. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
777:I didn't only have a perceptual problem, I was also so nervous and so upset. The process just didn't work. I lost enthusiasm for school and I flunked second grade. The teachers said I was lazy. ~ Bruce Jenner, #NFDB
778:Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
779:There would always be naysayers, we told ourselves; in fact, it was this spirit that ultimately inspired the organization’s name, Duterimbere, which means to go forward with enthusiasm. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz, #NFDB
780:When I felt annoyed I practiced looking serene, even cheerful; in my enthusiasm I went so far as to suffer pain voluntarily so as to achieve a simultaneous expression of pleasure. ~ Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, #NFDB
781:Here am I, sweating my brains out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a single spark of enthusiasm. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
782:I am impressed with just the enthusiasm for life and the fact that some of these people are in their 80's, even 90's, and they're absolutely determined to get out there and make a difference. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
783:I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
784:So much of my self worth was tied with my position. It felt like I was being enveloped in darkness. It was a sense of loss of enthusiasm, a loss of happiness, a significant decline in self worth. ~ Tom Johnson, #NFDB
785:The time left over from these good works was given to ‘making a home’ for her brother, whom she adored, though she was completely undomesticated and went about it with more enthusiasm than skill. ~ Barbara Pym, #NFDB
786:To attempt to write with enthusiasm about food, I have discovered, requires two great qualities: the ability to eat with a catholic, voluminous appetite, and the ability to eat out alone. ~ Samanth Subramanian, #NFDB
787:When I began to read as an adult, my first big enthusiasm was Evelyn Waugh. I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date. ~ Hilary Mantel, #NFDB
788:I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people," said Schwab, "the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
789:I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,’ said Schwab, ‘the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
790:I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
791:I still would like you to feel the enthusiasm that all those people felt in the twenties and thirties, that indeed we had discovered, with cinema, the great 20th-century, all-embracing medium. ~ Peter Greenaway, #NFDB
792:I would love to be on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' I'd love to be on that. A lot of my favorite shows get canceled really early on. I liked 'Twin Peaks.' If I had a time machine I'd be in that. ~ Matthew Gray Gubler, #NFDB
793:There is something about boys,” she said, “that makes them think it is unmanly to show any feelings other than scorn and irritation or any enthusiasm for anything. It is a very unattractive trait. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
794:Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
795:When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind - with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows ~ Florence Nightingale, #NFDB
796:Would you like to be a brilliant conversationalist? Just give your natural enthusiasm free reign and say whatever comes into your head. Your rashness will be taken for extraordinary courage. ~ Alain Rene Lesage, #NFDB
797:Many of the old masters of watercolour painted from notes, with enthusiasm either unabated or renewed. It is hard to assume the same degree of concentration in the studio, but not impossible. ~ Walter J Phillips, #NFDB
798:she experienced through music “the highest moments of a contemplative kind,” when “I seemed to see the relations of things . . . and my soul was rapt to enthusiasm to live & be what I ought. ~ Megan Marshall, #NFDB
799:Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travellers are heartless. ~ Elias Canetti, #NFDB
800:When you find your way you cannot be scared. You need to be brave enough to take wrong steps. The deceptions, failures, lack of enthusiasm, are tools that God places in our way to reveal the path. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
801:A dozen men under the power of the Holy Spirit are a more potent force than the teeming masses whose initial enthusiasm for Jesus was apparently provoked by little more than sheer curiosity. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
802:He called you a mother fucker, but with Farlander, the way you decline a word lends additional negativity or positivity. He said you fuck your mother and that you enjoy it with particular enthusiasm. ~ Megan Derr, #NFDB
803:Imagining is in itself the very height and life of poetry, which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we behold those things which the poet paints. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
804:I wish the state of enthusiasm I am in may last, for to-day I have felt that there is a God; I have been devotional, and my mind has bben led away from the follies that it is mostly wrapped up in. ~ Elizabeth Fry, #NFDB
805:Labor, in itself, is neither elevating or otherwise. It is the laborer's privilege to ennoble his work by the aim with which he undertakes it, and by the enthusiasm and faithfulness he puts into it. ~ Lucy Larcom, #NFDB
806:Steven Adler was really nice, and expressed himself with an infectious, almost childlike enthusiasm. He said, “Listen, we’re going to be great—going to get the feet stompin’ and the hands clappin’. ~ Duff McKagan, #NFDB
807:The passion of the collector when confronted with a rare item, the enthusiasm of a hunter who sees a fine, handsome beast, can give us no idea of the tremendous love of clothes in some women. ~ Benito P rez Gald s, #NFDB
808:If you are not bored by life, and your primary motto is enthusiasm and if you like your friends, family around you, it all translates into your designs. That's what keeps the creativity alive. ~ Christian Louboutin, #NFDB
809:Pennsylvania State researchers reported in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology that the more physically active people are, the greater their general feelings of excitement and enthusiasm. ~ Neil Pasricha, #NFDB
810:This enthusiasm [for empathy] may be misplaced. Empathy has some unfortunate features – it is parochial, narrow-minded and innumerate. We’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it. ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
811:contagious, infectious. Diseases spread by contact are contagious. Those spread by air and water are infectious. Used figuratively (‘contagious laughter’, ‘infectious enthusiasm’), either is all right. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
812:Enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty; as superstition,on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
813:Life is not all fun and easy going. Far from it; there are many rough times. But, sadly, we too often let the hard times dull our enthusiasm. And that is dangerous, if not fatal, to our lives. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
814:That is the beauty of the person who continues onward with enthusiasm and respect for the mystery of life as his only guide; his road is beautiful and his burden light. The goal can be large or small, ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
815:Inspiration demands the active cooperation of the intellect joined with enthusiasm, and it is under such conditions that marvelous conceptions, with all that is excellent and divine, come into being. ~ Giorgio Vasari, #NFDB
816:On the other hand, I don't understand the enthusiasm for everything in the antique shop that Grandma threw out. There, the sense of quality has declined; otherwise Grandma wouldn't have thrown it out. ~ Arne Jacobsen, #NFDB
817:She loved his passion, his enthusiasm for life, the depth in his eyes, loyal like a dog, and she knew, just knew, sat there in that moment in a hotel in Devon, that she would never let him go, not ever. ~ Tina Seskis, #NFDB
818:To be asked by her to do something filled him with pleasurable strength, as if she called all his powers into play. He felt able to move heaven and earth, he said to himself. She was his enthusiasm. ~ Dorothy Whipple, #NFDB
819:She remained both girl and woman to the last day of her life. Under a grave and gentle exterior burned inextinguishable fires of sympathy, energy, devotion, enthusiasm, and absolutely limitless affection. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
820:Think enthusiastically about everything; but especially about your job. If you do so, you'll put a touch of glory in your life. If you love your job with enthusiasm, you'll shake it to pieces. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
821:Anybody knows who lives with animals, they teach you more about what it is to be a good human than most people: patience, goodheartedness, enthusiasm, presence, forgiveness, focus, restfulness, honesty. ~ Tilda Swinton, #NFDB
822:But his enthusiasm is infectious. The whole park is buzzing with it; a sound perceived but not exactly heard, a sense of anticipation like the moment just before all the crickets start singing at night. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
823:One of the main reasons that we lose our enthusiasm in life is because we become ungrateful..we let what was once a miracle become common to us. We get so accustomed to his goodness it becomes a routine.. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
824:Yes, Isaac Taylor, who has just published 'The World of Mind,' is the Isaac Taylor, author of the 'Natural History of Enthusiasm.' I dare say by this time there is a want of fatty particles in his brain. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
825:China approaches fashion with strong enthusiasm. And I believe that this enthusiasm can be translated into something interesting, economically speaking. Not only for my brand, but also for other brands. ~ Giorgio Armani, #NFDB
826:He had a boyish enthusiasm for warfare and was delighted beyond words to be made a colonel in the Illinois National Guard without ever having done anything to merit it other than to exist as a rich person. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
827:I am thoroughly enjoying spending the majority of my time with entrepreneurs. I find that their enthusiasm, dedication, willingness to take huge risks and desire to make a dramatic impact quite inspiring. ~ Maynard Webb, #NFDB
828:Maybe it’s animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting. ~ Carol Emshwiller, #NFDB
829:An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection. Baudelaire thought him a profound philosopher... Poe was much the greater charlatan of the two, as well as the greater genius. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
830:Enthusiasm produces the most cruel disorders in human society; but its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust themselves in a little time, and leave the air more calm and serene than before. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
831:Fanaticism, or, to call it by its milder name, enthusiasm, is only powerful and active so long as it is aggressive. Establish it firmly in power, and it becomes conservatism, whether it will or no. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
832:In Buddhism, what is known as beginner's mind is a way to look at the world as if for the first time: with interest, enthusiasm, and engagement. This may be the optimal state of mind for a healthy brain. ~ Louis Cozolino, #NFDB
833:In every sphere of human activity there are sources of inspiration whose perfection, far from discouraging us, in fact whets our enthusiasm by holding out an admirable vision of that to which we aspire. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
834:I was really glad to meet Jane Clark because it did give me an insight. I couldn't imagine what kind of woman she was. I was hugely impressed by her energy, straightforward nature and enthusiasm for life. ~ Jenny Agutter, #NFDB
835:The widespread enthusiasm for reducing government taxes and other impositions is not matched by a comparable enthusiasm for eliminating government programs—except programs that benefit other people. The ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
836:Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
837:The motivation is really to say people can find the game of getting involved interesting and find the problem and really have the passion and the enthusiasm to solve it and move forward, but that's all I know. ~ Ai Weiwei, #NFDB
838:When you're that age, you sometimes have a great enthusiasm that is very deep and very narrow, and that is something that has always intrigued me-- that world of the eleven-year-old that is so quickly lost. ~ Alan Bradley, #NFDB
839:Winston Churchill, who apart from his statesmanship also wrote and painted prolifically, famously defined success as arising from “the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Hillary Rettig, #NFDB
840:A circus?’ I said, surprised at his enthusiasm. I had had a run-in with a circus five years before and to hear Hugh on the subject then, Caligula himself would have walked out and written to The Times. ~ Catriona McPherson, #NFDB
841:Only one who bursts with enthusiasm do I instruct; Only one who bubbles with excitement do I enlighten. If I hold up one corner and you do not come back to me with the other three, I do not continue the lesson. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
842:Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
843:There's just kind of a sweetness about Canadians. Americans are a little more pushy, I mean, in a way that I enjoy - they're basically pushy because of their enthusiasm - we're a lot clumsier than other people. ~ Neko Case, #NFDB
844:Those who are fired with an enthusiastic idea and who allow it to take hold and dominate their thoughts find that new worlds open for them. As long as enthusiasm holds out, so will new opportunities. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
845:Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
846:Astronaut Kjell Lindgren, for giving me a guided tour of NASA, for sharing his patriotism and enthusiasm with me, and for taking the cover of my first novel up in outer space. I want to be him when I grow up. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
847:At the height of creative activity fueled by enthusiasm, there will be enormous intensity and energy behind what you do. You will feel like an arrow that is moving toward the target-and enjoying the journey. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
848:But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond these words. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
849:He wasn’t just Gat. He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. All that was there, in the lids of his brown eyes, his smooth skin, his lower lip pushed out. There was coiled energy inside. ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
850:I knew Hillary Clinton from undergraduate days and was enormously impressed with her. She was a terrific energy and enthusiasm, and a great organizer. And I knew that she was going to have a political future. ~ Robert Reich, #NFDB
851:It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
852:Mr. Tracy Tupman—the too susceptible Tupman, who to the wisdom and experience of maturer years superadded the enthusiasm and ardour of a boy in the most interesting and pardonable of human weaknesses—love. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
853:My dick is so stiff and hard it’s painful and becoming unbearable.
I get to have sex with my girlfriend.
I am having sex, motherfuckers!
I try to curb my enthusiasm, but it’s hard.
Really hard. ~ Sara Ney,#NFDB
854:Rooting in work is crucial to any accomplishment. Rooting in mere enthusiasm will in the long run force illusory measures to keep the fires of empty enthusiasm going. And this makes politics and politicians. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
855:The average English critic is a don manqué, hopelessly parochial when not exaggeratedly teutonophile, over whose desk must surely hang the motto (presumably in Gothic lettering) "Above all no enthusiasm". ~ Constant Lambert, #NFDB
856:The child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope that humanity can develop in a new direction. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
857:The expression of a gentleman's face is not so much that of refinement, as of flexibility, not of sensibility and enthusiasm as of indifference; it argues presence of mind rather than enlargement of ideas. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
858:The goal has its importance. But the doing is what is truly fulfilling. Every enthusiastic person has a goal that may be important, but the doing is intensely fulfilling, and it is the essence of enthusiasm. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
859:Today is life - the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
860:From my point of view what I have to do now is appreciate and enjoy what football gave me, but now do something else with the same energy and enthusiasm I gave to football without expecting the same results. ~ Graeme Le Saux, #NFDB
861:Happy my lot in life if my desire coincides with my duty, and conversely; and most people's task in life is exactly to stay under their obligation, and by their enthusiasm to transform it into their wish. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
862:I've always been a fan, so my enthusiasm has always been great, but it's never going to be the same as it was from 1970 to 1975. You cannot repeat that, but you can get inspired by searching, by being mystified. ~ Elton John, #NFDB
863:Being created in the image of our omnipotent God, our spoken words are potent. Speaking what we believe—even from ourselves to ourselves—is like inviting our souls to a pep rally. Vocalized words stir enthusiasm. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
864:Religion does not blithely promise some sort of no-trouble, no-problem, no-poverty world; but rather a spirit, a power, an enthusiasm that endows everyone with the ability to overcome any and all of it. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
865:And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
866:In the excitement of a charge, or in the enthusiasm of approaching victory, there is a sense of pleasure which no one should attempt to underrate.” General Horace Porter, aide-decamp to General Grant Custer ~ Stephen E Ambrose, #NFDB
867:that one thing that was absent was fire. There was no zeal, no enthusiasm, no apparent concern for us as members of the congregation. His whole attitude seemed to be detached and academic and formal. Let ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
868:That the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
869:The biggest thing our dad taught us is that enthusiasm is real. He talks about coaching with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. To me, that's how he lives his life. And the relationships he had with his players. ~ John Harbaugh, #NFDB
870:All the things you would do gladly, oh without enthusiasm, but gladly, all the things there seems no reason for your not doing, and that you do not do! Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
871:How should you practice these instructions? Be like a hungry yak, browsing on one tuft of grass with its eyes already fixed on the next. Practice with joy and enthusiasm, and never fall into laziness or apathy. ~ Dilgo Khyentse, #NFDB
872:[I have a] fondness for telling stories, like the Arab storytellers on the marketplace. ... I will never grow tired of [telling] stories [and] I make the mistake of thinking that everyone has the same enthusiasm! ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
873:The priceless treasure of boyhood is his endless enthusiasm, his high store of idealism, his affections and his hopes. When we preserve these, we have made men. We have made citizens and we have made Americans. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
874:As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm.
'You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man.' She narrowed her eyes and shivered. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,#NFDB
875:I'm going to just sit down for a couple of weeks and do nothing but read who-dunnits and Art books. I feel my work is getting a bit dull and mechanical and this proposed resting should work up some enthusiasm in me. ~ E J Hughes, #NFDB
876:Marco Rubio announced he's running for president. Fun fact: Marco Rubio's wife is a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader. In other words, she knows how to generate fake enthusiasm for someone who's not going to win. ~ Conan O Brien, #NFDB
877:Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
878:the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
879:The most important thing to me about energy is mental, not physical. By that I mean to say, the easiest way I've found to create sustained enthusiasm is to be absolutely head-over-hells in love with what you do. ~ Matthew Hussey, #NFDB
880:This cohort of politicians have in common the enthusiasm that they fail to inspire in the electors of their respective countries. They do not seem to believe very firmly in any coherent set of principles or policies; ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
881:What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation - if not beauty? ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
882:Whenever you are setting up a new project, the most important thing is to surround yourself with people who are better than yourself, have different skills and a healthy combination of enthusiasm and experience. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
883:You know...” Amaranthe dumped her dust pile outside and returned to face him. “It’s hard for me to maintain my vigor and enthusiasm for leading you when you do nothing but stand there and ooze disapproval at me. ~ Lindsay Buroker, #NFDB
884:Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
885:Inspirational leaders need to have a winning mentality in order to inspire respect. It is hard to trust in the leadership of someone who is half-hearted about their purpose, or only sporadic in focus or enthusiasm. ~ Sebastian Coe, #NFDB
886:I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
887:It is your blessing, the path God has chosen for you here on Earth. Whenever a man does that which gives him enthusiasm, he is following his Legend. However, not everyone has the courage to face up to his own dreams. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
888:Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity and fear of others. Never decide to do nothing just because you can only do little. Do what you can. You would be surprised at what "little" acts have done for our world. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
889:...the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
890:Courageous people are not afraid to fail. So often in life and in sports, we're afraid to fail. Instead, we should attack things with excitement and enthusiasm and think about the positives as opposed to the negatives. ~ Matt Cullen, #NFDB
891:Don’t allow your circumstances or feelings to dull your enthusiasm for life and imprison you in a negative frame of mind. Starting today, expect things to change in your favor. Expect to experience the goodness of God! ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
892:Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
893:I always say to people, ‘I am born today and I will die today’, which does not mean I will do harm to myself but which means I am living in every moment with utmost enthusiasm, love and I know the final destination. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
894:I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
895:SUCCESS TONIC
• 1 tsp confidence
• 1 tsp courage
• 2 tsp patience
• 4 tsp prayer
• 4 tsp perseverance
• 4 tsp joy
• 6 tsp enthusiasm
Take one teaspoonful of this tonic three times daily. ~ Sivananda Saraswati,#NFDB
896:That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
897:Then there is a still higher type of courage - the courage to brave pain, to live with it, to never let others know of it and to still find joy in life; to wake up in the morning with an enthusiasm for the day ahead. ~ Howard Cosell, #NFDB
898:The PC principle is to always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. You can buy a person’s hand, but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
899:have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
900:He was so excited. He cut out pictures of these landscapes and neighborhoods and kind of really tried to give you a feel of the movie. It was kind of cute but at the same time it really showed his enthusiasm for it. ~ Macaulay Culkin, #NFDB
901:I am so excited to be here with you ladies tonight,” Olivia continued with the enthusiasm of a mortician on Prozac. “We are going to flush blubber right off your body and you are going to love looking in the mirror. ~ Jennifer Coburn, #NFDB
902:I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts. ~ Abbas Kiarostami, #NFDB
903:Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
904:We shared an explosive enthusiasm that we blasted out of our bodies with alcohol. It was almost a sport. We tore through sobriety together, drink by drink, until we occupied a separate reality from the rest of the world. ~ Ariel Levy, #NFDB
905:Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
If you're going through hell, keep going.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. ~ Winston Churchill,#NFDB
906:The consul was interested in his report. He was only twenty-four; and he had not been in Coralio long enough for his enthusiasm to cool in the heat of the tropics — a paradox that may be allowed between Cancer and Capricorn. ~ O Henry, #NFDB
907:The enthusiasm that characterizes our time is, unlike current events, hopeful and, like all enthusiasms, playful. The energy that flashes through our electronics has leapt into most of our bloodstreams and brains. ~ Edward M Hallowell, #NFDB
908:A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm; that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt fated support them through great actions. ~ Augustus Hare, #NFDB
909:I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
910:School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony. ~ John Taylor Gatto, #NFDB
911:What I really value in Angela Merkel is that she has never tried to tap the brakes on my élan, my enthusiasm. She tells me: I'm not going to play the role of the person who has already experienced and seen everything. ~ Emmanuel Macron, #NFDB
912:I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
913:Puritan country as well,” he interjected. He was pleased by her enthusiasm—though somewhat astonished. “Indeed…though I think history will find those accused and hanged for being witches owned the better character. ~ Marcia Lynn McClure, #NFDB
914:Study the unusually successful people you know, and you will find them imbued with enthusiasm for their work which is contagious. Not only are they themselves excited about what they are doing, but they also get you excited ~ Sam Altman, #NFDB
915:The first virtue of a young man today - that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers - is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains. ~ Stendhal, #NFDB
916:The thing about the yellow road is that it’s enchanted. It wants you to follow it—not for any devious reason, but just because it likes to have a purpose. It’s very hard to resist a road with such infectious enthusiasm. ~ Danielle Paige, #NFDB
917:The thrill bumps that you experience are evidence of our enthusiasm for what you are experiencing in that moment. You think those thrill bumps belong only to you, but they are actually you resonating with the way we feel. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
918:You have to take a wheelbarrow full of money and roll out and try to make a movie out of it. But you run out of money eventually, and then it becomes painful and it becomes a struggle and time will kill the enthusiasm! ~ Lance Henriksen, #NFDB
919:As Georges Clemenceau, reporting on Reconstruction for a French newspaper, observed after the war, “Any Democrat who did not manage to hint that the negro is a degenerate gorilla would be considered lacking in enthusiasm.”57 ~ Eric Foner, #NFDB
920:first impressions based on the qualities of enthusiasm, passion, and confidence might actually be quite sound—precisely because they’re so hard to fake. When you are not present, people can tell. When you are, people respond. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
921:How should you practice these instructions? Be like a hungry yak, browsing on one tuft of grass with its eyes already fixed on the next. Practice with joy and enthusiasm, and never fall into laziness or apathy. ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, #NFDB
922:Independence of mind, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, and willingness to challenge and question and to explore new direction. There are plenty of people like that, but schools tend to discourage those characteristics. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
923:There is one common thing in superstars - enthusiasm and humility towards their work. Off sets, they are big stars for others, and they carry themselves the way they want to. When they are working, they are not stars. ~ Abhishek Bachchan, #NFDB
924:the strongest predictor of who got the money was not the person’s credentials or the content of the pitch. The strongest predictors of who got the money were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
925:A man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their way not without wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
926:His enthusiasm was adorable. I couldn’t resist leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. “Just so you know, I’m right here,” Mom said. “Sitting next to you. Your mother. Who held your hand as you took your first infantile steps. ~ John Green, #NFDB
927:I admire your enthusiasm...but I cannot, in good conscience, assist you with any civic unrest.'
'Civic unrest? This is war, Major," said Alice, chuckling at him. 'Man the barricades and break out the Molotov cocktails! ~ Helen Simonson,#NFDB
928:I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate in my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
929:I'm not lacking for enthusiasm as you can see, given that I have something like 65 canvases covered with paint and I'll be needing more since the place is quite out of the ordinary; so I'm going to order some more canvases. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
930:It is difficult to describe in short the enthusiasm and devotion provoked by and given to my research. We lived almost in poverty. I used pencils, two for a nickel, and could not buy a fountain pen, when I lost mine. ~ Immanuel Velikovsky, #NFDB
931:Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, are things Christ unsparingly condemned. Destitute of fire, they are nothing more than a godless philosophy, an ethical system, and a superstition. ~ Samuel Chadwick, #NFDB
932:What did The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and all that have to do with our present enthusiasm for women’s rights? Not that much, really. Women just got lucky this time. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
933:After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant's enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris. ~ Gilad Atzmon, #NFDB
934:Bernie had needed to be a detective as other men had needed to paint, write, drink or fornicate. Surely the CID was large enough to accommodate one man's enthusiasm and inefficiency? For the first time Cordelia wept for Bernie. ~ P D James, #NFDB
935:Enthusiasm is not an emotional state. It is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process. Enthusiasm - from the Greek, filled with God - is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life itself. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
936:If you love what you do and if you believe in what you do, others will share your enthusiasm. Passionate people find their way to the Virgin Group, and when they do, we snap them up and try to keep them within the family. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
937:The first act of man, filled and carried away with enthusiasm (of the divine breath), is to adore the invisible Providence on which he feels that he depends, and which he calls GOD. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Philosophy of Misery. § 1.1, #NFDB
938:Tria questioned the morality of even that type of illicit entry. But her need and the enthusiasm of Rehanne and Lina persuaded her to agree to the attempt, despite her strong mistrust of spells. The room door was locked, the ~ E Rose Sabin, #NFDB
939:When it is our turn to check in, the woman behind the counter smiles brightly at us despite the cruel hour. I attempt to return her enthusiasm, but my lips don't have the energy for it. The effect is something like a snarl. ~ Julie Buxbaum, #NFDB
940:About that mystifying enthusiasm a million years ago for turning over as many human activities as possible to machinery: What could that have been but yet another acknowledgment by people that their brains were no damn good? ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
941:Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. ~ Arnold J Toynbee, #NFDB
942:Chance dug deep into the dirt, his front end rising like a speed boat accelerating through water. I grabbed the saddle horn, surprised by his enthusiasm, but I was just as anxious to run as he was. I gave him the reins to go. ~ Brittney Joy, #NFDB
943:A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
944:Godly enthusiasm is not a fire of our own kindling...If a man, however, has caught fire, let me not quench the Spirit by dampening the ardor of his pure devotion. Enthusiasm is not contrary to reason; it is reason - on fire. ~ Peter Marshall, #NFDB
945:I work because I love it. It's a projection of myself. It allows me to express my enthusiasm for music and film using the spoken word, which I love, and broadcasting, a medium which has always fascinated me. I'm very lucky. ~ Paul Gambaccini, #NFDB
946:The crucial question one comes back to is the examination; without that experience is meaningless. And I think it's true that society is becoming more and more passive, less and less fired up with enthusiasm, in many spheres. ~ Peter Hammill, #NFDB
947:When I'm in New York I love to stay at the Mercer Hotel, and the C. Wonder store was so part of my New York experience from staying downtown. What I love the most about the brand is the enthusiasm that the customer has for it. ~ Brad Goreski, #NFDB
948:here's what making is-ness your business means: engage in your life with enthusiasm exactly as it is, regardless of your likes and dislikes, your preferences, ideas, beliefs, and opinions about how things should be or could be. ~ Marie Forleo, #NFDB
949:If a young man is going to get ahead, if he is going to reach the top, he must be all wrapped up in what he is doing. He has to give his job - whatever it is - not only his talent but every bit of his enthusiasm and devotion. ~ Samuel Goldwyn, #NFDB
950:In modern times, nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
951:I want to apologize for plaguing you with so many telephone calls last November and December. When the 'enthusiasm' is coming on me it is accompanied by a feverish reaching out to my friends. After its over I wince and wither. ~ Robert Lowell, #NFDB
952:No nation has embraced Total Quality Management, e-commerce and e-government with greater enthusiasm than Dubai. Such innovations have given Dubai a competitive edge and an accelerated growth rate that few could match. ~ Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, #NFDB
953:The people in East Germany have lived through so many changes in the last 15 years like never before in the country, and they did this often with great enthusiasm. But in the West we also have a high degree of transformations. ~ Angela Merkel, #NFDB
954:Eager as they were to leave, the judges could not go anywhere without Dom Pedro, who was not only the leader of a large country but, with his irrepressible energy and enthusiasm, had become the darling of the centennial fair. ~ Candice Millard, #NFDB
955:How you doing at 26 Fed?"
“I’m growing and learning, meeting new challenges with confidence and enthusiasm while developing good work ethics and people skills.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t fired your ass.”
“Me too. ~ Nelson DeMille,#NFDB
956:I just think to be a manager you've got to live and breathe and have this incredible enthusiasm for football, the whole thing. And while I love the game, and it's been a large part of my life, it's not the only thing in my life. ~ Gary Lineker, #NFDB
957:As we become more mature and enlightened adults, we come to realize that if an opportunity is presented to us and it does not gain a near 100-percent enthusiasm and commitment from us, then the reply must be a 100-percent no. ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
958:Marathons are extraordinarily difficult, but if you've got the training under your belt, and if you can run smart, the races take care of themselves. When you have the enthusiasm and the passion, you end up figuring how to excel. ~ Deena Kastor, #NFDB
959:My enthusiasm for joining the New York Film Academy is predicated on my personal explorations into video as well as a sense of responsibility to share my extended experience of photography with committed students in both mediums. ~ Ralph Gibson, #NFDB
960:Perfecting and selling your writing is a lifelong task. If you are a persistent writer, you can expect your abilities to improve with time. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
961:To an onlooker, it may appear that you are under stress, but the intensity of enthusiasm has nothing to do with stress. When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you are doing, you become stressed. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
962:You are what you think. Think enthusiasm and you’ll be enthusiastic. To get high-quality work, be enthusiastic about the job you want done. Others will catch the enthusiasm you generate and you’ll get first-class performance. ~ David J Schwartz, #NFDB
963:You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
964:But the human character, however it may be exalted or depressed by a temporary enthusiasm, will return by degrees to its proper and natural level, and will resume those passions that seem the most adapted to its present condition. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
965:everything I like, on the rust of the construction girders, on the rotten boards of the fence, a miserly, uncertain light falls, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before, ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
966:If a show is good, it helps people learn about themselves, in some way and in some function. Whatever the genre is, if it's executed well, audiences grow and learn from it, and that's where their passion and enthusiasm comes from. ~ Matthew Davis, #NFDB
967:In his earliest youth, he had drawn inspiration from really bad authors, as you may have seen from his style; as he grew older, he lost his taste for them, but the excellent authors just didn’t fill him with the same enthusiasm ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
968:In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there is something of everything; there is bravery, youth, honor, enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the eager fury of the gamester, and above all, intervals of hope. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
969:Tacos will grow on Christmas trees before I learn to carry a tune. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter. In karaoke, talent means nada; enthusiasm is everything. What I lack in talent, I make up for in passion. Hence my karaoke problem. ~ Rob Sheffield, #NFDB
970:The biggest reward from that record was the enthusiasm everyone had to sing on it. The Grammy nominations and the chart positions are great, but ultimately the way you interact with other musicians is the most important thing to me. ~ Chris Botti, #NFDB
971:Despair is a concern of the Adult, while in depression it is the Child who has the executive power. Hopefulness, enthusiasm or a lively interest in one's surroundings is the opposite of depression; laughter is the opposite of despair. ~ Eric Berne, #NFDB
972:From what I've come to know about you, my dear, you're a lady who embraces every venture with enthusiasm. I would have been very disappointed if you'd gone out on that court and not played the way you're apparently capable of playing. ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
973:He broke open the first of the meal packets, and inspected it without enthusiasm. The name on the label—SPACETASTIES—was enough to put him off. And he had grave doubts about the promise printed underneath: ‘Guaranteed crumbless’. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
974:Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,--compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, #NFDB
975:The soul's safety is in its heat. Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, make for a Church without power. Destitute of the Fire of God, nothing else counts; possessing Fire, nothing else matters. ~ Samuel Chadwick, #NFDB
976:What you want to see [in Formula One] is a highly competitive sport - and the more equal it is the more exciting it is... the more volatile in the sense of results. If you have just one winner continuously it dulls the enthusiasm. ~ Martin Sorrell, #NFDB
977:Five is very good, Milo,” he observed with enthusiasm, spying a ray of hope. “That averages out to almost one combat mission every two months. And I’ll bet your total doesn’t even include the time you bombed us.” “Yes, sir. It does. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
978:What I said to Donald Trump was that what may work in generating enthusiasm or passion during elections may be different than what will work in terms of unifying the country and gaining the trust even of those who didn't support him. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
979:When we understand clearly that inner peace is the real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous enthusiasm to practice ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, #NFDB
980:Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing do it with all your might. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
981:Live life as it was meant to be lived. Half asleep, preferably.
[...]
She preferred [...] to go to sleep at once, sleep now being one of the very few aspects of existence for which she felt any degree of enthusiasm [...] ~ Jonathan Coe,#NFDB
982:Passion is that drive, that self-confidence, that enthusiasm that makes one to resist every obstacle that attempts to stop him from attaining his ultimate status in life and guides him to keep trying till the harvest time is due. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
983:Quite often people will get an animal which is probably not a good idea for them to have. They get it out of enthusiasm, there is a genuine interest, but sometimes they're not exactly prepared for what they're getting themselves into. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
984:You don't have to know anything about a subject as long as you use common sense and imagination, plus enthusiasm! I use all periods of design in my work, for, after all, decorative styles are simply indications of a manner of living. ~ Dorothy Draper, #NFDB
985:Fear is a great robber of power. It paralyzes the thinking faculties, ruins spontaneity, enthusiasm, and self confidence. It has a blighting effect upon all one's thoughts, moods, and efforts. It destroys ambition and efficiency. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
986:I thought of Joel Silver. He never changes. He's sort of the unmoving, unchanging rock of Gibraltar in the otherwise-shifting world of Hollywood. He's the same as he always was. He looks the same, talks the same, has the same enthusiasm. ~ Shane Black, #NFDB
987:We all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
988:Western nations took a strange pride in this system, though it amounted to little more than a power-sharing deal between two rival gangs, and they would even go to war to impose it on nations that failed to share their enthusiasm. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
989:"You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy their heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his his resourcefulness." ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
990:Aphrodite,” [Annabeth] said. “Venus?” Hazel asked in amazement. “Mom,” Piper said with no enthusiasm. “Girls!” The goddess spread her arms like she wanted a group hug. The three demigods did not oblige. Hazel backed into a palmetto tree. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
991:Love of the head has doubtless more intelligence than true love, but it only has moments of enthusiasm. It knows itself too well, it sits in judgement on itself incessantly; far from distracting thought, it is made by sheer force of thought. ~ Stendhal, #NFDB
992:Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
993:Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
994:Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to a treasure, and not squander on our way through life in the small coin of empty words, or in exact and priggish argument. ~ George Sand, #NFDB
995:Teach what you know, regardless of when you have learned it—teach what you learned yesterday sagely, as if you have known it all your life, and teach what you have known for decades with enthusiasm, as if you learned it only yesterday. ~ Mercedes Lackey, #NFDB
996:When ... we realize the possibilities of deep sea life still unknown to us, every haul of the dredge should be welcomed by an expectant enthusiasm equaled in other fields only by the possible hope of communication with our sister planets. ~ William Beebe, #NFDB
997:-"Then what," Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, "is making you smile about a disaster?" -"Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus. ~ Iain Banks, #NFDB
998:I always say that I can help someone who can already compose, but if they can't, I can't help them. I can advise on technical issues, of course, like how low the piccolo can go, but otherwise what's important is not wisdom but enthusiasm. ~ George Benjamin, #NFDB
999:Teach what you know, regardless of when you have learned it -- teach what you learned yesterday sagely, as if you have known it all your life, and teach what you have known for decades with enthusiasm, as if you learned it only yesterday. ~ Mercedes Lackey, #NFDB
1000:Western nations took a strange pride in this system, though it amounted to little more than a power-sharing deal between two rival gangs, and they would even go to war to impose it on nations that failed to share their enthusiasm. Over ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
1001:I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1002:Not until your heart and mind comes into a total agreement for the approval of your true purpose on earth, you shall least unleash your full energy and true strength to accomplish your true mission with enthusiasm and full tenacity. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1003:And what if life, rather than being a glamorous stage filled with love and sunshine, was nothing more than a lesson in resilience? Or a universal “Lost and Found”? Lost enthusiasm, Found job; Lost job, Found Freedom; Lost freedom, Found love… ~ Carol Vorvain, #NFDB
1004:Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
1005:Enthusiasm is when the universe creates through you. You are involved in a creative act. You are bringing something new into this world. When that energy comes in, you feel an intense aliveness that flows into what you do. That is enthusiasm. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1006:For a long time networks just wanted to buy imitations of other shows - i.e. Curb (the Enthusiasm or the Office). The word gets out that "Hey, we want to buy something like that" and every comedy producer just starts dreaming up ideas like that. ~ B J Porter, #NFDB
1007:Living our lives of faith or motivation with enthusiasm and excitment, convincing each other, dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day, but on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions. ~ Tim Kaine, #NFDB
1008:There's been plenty of adversity, starting the moment he was born. He had a respiratory crisis, and it was touch and go for a week whether he would survive. I think ever since, you can feel this pulse in the guy, an almost physical enthusiasm. ~ James Taylor, #NFDB
1009:I was studying to be an architect, I wasn't plotting to join the movies. Films were just another career option. I took acting up with the same schoolgirl enthusiasm I had for examinations. Acting is a job and I take it very seriously. ~ Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, #NFDB
1010:The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland. ~ James Larkin, #NFDB
1011:There was a moment's suspense while Conscience and Sheer Wickedness fought the matter out inside him, and then Conscience, which had started on the encounter without enthusiasm, being obviously flabby and out of condition, threw up the sponge. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
1012:You need to have new people, young people that are super excited and super eager to get in there anytime we're doing something dangerous action-wise. It's pretty annoying but I get it, I understand the enthusiasm, I just give it a little time. ~ Mark Wahlberg, #NFDB
1013:I printed a list of Irish names from the Internet and my husband, Dave, saw Finley on the list. I really liked it but didn't want to scare Dave off with my enthusiasm. So I used a little reverse psychology and let him think it was his idea. ~ Holly Marie Combs, #NFDB
1014:Meditation is to dive all the way within, beyond thought, to the source of thought and pure consciousness. It enlarges the container, every time you transcend. When you come out, you come out refreshed, filled with energy and enthusiasm for life. ~ David Lynch, #NFDB
1015:Proverbs 19:1-3 1 Better to be poor and honest than to be dishonest and a fool. 2 Enthusiasm without knowledge is no good; haste makes mistakes. 3 People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the LORD. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1016:This generation has a responsibility to reshape the world. Start the task even if it will not be fulfilled in your lifetime. Even if it seems hopeless now, never give up. Offer a positive vision, with enthusiasm and joy, and an optimistic outlook. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1017:Watching amateurs at work can also inspire us to attempt the work ourselves. “I saw the Sex Pistols,” said New Order frontman Bernard Sumner. “They were terrible. . . . I wanted to get up and be terrible with them.” Raw enthusiasm is contagious. ~ Austin Kleon, #NFDB
1018:If I had signed my fourth season of SNL, I wouldn't have ever had the opportunity to do Curb Your Enthusiasm. If my buddy OG Pearson wouldn't have passed away, I wouldn't have been in L.A. for his memorial, and I would've never auditioned for Curb. ~ J B Smoove, #NFDB
1019:I'm a mite worried about how Foodle will respond to being out here," her aunt continued. "She's so sensitive to strange surroundings." Foodle apparently excelled at hiding her sensitivities, for she was chasing her tail with great enthusiasm. ~ Sabrina Jeffries, #NFDB
1020:Keep in mind the roots of violence: Lust, envy, anger, avarice, and vengeance...the taproot...the killer's ultimate and truest motivation...is the hatred of truth...the hatred of truth is a vice. From it comes pride and an enthusiasm for disorder. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1021:Faith, enthusiasm, and passionate intensity in general are substitutes for the self-confidence born of experience and the possession of skill. Where there is the necessary skill to move mountains there is no need for the faith that moves mountains. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1022:It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities - life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked. ~ Patrick Kavanagh, #NFDB
1023:Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticizes itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought. ~ Stendhal, #NFDB
1024:-"Then what," Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, "is making you smile about a disaster?"
-"Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus. ~ Iain Banks,#NFDB
1025:What was this curious, syntactically repetitive emotion?
It expressed a certain reflexivity about the amorous state, it meant deriving more pleasure from one's own emotional enthusiasm than from the object of affection which had elicited it. ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
1026:Intolerance is based upon a small certainty about things unknown. Yet intolerance can be the destroyer of religions and nations; hence the necessity for the statement of doubt, and moderation of theological enthusiasm. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
1027:I suspect that for a good deal of the time you live in a sort of glass case, not knowing real enthusiasm or genuine emotion; or feeling them perhaps at second hand, feeling them sometimes because you think you ought to, not because you really do. ~ Winston Graham, #NFDB
1028:Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection. ~ Alban Berg, #NFDB
1029:There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1030:We just did a bunch of songs, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for the songs that we made. We didn't feel like we had to do Miike Snow. We just did it because, I mean, I guess we felt like it would be a bit of a shame to leave it where we left it. ~ Andrew Wyatt, #NFDB
1031:When Emerson said, “Nothing great was ever created without enthusiasm,” he wasn’t just talking about works of art, he was talking about individual lives. No one creates a great life without reconnecting to the enthusiasm experienced in childhood. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
1032:I think the popular concept of the artist is a person who has this great passion and enthusiasm and super emotion. He just throws himself into this great masterpiece and collapses from exhaustion when it's finished. It's really not that way at all. ~ Richard Estes, #NFDB
1033:There was among the tribes in the fighting zone a nervous enthusiasm common, I suppose, to all national risings, but strangely disquieting to one from a land so long delivered that national freedom had become like the water in our mouths, tasteless. ~ T E Lawrence, #NFDB
1034:And what I like best in you is this particular enthusiasm, which is not at all practical or sensible, which is downright Quixotic. You are not altogether what you seem, and you have your reservations. Living among the wolves, you have not become one. ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
1035:He had written her reams and reams of letters, as well as a poem that she kept folded in a locket around her neck. Her letters were full of love and anticipation, matching his for enthusiasm and tenderness. He was the luckiest man in the world. ~ Melissa de la Cruz, #NFDB
1036:Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticises itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought. On ~ Stendhal, #NFDB
1037:Men will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences. Science will go on whether we are pessimistic or optimistic, as I am. More interesting discoveries than we can imagine will be made, and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm. ~ Linus Pauling, #NFDB
1038:The challenge is to make the church's yes to life concrete and effective. The struggle will be long, and it needs each one of you. Place your intelligence, your talents, your enthusiasm, your compassion and your fortitude at the service of life! ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1039:Try and maybe write a couple of articles for your local paper. Perhaps you need to go to college to learn some things that might help you on the way. If you've got enthusiasm, determination and you love your sport - why shouldn't you be doing my job? ~ Jill Douglas, #NFDB
1040:If you understand our salary cap, you have to be logical. If Barry Sanders , for instance, came out of retirement, if we were interested we probably couldn't get real interested. So you've got to temper your enthusiasm with the reality of our situation. ~ Jon Gruden, #NFDB
1041:I was yearning to follow him, especially now that I knew he shared in the enterprises of that raggedy gang of boys, and it seemed to me that he had opened the gates of a new kingdom, to look at not with fearful distrust but with comradely enthusiasm. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
1042:Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
1043:Intense dispassion is essential to attain God. You must renounce immediately what you think is an obstacle in your way to God. ‘Lust and greed’ are hurdles on the way. You must take your mind off them. It will not do to lack enthusiasm or diligence. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1044:I share your modest enthusiasm for Austen’s Mansfield Park. I didn’t like the movie, though. Do you like any of the recent Jane movies? Oh, as movies, sure. Not as Austen. There is no way I can dislike Alan whatshisname with the voice like a cello. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1045:The enthusiasm geologists show for adding new words to their conversation is, if anything, exceeded by their affection for the old. They are not about to drop 'granite.' They say 'granodiorite' when they are in church and 'granite' the rest of the week. ~ John McPhee, #NFDB
1046:The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts.
Bounce, effort, and snark.
Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.
Sugar, curiosity, and rain.
And yet, there was a witch.
There's always a witch. ~ E Lockhart,#NFDB
1047:The monk made his evening devotions with slightly less enthusiasm than usual. It is one thing to pray; it is another to pray to entities who will search you out on the road and beat you across the head with sticks if you say something that offends them. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1048:Aphrodite,” [Annabeth] said.
“Venus?” Hazel asked in amazement.
“Mom,” Piper said with no enthusiasm.
“Girls!” The goddess spread her arms like she wanted a group hug.
The three demigods did not oblige. Hazel backed into a palmetto tree. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1049:Did you know, Audrius, that when dueling was first discovered by the Russian officer corps in the early 1700s, they took to it with such enthusiasm that the Tsar had to forbid the practice for fear that there would soon be no one left to lead his troops. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
1050:Enthusiasm reaches out with joy, for there is nothing depressing about it; it reaches out in faith, for there is no fear in it; it reaches out with acceptance, for there is no doubt in it; it reaches out as a child for there is no uncertainty about it. ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
1051:Not for Moorcock the painful, infrequent excretion of dry little novels like so many rabbit pellets; his is the grand, messy fluxitself, in all its heroic vulgarity, its unquenchable optimism, its enthusiasm for the inexhaustible variousness of things. ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
1052:What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1053:What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1054:How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means 'filled with a god,' so what makes you enthusiastic? Follow it. So I have a little word: follow your bliss. The bliss is the message of God to yourself. That's where your life is. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1055:The same zeal and guts with which you were persistent not to forgive is the same zeal and enthusiasm with which you should be able to open up a new relationship with your partner, loved one or friend, one that is founded on commitment and dedication. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
1056:Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1057:Worse than the composers' suffering, though, was the fact that the girl was playing the music with such soul because she knew she was going to die. And am not going to die? Where is my soul that I might play the music of my own life with such enthusiasm? ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1058:Curb Your Enthusiasm set me up so perfectly. That was one of my favorite shows before I got on it. That started a whole different level of a story for me. I didn't know how to process it until after I got on the show and realized what the purpose of it was. ~ J B Smoove, #NFDB
1059:Her face held the wonderful enthusiasm of youth as yet unblemished by life. That age was a nice time in anyone’s life. And it was necessary. To get through what was coming in later years. If we all started out cynical, what a shitty world that would be. ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
1060:I think we may be seeing the beginnings of a resurgence of civic-mindedness in this country. Hopefully the younger generations, which came out in record numbers during the last presidential election, will pass their enthusiasm on to their children. ~ Sandra Day O Connor, #NFDB
1061:The nation is burdened with the heavy curse on those who come afterwards. The generation before us was inspired by an activism and a naive enthusiasm, which we cannot rekindle, because we confront tasks of a different kind from those which our fathers faced. ~ Max Weber, #NFDB
1062:A tell-all book by David Axelrod, one of President Obama's former strategists, reveals that Obama chose Joe Biden as his VP because of his energy and enthusiasm. You know, the qualities you look for in someone whose main job is traveling to state funerals. ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
1063:How did you know?"
"This may be a large house, but I'm not blind. Or deaf."
[..]"Well, you needn't avail yourself of any romantic notions. He was just doing his duty."
"And with unflagging enthusiasm, I might add." Diana said dryly. ~ Teresa Medeiros,#NFDB
1064:I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1065:Lorraine fiddled with the unlit cigarette. The moms went back to their inane chatter, though with less enthusiasm. They constantly sneaked glances at Lorraine, as if she were some virus introduced into their suburban life-form with a mission to destroy it. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1066:And so Graham and I finally got down to our first film script, and I can say with complete confidence that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Of course, we had no idea we had no idea what we were doing, and that meant our enthusiasm stayed intact. ~ John Cleese, #NFDB
1067:For far too long, economists have neglected the distribution of wealth, partly because of Kuznets’s optimistic conclusions and partly because of the profession’s undue enthusiasm for simplistic mathematical models based on so-called representative agents. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1068:No one can learn to love by following a manual and no one can learn to write by following a course. I'm not telling you to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1069:Share your enthusiasm with the collector's enthusiasm for the work, and discover things together. Be nice and appreciative and at the same time give them the hint that you're a winner so they believe they've made a good investment. It's simple common sense. ~ Mark Kostabi, #NFDB
1070:For the novelists in your life I have heard it said that it is better if you pretend they do something else and that it is always attended to, and doesn’t need your attention in the slightest. And then when asked for support, muster an enormous enthusiasm. ~ Alexander Chee, #NFDB
1071:I remember thinking, 'Sometimes you're riding high in April and shot down in June, but at least we have each other.' We were full of enthusiasm and color, and you could sense that something was brewing that could be amazing, but we weren't quite there yet. ~ Anthony Kiedis, #NFDB
1072:But, as I have said, the bugs had no interest in getting us…and no great curiosity or enthusiasm about us as such; from the cowardly cockroaches to the blind stolid ants they wanted only to be left alone to eat and breed and eat and breed, just like us. ~ William T Vollmann, #NFDB
1073:Looking back, it is striking to note how many in western Europe and the United States expressed enthusiasm for Mao Tse-tung’s dictatorially uniform ‘cultural revolution’ while defining cultural reform at home as the maximizing of private initiative and autonomy. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
1074:To the children who loved Harry Potter, I want to say your enthusiasm was the real magic. I so enjoyed being on the journey with you. And to the adults who bought the Harry Potter books and devoured them, I just want to say, those books were for children. ~ Daniel Radcliffe, #NFDB
1075:I managed to persevere partly because not everyone responded with that stare; there was enthusiasm as well. And I was struck that no one responded with bored indifference. The topic was clearly hot—too hot for some people to handle, heartwarming to others. ~ Cheryl Mendelson, #NFDB
1076:Do you need anything, Mr. Pierce?” the young associate asked him. She was a recent Stanford Law grad and gorgeous and chipper and full of life, and you wondered when life would beat it out of her. It always did in the end. That kind of enthusiasm wouldn’t last. ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1077:On a visceral level, most of us know what soul loss means. This is the shaman's diagnosis of the root cause of many of our complaints: our lack of energy, our fatigue, our depression, why our immune systems are blown, why we lack enthusiasm and courage for life. ~ Robert Moss, #NFDB
1078:Overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time ... There now began the greatest and most unforgettable time of my earthly existence. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1079:This is quite banal, but we often overlook it in our enthusiasm for the future: without traditions and their history, nothing is meaningful. Any meaning and significance that an action or a cultural product may have draws on historically developed practices. ~ Svend Brinkmann, #NFDB
1080:Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. Thirty — the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1081:Those who have arrived at any very eminent degree of excellence in the practice of an art or profession have commonly been actuated by a species of enthusiasm in their pursuit of it. They have kept one object in view amidst all the vicissitudes of time and torture. ~ John Knox, #NFDB
1082:When friends enter a home, they sense its personality and character, the family's style of living - these elements make a house come alive with a sense of identity, a sense of energy, enthusiasm, and warmth , declaring: "This is how we are; this is how we live." ~ Ralph Lauren, #NFDB
1083:As we have seen after every other [Donald] Trump controversy, this one only increased their enthusiasm for him. His supporters thought the idea of a temporary halt in Muslims coming to the U.S. was a common sense proposal in a time of great fear about terrorism. ~ Steve Inskeep, #NFDB
1084:Enthusiasm springs from the imagination, and self-sacrifice from the heart. Women are, therefore, more naturally heroic than men. All nations have in their annals some of these miracles of patriotism, of which woman is the instrument in the hands of God. ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, #NFDB
1085:Roger that, Lieutenant. We're boots to the ground. You need firepower?"
Walker shook his head at the man's enthusiasm. "No firepower necessary. We're using brains today, Cudahy. I know it may be a novel experience for you four, but it's a good time to start. ~ Christina Skye,#NFDB
1086:The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language--the word 'enthusiasm'--en theos--a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it. ~ Louis Pasteur, #NFDB
1087:Though he had determined upon this in the first moment of joyful enthusiasm, yet the delay of four-and-twenty hours had made a material change in his feelings; his most virtuous resolves were always rather the effect of sudden impulse than of steady principle. ~ Maria Edgeworth, #NFDB
1088:And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful”; and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1089:But I find the best things I do, I do when I'm trying to avoid doing something else I'm supposed to be doing. You know, you're working on something. You get bugged, or you lose your enthusiasm or something. So you turn to something else with an absolute vengeance ~ Norton Juster, #NFDB
1090:He remembered enthusiasm, hope, and a kind of jubilation or exultation. Cheerfulness, yes, and joviality, and the brief gratification of sex. Gladness, too, fullness of heart, appreciation, and many other emotions. But not joy. No, that belonged to simpler minds. ~ Evan S Connell, #NFDB
1091:I look back the old old ones [X-Files series], from the beginning, and I'm kind of mortified by my acting! But I'm kind of impressed by my enthusiasm. I'm just thankful that I got to become better at what I did, and that we didn't get cancelled in the first year. ~ David Duchovny, #NFDB
1092:I think that breaking into the mainstream - it was just the right cycle of music for us in Blink-182. People were kind of over the boy-band, pop-princess, manufactured sensibility, and were excited for guitars and angst and energy and enthusiasm, which is our thing. ~ Mark Hoppus, #NFDB
1093:Now then, you of noble mind, who love this profession, come at once to art and accept these precepts: enthusiasm , reverence, obedience, and perseverance. As soon as you can, place yourself under the guidance of a master, and remain with him as long as possible. ~ Cennino Cennini, #NFDB
1094:There will be that zip-a-dee-doo-dah after the nominee is chosen. I guarantee there will be that enthusiasm. But to be brutally honest, with all due respect to governor Romney, who is obviously the frontrunner... hes not garnering a lot of that enthusiasm right now. ~ Sarah Palin, #NFDB
1095:Don't tell me that definition of madness,
doing the same thing over again etcetera.
The definition of madness
is a certain enthusiasm, then there has
to be another person there
to not share it in--who is oppressed by it
who can only stare into it. ~ Bianca Stone,#NFDB
1096:Lastly, notice your level of enthusiasm. If you had to decide right now how enthusiastic you are about being a writer, on a scale from one to ten, where one is not at all enthusiastic, and ten is extremely enthusiastic, what is your level of enthusiasm about writing? ~ Beth Barany, #NFDB
1097:A real descent from above to below is always accompanied by disappointment. 1 can readily understand this, for, in world of archetypes, 1 is inflated, as 1 is dealing with the gods. But this inflation is necessary because 1 cannot be creative without a certain enthusiasm ~ vonFranz, #NFDB
1098:In early October 2008, after the U.S. government had stepped in to say it would, in effect, absorb all the losses in the financial system and prevent any big Wall Street firm from failing, Burry had started to buy stocks with enthusiasm, for the first time in years. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1099:My friends wanted to take me shopping,” she said without enthusiasm. “Buying clothes seems so, frivolous. I was in a store, and my friends were trying on outfits, and I looked around at people buying clothes, and I thought, I have nothing in common with these people. ~ Craig Alanson, #NFDB
1100:Authors change publishers because it's like being married for a long time and suddenly you want to go out and have a wild affair! No, not seriously, sometimes the deal is more interesting with a new publisher, and other times they have more enthusiasm for your books. ~ Jackie Collins, #NFDB
1101:Enthusiasm for the universe, in knowing as well as in creating, also answers the question of doubt and meaninglessness. Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge. And meaninglessness is no threat so long as enthusiasm for the universe and for man as its center is alive. ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
1102:Geniuses are those who have the intelligence, enthusiasm, and endurance to acquire the needed expertise in a broadly valued domain of achievement and who then make contributions to that field that are considered by peers to be both original and highly exemplary. ~ Dean Keith Simonton, #NFDB
1103:If you feel afraid, you can make yourself courageous by acting courageous. If you are feeling unhappy, by deliberately acting happy you can induce happy feeling. If you are lacking in enthusiasm, by simply acting enthusiastic you can make yourself enthusiastic. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
1104:the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.” ― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1105:Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm, nor does it arise from sentiments of which nonartists are devoid; it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1106:Avoid people who are always having a bad day. In their minds, nothing ever works in their favor. They have a chronic “Woe Is Me” campaign that they continue to launch full blast. This kind of negativity depletes enthusiasm. You don’t need the woe-is-me speech every day. ~ Steve Harvey, #NFDB
1107:The observance of Thanksgiving Day-as a function-has become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1108:You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1109:Being a nerd, which is to say going to far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know. For me, the spark that turns an acquaintance into a friend has usually been kindled by some shared enthusiasm like detective novels or Ulysses S. Grant. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
1110:There’s something inside me, something as hard as an iron bar, that crushes my will and stops every flicker of enthusiasm or desire. I strip my heart bare, and have a soul as black as any pitch. The thought that mine is not an isolated case offers me no consolation. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
1111:Being internet famous is kind of like being a camp counselor, and you've got this group of rowdy energetic kids every day. You've got to come up with something new every single day to entertain all of us. The internet is a 24-hour playground, there's a lot of enthusiasm. ~ Ariel Schulman, #NFDB
1112:In addition to the leadership of the Party, a decisive factor is our population of 600 million. More people mean a greater ferment of ideas, more enthusiasm and more energy. Never before have the masses of the people been so inspired, so militant and so daring as at present. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
1113:The financial cost20 was around £47 million, an appalling sum for those days. The cost in idealism, energy, and enthusiasm was probably higher. Bitterness, cynicism, disillusionment, emigration, censorship, clericalism and stagnation became the hallmarks of Irish society ~ Tim Pat Coogan, #NFDB
1114:There are many aspects to success; material wealth is only one component. ...But success also includes good health, energy and enthusiasm for life, fulfilling relationships, creative freedom, emotional and psychological stability, a sense of well-being, and peace of mind. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1115:And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture; they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people! ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
1116:I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning. ~ Chiaki Kuriyama, #NFDB
1117:It is not the act of making art that is painful. It is the desire to make something and not acting on it that causes pain....A day when I don't write is less happy. This is not discipline. It is affection, enthusiasm, adventure-any number of other words besides discipline. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
1118:Wrought upon at length, you may say, by an enthusiasm and frenzy that could brook no control - I burst the tyrant bands, which held my sex in awe, and clandestinely, or by stealth, grasped an opportunity, which custom and the world seemed to deny, as a natural privilege. ~ Deborah Sampson, #NFDB
1119:Lose what? A man only has a soul to be won or lost; apart from his life, he has nothing. Past or future lives do not matter - at the moment you are living this one, and you should do so with silent comprehension, joy and enthusiasm. What you must not lose is your enthusiasm. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1120:The history of man is essentially zoological; it becomes human late in the day, and then only in the beautiful souls, the souls alive to justice, goodness, enthusiasm, and devotion. The angel shows itself rarely and with difficulty through the highly-organized brute. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
1121:Though it was dark, I could see how his eyes came alive with enthusiasm and the way he used his hands to illustrate with surprising grace. There were hidden depths beneath that impassive exterior. A sweet kernel shielded by a tough shell; dancing fire concealed in stone. ~ Juliet Marillier, #NFDB
1122:(Vincent van Gogh, for one, wrote that his exuberant mood propelled not just his art but his speech: "There are moments," he said, "when I am twisted by enthusiasm or madness or prophecy, like a Greek oracle on the tripod. And then I have great readiness of speech.") ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
1123:Forget all the conventional 'rules' but one. There is one golden rule: Stick to topics you deeply care about and don't keep your passion buttoned inside your vest. An audience's biggest turn-on is the speaker's obvious enthusiasm. If you are lukewarm about the issue, forget it! ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
1124:But I think the - what the tea party movement demonstrates, and I think the, the, the enthusiasm that we're seeing from independents and Republicans, is that if Washington isn't going to change itself, then we're going to change Washington. And I think that's what we're seeing. ~ John Cornyn, #NFDB
1125:Enthusiasm is the parent of enterprise. Search and you will find that at the base and birth of every great business organization was an enthusiast, someone consumed with earnestness of purpose, with confidence in their powers, with faith in the worthwhileness of their endeavors. ~ B C Forbes, #NFDB
1126:We will not let ourselves be intimidated by the number and violence of attacks against women; nor be fooled by the self-serving praise showered on the “real woman”; nor be won over by men’s enthusiasm for her destiny, a destiny they would not for the world want to share. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
1127:He wrote more or less the same way as he dreamed or masturbated: a mixture of compulsion, enthusiasm, despair, disgust, and wretchedness. And in those days he also had an insatiable curiosity to try to understand why people hurt each other, and themselves, without meaning to at all. ~ Amos Oz, #NFDB
1128:There was all this enthusiasm about amateurism and the idea that people could now just make videos in their bedroom, or blog news stories and share it online, and isn't this great? Now we can do it just for the love of it and not try to be professionals, corrupted by careerism. ~ Astra Taylor, #NFDB
1129:But now, my people will starve.” “Some might,” Leyers said. “But I answer to a greater authority. Any lack of enthusiasm for this mission on my part could be grounds for . . . Well, that’s not going to happen if I can help it. Take me back to Milan, the central train station. ~ Mark T Sullivan, #NFDB
1130:By a peculiar thermometric adjustment, when a woman's talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is at the boiling pitch; when she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer heat; and if ever she reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1131:Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing. ~ Isaac D Israeli, #NFDB
1132:They were probably fifty feet away from each other. How far is fifty feet? To the top of the tallest tree? From one lip of a volcano to the other? As far as a man can go in ten seconds, striding briskly? As far as a man can go in five seconds, falling over himself in enthusiasm? ~ Lydia Netzer, #NFDB
1133:We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean—except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1134:Everyone says that love requires the utmost honesty, but that’s not entirely true. Once I knew that my father was suffering for my sake—really suffering—I learned that love, especially the parental kind, requires the heartwarming sacrifice that can only accompany fake enthusiasm. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
1135:He who suffers himself to be transported by the love of things on high, who drinks at the sources of eternal beauty, who lives by the Infinite and combats for the ideal of all virtue and all knowledge, who shows for that cult an enthusiasm pushed to a very fury,—he is the hero. ~ Giordano Bruno, #NFDB
1136:One of the main reasons that we lose our enthusiasm in life is because we become ungrateful; we take for granted what God has done for us. We let what once was a miracle become common to us. We get so accustomed to goodness, it becomes routine; it doesn’t really excite us anymore. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1137:I’ve seen Christians who are faithful to the church of God, who frequently demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for the things of God, and who are committed to the preaching of the Word of God, yet who trivialize their effectiveness for the kingdom of God through lack of discipline. ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
1138:Will you laugh at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine wanderer? If you do, you must have certainly lost that simplicity which was once your characteristic charm. Yet, if you will, smile at the warmth of my expressions, while I find every day new causes for repeating them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1139:Enthusiasm releases the drive to carry you over obstacles and adds significance to all that you do. It tones up your physical vitality and gives warmth to all your personal relationships. When you associate with enthusiasm long enough it grabs you and takes over within you. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
1140:The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions - hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity - also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1141:There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1142:We each have a litany of holiday rituals and everyday habits that we hold on to, and we often greet radical innovation with the enthusiasm of a baby meeting a new sitter. We defend against it and - not always, but often enough - reject it. Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to. ~ Ellen Goodman, #NFDB
1143:We need spirited, energetic and strong young people whose hearts are filled with life, enthusiasm, zeal and dynamism; whose souls are full of ambition, aspiration and vigor and have great goals, rising and aspiring to reach them until they eventually arrive at their destination. ~ Hassan al Banna, #NFDB
1144:In some cases, the partner of an abuser may eventually come to the conclusion that something is wrong in the relationship but not know what it is. This is most common if the abuser is covert. The abuser may quietly counter nearly every comment and enthusiasm the partner expresses. ~ Patricia Evans, #NFDB
1145:Many growth-minded people didn't even plan to go to the top They got there as a result of doing what they love. It's ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it's where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
1146:Molly. I have an opportunity for you.”
“An opportunity?” I repeated, without enthusiasm. Oh, good. Next comes the part where he tells me to be a “team player” and then dumps some tedious task on me.
“It’s a chance for you to show that you can be a team player,” Bill Vogel said. ~ Frankie Bow,#NFDB
1147:The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1148:The determination and enthusiasm of the Category 5 team makes it the perfect home for my music as I embark on this next stage of my career. The promotional savvy and level of support they've pledged meets or exceeds anything I've seen from the major labels I've been associated with. ~ Travis Tritt, #NFDB
1149:The enthusiasm which induced a priest, notary, and teacher like Knox to carry a claymore in defence of a beloved teacher, Wishart, seems more appropriate to a man of about thirty than a man of forty, and, so far, supports the opinion that, in 1545, Knox was only thirty years of age. ~ Andrew Lang, #NFDB
1150:If we are to give our utmost effort and skill and enthusiasm, we must believe in ourselves, which means believing in our past and in our future, in our parents and in our children, in that particular blend of moral purpose and practical inventiveness which is the American character. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
1151:If you’ll remember, helping people was one of the two basic things Fat has been told long ago to give up; helping people and taking dope. He had stopped taking dope, but all his energy and enthusiasm were now totally channeled into saving people. Better he had kept on with the dope. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1152:Many growth-minded people didn’t even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
1153:As Einstein said, God does not play dice with the universe; everything is interconnected and has a meaning. That meaning may remain hidden nearly all the time, but we always know we are close to our true mission on earth when what we are doing is touched with the energy of enthusiasm. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1154:Fears have been raised that in their enthusiasm scientists might inadvertently create a black hole or even something called “strange quarks,” which could, theoretically, interact with other subatomic particles and propagate uncontrollably. If you are reading this, that hasn’t happened. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1155:I love racers from that early vintage antique era of the 1950s. There's just something about them. It's the last romantic epoch of car-making. They were not efficient, necessarily. They were put together with intuition and enthusiasm, not with a formula. That's as technical as I'll get. ~ Jon J Muth, #NFDB
1156:I would say on the other side of the equation that there were really some massive sales and massive enthusiasm for some films that were given big releases. And I'm not really sure that happens in quite the same way, small films getting big releases. Maybe it still does, I don't know. ~ Whit Stillman, #NFDB
1157:These are the Nebraska years and the sooner you quit being surprised by the hardship of them, the sooner you can survive. Not just survive, but actually thrive. With a Rocky-climbing-the-stairs enthusiasm you can eventually start to see the odds stacked against you as exhilarating. That’s ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
1158:All I know is that, like Santiago the shepherd boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1159:"Hey Jacob!" I felt an unfamiliar surge of enthusiasm at his smile. I realized that I was pleased to see him. This knowledge surprised me. I smiled back, and something clicked silently into place, like two corresponding puzzle pieces. I'd forgotten how much I really liked Jacob Black. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
1160:I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. “There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1161:No one can learn to love by following a manual, and no one can learn to write by following a course. I'm not telling you to seek out other writers but to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1162:The antitheist is quick to excoriate all religious belief by generically laying the blame at the door of all who claim to be religious, without distinction. By the same measure, why is there not an equal enthusiasm to distribute blame for violence engendered by some of the irreligious? ~ Ravi Zacharias, #NFDB
1163:The contribution of the Western democracies to the awakening of the East has been indirect and certainly unintended. They have kindled an enthusiasm of resentment against the West; and it is this anti-Western fervor which is at present rousing the Orient from its stagnation of centuries.2 ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1164:One of the subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as possible, and of successfully representing oneself to be stupider than one really is - which in everyday life is often as desirable as an umbrella,- is called ENTHUSIASM, including what belongs to it, for instance, virtue. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1165:Hey Jacob!" I felt an unfamiliar surge of enthusiasm at his smile. I realized that I was pleased to see him. This knowledge surprised me.
I smiled back, and something clicked silently into place, like two corresponding puzzle pieces. I'd forgotten how much I really liked Jacob Black. ~ Stephenie Meyer,#NFDB
1166:I think that the BBC’s attitude toward the show while it was in production was very similar to that which Macbeth had toward murdering people—initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm and then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the undertaking and still no end in sight. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1167:Never when controversy avoided the subjects which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm was the mind of a people stirred up from its foundations, and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of thinking beings. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1168:The model for tomorrow, and this is the model I’ve been using with enormous enthusiasm since I started blogging back in 2001, is to try everything. Make mistakes. Surprise ourselves. Try anything else. Fail. Fail better. And succeed in ways we never would have imagined a year or a week ago. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1169:Enthusiasm. Order: self-organization. Think in terms of others’ interests. Questions. Key issue. Silence: listen. Sincerity: deserve confidence. Knowledge of my business. Appreciation and praise. Smile: happiness. Remember names and faces. Service and prospecting. Closing the sale: action. ~ Frank Bettger, #NFDB
1170:Humanism inspires a lot of enthusiasm for everyday life and urges people to be better to one another, to work towards a better future and a common good. If I believed there was an afterlife I would have so much less motive for filling this life with every experience that is offered up to me. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1171:If you'll remember, helping people was one of the two basic things Fat has been told long ago to give up; helping people and taking dope. He had stopped taking dope, but all his energy and enthusiasm were now totally channeled into saving people.
Better he had kept on with the dope. ~ Philip K Dick,#NFDB
1172:Rue carried her mother's parasol, which was too ugly to match any of her outfits, but was more sturdy than any of her fashionable ones. This one, felt Rue, could really cause damage to a noggin if applied with enough enthusiasm. Somehow this made her feel more secure about life in general. ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
1173:We praise a toddler for walking, because the toddler could not walk before. We clap relative to the child’s lack of ability in the past, but if we continue clapping, we strip the enthusiasm for achievement in the future. What originates as a form of motivation becomes a form of paralysis ~ Stefan Molyneux, #NFDB
1174:You would think that with hunger and poverty and disease to do their part, mankind would not need to look for ways to die. But that's not the case. Hardly; hardly. There is always a new cruelty, a new war. And each time, they deal out death with an enthusiasm that staggers the mind. ~ Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, #NFDB
1175:I can't tell you that I like getting older, but I think I can cope with it because everybody gets older. Sometimes it's a little upsetting because time goes by and you want to do more and you have to accept life for what it is and find some new motivation that gives you drive and enthusiasm. ~ Sophia Loren, #NFDB
1176:Lyndon Johnson knew how to make the most of such enthusiasm and how to play on it and intensify it. He wanted his audience to become involved. He wanted their hands up in the air. And having been a schoolteacher he knew how to get their hands up. He began, in his speeches, to ask questions. ~ Robert A Caro, #NFDB
1177:My father was an inspiration to me; I made a few movies with him and I loved working with him. Everything about him - his whole approach to work, as well as his love, enthusiasm and respect for it and other people in the business - was inspiring. I was very lucky to have him as a role model. ~ Hayley Mills, #NFDB
1178:No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His worker, only one thing will, and that is a personal relationship to Himself which has gone through the mill of His spring-cleaning until there is only one purpose left--I am here for God to send me where He will. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1179:The greatest contribution we can make to the wellbeing of those in our lives is to have peace in our own hearts. When our hearts are filled with gratitude and our minds are brimming with enthusiasm, everyone we encounter leaves our space feeling a little bit lighter than when they entered it. ~ David Simon, #NFDB
1180:There are some who seek to magnify the Spirit but neglect the Word. This will not do at all. Fanaticism, baseless enthusiasm, wildfire are the result. Others seek to magnify the Word, but largely ignore the Spirit. Neither will this do. It leads to dead orthodoxy, truth without life and power. ~ R A Torrey, #NFDB
1181:William had played [rugby] at Eton when it first became popular, and now he only spoke of it in a reverent tone he normally saved only for women and rifles. . . . .
[in contrast] Cricket had rules: one was not allowed to stamp on the head of another player and pass it off as enthusiasm. ~ Natasha Pulley,#NFDB
1182:Fears have been raised that in their enthusiasm scientists might inadvertently create a black hole or even something called “strange quarks,” which could, theoretically, interact with other subatomic particles and propagate uncontrollably. If you are reading this, that hasn’t happened. Finding ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1183:When I look back now, I realize what a trial I must have been to my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I was always yelling and running somewhere, because I was afraid life was going to be over that very afternoon. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1184:The primary motivation in the world of television is fear. People are scared to death. Ambition and enthusiasm and interest and the desire to excel are secondary. Because fear is an enormous motivating force, many in the medium are afraid to make decisions, take chances, do anything innovative. ~ Sally Quinn, #NFDB
1185:Virtually everything I learned about leadership traits and core values, I learned in the Marine Corps. To this day, I keep a list of the traits in a little black book, 14 of them, including integrity, justice, bearing, enthusiasm, endurance - all indicators you aspire to when you're a leader. ~ Raymond Kelly, #NFDB
1186:As we shall see, the tractable apostrophe has always done its proper jobs in our language with enthusiasm and elegance, but it has never been taken seriously enough; its talent for adaptability has been cruelly taken for granted; and now, in an age of supreme graphic frivolity, we pay the price. ~ Lynne Truss, #NFDB
1187:If we are to achieve a world free from nuclear weapons, we need the involvement of young people. Youth have energy, enthusiasm and many good ideas to share. Most importantly, however, it is young people who will be inheriting the problems which have been left to them by the generations past. ~ Marc Kielburger, #NFDB
1188:My old friend has gained weight. His shirt is wrinkled and his hair is too long. We clamp hands on each other and trade kisses on the cheek, holding on longer than we should, because as the distance has grown, so has the enthusiasm of our greetings. Someday we will be the greatest of strangers. ~ Ian Caldwell, #NFDB
1189:No one has success until he has the abounding life. This is made up of the many-fold activity of energy, enthusiasm and gladness. It is to spring to meet the day with a thrill at being alive. It is to go forth to meet the morning in an ecstasy of joy. It is to realize the oneness of humanity. ~ Lilian Whiting, #NFDB
1190:What motivates you is the ignition to your passion, the source for your enthusiasm, and the fuel of your persistence. This is so important that I made it the focus of another book, Living Your Best Year Ever: A Proven System for Achieving BIG GOALS (SUCCESS Books, 2011). You MUST know your why. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
1191:Despite popular enthusiasm for his candidacy, Ford was effectively locked out of contention. Senator James Couzens called the idea of his candidacy ridiculous. “How can a man over sixty years old, who…has no training, no experience, aspire to such an office?” he asked. “It is most ridiculous. ~ Steven Levitsky, #NFDB
1192:He will conclude that love can endure only when one is unfaithful to its beguiling opening ambitions; and that for his relationships to work he will need to give up on the feelings that got him into them in the first place. He will need to learn that love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1193:I went to Luc’s without much enthusiasm and even with some trepidation: I was going to have to chat, be friendly and project an image of myself to them. I would have preferred to have lunch on my own, twirl a jar of mustard round between my fingers, and be vague, vague, completely vague . . . ~ Fran oise Sagan, #NFDB
1194:Public enthusiasm for new advances is a key ingredient in influencing policy-makers to stimulate follow-up work with suitable funding, and it can be achieved far faster now that interested non-specialists can explore new research autonomously and can also be appealed to directly by scientists. ~ Aubrey de Grey, #NFDB
1195:Their most notable defect was that they considered work a virtue, even manual labor. They were materialists, conquerors, and they were infused with a messianic enthusiasm for reforming those who did not think as they did; they did not, however, represent an immediate threat to civilization. No ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
1196:These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1197:Visit any comedy club, or watch Bridesmaids, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy or Louis CK’s routines on YouTube, and you’ll realize that Americans pay comedians millions of dollars to talk about things most of them have felt, or thought, but never said in public. In ~ Martin Lindstrom, #NFDB
1198:We get what we deserve. When we allow dirty players to be sanitized and called "intense competitors," when we accept classless gestures and taunting as healthy enthusiasm, when we cheer for the barbaric, eye-for-an-eye mentality of players throwing baseballs at each other, we get what we deserve. ~ Phil Taylor, #NFDB
1199:Good energy, even if it’s not focused. Bad technique, but that’s understandable and it can be corrected. Too much enthusiasm. There’s no shame in honorable combat, but there shouldn’t be so much unnatural pleasure. The man with the greatest thirst for blood ends up drinking at Hades’s table. ~ Esther M Friesner, #NFDB
1200:He will surmise that love can endure only when one is unfaithful to its beguiling opening ambitions, and that, for his relationships to work, he will need to give up on the feelings that got him into them in the first place. He will need to learn that love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1201:Proactively bring passion to everything you touch, to everything you do. No matter what task is in front of you, bring as much enthusiasm and energy to it as you possibly can. Bring your full attention, your full presence, the Godlike quality that each of us has within, to every task in your day. ~ Marie Forleo, #NFDB
1202:These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm whcih elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranqualize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1203:Until he announced his immigration policy last week, Obama had the support of most Hispanic voters - but not the enthusiasm they had shown for him in 2008. That may be changing in part because of the decision not to deport young immigrants whose undocumented parents brought them here as children. ~ Mara Liasson, #NFDB
1204:Wait a second while I take a swig off this bottle: it's my true and only Helicon, my Caballine fount, my sole Enthusiasm. Here, drinking, I deliberate, I reason, I resolve and conclude. After the epilogue I laugh, I write, I compose, I drink. Ennius drinking would write, writing would drink. ~ Francois Rabelais, #NFDB
1205:Choose the mountain you want to climb: don't pay attention to what other people say, such as "that one's more beautiful" or "this one's easier". You'll be spending lots of energy and enthusiasm to reach your objective, so you're the only one responsible and you should be sure of what you're doing. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1206:Even the financial disclosure statements that political bloggers were required to post hadn't stemmed the suspicion that people's opinions weren't really their own. "Who's paying you?" was a retort that might follow any bout of enthusiasm, along with laughter - who would let themselves be bought? ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
1207:I believe that true success in bodybuilding nutrition comes from some variety in diet. It allows for more creativity, enables a bodybuilder to enjoy diversity, and causes less stress emotionally and mentally compared to a very basic diet for which a bodybuilder will lose enthusiasm for over time. ~ Robert Cheeke, #NFDB
1208:I had spent the previous summer and lunch hours during the school year working in my uncle Earl Edmund Sweet’s drugstore soda fountain in Oak Park. That was where I learned that you could influence people with a smile and enthusiasm and sell them a sundae when what they’d come for was a cup of coffee. ~ Ray Kroc, #NFDB
1209:In the beginning practice is not easy. You may encounter difficulties or experience a loss of enthusiasm. Or perhaps there will be too much enthusiasm – then after a few weeks or months, your enthusiasm may wane. You need to develop a constant persistent approach based on a long-term commitment. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1210:Vashet," I said. "It occurs to me it would be nice to fight someone whose ability is somewhat closer to my own."
Vashet laughed, shaking her head. "That is like throwing two virgins into a bed. Enthusiasm, passion, and ignorance are not a good combination. Someone is likely to get hurt. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,#NFDB
1211:I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together. ~ Queen Elizabeth II, #NFDB
1212:School is temporary. Education is not. If you want to prosper in life: find something that fascinates you and jump all over it. Don't wait for someone to teach you; your enthusiasm will attract teachers to you. Don't worry about diplomas or degrees; just get so good that no one can ignore you. ~ James Marcus Bach, #NFDB
1213:There's no point putting your heart and soul into a part when you know in advance it isn't worth the trouble. I'm not speaking as a dedicated actress. Enthusiasm and hard work are requisites for any job a person undertakes. I tried working just for money once and it made me almost physically ill. ~ Lizabeth Scott, #NFDB
1214:Typical Chilean characteristics, such as sobriety, a horror of ostentation, of standing out over others or attracting attention, generosity, a tendency to compromise rather than confront, a legalistic mentality, respect for authority, resignation to bureaucracy, enthusiasm for political argument, ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
1215:I have a congenital desire to contradict; my whole life is merely a chain of sad and unsuccessful contradictions to heart and mind. When faced with enthusiasm, I am seized by a midwinter freeze, and I suppose that frequent dealings with sluggish phlegmatics would have made a passionate dreamer. ~ Mikhail Lermontov, #NFDB
1216:You must bring every particle of your energy, unanswerable resolution, your best efforts, your persistent industry to your task or the best will not come out of you. You must back up your ambition by your whole nature, by unbounded enthusiasm and a determination to win which knows no failure. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1217:Everyday he saw better, and he began to climb slowly, one by one, almost reluctantly at first then, with intoxication and, as though drawn by an irresistible fascination, steps that started off dark, then gradually became dimly illuminated, only to end in the luminous and splendid blaze of enthusiasm. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1218:I feel that talent means little unless coupled with an insatiable desire to give an excellent personal demonstration of ability...talent must be in company with a capacity for unlimited effort which provides the power that eventually hurdles the difficulties that would frustrate lukewarm enthusiasm. ~ Andrew Loomis, #NFDB
1219:There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1220:…there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1221:Self-interested employees are Glauconians, far more interested in looking good and getting promoted than in helping the company.43 In contrast, an organization that takes advantage of our hivish nature can activate pride, loyalty, and enthusiasm among its employees and then monitor them less closely. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1222:She [Carol Parsinan] somehow read my poems and came back to me and convinced me that I could be a poet, that I had the passion and the enthusiasm and the creativity to become a poet, but that what I was writing was not poetry because I was just expressing my feelings and I wasn't try to make anything. ~ Edward Hirsch, #NFDB
1223:These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1224:You guessed it! And you say you aren't creative!"
"We did not guess anythiung. We deduced it from the plethora of data you provided us, both consciously and unconsciously."
"And yet you couldn't detect the irony in my enthusiasm."
"We detected it. As information, however, it was worthless. ~ Orson Scott Card,#NFDB
1225:It's a fascinating culture [the South in the Civil War period] and so rife with comedic possibilities. And not in a way that...I have no intention of making fun of re-enactors. I think it's more just a celebration of their passion and enthusiasm, which is so infectious and maybe at times a little misguided. ~ Ed Helms, #NFDB
1226:She was young, healthy, stronger than she’d ever been. And she was in love with him. She’d fallen in love with a man who challenged the world to take him on, sometimes with laughing, boyish enthusiasm and other times as a warrior born and trained to kill. She could do this for him. Would do this for him. ~ Anne Bishop, #NFDB
1227:There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
1228:Grendel waved his tail. Whatever horrors happened in his canine life, Grendel always bounced back with easy enthusiasm whenever some food made an appearance. A treat, a blanket in a nice warm house, an occasional pat on the head, and Grendel would be as happy as he could be. If only people were so easy. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
1229:Sincerity, Aspiration, Faith, Devotion and Self-Giving, Surrender to the Divine Will, Love, Openness and Receptivity, Purity and Humility, Gratitude and Faithfulness, Will and Perseverance, Enthusiasm, Hope and Straightforwardness, Happiness and Joy, Heroism and Bravery, Prudence and Balance, Truth and Speech ~ ?, toc, #NFDB
1230:The love of absurdity and paradox is the animal happiness* of the sad. Just as the normal man talks nonsense and slaps others on the back out of zest and vitality, so those incapable of joy and enthusiasm do somersaults in their minds and perform, in their own cold way, the warm gestures of life. 297. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
1231:I sat at the foot of a huge tree, a statue of the night, and tried to make an inventory of all I had seen, heard, smelled, and felt: dizziness, horror, stupor, astonishment, joy, enthusiasm, nausea, inescapable attraction. What had attracted me? It was difficult to say: Human kind cannot bear much reality. ~ Octavio Paz, #NFDB
1232:It sounds strange to say it, but you can be in a war zone and have a lot of fun. Even though war is essentially pain on all sides, human beings have the capacity to enjoy themselves. The soldiers are mostly young people, full of enthusiasm and energy, and that's an exciting thing for an old guy like me. ~ Bruce Cockburn, #NFDB
1233:The state sometimes makes mistakes. When one of these mistakes occurs, one notes a decline in collective enthusiasm due to the effect of a quantitative diminution in each of the elements that make up the mass. Work is paralyzed until it is reduced to an insignificant level. It is time to make a correction. ~ Che Guevara, #NFDB
1234:We were discussing a grisly double murder and Rodriguez was telling us all this in the same sort of conversational tone a person might use to pass on a favorite lasagna recipe. And I was responding with the same enthusiasm a new cook might show. I was simultaneously horrified and impressed with myself. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
1235:When I’m depressed, pain is my friend. I wallow in pain. It’s what I am familiar with. I’ll tell you that I hate my pain and that there is nothing good about it, but I still hold onto it. I’m so dead inside, so empty of any enthusiasm or hope. My pain reminds me that I’m alive. It allows me to be angry. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1236:Oh my god,” she said, once I’d finished. She had reacted just as I’d hoped she would throughout. She’d been responding at the right moments, making me realize how much I’d missed telling her things—her enthusiasm, her complete lack of judgment, the way that, even when you were wrong, she was on your side. ~ Morgan Matson, #NFDB
1237:The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from, the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
1238:I did about 10-12 national commercials and then got one line parts in things like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and the show 'The Unit.' Got a little part in the movie 'Redbelt' by David Mamet and kept slowly grinding up and then started getting bigger parts in independents and getting noticed by Liz Meriwether. ~ Jake M Johnson, #NFDB
1239:The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the most complex. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1240:Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder have created a compelling vision for a Clean Tech Nation and a roadmap for creating it, even as they surprise and delight readers with a rich account of progress already achieved. I salute their unique combination of technical savvy, practical sense, and imperishable enthusiasm. ~ Ralph Cavanagh, #NFDB
1241:The experience of the past lives little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1242:What's great about the geek spirit is that life never seems to stop us, and they never seem to kill our enthusiasm, our optimism and our hunger to experience the world. We keep our sense of humor, we protect our dignity, we talk to our friends about the experience and then we start again fresh the very next day. ~ Paul Feig, #NFDB
1243:So too did any doubts about the involvement of Loki, god of mischief. That capricious deity was clearly up to his old tricks. How else to explain how a man who adored women-and who was adored by them-found himself with a bride who faced the marriage bed with less enthusiasm than she would a viper-infested den? ~ Josie Litton, #NFDB
1244:The enthusiasm of today’s youth is as pure and bright as it was in our time. Only one thing has happened: a shift of goals, the replacement of one beauty with another! The entire misunderstanding lies merely in the question of which is more beautiful: Shakespeare or a pair of boots, Raphael or petroleum? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1245:From 2001 to 2007, the average mortgage debt per household increased 63 percent, while wages remained flat in real terms. The financial system provided this credit with enthusiasm, even to individuals with low or undisclosed incomes, then packaged the loans into securities that were also bought on credit. ~ Timothy F Geithner, #NFDB
1246:Give an earnest-hearted, devoted girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
1247:The common idea that scientists reject a theory as soon as it leads to a contradiction is just not so. When they get something that works at all they plunge ahead with it and ignore its weak spots... scientists are just as bad as the rest of the public in following fads and being influenced by mass enthusiasm. ~ Vannevar Bush, #NFDB
1248:The Texas Republic, whose constitution expressed an overheated enthusiasm for America’s peculiar institution, had been created in 1836 in part as a way for slave-owners to keep their human property by effectively seceding from Mexico where slavery was illegal. These are well-known facts, except possibly in Texas, ~ Sally Mann, #NFDB
1249:You know what?’ Ron murmured, looking over at the bar with enthusiasm. ‘We could order anything we liked in here. I bet that bloke would sell us anything, he wouldn’t care. I’ve always wanted to try Firewhisky –’ ‘You – are – a – prefect,’ snarled Hermione. ‘Oh,’ said Ron, the smile fading from his face. ‘Yeah … ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1250:And few can deny that welfarism, taken to extremes, carries a whiff of do as you’re told!: there were moments in postwar Scandinavia when the enthusiasm for eugenics and social efficiency suggested not just a certain insensitivity to recent history but also to the natural human desire for autonomy and independence. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
1251:Maybe it's animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting. At any rate, how nice to be well dressed and among friends and in a state where poems pop out by themselves. ~ Carol Emshwiller, #NFDB
1252:One of the reasons you don’t recognize this moment in time as an era of great transformation is because it’s hard to recognize change. Another reason: novelty has become the new normal. The pace of change has accelerated, as we are exposed to and adopt new technologies with greater enthusiasm and voracity each year. ~ Amy Webb, #NFDB
1253:The movies remind me of the Triangle Club at Princeton. I used to belong to it, and we always started out firm in our decision to create new and startling things. We always ended up by producing the same old show. In the beginning, our enthusiasm and ideals discarded as rubbish all the old fossilized plots. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1254:Copying is an art in itself, demanding the greatest technical ability, especially in watercolour. However well done, the copy invariably lacks that nascent, ineffable, but definite quality, provided by the furious enthusiasm with which an original is created, an essential spontaneity that defies reproduction. ~ Walter J Phillips, #NFDB
1255:We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system; not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us. ~ Erich Maria Remarque, #NFDB
1256:A bullet has no conscience to consult as it flies from the barrel of a gun. It doesn't feel the wind or the sun or the rain as it speeds toward its target. It penetrates the innocent and the guilty with equal intent and creates victims with the same enthusiasm with which it saves them from the bullets of others. ~ Bracken MacLeod, #NFDB
1257:Choose the mountain you want to climb: Don’t be influenced by what other people say: ‘that one’s prettier’ or ‘that one looks easier’.You are going to put a lot of energy and enthusiasm into achieving your objective, and you are the only person responsible for your choice, so be quite sure about what you are doing. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1258:I teach in my life-coaching programs, when you bear a grudge against someone, it is almost as if you carry that person around on your back with you. He drains you of your energy, enthusiasm and peace of mind. But the moment you forgive him, you get him off your back and you can move on with the rest of your life. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1259:to always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. You can buy a person’s hand, but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can’t buy his brain. That’s where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1260:When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose and meaning. Life is rich and full. We have no thoughts of bitterness. We have no memory of fear. We are joyously and intimately engaged with our world. This is the experience of authentic power ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
1261:You don't seem to need many qualifications to liaise with Muggles; all they want is an OWL in Muggle Studies. ''Much more important is your enthusiasm, patience and a good sense of fun.'' - ''You'd need more than a good sense of fun to liaise with my uncle'', said Harry darkly .''Good sense of when to duck more like. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1262:A people may prefer a free government, but if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers to subvert their institutions, in all these cases they are unfit for liberty. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1263:Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, #NFDB
1264:How just will such reflections be, when our posterity shall fall under the merciless clutches of this uncharitable Generation! when our Church shall be swallowed up in Schism, Faction, Enthusiasm, and Confusion! when our Government shall be devolved upon Foreigners, and our Monarchy dwindled into a Republic! Rowan ~ Mencius Moldbug, #NFDB
1265:Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. As slaves of Christ, do the will of God with all your heart. 7 Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 8 Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1266:We have now in our possession three instruments of civilization, unknown to antiquity. These are the art of printing; free representative government; and, lastly, a pure and spiritual religion, the deep fountain of generous enthusiasm, the mighty spring of bold and lofty designs, the great sanctuary of moral power. ~ Edward Everett, #NFDB
1267:We are in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us....How glorious a conversion, so complete and wholesome it is, scarce memory enough of old bondage days left as a standpoint to view it from! In this newness of life we seem to have been so always ~ John Muir, #NFDB
1268:Every memorable act in the history of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it because it gives any challenge or any occupation, no mater how frightening or difficult, a new meaning. Without enthusiasm you are doomed to a life of mediocrity but with it you can accomplish miracles ~ Og Mandino, #NFDB
1269:Every memorable act in the history of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it because it gives any challenge or any occupation, no matter how frightening or difficult, a new meaning. Without enthusiasm you are doomed to a life of mediocrity but with it you can accomplish miracles. ~ Og Mandino, #NFDB
1270:I like having plans. I like keeping them. Even if said plan is to spend an uninterrupted hour watching Friday Night Lights. If I pass the day excited about solo time on the couch with a glass of wine, pad thai, and Tim Riggins, it's hard to shift gears and muster up enthusiasm for an invitation when it comes my way. ~ Rachel Bertsche, #NFDB
1271:But on balance, a performer wants to feel that there's something there which stands out because you put a lot of effort into it, a lot of energy and a lot of yourself into something. I feel pretty successful about some movies I've been in that have not been greeted with a lot of enthusiasm and I do trust my own criteria. ~ Ben Affleck, #NFDB
1272:Because, instead of bitterness, you feel enthusiasm. That is the only difference. Apart from that, one must respect the Mystery, and humbly accept that God has a plan for us. A generous plan, which leads us towards His presence, and which justifies these millions of stars, planets, black holes, etc. which we see tonight, ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1273:Developing excellent COMMUNICATION skills is absolutely essential to effective leadership. The leader must be able to share knowledge and ideas to transmit a sense of urgency and enthusiasm to others. If a leader can't get a message across clearly and motivate others to act on it, then having a message doesn't even matter. ~ Gil Amelio, #NFDB
1274:Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1275:I've never been a good cook - my ex-fiance once compared my meatloaf to roadkill - but I used to make more of an effort. Then my liege lord asked me for a "little favor" and I wound up spending fourteen years as an enchanted fish. It was difficult to work up any enthusiasm about learning to make a casserole after that. ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
1276:No pleasure or success in life quite meets the capacity of our hearts. We take in our good things with enthusiasm, and think ourselves happy and satisfied; but afterward, when the froth and foam have subsided, we discover that the goblet is not more than half-filled with the golden liquid that was poured into it. ~ Louise Imogen Guiney, #NFDB
1277:Perhaps Phillips Brooks was consciously echoing Henry Ward Beecher, who gave the first Yale lectures in 1872 in memory of his father. “A preacher,” he said, “is, in some degree, a reproduction of the truth in personal form. The truth must exist in him as a living experience, a glorious enthusiasm, an intense reality.”7 ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
1278:Buses come and go. People get off and walk quickly, maybe because of the cold. Others board slowly, not wanting to get home, to work, or to school. But no one shows any anger or enthusiasm; they’re not happy or sad, just poor souls mechanically carrying out the mission that the universe assigned on the day they were born. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1279:We have had with Barack Obama some just amazing experiences traveling abroad, being able to introduce our children to the world.... I'm also humbled by the response and the receptiveness, not just here in America, but around the world. There's a part of that warmth and enthusiasm and hope that is surprising and humbling. ~ Michelle Obama, #NFDB
1280:And at the end of all this, the fact that we humans, who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature, have been able to come to an understanding of the laws governing us, and our universe, is a great triumph. I want to share my excitement about these big questions and my enthusiasm about this quest. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1281:Halvorsen remembered Harry had once said that what separates a good detective from a mediocre one is the ability to forget. A good detective forgets all the times his gut instinct lets him down, forgets all the leads he has believed in that led nowhere. And pitches in, naïve and forgetful again, with undiminished enthusiasm. The ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
1282:It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate. If you want to feel ten feet tall and as though you could run a hundred miles without stopping, hate beats pure cocaine any day. Hitler resurrected a beaten, bankrupt, half-starved nation with hatred and nothing more. Imagine that. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1283:Mama, you know, lost all her enthusiasm for mothering by Baby Number Seven. What a pity she did not lose her enthusiasm for Papa at the same time. But then, I doubt she was ever altogether clear on where babies come from. She was very much astonished each time she found herself enceinte. Papa was naughty not to explain her. ~ Loretta Chase, #NFDB
1284:My eyes found Gyro, who had begun barking at a lizard with enthusiasm. The lizard goggled one eye at him from its perch on one of the boat davits and gave him the unmoving, reptilian equivalent of a middle finger. For a critter who weighed less than an ounce, it didn’t appear that he scared easily. Score one for the lizard. ~ Terry Maggert, #NFDB
1285:There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
1286:There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1287:Up to then, the joy of fulfilling, perhaps over-fulfilling, their duty had kept them in a state of exultation. Such a state is close to enthusiasm and that makes one insensible to the things of this earth. But their enthusiasm died down, and they had had gradually to return from the land of dreams to the world of reality. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
1288:When employees don't really care about the work they do and they take no pride in being in the specific organization where they work, they bring no enthusiasm, energy or passion to what they're doing. If, in addition, they feel abused, resentful, insignificant, betrayed, or taken advantage of...they want out. Naturally. ~ Judith M Bardwick, #NFDB
1289:For me, it's the unexpected and surprising combinations of produce that are the most exciting and lure me into the kitchen for a little bit of experimenting. Apples and sweet potatoes together? Who knew? Carrots with grapes? Okay. I may not be Julia Child, but I can do pretty well with a simple recipe and a lot of enthusiasm. ~ Marlo Thomas, #NFDB
1290:Nevertheless, if you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane. A child allows us to revisit the excitement we once felt about, well... everything. A generation later, our grandkids bump up our enthusiasm yet again. Reproducing is a kind of booster shot to keep us loving life. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1291:Thus make sure your enthusiasm for mind training remains undiminished. As for the pledges of the Great and Lesser vehicles you have taken, [75] you should, by sailing the great ship of shame and conscientiousness, which are the [true] antidotes, learn to guard them undiminished, not tainted by even the slightest infractions. ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
1292:To teach effectively a teacher must develop a feeling for his subject; he cannot make his students sense its vitality if he does not sense it himself. He cannot share his enthusiasm when he has no enthusiasm to share. How he makes his point may be as important as the point he makes; he must personally feel it to be important. ~ George Polya, #NFDB
1293:Women encourage killers. They do it by falling in love with warriors and heroes. Men know it and respond with enthusiasm. The Crusaders marched off to war with ladies favors in their helmets. The heroes sliced up adults and baked infants on spits, all the while thinking of how the damsels back home would admire their bravery. ~ Howard Bloom, #NFDB
1294:Our kids are our future. They deserve every possible opportunity to start their day with enthusiasm, encouragement and food in their stomachs. Protecting human rights of every man, woman and child is fundamental. Kids cannot protect themselves. It's up to us to ensure they have what they need to be all they can possibly be. ~ Arlene Dickinson, #NFDB
1295:This was Andrew Murray’s judgment a hundred years ago: As we seek to find out why, with such millions of Christians, the real army of God that is fighting the hosts of darkness is so small, the only answer is—lack of heart. The enthusiasm of the kingdom is missing. And that is because there is so little enthusiasm for the King.18 ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1296:We can put our whole heart into whatever we do; but if we freeze our attitude into for or against, we're setting ourselves up for stress. Instead, we could just go forward with curiosity, wondering where this experiment will lead. This kind of open-ended inquisitiveness captures the spirit of enthusiasm, or heroic perseverance. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
1297:You feel the strong desire to attain something desperately, but life after you get it, is different. There is a feeling of missing something. The desperation, the passion to accomplish is gone. You no longer have the motivation to push your limits. For a life to be lived with the greatest of enthusiasm, you need a want of something. ~ Praveer, #NFDB
1298:Madeline began hearing people saying "Derrida". She heard them saying "Lyotard" and "Foucault" and "Deleuze" and "Baudrillard". That most of these people were those she instinctually disapproved of- upper-middle-class kids who wore Doc Martens and anarchist symbols- made Madeline dubious about the value of their enthusiasm. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
1299:It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger. ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
1300:Oh. Yeah. That does make sense.” Shaylin hesitated. “But I don’t know which dorm room is hers.” “Third floor, number thirty-six. When they shared a brain, they used to say it stood for their chest size. I said it was their combined IQ.” “Of course you did,” Shaylin said. “See, you do understand me!” Aphrodite said with fake enthusiasm. ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
1301:She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1302:The life of the spirit is the expression of Infinity and, as such, knows no artificial limits. True spirituality is not to be mistaken for an exclusive enthusiasm for some fad. It is not concerned with any "ism." When people seek spirituality apart from life, as if it had nothing to do with the material world, their search is futile. ~ Meher Baba, #NFDB
1303:What you’ll find is that the only thing you really want from life is to feel enthusiasm, joy, and love. If you can feel that all the time, then who cares what happens outside? If you can always feel up, if you can always feel excited about the experience of the moment, then it doesn’t make any difference what the experience is. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
1304:In you alone I have found the same swelling of enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness… Before, I almost used to think there was something wrong. Everybody else seemed to have the brakes on… I never feel the brakes. I overflow. And when I feel your excitement about life flaring, next to mine, then it makes me dizzy. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1305:It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
1306:The world is for newness, not for oldness. New, new things we have to create. Then only the world will progress. If not, we will come to feel that there is nothing new under the sun. We have to create new things to keep our joy. If there is no newness, how can we have enthusiasm? And if there is no enthusiasm, do we make any progress? ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1307:You have to believe, and you have to develop the skills to transmit your belief. It’s your passion that brings the vision to life. If you’re going to lead, you have to recognize that your enthusiasm and expressiveness are among your strongest allies in your efforts to generate commitment in others. Don’t underestimate your talents. ~ James M Kouzes, #NFDB
1308:If you want a new challenge at work or more responsibility, it’s on you to pitch your boss or your client on what needs to be done, why it’s a good idea, why you’re the best person to do it, and why everyone will benefit. Lead the way with your own creativity and initiative, and back it up with enthusiasm and a strong business case. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
1309:In the enthusiasm for Mexico's auto boom - 3.2 million cars were produced here last year in 18 factories - the question of labor conditions often is overlooked. Industry analysts and experts say most of these jobs provide above-average employment for Mexicans, offering insurance, overtime and other benefits in state-of-the-art factories. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1310:When the vital joins in the love for the Divine, it brings into it heroism, enthusiasm, intensity, absoluteness, exclusiveness, the spirit of self-sacrifice, the total and passionate self-giving of all the nature. It is the vital passion for the Divine that creates the spiritual heroes, conquerors or martyrs.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#NFDB
1311:If we go back to the beginning,” says Holbach, “we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them; and that custom respects and tyranny supports them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1312:I have seen some terrifically exciting changes with young players coming into the squad which is reinvigorated. The older players and the whole group has been refreshed by the youth and enthusiasm that has come into the team. I think that has been misunderstood and misrepresented in certain quarters to the detriment of Indian cricket. ~ Greg Chappell, #NFDB
1313:A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
1314:He couldn’t help it—he was in love by the time she left the kitchen—but love made him feel sad and doomed, as usual. What he didn’t know was that she’d suffered through a decade of cool, commitment-phobic men, and Lars’s kindness, but mostly his effusive, overt enthusiasm for her, was at that time exactly what she wanted in a partner. ~ J Ryan Stradal, #NFDB
1315:I began to wonder what, exactly, mainstream conservatism was conserving. It dawned on me that some of the causes championed by my fellow conservatives—chiefly an uncritical enthusiasm for the market—can in some circumstances undermine the thing that I, as a traditionalist, considered the most important institution to conserve: the family. ~ Rod Dreher, #NFDB
1316:But I noted with real satisfaction how well ex-footballers seemed to have leadership qualifications . . . I believe that football, perhaps more than any other sport, tends to instill in men the feeling that victory comes through hard - almost slavish - work, team play, self-confidence, and an enthusiasm that amounts to dedication. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
1317:I learned a good deal about economics, and about America, from the author of the Reagan tax reforms - the great Jack Kemp. What gave Jack that incredible enthusiasm was his belief in the possibilities of free people, in the power of free enterprise and strong communities to overcome poverty and despair. We need that same optimism right now. ~ Paul Ryan, #NFDB
1318:When you answer questions about your educational or work history, let your enthusiasm about different projects and situations come through (e.g., “It was so much more than I could have hoped for in an internship. I had the chance to actually write up the newsletter and work with a designer to put it together. I loved every minute of it.”). ~ Kate White, #NFDB
1319:You cannot but remember the lively enthusiasm which your discourse created. Oh! how I drank your words! How your eloquence seemed to steal me from myself! I scarcely dared to breathe, fearing to lose a syllable; and while you spoke, Methought a radiant glory beamed round your head, and your countenance shone with the majesty of a God. I ~ Matthew Lewis, #NFDB
1320:From the glow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape. I pursue it. Breathless I catch up with it. It flies again, it disappears, it plunges into a chaos of diverse emotions. I catch it again, I seize it, I embrace it with delight... I multiply it by modulations, and at last I triumph in the first theme. There is the whole symphony. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven, #NFDB
1321:He remembered the PM saying that every Russian is at heart a chess-player, and every American at heart a public-relations man. Well, Bret Rensselaer’s zeal did nothing to disprove that one. The sheer audacity of the scheme plus Bret’s enthusiasm was enough to persuade him that it was worth a try. Bret nodded to acknowledge the compliment. ~ Len Deighton, #NFDB
1322:I began to wonder what, exactly, mainstream conservatism was conserving. It dawned on me that some of the causes championed by my fellow conservatives—chiefly an uncritical enthusiasm for the market—can in some circumstances undermine the thing that I, as a traditionalist, considered the most important institution to conserve: the family. I ~ Rod Dreher, #NFDB
1323:Every epoch which seeks renewal first projects its ideal into a human form. In order to comprehend its own essence tangibly, the spirit of the time chooses a human being as its prototype and raising this single individual, often one upon whom it has chanced to come, far beyond his measure, the spirit enthuses itself for its own enthusiasm. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1324:Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
1325:One of the characteristics that laymen find most odd about zoologists is their insatiable enthusiasm for animal droppings. I can understand, of course, that the droppings yield a great deal of information about the habits and diets of the animals concerned, but nothing quite explains the sheer glee that the actual objects seem to inspire. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1326:One thing that struck me about going to those tech conferences was all the enthusiasm for free culture, and remixing, and social media, but people's greatest ambition was to be sponsored by Chipotle or something equivalent to that. It was this weird mix of collaborative, utopian claims and this total acquiescence to commercial imperatives. ~ Astra Taylor, #NFDB
1327:What seems to set apart those at the very top of competitive pursuits from others of roughly equal ability is the degree to which, beginning early in life, they can pursue an arduous practice routine for years and years. And that doggedness depends on emotional traits—enthusiasm and persistence in the face of setbacks—above all else. The ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
1328:Before having taken even the first steps, we were slipping toward disaster - yes, toward giving up. For to devote a single minute to satisfying idle curiosity amounted to abandoning our goal and betraying our word. All our enthusiasm for exploration suddenly struck us as trivial, along with the clever pretexts we had found for those pastimes. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
1329:The world is your mirror and your mind is a magnet. What you perceive in this world is largely a reflection of your own attitudes and beliefs. Life will give you what you attract with your thoughts think, act and talk negatively and your world will be negative. Think and act and talk with enthusiasm and you will attract positive results. ~ Michael LeBoeuf, #NFDB
1330:Kruppe hastens with proper welcome to this grand company to already beloved Scillara of the Knowing Eyes and other assorted accoutrements of charm Kruppe would dearly wish to knowingly eye, if not for the dastardly demands of decorum. Welcome, cries Kruppe, even as he slumps back - oof! - exhausted by his enthusiasm and dimpled with desire. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1331:The next time you feel as though you must buy or sell a security, or that you are certain of where the financial markets are headed, take a moment to explain, in detail, the factual reasons why this is so. You’re likely to find that your enthusiasm has gotten the best of your brain and nothing brings them back into sync like having to teach. ~ Daniel Crosby, #NFDB
1332:According to Marx, socialism is the first stage of communism and it covers a very long historical period in which we must practise the principle "to each according to his work" and combine the interests of the state, the collective and the individual, for only thus can we arouse people's enthusiasm for labour and develop socialist production. ~ Deng Xiaoping, #NFDB
1333:An exuberant temperature by no means leads inevitably, or even usually, to shallowness, but the potential is there. Subtleties and sustained thought can be lost in a swirl of vivacious moods and energies, just as monomaniacal enthusiasm can limit awareness of and sensitivity to the perspective, needs, and contributions of other people. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
1334:Are you going to write the accident report?” Summer asked. “For Willard? Not yet.” “He’ll expect it today.” “I know. But I’m going to make him ask, one more time.” “Why?” “I guess because it’s a fascinating experience. Like watching maggots writhing around in something that died.” “What died?” “My enthusiasm for getting out of bed in the morning. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1335:In a lower voice, Hale asked, “I trust you know what to do?” “Indeed, sir.” Marcus stood a little straighter. “I shall endear myself to the staff and find out where all the skeletons are buried. Both literally and figuratively.” “We can probably do without the literal skeletons, but I like the enthusiasm,” Hale said with a slap on Marcus’s arm, ~ Ally Carter, #NFDB
1336:To declare enthusiasm for feminist ideals is almost a new mode of macho, a way to flaunt an invulnerable virility. Many will dismiss feminism as merely a matter of domestic logistics. . . . Mention procreation, and they talk about the population explosion. They believe it is just as well that many women indicate disinterest in having children. ~ George Gilder, #NFDB
1337:Almost everyone who feels stymied, aimless, directionless is carrying an unresolved emotional wound. A lack of enthusiasm for life is always a sign that the deep self is hurt. Every person's essential self is pure, productive energy, and yours will return and send you into a fulfilling life almost automatically if your psyche is in good repair. ~ Martha N Beck, #NFDB
1338:At one point, so many people had assembled on the bridge that linked the ship to the shore that the timbers began to creak and groan. Suddenly, there was a tremendous crack and a hundred or more people were plunged into the muddy river. Wiser heads might have seen this as a warning that Elizabethan technology did not always match its enthusiasm. ~ Giles Milton, #NFDB
1339:Feelings of excitement and curiosity become bound in shame, and the child’s courage and enthusiasm are severely limited. Toxic shame takes on the face of apathy or cowardice at this stage. Describing the impact of her father’s incest, the poet Mary Oliver writes in her poem “Rage”: “And you see how the child grows—timidly, crouching in corners. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
1340:Religious enthusiasm among students is now an embarrassment; belief in the authority of the Bible and the deity of Jesus Christ is treated as naivety to be enlightened rather than life to be nourished. Scholars in the arts, letters, and sciences who show signs of Christian devotion are likely to be shrugged off as simplistic and eccentric. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge, #NFDB
1341:The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1342:You must also remember the yellow-hair may give you many more children than a Comanche woman. Take care or you could father more children than you can feed. I’ve never seen a white woman yet who wasn’t a good breeder.”
A slow grin spread across Hunter’s mouth. “You will tell her this, yes? So far she isn’t showing the proper enthusiasm. ~ Catherine Anderson,#NFDB
1343:Had Ma held a strengths perspective, he would have stuck to what he knew best: teaching English. After all, Ma had never written a line of code or made even a single sale to a customer before deciding to launch a commercial Internet venture. But Ma derived his enthusiasm from the belief that if he failed, he would have learned from the experience. ~ Emma Sepp l, #NFDB
1344:The Bush administration, they had two blue ribbon commissions about infrastructure finance that recommended a lot more money, and additionally the gas tax being increased. We couldn't get them to accept being able to move forward. Since President Obama's been in office, there has been, to be charitable, a lack of enthusiasm for raising the gas tax. ~ Ray LaHood, #NFDB
1345:imaging has its own formula: 1) the goal, 2) the purpose, 3) prayer activity, 4) thoughtful planning, 5) innovative thinking, 6) enthusiasm, 7) organized hard work, and 8) always holding the image of success firmly in mind. If this formula is faithfully carried out, the desired results will be achieved despite all difficulties or setbacks. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
1346:Oh. Yeah. That does make sense.” Shaylin hesitated. “But I don’t know which dorm room is hers.”
“Third floor, number thirty-six. When they shared a brain, they used to say it stood for their chest size. I
said it was their combined IQ.”
“Of course you did,” Shaylin said.
“See, you do understand me!” Aphrodite said with fake enthusiasm. ~ Kristin Cast,#NFDB
1347:Productivity is effectively stewarding your gifts, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm for the good of others and the glory of God. You have limited amounts of gifting, talents, time, energy, and enthusiasm, but unlimited ways of allocating them. For this reason productivity involves making decisions about how to allocate these finite resources. ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
1348:The attitude of the men is equally worthy of admiration...there is a rush to be first when work is to be done, and the same desire to sacrifice selfish consideration to the success of the expedition...Fortune would be in a hard mood indeed if it allowed such a combination of knowledge, experience, ability, and enthusiasm to achieve nothing. ~ Robert Falcon Scott, #NFDB
1349:The sun is not ridiculous, quite the contrary. On everything I like, on the rust of the construction girders, on the rotten boards of the fence, a miserly, uncertain light falls, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before, on pages you have written in one spurt without crossing out a word. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
1350:Between the covers a book can be a sin. I have spent many hours in search of a waking dream. And once having learned to read, I couldn’t imagine my life otherwise. The indifferent children around me didn’t share my enthusiasm for the written word. Some might sit for a good story while told, but if a book had no pictures they showed scant interest. ~ Keith Donohue, #NFDB
1351:I write about this in The Last Temple, the early church knew that Christ has risen from the dead, and so they didn't live their lives with earthly vanities, but they lived their lives for eternal verities. And I think that if we might catch that enthusiasm and the reality of resurrection, we would live by a completely different standard as well. ~ Hank Hanegraaff, #NFDB
1352:Today, any action anywhere on earth has an immediate repercussion on all five continents. News of a victory of the Eastern armies in Morocco or Shanghai travels instantly, thanks to modern means of communication, to all Eastern peoples and fills them with enthusiasm and faith. This phenomenon is, of course, unprecedented in the history of man. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
1353:Even when I was on Curb Your Enthusiasm I wasn't this "over-the-top" crazy character. It was still kind of play it straight but it was funny because the situation was funny. That's kind of how I portrayed things and I like dramas; I like to be able to - because in dramas you can laugh and joke and still be serious, be real. I like the realism of them. ~ Mekhi Phifer, #NFDB
1354:Millions of small changes can be done, and through that, there can be a bigger impact because anybody can talk to another person. Anybody can educate somebody if they feel like their neighbor is stupid. It's more like "Educate thy neighbor, my friend." I think that enthusiasm, and not giving into lazy-minded cynicism, is where the potential and hope is. ~ Eugene Hutz, #NFDB
1355:Forty years as an astronomer have not quelled my enthusiasm for lying outside after dark, staring up at the stars. It isn't only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It's the sense I have that some of those points of light are the home stars of beings not so different from us, daily cares and all, who look across space with wonder, just as we do. ~ Frank Drake, #NFDB
1356:We have to be vigilant on two fronts: (1) to not let our anti-imperialism lead to the defense of authoritarian regimes in the region and (2) to not let our enthusiasm for rebellion lead to cheering on the cruise missiles from US warships. These two sirens should worry us as we make our hesitant way alongside the rebirth of a New Left in the Arab world. ~ Vijay Prashad, #NFDB
1357:You know, students who major in elementary education - they're going to be grade school teachers - they have the highest rates of math anxiety of any college major. And they bring that into the classroom. So you find students being introduced to math concepts by teachers who may have not only a lack of training but also a lack of enthusiasm about math. ~ Anya Kamenetz, #NFDB
1358:Chances are, when you were young, you were told, in effect, "Listen, kid, here is the news: life is not about you. Life is not about what you want. What you want is not important. Life is about doing what others expect of you." If you accepted this idea, later on you wondered what had happened to your fire. Where had your enthusiasm for living gone? ~ Nathaniel Branden, #NFDB
1359:Try to finish everything. You’ll always find your enthusiasm for a project waning as it goes on, and you’ll be tempted by a new idea, but learn to ignore the latter and continue with the former. If you start abandoning work, you set a bad precedent, and establish a pattern for the years to come. And be nice to booksellers: never let them pay for a round. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
1360:When indeed Religion is kindled into enthusiasm, its force like that of other passions is increased by the sympathy of a multitude. But enthusiasm is only a temporary state of Religion, and whilst it lasts will hardly be seen with pleasure at the helm. Even in its coolest state, it has been much oftener a motive to oppression than a restraint from it. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
1361:The thing I really like about Twitter is the speed with which information reaches me. You find out things from Twitter long before they're on the news. That I think is valuable. In terms of actually tweeting myself, I have just lost enthusiasm for it. Maybe I'll do some of it this week to tell people about the PEN Festival and encourage them to show up. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1362:But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1363:God never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses His enthusiasm. His attitude toward sin is now the same as it was when he drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden, and His attitude toward the sinner the same as when He stretched forth His hands and cried, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1364:Oh, good,” said Hugh, but without enthusiasm. “By the way, here is that American novel I told you about. Let me know what you think of it.”
“Anything special?”
“I don’t feel happy about the chapter where Irving and Wayne listen to the whip-poor-will.”
“I’ll study it.”
I took Lot’s Hometown and went back to my room to ring up Hudson. ~ Anthony Powell,#NFDB
1365:[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their previous enthusiasm? Will Republicans stop their vicious attacks because Obama is lashing out to his left? It was pure self-indulgence; even if he feels aggrieved, he has to judge his words by their usefulness, not by his desire to vent. This isn't about him. ~ Paul Krugman, #NFDB
1366:It was Sir Winston Churchill, in the midst of Nazi bombings, who said to the people of London, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."' He was the one who offered the best definition of success I've ever read: "Success is moving from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
1367:Yet I believe the campaign against the idea of common ideals and a single society will fail. Gunnar Myrdal was surely right: for all the damage it has done, the upsurge of ethnicity is a superficial enthusiasm stirred by romantic ideologues and unscrupulous hucksters whose claim to speak for their minorities is thoughtlessly accepted by the media. ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, #NFDB
1368:I was not able to work up much enthusiasm over the ball game, and in the midst of it I was handed a note informing me of the sudden death of Senator Dwight morrow. He had proved a great pillar of strength in the senate and his death was a great loss to the country and to me. I left the ballpark with the chant of the crowd ringing in my ears, 'We Want Beer!' ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
1369:Dear friends, sometimes we may be tempted to allow ourselves be overtaken by laziness or despondency, especially when faced with the hardships and trials of life. In these cases, do not lose heart, but invoke the Holy Spirit, so that with the gift of fortitude He can lift our hearts and communicate new vigor and enthusiasm to our lives and our following Jesus. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1370:Onstage, it's all just a heightened and more elaborate version of me. When you're standing onstage, your adrenaline is going, your enthusiasm is at full tilt, and the excitement helps elevate you're attitude. I've always wanted to be as close to myself offstage, being funny with my buddies, and that's what I've worked hard on - being authentic to who I really am. ~ Dane Cook, #NFDB
1371:The important thing isn't that we're freakazoidal about the same things--it's that she's as freakazoidal about her stuff as I am about mine, and that enthusiasm can't help but unite us, even if the object thereof doesn't. If two people are twisted enough to connect on a deep level, it's only natural there will be lots of angles where they don't connect at all. ~ Rob Sheffield, #NFDB
1372:I spent a restless night plagued with excruciating dreams of Adam sucking me off in front of Matt, Jay and my mother. Matt and Jay weren’t paying much attention, being too busy excavating each other’s tonsils with their tongues, but Mum was staring with folded arms and narrowed eyes, occasionally muttering, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Timothy—show a little enthusiasm! ~ J L Merrow, #NFDB
1373:Our students wanted to know everything: but only the newest theory seemed to them worth bothering with. Knowing nothing of the intellectual achievements of the past, they kept fresh and intact their enthusiasm for 'the latest thing'. Fashion dominated their interest: they valued ideas not for themselves but for the prestige that they could wring from them. ~ Claude Levi Strauss, #NFDB
1374:Our students wanted to know everything: but only the newest theory seemed to them worth bothering with. Knowing nothing of the intellectual achievements of the past, they kept fresh and intact their enthusiasm for 'the latest thing'. Fashion dominated their interest: they valued ideas not for themselves but for the prestige that they could wring from them. ~ Claude L vi Strauss, #NFDB
1375:Play: It is an an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action. ~ Johan Huizinga, #NFDB
1376:As we walked, I asked him what, in a battle situation, was a person's greatest source of strength in trying to defeat the enemy.
"Your present. We defend ourselves best through what we are doing right now, because that is where agape and the will to win, through enthusiasm, are."
...we have to use the trust of what we are doing right now to defeat the enemy. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
1377:But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1378:By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
1379:Legion, cuneum formate!’ Reyna yelled. ‘Advance!’ Another cheer on Jason’s right as Percy and Annabeth reunited with the forces of Camp Half-Blood.
‘Greeks!’ Percy yelled. ‘Let’s, um, fight stuff!’ They yelled like banshees and charged.
Jason grinned. He loved the Greeks. They had no organization whatsoever, but they made up for it with enthusiasm. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1380:When we radiate warmth and acceptance, conversations just seem to flow. When we enter a room with a level of comfort and enthusiasm, we attract people toward us. Smile at someone on the street, and as a reflex they’ll smile back. Understanding that reflex and putting it into practice is critical to the success of just about every negotiating skill there is to learn. ~ Chris Voss, #NFDB
1381:In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1382:I've always felt that I shouldn't scream on the air...I just feel there's a way of rising enthusiastically if there's an exciting play, but you don't have to scream. There are people who do shout, and I think that's unnecessary. You have to be under control at all times, no matter what's taking place. Enthusiasm and excitement can be expressed without going berserk. ~ Marv Albert, #NFDB
1383:You managed to finish what you began even though you did not foresee all the traps along the way. And when your enthusiasm waned because of the difficulties you encountered, you reached for discipline. And when discipline seemed about to disappear because you were tired, you used your moments of repose to think about what steps you needed to take in the future. You ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1384:If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain-moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen - you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1385:Now, if you’re ready, I think we should go have a wedding.” Marty nodded in great enthusiasm. “I was ready when I got here. Will said if we didn’t get downstairs, he was gonna come up here and get you. He said he’d carry you over his shoulder if he had to. I think he just wants to kiss you.” “Oh dear,” Hannah said in mock horror. “Then we had better move quickly. ~ Tracie Peterson, #NFDB
1386:In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1387:The modern discovery of history and historical consciousness owed one of its greatest impulses neither to a new enthusiasm for the greatness of man, his doings and sufferings, nor to the belief that the meaning of human existence can be found in the story of mankind, but to the despair of human reason, which seemed adequate only when confronted with man-made objects. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1388:The fact is, man has never stayed by a single ideal. The mass enthusiasm when you were young gave way to cool, rationalistic classicism. Today that’s being drowned in turn by a kind of neoromanticism. God knows where that will lead. I probably won’t approve. Regardless, new generations grow up. We’ve no right to freeze them into our own mold. The universe is too wide. ~ Poul Anderson, #NFDB
1389:If you look at the well-informed Democratic Sanders activists - I don't know if you were in Philadelphia, but there was no secret about their enthusiasm for our campaign. But once you got more remote from the super activists in the Bernie [Sanders] camp, they don't know so much about our campaign. And the question is whether they are going to have a chance to be informed. ~ Jill Stein, #NFDB
1390:Schultz told stories of violence against Jews, communists, and anyone the Nazis saw as unsympathetic to their revolution. In some cases the victims had been American citizens. Martha countered that Germany was in the midst of a historic rebirth. Those incidents that did occur surely were only inadvertent expressions of the wild enthusiasm that had gripped the country. In ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
1391:The sectaries of a persecuted religion, depressed by fear, animated with resentment, and perhaps heated by enthusiasm, are seldom in a proper temper of mind calmly to investigate, or candidly to appreciate, the motives of their enemies, which often escape the impartial and discerning view even of those who are placed at a secure distance from the flames of persecution. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1392:A love of flowers would beget early rising, industry, habits of close observation, and of reading. It would incline the mind to notice natural phenomena, and to reason upon them. It would occupy the mind with pure thoughts, and inspire a sweet and gentle enthusiasm; maintain simplicity of taste; and ... unfold in the heart an enlarged, unstraightened, ardent piety. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
1393:And now the initiation was begun. She was to read, to study, to depict by a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on the boards; lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the pure enthusiasm that comes from art; for the mind that rightly conceives art is but a mirror which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully only—while unsullied. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton, #NFDB
1394:Connecting to your breath when thoughts or images arise is like spotting a friend in a crowd: you don't have to shove everyone else aside or order them to go away; you just direct your attention, your enthusiasm, your interest toward your friend. 'Oh,' you think, 'there's my friend in that crowd. Oh, there's my breath, among those thoughts and feelings and sensations. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
1395:I do have hope. Nature is enormously resilient, humans are vastly intelligent, the energy and enthusiasm that can be kindled among young people seems without limit, and he human spirit is indomitable. But if we want life, we will have to stop depending on someone else to save the world. It is up to us-you and me, all of us. Myself, I have placed my faith in the children. ~ Jane Goodall, #NFDB
1396:There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language that the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired... Just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1397:I greeted his posting with the sort of enthusiasm that would have followed the news that King Herod had been chosen to supervise the crèche. Very early on in our working relationship I ventured the notion - on air - that clouds were, if you like, poems in the sky, and he greeted this outbreak of loveliness with spluttering disbelief. here, I felt, was a singularly crass man. ~ John Peel, #NFDB
1398:The women I knew in those days liked the fact that I had a feminine streak, that I seemed to be sensitive and caring, that I didn’t know the names of any NFL teams, that I could make a nice risotto. A lot of straight women love a female sensibility in a man, an enthusiasm that goes right up to, but unfortunately does not quite include, his being an actual woman. ~ Jennifer Finney Boylan, #NFDB
1399:Acceptance is supposed to be a good thing - Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Also compromise, as every couples therapist will tell you. But the cost was high - the damping of expectation, the dwindling of spirit, the resignation that comes to replace enthusiasm, the cynicism that supplants hope. The mouldering that goes unnoticed and unchecked. ~ A S A Harrison, #NFDB
1400:But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a universal language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1401:Enthusiasm is the dynamics of your personality. Without it, whatever abilities you may possess lie dormant; and it is safe to say that nearly every man has more latent power than he ever learns to use. You may have knowledge, sound judgment, good reasoning faculties; but no one-not even yourself-will know it until you discover how to put your heart into thought and action. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1402:Within the framework of the Buddhist Path, reflecting on suffering has tremendous importance because -realizing the nature of suffering, you will develop greater resolve to put an end to the causes of suffering and the unwholesome deeds which lead to suffering. And it will increase your enthusiasm for engaging in the wholesome actions and deeds which lead to happiness and joy. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1403:In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized,--no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,--so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1404:Candy. He spoke of candy. Was he still in the child's world where candy stood for something sweet enough to hold back tears? I had grown older, and had lost enthusiasm for childish delights. I wanted what every teenager wants -- freedom to develop into a woman, freedom to have full control over my life! Though I tried to tell him this, my voice had dried up along with my tears. ~ V C Andrews, #NFDB
1405:There's a version of Tony [from "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"] that I think could be heightened. Trying to find the balance. A lot of that comes from "Who is he?" I think we've all kind of met that dude. The comic book enthusiast, or someone who gets too excited about things, but his own enthusiasm tends to alienate him. I relate to it because I've seen that guy. ~ Elijah Wood, #NFDB
1406:The boss drives his workers; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on goodwill. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says “I”; the leader, “we.” The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how. The boss says, “Go”; the leader says, “Let’s go! ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1407:In any crowd there is a malcontent or two, and the Easter crowd is no exception. Someone invariably demands I speak out against the Easter Bunny. I am captivated by a great number of subjects, but have never worked up the enthusiasm to preach against rabbits, real or mythic. These are the same people who complain about Santa at Christmas and want me to take a swipe at Halloween. ~ Philip Gulley, #NFDB
1408:If you absolutely have to work on long-term projects, try to dedicate one day a week (or every two weeks) to small victories that generate enthusiasm. Small victories let you celebrate and release good news. And you want a steady stream of good news. When there’s something new to announce every two weeks, you energize your team and give your customers something to be excited about. ~ Jason Fried, #NFDB
1409:I was thinking I had noticed a curious lack of either enthusiasm or bitterness in the account of the world by Theobald's sister. There was in her story the flatness one associates with a storyteller who is accepting of unhappy endings, as if her life and her companions had never been exotic to her—as if they had always been staging a ludicrous and doomed effort at reclassification. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
1410:What we must do now is create ourselves—not re-create, but create. This is why it is cruel. When we first did this, we had all the energy of youth. We did not know that attaining our dreams would be impossible—we just went out and got them. Innocence shielded us. Enthusiasm and unflagging confidence got us through. But now we have none of that. Now we are old, wiser, tired. ~ Michael A Stackpole, #NFDB
1411:He called me "Bubbles," a pet name he had chosen, he told me, because I seemed to enjoy so many things. Anxious to confirm his description, I refused to let my enthusiasm wane, even when I grew tired or grumpy. Thus excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
1412:Romanticism, which has helped to fill some dull blanks with love and knowledge, had not yet penetrated the times with its leaven and entered into everybody's food; it was fermenting still as a distinguishable vigorous enthusiasm in certain long-haired German artists at Rome, and the youth of other nations who worked or idled near them were sometimes caught in the spreading movement. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1413:People seem able to love their dogs with an unabashed acceptance that they rarely demonstrate with family or friends. The dogs do not disappoint them, or if they do, the owners manage to forget about it quickly. I want to learn to love people like this, the way I love my dog, with pride and enthusiasm and a complete amnesia for faults. In short, to love others the way my dog loves me. ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
1414:her disposition is not all it should be; she wants what she wants when she wants it and she is prone to make every one around her pretty miserable when she doesn't get it—but in the true sense she is not spoiled. Her fresh enthusiasm, her will to grow and learn, her endless faith in the inexhaustibility of romance, her courage and fundamental honesty—these things are not spoiled. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1415:The priestess of Artemis took hold of her almost with the violence of a lover, and whisked her away into a languid ecstasy of reverie. She communicated her own enthusiasm to the girl, and kept her mind occupied with dreams, faery-fervid, of uncharted seas of glory on which her galleon might sail, undiscovered countries of spice and sweetness, Eldorado and Utopia and the City of God. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
1416:Sports are too much with us. Late and soon, sitting and watching - mostly watching on television - we lay waste our powers of identification and enthusiasm and, in time, attention as more and more closing rallies and crucial putts and late field goals and final playoffs and sudden deaths and world records and world championships unreel themselves ceaselessly before our half-lidded eyes. ~ Roger Angell, #NFDB
1417:The priestess of Artemis took hold of her almost with the violence of a lover, and whisked her away into a languid ecstasy of reverie. She communicated her own enthusiasm to the girl, and kept her mind occupied with dreams, faery-fervid, of uncharted seas of glory on which her galleon might sail, undiscovered countries of spice and sweetness, Eldorado and Utopia and the City of God. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
1418:Though he had determined upon this in the first moment of joyful enthusiasm, yet the delay of four-and-twenty hours had made a material change in his feelings; his most virtuous resolves were always rather the effect of sudden impulse than of steady principle. But when the tide of passion had swept away the landmarks, he had no method of ascertaining the boundaries of right and wrong. ~ Maria Edgeworth, #NFDB
1419:People seem able to love their dogs with an unabashed acceptance that they rarely demonstrate with family or friends. The dogs do not disappoint them, or if they do, the owners manage to forget about it quickly. I want to learn to love people like this, the way I love my dog, with pride and enthusiasm and a complete amnesia for faults. In short, to love others the way my dog loves me. When ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
1420:The thing about enthusiasm-- especially Liam's particular brand-- was that it was catching. There would be nights I would simply sit back, watching, as he became more and more animated with his hands as he spoke, as if trying to shape his ideas out of the air for the rest of us to see. His words were coated with such unyielding hopefulness that it visibly inflated everyone around him. ~ Alexandra Bracken, #NFDB
1421:Wait... we... you... you mean... we...” I spray words around the room, taking out innocent bystanders with my abrupt enthusiasm. “This is huge! This is enormous! This is like the Godzilla of breaks. It’s the sort of break that destroys large chunks of Tokyo!” I stop, take stock, try and gain perspective. Punctured lung and all that. “Who is it?” I ask, unable to stop one toe from tapping. ~ Jonathan Wood, #NFDB
1422:You look at Donald Trump and Ben Carson and you can see the people supporting them are small donors, the people I always call the ones who make the country work. Certainly not rich corporate CEO types, and these are not people that expect some sort of issue oriented payback. They're donating because of enthusiasm, ideas. The corporate donors are donating 'cause they want policy in return. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1423:It struck me, in fact, that all of my work on habits and happiness was meant to help us construct, as much as possible, just that: everyday life in Utopia. Everyday life with deep, loving relationships and productive, satisfying work; everyday life with energy, health, and productivity; everyday life with fun, enthusiasm, and engagement, with as little regret, guilt, or anger as possible. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
1424:People seem able to love their dogs with an unabashed acceptance that they rarely demonstrate with family or friends. The dogs do not disappointment them, or, if they do, the owners manages to forget about it quickly. I want to learn to love people like this, the way I love my dog, with pride and enthusiasm and a complete amnesia for faults. In short, to love others the way my dog loves me. ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
1425:She hefted the ax, which had been my first, a gift from Darci when I was twelve. It was a twenty-six-inch camper’s ax, all one-piece metal like the hammers Estwing makes. She twirled it in a loop around her, the stainless steel flashing a silver line in the dim light. “I like this. It’s got great balance,” she said with the kind of enthusiasm that most girls reserve for shoes. Picking ~ John Conroe, #NFDB
1426:What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow. During the past decade that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis. As 'bandwagon' investors join any party, they create their own truth - for a while. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1427:In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (1850), #NFDB
1428:After meticulously analyzing videos of 185 venture capital presentations — looking at both verbal and nonverbal behavior — Lakshmi ended up with results that surprised her: the strongest predictor of who got the money was not the person’s credentials or the content of the pitch. The strongest predictors of who got the money were these traits: confidence, comfort level, and passionate enthusiasm. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
1429:There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
1430:Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management. ~ Theodore Levitt, #NFDB
1431:The only thing you have to know is that opening allows energy in, and closing blocks it out. Now you have to decide whether or not you want this energy. How high do you want to get? How much love do you want to feel? How much enthusiasm do you want to have for the things you do? If enjoying a full life means experiencing high energy, love, and enthusiasm all the time, then don’t ever close. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
1432:When we are right, let’s try to win people gently and tactfully to our way of thinking, and when we are wrong – and that will be surprisingly often, if we are honest with ourselves – let’s admit our mistakes quickly and with enthusiasm. Not only will that technique produce astonishing results; but, believe it or not, it is a lot more fun, under the circumstances, than trying to defend oneself. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1433:Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires. ~ Edward Everett, #NFDB
1434:Here’s the thing about Cricket Bell. You can’t NOT notice him when he walks into a room. The first thing that registers is his height, but it’s quickly followed by recognition of his energy. He moves gracefully like his sister, but with an enthusiasm he can’t quite control- the constantly moving body, hands, feet. He’s been subdued the last few times I’ve seen him, but he’s fully revived now. ~ Stephanie Perkins, #NFDB
1435: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
1436:The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous. ~ Paul Rand, #NFDB
1437:We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,-a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
1438:You can buy a person’s hand, but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can’t buy his brain. That’s where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness. PC work is treating employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that’s what they are. They volunteer the best part—their hearts and minds. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1439:God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshipers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global purpose. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1440:In short, here's what making is-ness your business means: engage in your life with enthusiasm exactly as it is, regardless of your likes and dislikes, your preferences, ideas, beliefs, and opinions about how things should be or could be. Unconditionally allow things to be the way they are. When you deal with what is, or your is-ness, you can then choose who you'd like to be in relationship to that. ~ Marie Forleo, #NFDB
1441:You are what you think about all day long. You are also what you say to yourself all day long. If you say that you are old and tired, this mantra will be manifested in your external reality. If you say you are weak and lack enthusiasm, this too will be the nature of your world. But if you say that you are healthy, dynamic and fully alive, your life will be transformed. Words have remarkable power. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1442:Long before that, we are shamed at a deeper level. We are shamed in our enthusiasm. We are made to feel guilty, naïve, and humiliated about our very pulse for life and about our very trust of each other. Long before we are ever told that sex is bad, or that our body isn’t quite right, or that we have failed in our duty somewhere, we are told we are bad because we are so trusting and enthusiastic. ~ Ronald Rolheiser, #NFDB
1443:She finished with the draft and sauntered—Lorraine never walked, she sauntered—toward the corner of the bar where they kept the good stuff. Broome spun around on the stool. There was a line at the buffet. An actual line for the food. On the stage a girl danced with the enthusiasm of a coma patient. The old Neil Diamond classic “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” played through the speaker system. Lorraine ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1444:Technical Utopias-flying, for example-have been achieved by the new science of nature.The human utopia...a united new humankind living in solidarity and peace, free from economic determination and from war and class struggle-can be achieved, provided we spend the same energy, intelligence, and enthusiasm on the realization of the human Utopia as we have spent on the realization of our technical Utopias. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1445:I owe everything to the gift of Pentecost. For fifty days the facts of the Gospel were complete, but no conversions were recorded. Pentecost registered three thousand souls. It is by fire that a holy passion is kindled in the soul whereby we live the life of God. The soul's safety is in its heat. Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, make for a Church without power. ~ Samuel Chadwick, #NFDB
1446:It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives ... thank you. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1447:It's always instructive to observe the life cycle of the First World aid worker. A wary enthusiasm blooms into an almost messianic sense of what might be possible. Then, as they bump up against the local cultural limits of acceptable change, comes the inevitable disappointment, which can harden into cynicism and even racism, until they are no better than the resident whites they have initially disparaged. ~ Peter Godwin, #NFDB
1448:If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
1449:Toward whatsoever we regard as perfect, undoubtedly, it is no less our duty than it is our nature to press forward; this is the generous enthusiasm which accomplishes not indeed the consummation after which it aspires, but one which approaches it in a degree far nearer than if the whole powers had not been developed by a delusion. It is in politics rather than in religion that faith is meritorious. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
1450:Yet however genuinely dreadful these moods and memories have been, they have always been offset by the elation and vitality of others; and whenever a mild and gentlish wave of brilliant and bubbling manic enthusiasm comes over me, I am transported by its exuberance—as surely as one is transported by a pungent scent into a world of profound recollection—to earlier, more intense and passionate times. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
1451:All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1452:He read his own obituary and an editorial lamenting his demise and praising his fortitude and immediately began to think up witty ways of writing to the paper to announce his continued and uninterrupted existence. The other two joined in the game with enthusiasm, and soon all three of them were howling with laughter and emptying bottles at a rate which would have alarmed even a depressed Scandinavian. ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
1453:One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement...It is easy to laugh at men's ideals; it is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others. The world is full of discouragers. We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet. Blessed is the man who speaks such a word. ~ William Barclay, #NFDB
1454:Something escapes us, and we are escaping from ourselves, or losing ourselves, as part of an irreversible process; we have now passed some point of no return, the point where the contradictoriness of things ended, and we find ourselves, still alive, in a universe of non-contradiction, of enthusiasm, of ecstasy - of stupor in the face of a process which, for all its irreversibility, is bereft of meaning. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
1455:Compounding Julia’s irritation was the fact that Mark and Jennifer were the parents of one of Sam’s friends, and thought of Jacob and Julia as their friends, and wanted to have a coffee after to “catch up.” Julia liked them and, insofar as she could muster enthusiasm for extrafamilial relations, considered them friends. But she couldn’t muster much. At least not until she could catch up with herself. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
1456:Interviewed many years later about the impact upon him of Lenin’s writings, Ho’s stilted language could not disguise his initial excitement: “What emotion, enthusiasm, clear-sightedness and confidence it instilled in me! I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my room, I shouted aloud as if addressing large crowds: ‘Dear martyrs, compatriots! This is what we need, this is the path to liberation. ~ Geoffrey C Ward, #NFDB
1457:do not understand Englishmen at all,” Stanley wrote. “Either they suspect me of some self-interest, or they do not believe me. . . . For the relief of Livingstone I was called an impostor; for the crossing of Africa I was called a pirate.” Nor was there enthusiasm in the United States for Congo colonization. James Gordon Bennett, Jr., in New York, now wanted to send Stanley off in search of the North Pole. ~ Adam Hochschild, #NFDB
1458:Enthusiasm needs to be effective enthusiasm. We must distinguish between the contribution and enthusiasm of the cheerleader and the enthusiasm of the player. While cheerleaders serve an important purpose, the real contest involves players on the field or on the court of life. We must not go through life acting only as enthusiastic cheerleaders available for hire; we must be anxiously and personally engaged. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
1459:Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty, intellect without effort, without suffering... not a feature is correct – but the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined. It makes the impression upon one that thousands of voices do, uniting in one unanimous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion, which is said to overcome the strongest man. ~ Florence Nightingale, #NFDB
1460:The books were alive in these men. They talked with fire and enthusiasm, the intellectual stimulant stirring them as he had seen drink and anger stir other men. What he heard was no longer the philosophy of the dry, printed word, written by half-mythical demigods like Kant and Spencer. It was living philosophy, with warm, red blood, incarnated in these two men till its very features worked with excitement. Now ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1461:When one becomes for an instant one's former self, that is to say different from what one has been for some time past, one's sensibility, being no longer dulled by habit, receives from the slightest stimulus vivid impressions which make everything that has preceded them fade into insignificance, impressions to which, because of their intensity, we attach ourselves with the momentary enthusiasm of a drunkard. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1462:I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. “There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1463:The proliferation of state concealed carry laws has evidently reduced the rate of violent street crime to a considerable extent. When the goblins do not know who is armed and who is not, their professional enthusiasm declines. Now that Britain has made sure (insofar as any law can so insure) that everybody is disarmed, the streets arem given back to the bad kid with the baseball bat. We hope they are satisfied. ~ Jeff Cooper, #NFDB
1464:There is eloquence in the tongueless
wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the
reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something
within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless
rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like
the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved
singing to you alone. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley,#NFDB
1465:You can be anywhere in the world ... under confetti, under bombs, in cellar or stratosphere, prison or embassy, on the equator in Trondhjem, you'll never go wrong, you'll get a direct response ... all they want of you is that famous Parisian vagina! la Parisienne! your man sees himself wedged between her thighs in epileptic bliss, full nuptial flight, inundating the barisienne with his enthusiasm ... ~ Louis Ferdinand C line, #NFDB
1466:I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy. In my excitement, I routinely take on more that I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion. You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart. This will be unbelievably tedious. I apologize in advance. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1467:You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
She shook her head, even though her pulse was racing.
Devon nuzzled against her hair. “I worried that I might have hurt or frightened you yesterday, in my…” He paused, searching for a word. “…enthusiasm,” he finished dryly.
“You…you didn’t know what you were doing.”
Self-mockery thickened his voice. “I knew exactly what I was doing. I just wasn’t able to do it well. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1468:Do you prefer burned or raw?"
"I'll have the burned portion, thank you."
"Excellent choice. The turnips will complement them perfectly." He winked at her and filled their plates with such amused spirits that Sophia found herself watching him through her lashes.
What was wrong with this man? Surely he wasn't used to such horrid meals? Yet to watch him eat with such enthusiasm, you'd think he was starving. ~ Karen Hawkins,#NFDB
1469:I am thoroughly convinced that there are people who cross our paths every day that do nothing but discourage us and make us lose focus on the big picture of what God has called us to do. If we allow them, they will steal our joy, our enthusiasm, and our calling. When you come across people like that, give them no time or opportunity. God is the source of our joy, and we must spend our energies focused on Him alone. ~ Ron Lambros, #NFDB
1470:The audience does not need to tune themselves to you - you need to tune your message to fit them. Skilled presenting requires you to understand their hearts and minds and create a message to resonate with what's already there. Your audience will be significantly moved if you send a message that is tuned to their needs and desires. They might even quiver with enthusiasm and act in concert to create beautiful results. ~ Nancy Duarte, #NFDB
1471:we have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.If we are not reborn if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm o childhood it makes no sense to go on living. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1472:agree with Nietzsche that ‘The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously.’ A joyful life is an active life – it is not a dull static state of so-called happiness. Full of the burning fire of enthusiasm, anarchic, revolutionary, energetic, daemonic, Dionysian, filled to overflowing with the terrific urge to create – such is the life of the man who risks safety and happiness for the sake of growth and happiness. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1473:Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart; his heart is where his enthusiasm is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is. Treat employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that's what they are. They volunteer the best parts - their hearts and minds. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
1474:It happens over and over again—a group of people come together, fired up with passion to create change. They begin with huge inspiration and enthusiasm—and a year later, it’s all foundered in the mire of conflict. We could have changed the world ten times over—if we didn’t have to do it together with other people, those irritating, self-righteous, controlling, fluff-brained, clueless idiots who are our friends and allies. ~ Starhawk, #NFDB
1475:Those who approach their jobs and careers with enthusiasm always find plenty of opportunities, while those who complain about no one ever giving them a chance are merely observers of life. When you are determined that you will not allow others to determine your future for you, when you refuse to allow temporary setbacks to defeat you, you are destined for great success. The opportunities will always be there for you. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
1476:It is a great art to succeed in having your soul sanctified. A person can become a saint anywhere. He can become a saint in Omonia Square, if he wants. At your work, whatever it may be, you can become a saint through meekness, patience, and love. Make a new start every day, with new resolution, with enthusiasm and love, prayer and silence - not with anxiety so that you get a pain in the chest. ~ Porphyrios Bairaktaris of Kafsokalivia, #NFDB
1477:Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each — or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1478:We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we can not silence its voice.The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. If we are not reborn if we can not learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm o childhood it makes no sense to go on living. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1479:All one night we sat, with a friend of his, in a big dark roadhouse outside of Philadelphia, arguing and arguing about mysticism, and smoking more and more cigarettes and gradually getting drunk. Eventually, filled with enthusiasm for the purity of heart which begets the vision of God, I went on with them into the city, after the closing of the bars, to a big speak-easy where we completed the work of getting plastered. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1480:Energy is the fuel that enables you to maintain clarity, focus, and action so that you can generate results day after day. Energy is contagious. It spreads from you to your clients and prospects like a positive virus, creating symptoms of enthusiasm and affirmative responses everywhere. Energy is a vaccine against rejection and disappointment. Have enough of it, and you’re almost permanently inoculated against negativity. ~ Hal Elrod, #NFDB
1481:Missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All you had to do was to cure the head savage´s sick daughter by a miracle- a miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance- and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert´s enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself easy now. He would take the ax and convert the rest of the nation himself. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1482:This is where the prayer beads around my neck come in,” Julian added with rising enthusiasm. “Every time I catch myself thinking a negative thought, I take this necklace off and remove another bead. These beads of worry go into a cup I keep in my knapsack. Together they serve as gentle reminders that I still have a distance to travel on the road to mental mastery and responsibility over the thoughts that fill my mind. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1483:Christ said that illumination is found only by putting everything one has in jeopardy. Thou, of all humans, should understand the courage that is required to reject the secure blessings of society in order to woo the unpredictable ecstasies of the solitary soul. It is true that Christ had little enthusiasm for dance or copulation, that he took ’right’ and ’wrong’ too seriously and set himself apart from the natural world, ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1484:I will begin with what in my opinion is your lack of restraint. You are like a spectator in a theatre who expresses his enthusiasm so unrestrainedly that he prevents himself and others from hearing. That lack of restraint is particularly noticeable in the descriptions of nature with which you interrupt dialogues; when one reads them, these descriptions, one wishes they were more compact, shorter, say two or three lines. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1485:So much enthusiasm about the non-existence of God is somewhat bewildering, as no one appears to be nearly as excited about a similar absence of belief in unicorns, vampires, werewolves, astrology, nation-building, or the Labor Theory of Value. Nor is anyone dedicating much of their time to writing books and giving speeches at universities and conferences with the avowed goal of convincing others not to believe in them either. ~ Vox Day, #NFDB
1486:In the wake of the affair, Rabih adopts a different view of the purpose of marriage. As a younger man he thought of it as a consecration of a special set of feelings: tenderness, desire, enthusiasm, longing. However, he now understands that it is also, and just as importantly, an institution, one which is meant to stand fast from year to year without reference to every passing change in the emotions of its participants. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1487:The law of demand and supply reaches into subtler realms than I had supposed.” Ananta spoke with a spiritual enthusiasm never before noticeable. “I understand for the first time your indifference to the vaults and vulgar accumulations of the world.” Late as it was, my brother insisted that he receive diksha into kriya yoga. The ‘guru’ Mukunda had to shoulder the responsibility of two unsought disciples in one day. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1488:Enthusiasm is always connected with the senses, whatever be the object that excites it. The true strength of virtue is serenity of mind, combined with a deliberate and steadfast determination to execute her laws. That is the healthful condition of the moral life; on the other hand, enthusiasm, even when excited by representations of goodness, is a brilliant but feverish glow which leaves only exhaustion and languor behind. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
1489:In a small, independent organization, these small wins will generate energy and enthusiasm. In the mainstream, they would generate skepticism about whether we should even be in the business. I want my organization’s customers to answer the question of whether we should be in the business. I don’t want to spend my precious managerial energy constantly defending our existence to efficiency analysts in the mainstream. ~ Clayton M Christensen, #NFDB
1490:And this is Liam,” Erin said with less enthusiasm.
“I’m twelve. But I’m mature for my age. In case you felt like dating a younger man.”
“Mature?” Erin snorted. “You still play with Legos.”
“Just practicing for my future in engineering.” His voice cracked in an unintended squeak. “Mam says one day girls are gonna fall for my intelligence.” Liam wiggled those brows toward me. “Better get me while I’m still available. ~ Jenny B Jones,#NFDB
1491:- When we feel well after carrying out a certain task. Consequently, everything which causes us to lose our enthusiasm and self respect, is harmful; even if it means power, money or success. I have seen so many people suffocated by success, making mistakes which ended up destroying years of work, yielding to heavy drinking, becoming aggressive, tough, bitter. These people are distant from themselves, and distant from others. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1492:And this is Liam," Erin said with leass enthusiasm.
"I'm twelve. But I'm mature for my age. In case you felt like dating a younger man."
"Mature?" Erin snorted. "You still play with Legos."
"Just practicing for my future in engineering." His voice cracked in an unintended squeak. "Mam says one day girls are gonna fall for my intelligence." Liam wiggled those brows toward me. "Better get me while I'm still available. ~ Jenny B Jones,#NFDB
1493:if you want to make significant improvements to your life. And to make you want to make the necessary changes, your why must be something that is fantastically motivating—to you. You’ve got to want to get up and go, go, go, go, go—for years! So, what is it that moves you the most? Identifying your why is critical. What motivates you is the ignition to your passion, the source for your enthusiasm, and the fuel of your persistence. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1494:You see, you’re not someone without direction; you’re an investigator, and the whole investigative process consists of learning a little bit about everything that looks interesting to you. If you respect your natural curiosity, you’ll come to trust your enthusiasm. It knows something about you. Your trail of enthusiasms is the most precise instrument you have for locating where you’d find the deepest satisfaction in your life. ~ Barbara Sher, #NFDB
1495:My neighbor Alice Pierce is fond of singing folk music to her garden plants. Thinks it makes them grow or something. The Major had often wondered how a wailing rendition of 'Greensleeves' would encourage greater raspberry production but Alice insisted that it worked far better than chemical fertilizers, and she did produce several kinds of fruit in pie-worthy quantitites. No sense of pitch, but plenty of enthusiasm, he added. ~ Helen Simonson, #NFDB
1496:sometimes good people can still hurt each other. I didn’t have sex again for a year, but based on who I was hanging out with during that period of my life, I doubt I missed anything spectacular. Lesson for young men: if you want your eventual wife to be excited about sucking your dick for forty years, don’t create a generation of women who think enthusiasm about sex is a bad thing. I ran into Landon about a year after we broke ~ Anna Kendrick, #NFDB
1497:Enthusiasm means everything. Not just a little. Everything. If you are involved in some kind of project right now, or launching any personal endeavor, your enthusiasm (or lack of it) will directly determine how successful this undertaking will be. If you are not excited at the core of your being by it, drop it right now. If you are excited at the core of your being, demonstrate that in everything you think and say and do. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1498:His wise parent disapproved of this uncatly conduct; it indicated a certain lack of character, and no good would come of it. By her own example she tried to guide him. When dinner was served she gave the plate a haughty sniff and walked away, no matter how tempting the dish. That was the way it was done by any self-respecting feline. In a minute or two she returned and condescended to dine, but never with open enthusiasm. ~ Lilian Jackson Braun, #NFDB
1499:In the ardor of his enthusiasm, a youth set forth in quest of a man of whom he might take counsel as to his future, but after long search and many disappointments, he came near relinquishing the pursuit as hopeless, when suddenly it occurred to him that one must first be a man to find a man, and profiting by this suggestion, he set himself to the work of becoming himself the man he had been seeking so long and fruitlessly. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott, #NFDB
1500:Item one: the law of the will. We just talked about this: one should only do that which truly fills our hearts with enthusiasm. If we brush this aside, if we put off the moment to live that which we dream of, we lose the energy necessary for any important transformation in our lives. Someone once put this most succinctly: “I don’t know the secret of success - but the secret of failure is to always try to follow the will of others. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
136 Integral Yoga
26 Occultism
18 Philosophy
14 Fiction
12 Yoga
10 Poetry
8 Psychology
6 Christianity
3 Education
2 Theosophy
2 Sufism
1 Thelema
1 Hinduism
1 Baha i Faith
1 Alchemy
77 The Mother
52 Sri Aurobindo
34 Satprem
24 Nolini Kanta Gupta
17 Aleister Crowley
9 H P Lovecraft
7 Plato
6 Swami Krishnananda
6 Sri Ramakrishna
6 Plotinus
6 Carl Jung
6 A B Purani
5 Percy Bysshe Shelley
4 Friedrich Nietzsche
3 Rudolf Steiner
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Jordan Peterson
11 Magick Without Tears
9 Record of Yoga
9 Lovecraft - Poems
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
7 The Synthesis Of Yoga
7 Questions And Answers 1954
7 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
7 Liber ABA
6 The Study and Practice of Yoga
6 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
6 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
6 Agenda Vol 04
5 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
5 Shelley - Poems
5 Questions And Answers 1956
5 On Education
5 Letters On Yoga IV
5 Letters On Yoga II
5 Agenda Vol 02
4 The Life Divine
4 The Human Cycle
4 Questions And Answers 1953
4 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
4 Agenda Vol 05
4 Agenda Vol 01
3 Twilight of the Idols
3 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
3 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Prayers And Meditations
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
3 Agenda Vol 08
3 Agenda Vol 06
2 Words Of The Mother II
2 Theosophy
2 Savitri
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
2 Mysterium Coniunctionis
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Letters On Poetry And Art
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
2 Agenda Vol 12
2 Agenda Vol 03
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The form of a thing can be beautiful; but the formless too has its beauty. Indeed, the beauty of the formless, that is to say, the very sum and substance, the ultimate essence, the soul of beauty that is what suffuses, with in-gathered colour and Enthusiasm, the realisation and poetic creation of the Upanishadic seer. All the forms that are scattered abroad in their myriad manifest beauty hold within themselves a secret Beauty and are reflected or projected out of it. This veiled Name of Beauty can be compared to nothing on the phenomenal hemisphere of Nature; it has no adequate image or representation below:
na tasya pratimsti
it cannot be defined or figured in the terms of the phenomenal consciousness. In speaking of it, however, the Upanishads invariably and repeatedly refer to two attributes that characterise its fundamental nature. These two aspects have made such an impression upon the consciousness of the Upanishadic seer that his Enthusiasm almost wholly plays about them and is centred on them. When he contemplates or communes with the Supreme Object, these seem to him to be the mark of its au thenticity, the seal of its high status and the reason of all the charm and magic it possesses. The first aspect or attri bute is that of light the brilliance, the solar effulgenceravituly-arpa the bright, clear, shadow less Light of lightsvirajam ubhram jyotim jyoti The second aspect is that of delight, the bliss, the immortality inherent in that wide effulgencenandarpam amtam yad vibhti.
And what else is the true character, the soul of beauty than light and delight? "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." And a thing of joy is a thing of light. Joy is the radiance rippling over a thing of beauty. Beauty is always radiant: the charm, the loveliness of an object is but the glow of light that it emanates. And it would not be a very incorrect mensuration to measure the degree of beauty by the degree of light radiated. The diamond is not only a thing of value, but a thing of beauty also, because of the concentrated and undimmed light that it enshrines within itself. A dark, dull and dismal thing, devoid of interest and attraction becomes aesthetically precious and significant as soon as the artist presents it in terms of the values of light. The entire art of painting is nothing but the expression of beauty, in and through the modalities of light.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
that the symbols are interchanged, Enthusiasm being
represented as the sinuous snake, scepticism as the
0.01 - Letters from the Mother to Her Son, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
want to dampen their Enthusiasm. I had entitled it "The Central
Thought", but they found this a little too philosophical, so it has
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have been speaking of philosophy and the philosophic manner. But what are the exact implications of the words, let us ask again. They mean nothing more and nothing lessthan the force of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present human consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-world poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous Enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shakespeare of the poet
Of imagination all compact.. . .
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the evolutionary urge, as I have said, has always been to bring down or instil more and more light and self-consciousness into the depths of the heart too: and the first result has been an intellectualisation, a rationalisation of the consciousness, a movement of scientific observation and criticism which very naturally leads to a desiccation of the poetic Enthusiasm and fervour. But a period of transcendence is in gestation. All efforts of modern poets and craftsmen, even those that seem apparently queer, bizarre and futile, are at bottom a travail for this transcendence, including those that seem contradictory to it.
Whether the original and true source of the poet's inspiration lies deep within or high above, all depends upon the mediating instrument the mind (in its most general sense) and speech for a successful transcription. Man's ever-growing consciousness demanded also a conscious development and remoulding of these two factors. A growth, a heightening and deepening of the consciousness meant inevitably a movement towards the spiritual element in things. And that means, we have said, a twofold change in the future poet's make-up. First as regards the substance. The revolutionary shift that we notice in modern poets towards a completely new domain of subject-matter is a signpost that more is meant than what is expressed. The superficialities and futilities that are dealt with do not in their outward form give the real trend of things. In and through all these major and constant preoccupation of our poets is "the pain of the present and the passion for the future": they are, as already stated, more prophets than poets, but prophets for the moment crying in the wildernessalthough some have chosen the path of denial and revolt. They are all looking ahead or beyond or deep down, always yearning for another truth and reality which will explain, justify and transmute the present calvary of human living. Such an acute tension of consciousness has necessitated an overhauling of the vehicle of expression too, the creation of a mode of expressing the inexpressible. For that is indeed what human consciousness and craft are aiming at in the present stage of man's evolution. For everything, almost everything that can be normally expressed has been expressed and in a variety of ways as much as is possible: that is the history of man's aesthetic creativity. Now the eye probes into the unexpressed world; for the artist too the Upanishadic problem has cropped up:
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, there are one or two points, notes for the guidance of the aspirant, which I would like to mention here for their striking appositeness and simple "soothfastness." First of all with regard to the restless Enthusiasm and eagerness of a novice, here is the advice given: "The fervour is so mickle in outward showing, is not only for mickleness of love that they have; but it is for littleness and weakness of their souls, that they may not bear a little touching of God.. afterward when love hath boiled out all the uncleanliness, then is the love clear and standeth still, and then is both the body and the soul mickle more in peace, and yet hath the self soul mickle more love than it had before, though it shew less outward." And again: "without any fervour outward shewed, and the less it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth" ('it' naturally refers to the soul). The statement is beautifully self-luminous, no explanation is required. Another hurdle that an aspirant has to face often in the passage through the Dark Night is that you are left all alone, that you are deserted by your God, that the Grace no longer favours you. Here is however the truth of the matter; "when I fall down to my frailty, then Grace withdraweth: for my falling is cause there-of, and not his fleeing." In fact, the Grace never withdraws, it is we who withdraw and think otherwise. One more difficulty that troubles the beginner especially is with regard to the false light. The being of darkness comes in the form of the angel of light, imitates the tone of the still small voice; how to recognise, how to distinguish the two? The false light, the "feigned sun" is always found "atwixt two black rainy clouds" : they are "highing" of oneself and "lowing" of others. When you feel flattered and elated, beware it is the siren voice tempting you. The true light brings you soothing peace and meekness: the other light brings always a trail of darknessf you are soothfast and sincere you will discover it if not near you, somewhere at a distance lurking.
The ultimate truth is that God is the sole doer and the best we can do is to let him do freely without let or hindrance. "He that through Grace may see Jhesu, how that He doth all and himself doth right nought but suffereth Jhesu work in him what him liketh, he is meek." And yet one does not arrive at that condition from the beginning or all at once. "The work is not of the hour nor of a day, but of many days and years." And for a long time one has to take up one's burden and work, co-operate with the Divine working. In the process there is this double movement necessary for the full achievement. "Neither Grace only without full working of a soul that in it is nor working done without grace bringeth a soul to reforming but that one joined to that other." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the higher mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teacher say: "It is no mastery to me for to say it, but for to do it there is mastery." Amen.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
in the students, whether in games, athletics or gymnastics. Even our own Enthusiasm dwindles when we see
their lack of interest in everything.
--
freedom. There is a kind of Enthusiasm in the soul (I do
not know whether it comes from the soul) to enjoy the
--
The resolutions I make lose their intensity and ardour after a time. How can I keep this Enthusiasm and
increase it more and more?
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Energy, strength, Enthusiasm, artistic taste, boldness, forcefulness are there too, if we know how to use them in the true way.
A vital converted and consecrated to the Divine Will becomes a bold and forceful instrument that can overcome all
0 1957-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For the spiritual tests: aspiration, confidence, idealism, Enthusiasm and generosity in self-giving.
For the tests stemming from the hostile forces: vigilance, sincerity and humility.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
As for the latest experience,1 I cant say for sure that no one has ever had it, because someone like Ramakrishna, individuals like that, could have had it. But I am not sure, for when I had this experience (not of the divine Presence, which I had already felt in the cells for a long time, but the experience that the Divine ALONE is acting in the body, that He has BECOME the body, yet all the while retaining his character of divine omniscience and omnipotence) well, the whole time it remained actively like that, it was absolutely impossible to have the LEAST disorder in the body, and not only in the body, but IN ALL THE SURROUNDING MATTER. It was as if every object obeyed without even needing to decide to obey: it was automatic. There was a divine harmony in EVERYTHING (it took place in my bathroom upstairs, certainly to demonstrate that it exists in the most trivial things), in everything, constantly. So if that is established in a permanent way, there CAN NO LONGER be illness it is impossible. There can no longer be accidents, there can no longer be illness, there can no longer be disorders, and everything should harmonize (probably in a progressive way) just as that was harmonized: all the objects in the bathroom were full of a joyful Enthusiasmeverything obeyed, everything!
As it was the first experience, it started to fade slightly when I began having contact with people; but I really had the feeling that it was a first experience, new upon earth. For I have experienced an absolute identity of the will with the divine Will ever since 1910, it has never left me. It isnt that, its SOMETHING ELSE. It is MATTER BECOMING THE DIVINE. And it really came with the feeling that this thing was happening for the first time upon earth. It is difficult to say for sure, but Ramakrishna died of cancer, and now that I have had the experience, I know in an ABSOLUTE way that this is impossible. If he had decided to go because the Divine wanted him to go, it would have been an orderly departure, in total harmony and with a total will, whereas this illness is a means of disorder.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Also, I explained to him that a mantra had come to you which you were repeating between 5 and 6 in particular, and I told him about this culminating point where you wanted to express your gratitude, Enthusiasm, etc., and about the French mantra. After explaining, I gave him your French and Sanskrit texts. He felt and understood very well what you wanted. His first reaction after reading it was to say, Great meaning, great power is there. It is all right. I told him that apart from the meaning of the mantra, you wanted to know if it was all right from the vibrational standpoint. He told me that he would take your text to his next puja and would repeat it himself to see. He should have done that this morning, but he has a fever (since his return from Madurai, he has not been well because of a cold and sunstroke). I will write you as soon as I know the result of his test.
Regarding me, this is more or less what he said: First of all, I want an agreement from you so that under any circumstances you never leave the Ashram. Whatever happens, even if Yama1 comes to dance at your door, you should never leave the Ashram. At the critical moment, when the attack is the strongest, you should throw everything into His hands, then and then only the thing can be removed (I no longer know whether he said removed or destroyed ). It is the only way. SARVAM MAMA BRAHMAN [Thou art my sole refuge]. Here in Rameswaram, we are going to meditate together for 45 days, and the Asuric-Shakti may come with full strength to attack, and I shall try my best not only to protect but to destroy, but for that, I need your determination. It is only by your own determination that I can get strength. If the force comes to make suggestions: lack of adventure, lack of Nature, lack of love, then think that I am the forest, think that I am the sea, think that I am the wife (!!) Meanwhile, X has nearly doubled the number of repetitions of the mantra that I have to say every day (it is the same mantra he gave me in Pondicherry). X repeated to me again and again that I am not merely a disciple to him, like the others, but as if his son.
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I understand why certain tantrics advise saying the japa in the heart center. When one applies a certain Enthusiasm, when each word is said with a warmth of aspiration, then everything changes. I could feel this difference in myself, in my own japa.
In fact, when I walk back and forth in my room, I dont cut myself off from the rest of the worldalthough it would be so much more convenient! All kinds of things come to mesuggestions, wills, aspirations. But automatically I make a movement of offering: things come to me and just as they are about to touch my head, I turn them upwards and offer them to the Light. They dont enter into me. For example, if someone speaks to me while I am saying my japa, I hear quite well what is being said, I may even answer, but the words remain a little outside, at a certain distance from the head. And yet sometimes, there are things that insist, more defined wills that present themselves to me, so then I have to do a little work, but all that without a pause in the japa. If that happens, there is sometimes a change in the quality of my japa, and instead of being fully the power, fully the light, it is certainly something that produces results, but results more or less sure, more or less long to fructify; it becomes uncertain, as with all things of this physical world. Yet the difference between the two japas is imperceptible; its not a difference between saying the japa in a more or less mechanical way and saying it consciously, because even while I work I remain fully conscious of the japa I continue to repeat it putting the full meaning into each syllable. But nevertheless, there is a difference. One is the all-powerful japa; the other, an almost ordinary japa There is a difference in the inner attitude. Perhaps for the japa to become true, a kind of joy, an elation, a warmth of Enthusiasm has to be added but especially joy. Then everything changes.
Well, it is the same thing, the same imperceptible difference, when it comes to entering the world of Truth. On one side there is the falsehood, and on the other, close by, like the lining of this one, the true life. Only a little difference in the inner quality, a little reversal, is enough to pass to the other side, into the Truth and Light.
0 1961-03-04, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Look, its Enthusiasm, see how beautiful it is! It must be put in water right away, otherwise. It needs vital force and water is vital force. Its lovely! What fantasy! And this one is the Consciousness one with the Divine Consciousness,1 but supramentalizedbeginning to be supramentalized. And here is a very pretty Promise of Realization2, and heres Balance3 and the Peace of Faithfulness.4
There you are, mon petit.
0 1961-04-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have to look at all this with a smile, of course (and I do), but I must say that the enthusiastic side (you know, that fire of Enthusiasm) has been dampened. Well, theres no need to get excitedit will take time.
We just have to keep on going, keep on moving: one step after another, one step after another, one step after another, without asking how many steps its going to take, or recalling how many weve taken.
0 1961-04-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you know, what seems to have gone is all this illusory Enthusiasm we confuse with. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it very often, and each time I read that sentence of his its like an icy shower (Mother laughs). I no longer know the exact wording, but he uses two words: illusory hopes all the human illusory hopes. It goes plunk! Well, all that has entirely gone. When I saw it I deliberately rejected it. Yes, I said to myself, we are always trying to cheer ourselves up with hopes.
(Mother turns towards the tape recorder) Dont keep all that. Its not worth it, dont keep it. Its quite useless. Take it out.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some months ago, when this body had once again become a battlefield and was confronting all the obstacles, when it was suspended, asking itself whether it wasnt wondering intellectually, but asking for a kind of perception, wanting to touch something: it wondered which direction it was taking, which way things were going to tilt. And suddenly, in all the cells, there was this feeling (and I know where it came from): If we are dissolved out of this amalgam, if this assemblage is dissolved and can no longer go on, then we shall all go straight, straight as an arrow and it was like a marvelous flamestraight to rejoin Sri Aurobindo in his supramental world, which is right here at our door. And there was such joy! Such Enthusiasm, such joy flooded all the cells! They didnt care at all whether or not they would be dissociated. Oh, they felt, so what!
This was truly a decisive stage in the work of illuminating the body.
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, the books he wrote (especially the first one, The Living Ether) were based on my knowledge; he put my knowledge into French and beautiful French, I must say! I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote The Gods (it was incomplete, one-sided). Then he became a lawyer and entered politics (he was a first-class orator and fired his audiences with Enthusiasm) and was sent to Pondicherry to help a certain candidate who couldnt manage his election campaign single-handed. And since Richard was interested in occultism and spirituality, he took this opportunity to seek a Master, a yogi. When he arrived, instead of involving himself in politics, the first thing he did was announce, I am seeking a yogi. Someone said to him, Youre incredibly lucky! The yogi has just arrived. It was Sri Aurobindo, who was told, Theres a Frenchman asking to see you. Sri Aurobindo wasnt particularly pleased but he found the coincidence rather interesting and received him. This was in 1910.
When Richard had finished his work, he returned to France with a poor photograph of Sri Aurobindo and a completely superficial impression of him, yet with the feeling that Sri Aurobindo KNEW (he hadnt at all understood the man that Sri Aurobindo was, he hadnt felt the presence of an Avatar, but he had sensed that he had knowledge). Moreover, I think he always held this opinion, because he used to say that Sri Aurobindo was a unique intellectual giant without many spiritual realizations! (The same type of stupidity as Romain Rollands.) Well, my relationship with Richard was on an occult plane, you see, and its difficult to touch upon. What happened was far more exciting than any novel imaginable.
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know very well that Bengal is not really ready. The spiritual flood which has come is for the most part a new form of the old. It is not the real transformation. However this too was needed. Bengal has been awakening in itself the old yogas and exhausting their samskaras [old habitual tendencies], extracting their essence and with it fertilizing the soil. At first it was the time of VedantaAdwaita, Sannyasa, Shankaras Maya and the rest. It is now the turn of Vaishnava DharmaLila, love, the intoxication of emotional experience. All this is very old, unfitted for the new age and will not endure for such excitement has no capacity to last. But the merit of the Vaishnava Bhava [emotional Enthusiasm] is that it keeps a connexion between God and the world and gives a meaning to life; but since it is a partial bhava the whole connexion, the full meaning is not there. The tendency to create sects which you have noticed was inevitable. The nature of the mind is to take a part and call it the whole and exclude all other parts. The Siddha [illuminated being] who brings the bhava, although he leans on its partial aspect, yet keeps some knowledge of the integral whole, even though he may not be able to give it form. But his disciples do not get that knowledge precisely because it is not in a form. They are tying up their little bundles, let them. The bundles will open of themselves when God manifests himself fully. These things are the signs of incompleteness and immaturity. I am not disturbed by them. Let the force of spirituality play in the country in whatever way and in as many sects as may be. Afterwards we shall see. This is the infancy or the embryonic condition of the new age. It is a first hint, not even the beginning.
The peculiarity of this yoga is that until there is siddhi above the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course had kept many of the old samskaras; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Aravinda Math [Sri Aurobindo monastery]. Now the intellect has recognized that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from the prana [breath, life energy]. And so there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but the harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind. And they took up my Yoga because it was very natural to the Bengali temperament, not so much from the side of Knowledge as from the side of Bhakti and Karma [Works]. A little knowledge has come in, but the greater part has escaped; the mist of sentimentalism has not been dissipated, the groove of the sattwic bhava [religious fervor] has not been broken. There is still the ego. I am not in haste, I allow each to develop according to his nature. I do not want to fashion all in the same mould. That which is fundamental will indeed be one in all, but it will express itself in many forms. Everybody grows, forms from within. I do not want to build from outside. The basis is there, the rest will come.
--
You say that what is needed is maddening Enthusiasm, to fill the country with emotional excitement. In the time of the Swadeshi [fight for independence, boycott of English goods] we did all that in the field of politics, but what we did is all now in the dust. Will there be a more favorable result in the spiritual field? I do not say there has been no result. There has been. Any movement will produce some result, but for the most part in terms of an increase of possibility. This is not the right method, however, to steadily actualize the thing. Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement or any intoxication of the mind the base. I wish to make a large and strong equanimity the foundation of the yoga. I want established on that equality a full, firm and undisturbed Shakti in the system and in all its movements. I want the wide display of the light of Knowledge in the ocean of Shakti. And I want in that luminous vastness the tranquil ecstasy of infinite Love, Delight and Oneness. I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God. I have no faith in the customary trade of the guru. I do not wish to be a guru. If anybody wakes and manifests from within his slumbering godhead and gets the divine lifebe it at my touch or at anothersthis is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.
You must not think from all this lecture that I despair of the future of Bengal. I too hope, as they say, that this time a great light will manifest itself in Bengal. Still I have tried to show the other side of the shield, where the fault is, the error, the deficiency. If these remain, the light will not be a great light and it will not be permanent.
0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this experience comes with examples just as concrete and as utterly banal as can be. Theres no room for imagination or Enthusiasm they are details of the utmost banality. For example (its only ONE example), this sudden shift of consciousness takes place (something imperceptible, you cant perceive it, for if you had time to perceive it, I suppose it wouldnt happen; it isnt objectified), and you feel youre going to faint, all the blood rushes from the head to the feet and: whoops! But if the consciousness is caught IN TIME, it doesnt happen; and if its not caught in time, it does.
This would tend to show. I dont know if we can generalize or if this is just one special case being worked out (I cant say), but theres a very distinct impression that what ordinary human consciousness perceives as death might simply be that the consciousness hasnt been brought back to its true position fast enough.
0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same with people who get cured. That I know, to some extent: the Power acts so forcefully that it is almost miraculousat a distance. The Power I am very conscious of the Power. But, I must say, I find it doesnt act here so well as it does far away. On government or national matters, on the terrestrial atmosphere, on great movements, also as inspirations on the level of thought (in certain people, to realize certain things), the Power is very clear. Also to save people or cure themit acts very strongly. But much more at a distance than here! (Although the receptivity has increased since I withdrew because, necessarily, it gave people the urge to find inside something they no longer had outside.) But here, the response is very erratic. And to distinguish between the proportion that comes from faith, sincerity, simplicity, and what comes from the Power Some people I am able to save (naturally, in my view, its because they COULD be saved), this is something that for a very long time I have been able to foresee. But now I dont try to know: it comes like this (gesture like a flash). If, for instance, I am told, So and so has fallen ill, well, immediately I know if he will recover (first if its nothing, some passing trouble), if he will recover, if it will take some time and struggle and difficulties, or if its fatalautomatically. And without trying to know, without even trying: the two things come together.2 This capacity has developed, first because I have more peace, and because, having more peace, things follow a more normal course. But there were two or three little instances where I said to the Lord (gesture of presenting something, palms open upward), I asked Him to do a certain thing, and then (not very often, it doesnt happen to me often; at times it comes as a necessity, a necessity to present the thing with a commentfrom morning to evening and evening to morning I present everything constantly, thats my movement [same gesture of presenting something] but here, there is a comment, as if I were asking, Couldnt this be done?), and then the result: yes, immediately. But I am not the one who presents the thing, you see: its just the way it is, it just happens that way, like everything else.3 So my conclusion is that its part of the Plan, I mean, a certain vibration is necessary, enters [into Mother], intervenes, and No stories to tell, mon petit! Nothing to fill people with Enthusiasm or give them trust, nothing.
Three or four days ago, a very nice man, whom I like a lot, who has been very useful, fell ill. (He has in fact been ill for a long time, and he is struggling; for all sorts of reasons of family, milieu, activities and so on, he isnt taken care of the way he should be, he doesnt take care of his body the way he should.) He had a first attack and I saw him afterwards. But I saw him full of life: his body was full of life and of will to live. So I said, No need to worry. Then after some time, maybe not even a month, another attack, caused not by the same thing but by its consequences. I receive a letter in which I am informed that he has been taken to the hospital. I was surprised, I said, But no! He has in himself the will to live, so why? Why has this happened? The moment I was informed and made the contact, he recovered with fantastic speed! Almost in a few hours. He had been rushed to the hospital, they thought it was most serious, and two days later he was back home. The hospital doctor said, Why, he has received a new life! But thats not correct: I had put him back in contact with his bodys will, which, for some reason or other, he had forgotten. Things like that, yes, theyre very clear, they take place very consciously but anyway, nothing worth talking about!
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother later clarified: "'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't MY mantra, it's something I ADDED to itmy mantra is something else altogether, that's not it. When I say that my mantra has the power of immortality, I mean the other, the one I don't speak of! I have never given the words.... You see, at the end of my walk, a kind of Enthusiasm rises, and with that Enthusiasm, the 'Glory to You' came to me, but it's part of the prayer I had written in Prayers and Meditations: 'Glory to You, O Lord, all-triumphant Supreme' etc. (it's a long prayer). It came back suddenly, and as it came back spontaneously, I kept it. Moreover, when Sri Aurobindo read this prayer in Prayers and Meditations, he told me it was very strong. So I added this phrase as a kind of tail to my japa. But 'Glory to You, O Lord' isn't my spontaneous mantrait came spontaneously, but it was something written very long ago. The two things are different."
Such is the case, for example, of Anandamayi-M, who was said to be hysterical because of the strange gestures she made during her meditations, until it turned out that they were ritual asanas and mudras which she performed spontaneously.
0 1963-07-17, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It requires no preparation, it isnt something you have to attain: its ALWAYS there. Only, it also stems from the fact that I am not here (thats so clear, so clear, it needs no reflection or observation, its such a well-established fact) I am not here for anything, anything whatsoever, any satisfaction of any sort, on any level, any pointnone of that exists any more, that has no more reality, no more existence. The only thing I still FEEL is a sort of not an aspiration, not a will, not an adherence or Enthusiasm, but something that is maybe its more like a power: to do the Lords Work. At the same time, I feel the Lord you understand, He isnt in front of me or outside of me! Thats not it, He is everywhere and He is everywhere and I am everywhere with Him. But what holds these cells together in a permanent form is that something which is at once the will and power (and something more than both) to do the Lords work. It contains something which probably is translated in peoples consciousnesses as Bliss, Ananda (I must say its an aspect of the problem I am not concerned with). Something like the intensity of a superlove as yet unmanifestits impossible to say.
Some time ago I made a discovery of that kind: someone asked me if there was any difference between Ananda and Love; I said, No. Then he said to me, But then how is it that some people feel Ananda while others feel Love? I answered him, Yes! Those who feel Ananda are those who like to receive, who have the capacity to receive, and those who feel Love are those who have the capacity to give. But its the same thing: you receive it as Ananda, you give it as Love.
0 1963-07-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So all that must be having repercussions on the others, like Pavitra, when he told me the other day he was seeking me up above and could no longer find me! This very down-to-earth state (we can really call it down-to-earth), this very down-to-earth state of things may also create not an increased heaviness (because God knows it isnt heavy! Its so luminous, vibrant, luminous, so vibrant, vibrant), thats not it, but its really at ground level. At ground level. It has none of the flights and Enthusiasms of mental things, visions and all that. So it appears a little monotonous and very much at ground level.
Yes, but we dont have the sense of participating in something. You are conscious, while were not.
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have reached this conclusion: in principle, what gives rapture is the awareness of and union with the Divine (thats the principle), therefore the awareness of and union with the Divine, whether in the world as it is or in the building of a future world, must be the samein principle. Thats what I keep saying to myself all the time: How is it that you dont have that rapture? I do have it: at the time when the whole consciousness is centered in the union, whenever that is, in the midst of any activity, along with that movement of concentration of the consciousness on the union comes rapture. But I must admit it disappears when I am in that its a world of work, but a very chaotic world, in which I act on everything around meand necessarily I have to receive whats around me in order to act on it. I have reached a state in which all that I receive, even the things considered the most painful, leave me absolutely still and indifferentindifferent, not an inactive indifference: no painful reaction of any kind, absolutely neutral (gesture turned to the Eternal), a perfect equanimity. But within that equanimity, there is a precise knowledge of the thing to be done, the words to be said or written, the decision to be made, anyway all that action involves. All that takes place in a state of perfect neutrality, with a sense of the Power at the same time: the Power goes through me, the Power acts, and neutrality stays but theres no rapture. I dont have the Enthusiasm, the joy and plenitude of action, not at all.
And I must say that the state of consciousness that rapture gives would be dangerous in the present state of the world. Because it has almost absolute reactions I can see that that state of rapture has an OVERWHELMING power. But I insist on the word overwhelming, in the sense that its intolerant of, or intolerable to (yes, intolerable to) all thats unlike it! Its the same thing, or almost (not quite the same but almost), as supreme divine Love: the vibration of that ecstasy or rapture is a first hint of the vibration of divine Love, and thats absolutely yes, there is no other word, intolerant, in the sense that it doesnt brook the presence of anything contrary to it.
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And yesterday, it was all very peaceful: X was there all the time with nobody in front of him, not pretending anything. But the first time, as he expected some result, he stayed on for ten minutesprobably he was expecting some reaction (I never told him that Sri Aurobindo is with me all the time, that we talk to each other every night). Anyhow, he was probably expecting some Enthusiasm on my part (!) There you are.
[Satprem cannot believe what Mother has just told him:] It was a will coming from him? It wasnt someone else who used that substance?
0 1964-01-29, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Doubt, discouragement, diminution or loss of faith, waning of the vital Enthusiasm for the ideal, perplexity and a baffling of the hope for the future are the common features of the difficulty. In the world outside there are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure, to the exclusion of higher things, and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world. All that, however acute, is a temporary phenomenon for which those who know anything about the workings of the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were prepared. I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the darkness of night before the dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the first signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand firm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come.
(XXVI.169-170, April 9, 1947)
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It takes a sort of VERY AUSTERE sincerity. You are carried away by Enthusiasm because the experience brings an extraordinary power, the Power is there its there before the words, it diminishes with the words the Power is there, and with that Power you feel very universal, you feel, Its a universal Revelation. True, it is a universal revelation, but once you say it with words, its no longer universal: its only applicable to those brains built to understand that particular way of saying it. The Force is behind, but one has to go beyond the words.
(silence)
0 1964-06-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have received a letter from Bharatidi,1 who is reading your book with Enthusiasm and a fine understanding.
You do not tell me anything about your health. I assume it is good thanks to the air of Brittany and that you will come back with a brand-new system.
0 1964-07-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Before his departure for America, when he spoke to me about the operation, I immediately saw not only that it was dangerous (that was obvious, he himself knew it), but that it couldnt be conclusive, and that at any rate one operation wasnt enough. When he spoke to me with the Enthusiasm of someone who at last sees his salvation, I asked him, Are you really sure it will be conclusive? That one operation is enough and the disease wont come again? He almost got angry! He thought I was (laughing) an atheist of medical science!
Anyhow, he left.
0 1965-03-06, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother looks for a note) We have faith in Sri Aurobindo, he represents for us something that we formulate for ourselves with the words we find the most adequate to express our experience. For us those words are obviously the best to formulate our experience. But if in our Enthusiasm we were convinced that they are the only ones suitable to express correctly what Sri Aurobindo is and the experience he gave us, we would become dogmatic and would be on the verge of founding a religion.
Oh, yes, indeed!
0 1965-09-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its very wise. The supreme Wisdom is infinitely greater than ours! In our Enthusiasm, we sometimes think, Oh, if things were like that! (Mother gives herself a slap)Be quiet, thats all.
We are very clumsy.
0 1965-12-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But just when it left, just half a second before that, there came How can I explain? Its so simple and natural and unsophisticated, oh, so simple that it seems childish. It was as though I were told by a voice that would be like Sri Aurobindos voice, You are the stronger and you can send the ball away, something of that sort. But the words are nothing; it was the feeling of a sort of buoyancy, as they say in English, that feeling one has when one is young, full of boldness and Enthusiasm the feeling of absolutely scoffing at them and at their formidable formation, as a lion would scoff at a rat. Absolutely that sort of relationship. And that kind of Enthusiasm lasted just a flash, and at the same time, just at the same time (gesture of a hood being removed), pfft! like night and day.
Oh, it has taught me a lot, a whole lot of things, a world of things.
0 1967-02-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With everything, the great secret is for the consciousness to be THE Consciousness the limitless Consciousness. Then what it does is to set this (the instrument) in motion. Laterlater, when the transformation takes place, when its total and effective, there will probably be a conscious collaboration; but now its only a surrender, a self-giving, and this lends itselflends itself with Enthusiasm and joylends itself for THE Consciousness to use it.
When its like that, all goes well.
0 1967-04-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this joy, this Enthusiasm at the possibility: that being wholly sincere is POSSIBLE; almost, I could say, that it is permitted (these are words): Life is such a disorder and muddle of insincerity that THAT is really what is expected of us, THAT; THAT is whats permitted, THAT is what must be realized: to be absolute in the joy of self-giving. Its a marvel, a marvel!
Also, the contact with all those beings of the Overmind, all those gods, all those Entities, all those divinities. There is here, in the cells, a sort of (what can I call it?) rectitude, and, yes, sincerity and honesty that says, Oh, what fuss they make! How all this is (Mother puffs up her cheeks) puff! puff! swollen up. Its very interesting, really very interesting. The vision of the world is quite different. Its far more honestfar more honest, far more sincere, far more upright. Its strange.
0 1967-05-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do you remember S.B.? He was here. He was a man with many disciples, he had yogic powers. He came here and was thunderstruck, as it were, when he saw Sri Aurobindo: he fainted. He said afterwards it was because of the power of the revelation. He stayed here for years and years; he lived there, downstairs. Then he went away; you see, he used to receive all his disciples here, so I said, No, that wont do, its better to have a room elsewhere. Then he left. And for years and years he wasnt heard of again. Lately, he has been reappearing (I have seen him relatively often at night), and he reappears with such ardour, such Enthusiasm! He has just sent this card from Riga, in Latviahe intended to go to Russia (Mother hands the card to the disciples):
Greetings. I remember your marvel. I spoke of our divine Master and of your sweetness in a great conference here. Bless me. Yours ever.
He was in Russia It has come back to him all at once: a great Enthusiasm.
He lived for a time in that house at the corner, which has become the Auroville Office, and the roof of that house is uneven (one part is at a certain height, and without warning, it suddenly drops down half a story). Once while he was walking on the roof in meditation, he fell; it seems he had just taken his meal, and he had a blockage. And he claimed he cured himself with an hour of concentration. It may be
He was very childlike, very enthusiastic, and very boastful at the same time, but with a fervour which was rather fine. A sort of very young Enthusiasm. Now he must be rather old. And I always see him in the middle of a large crowd. He knows how to comm and attention. He isnt quite indifferent. But I didnt work to send him away from here: he had quarrelled with someone or other, then started openly receiving a large number of disciples; I said, It would be better if you saw your disciples elsewhere. Then he left.
He writes a lot of books in Tamil.
0 1971-01-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theyve lost the Enthusiasm that makes you act without thinking about consequences. Theyre constantly weighing the consequences of everything they do. In America theres an aspiration. Thats where the push will be, thats where (pointing to the manuscript) the bomb must go off! (laughter)
On the Way to Supermanhood.
0 1971-05-15, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
India is precisely such a symbol and Bangladesh is another, a little turning point in the great course of events of the earth. The time has come to consider the eternal Landmarks and read the greater tide in the small eddies. Now, the greater tide tells us that Indias role is to be the spiritual heart of the terrestrial body just as, for example, the role of France is to express clarity of intellect, or that of Germany to express skill, Russia the brotherhood of man and the United States Enthusiasm for adventure and practical organization, etc. But only if India is ONE can she fulfill this role, for how can one who is herself divided lead others? Thus the division of India is the first Falsehood that must disappear, for it is the symbol of the earths division. As long as India is not one, the world cannot be one. Indias striving for unity is the symbolic drama of the worlds striving for unity.
From this simple, eternal Fact follow all the conclusions and policies that will flow with the current of the earths destiny. Sri Aurobindo said so already in 1947, The division must and will go. Dire will be the consequences for India and for the earth if we fail to heed this eternal Theorem: The old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country, said Sri Aurobindo. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. We now know, twenty-four years after this prophetic declaration, that China is at our gates and only awaits her hour to invade the entire continent, seizing precisely on this division of India to strike at the spiritual heart of the world and, perhaps, frustrating the realization of the entire destiny of the earth or postponing it until a future cycle after much suffering and complication.
0 1972-04-08, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I would like, I want to work with you to pursue an idealan ideal that fills my whole being with Enthusiasm.
Everything I have so painstakingly created is collapsing. I am left with a feeling of having worked and suffered in vain and for nothing.
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Enthusiasm of a divine surprise
Pervades our life, a mystic stir is felt,
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A strange Enthusiasm has moved its heart;
It hungers for heights, it passions for the supreme.
03.04 - The Other Aspect of European Culture, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is it meant that "Mediaeval obscurantism" was Europe's supreme ideal and that the cry should be: "Back to the Dark Age, into the gloom of Mystic superstitions and Churchian dogmas?" Now, one cannot deny that there was much of obscurantism and darkness in that period of Europe's evolution. And the revolt launched against it by the heralds of the Modern Age was inevitable and justified to some extent; but to say that unadulterated superstition was what constituted the very substance of Middle Age Culture and that the whole thing was more or less a nightmare, is only to land into another sort of superstition and obscurantism. The best when corrupt does become the worst. The truth of the matter is that in its decline the Middle Age clung to and elaborated only the formal aspect of its culture, leaving aside its inner realisation, its living inspiration. The Renaissance was a movement of reaction and correction against the lifeless formalism, the dry scholasticism of a decadent Middle Age; it sought to infuse a new vitality, by giving a new outlook and intuition to Europe's moribund soul. But, in fact, it has gone a little too far in its career of correction. In its violent Enthusiasm to pull down the worn-out edifice of the past and to build anew for the future, it has almost gone to the length of digging up the solid foundation and erasing the fundamental ground-plan upon which Europe's real life and culture reposed and can still safely repose.
If then Europe can cut across the snares that Modernism has spread all about her and get behind the surface turmoils and ebullitions and seek that which she herself once knew and esteemed as the one thing needful, then will she really see what the East means, then only will she find the bond of indissoluble unity with Asia. For the Truth that Europe carried in her bosom is much bigger than anything she ever suspected even in her best days. And she carried it not with the full illumination and power of a Master, but rather in the twilight consciousness of a servant or a devotee. The Truth in its purity flowed there for the most part much under the main current of life, and its formulations in life were not its direct expressions and embodiments but echoes and images. It is Asia who grasps the Truth with the hand of the Master, the Truth in its full and absolute truth and it is Asia who can show in fact and life how to embody it integrally.
03.09 - Art and Katharsis, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The uplifting power of Art is inherent in its nature, for Art itself is the outcome of an uplifted nature. Art is the expression of a heightened consciousness. The ordinary consciousness in which man lives and moves is narrow, limited, obscure, faltering, unhappyit is the abode of all that is evil and ugly; it is inartistic. The poetic zeal, Enthusiasm or frenzy, when it seizes the consciousness, at once lifts it high into a state that is characterised by wideness and depth and a new and fresh exhilarating intensity of perception and experience. We seem to arrive at the very fountain-head, where things take birth and are full of an unspoilt life and power and beauty and light and harmony. A line burdened with the whole tragedy of earthly existence such as Shakespeare's:
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain...
04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is the view, an old-world view, of eternal recurrence. That is to say, creation is ever the same; it goes through a cycle of changes, but the cycles repeat ad infinitum. There is no progress, no forward movement towards a more and more perfection. Indeed, the cycle of creation is a closed circle. The idea of progress was very much in vogue at one time. It was born under the auspices of Romantic Idealism; it was fostered and streng thened by youthful, Science in the first Enthusiasm of her early discoveries, especially that of the fact of biological evolution. There has, however, been a setback since, when it was found that the original picture of evolution the emergence and growth of species in the course of a few thousand years is far from being true, that evolution means not thousands but millions of years. And when archaeologists discovered that men could build hygienic cities, run democratic states, discuss and argue acutely on recondite problems of life and philosophy, women knew the use of ornaments and jewels of consummate beauty and craftsmanship in epochs when they were expected to be no more than wild denizens of the cave or the forest, the belief in human progress, at least along a steady straight line, was very much shaken.
Yet an imperious necessity of the idea, almost as an inevitable ingredient of human consciousness, always exists and constantly makes its presence felt. If recurrence is the law of creation, this idea with its will to fruition is also a recurrent phenomenon. A modern form of it has been given a very dynamic drive in the Marxian gospel. A socio-economic progress, however, is and can be only a part, in fact, a result of a wider and deeper progress.
06.07 - Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The reason is very simple. The experience or realisation is not a total one, that is to say, it belongs to a part only of the nature and is not shared by other parts. The sadhak is not of one piece: the whole of his nature is not worked to the same pitch and amplitude, it is not equally responsive everywhere. Thus, when the psychic brings forward an experience and the inner consciousness is full of the light and energy and joy and faith, even then, in the background or by the side, if you are vigilant and observe carefully, you will see that the mind, the external mind, has its reservations or continues to move in its accustomed way. It looks askance at the experience, criticises or doubts; or it tries to understand or explain in its own terms, seize it within its frame of comprehension. Or else, the vital rises up and tries to get hold of the experience and utilise it for its own purposes; it is enjoyed as a tasty food, made to serve the vital's ambition or vanity, some lower ignorant egoistic urge. Or again, the physical, the body consciousness may not at all participate in the experience; it may remain indifferent, listless, lethargic with no impulse or Enthusiasm to carry out in practice the experience of the inner consciousness. Any of these drags or cross-currents is sufficient to maim and diminish and even wipe out the experience: and usually all the three are finally there to combine and reinforce each other's effects to do the mischief.
The remedy is to turn back and hold to the spot of light that is there in the consciousness, the clarity or the aspiration that belongs to the inner and higher being. That has to be used as a torch, as a staff to support and guide you in your periods of darkness and vacillation. That beam of burning light should be thrown, in turn, upon those parts in you that besiege with their obscurity and inconscience, doubt and arrogance, the realisation that comes, the progress on the way. It must be done with firmness, vigilance and perseverance. The mixture has to be sorted out, the dross separated, kept on one side and the pure element on the other: the impurities have to be put under the flame-light to melt, burn away and be eliminated. And this means an ardent sincerity, for that is the tinder which keeps the fire blazing.
--
Indeed, the experience of joy in the very process of suffering is a common experience with the saint and the martyr. We know of innumerable instances where the fierce torture of the flesh was drowned, overwhelmed in the ecstasy of the inner aspiration; the vital Enthusiasm drawn from the inner flame suffuses, courses through the nerves and tissues with such energy and impetus that it effectively blocks out the invading reaction of pain. It is a discipline that has its value even for the sadhak of the sunlit path.
***
06.10 - Fatigue and Work, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Fatigue, it is said, comes from overwork. The cure for fatigue is therefore rest, that is, do-nothing. But the truth of the matter is that most often fatigue is due not to too much work, but rather too little work, in other words, laziness or boredom. In fact, fatigue need not come too soon or too easily, provided one knows how to set about his work. If you are interested in your work, you can continue for a very long time without fatigue; and precisely one of the means of recovering from fatigue is not to sit down and slip into lethargy and tamas, but to take up a work that rouses your interest. Work done in joy and quiet Enthusiasm is tonic: it is dynamic rest. A work done without interest, as a sort of duty or task, will naturally tire you soon. The remedy therefore against fatigue is to keep the interest awake. Now, there is a further mystery. Interest does not depend upon the work: any work can be made interesting and interesting to a supreme degree. There is no work which is by itself dull, insipid, uninteresting. All depends upon the value you yourself put upon it; you can choose to make it as attractive as a romance, as significant as a symbol.
How to do it? How to find interest in anything or all things? Is there not a work that conforms to your nature, adapted to your character and capacity? And are there not works that are against the grain with you that lie outside your scope and province?
07.24 - Meditation and Meditation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have never seen people who left off everything to sit in a more or less empty meditation making any progress; in any case their progress is very small. On the contrary, I have seen people, full of Enthusiasm for the work of transformation in the world, devoting themselves to that work without reservation: they give themselves up with no idea of personal salvation. Yes, it is such people I have seen making the wonderful progress. On the other hand, I have seen very many living in monasteries: well, they are not worth talking about. It is not by running away from the world that you will change it: it is only by working steadily at it that you can bring about the change.
Does this mean that meditation is of no use at all?
07.29 - How to Feel that we Belong to the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To have such an experience, you must first have the will for it; you must will and aspire, try to be less and less an egoist, to have less and less the feeling of being a particular person. You must have then within you this flame, this ardent yearning, this need of union. It is a kind of luminous Enthusiasm that possesses you, an irresistible necessity of your being to dissolve in the divine and not to be separate. True, it is a state that does not last longin the beginningyou have the contrary experience immediately after. But if you continue, persist in your will and aspiration, the other state will come again. The two alternate for a time till the complete fusion is achieved. Finally there is no longer the distinction of your personal being and the Divine Being, the two are one. There is no more the state of yearning towards an ecstatic sense of submission in which the two are still separate. The state of fusion and mingling, of complete identity is extremely simple and supremely spontaneous. I heard once from an Indian Sufi at Paris of this state of consciousness. They too know of it.
Is that then the final stage, no more progress after that?
08.17 - Psychological Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Next in the series comes Devotion. Certainly, devotion is very good; but here too, unless it is accompanied with many other things, it can lead you into much error. For with devotion one keeps one's ego also. Out of devotion you may behave most egoistically. You think of your devotion, only of your devotion, that is to say, you think of yourself alone, you do not think of others, of the world, of the work that you do and ought to doyou become formidably egoistic. And when you see that the Divine, for some reason or other, does not respond to your devotion with an Enthusiasm you expect of him, you despair and fall into one or all of the three difficulties I spoke of just now. Either the Divine must be cruelwe know of devotees who throw all their anger upon the Divine, accusing him of neglect and cruelty; or then they think, "I must have made a grave, blunder, I am hopeless in his eyes and I am rejected."
Now, there is a movement which one can have and constantly along with devotion, as complementary to ita sense of gratitude, that the Divine exists and one feels a kind of gratefulness, born of wonder, which fills you truly with a sublime joy; the very fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not merely a monstrosity that we see here below, brings a flow of unspeakable gladness in you. Every time the least thing puts you in contact with this sublime reality of the Divine's existence, whether directly or indirectly, your heart is filled with a feeling so intense, so marvellous, the feeling precisely of a profound gratitude which has of all things the sweetest savour, that no other joy can bring. So I say devotion by itself is incomplete, it must have gratitude as its companion.
08.27 - Value of Religious Exercises, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But if you take a truly divine being, that is not the thing he likes or appreciates. He does not like to be worshipped; worship does not give him special pleasure. But if he sees anywhere a fine intuitive sense, a good feeling, a movement of unselfishness or spiritual Enthusiasm, he considers that as infinitely more valuable than prayers and Pujas. I tell you seriously, if you place a true god upon a chair and compel him to remain there all the time you are doing him Puja, he can amuse himself by letting you do it, but surely it gives him no happiness, none! He feels neither flattered nor satisfied nor glorified by your Puja. You must get that idea out of your head. There is an entire region between the spiritual world and the material, belonging to the vital beings and it is this region that is full of such things as are liked by them, because they are their food. They are happy, they feel important when men call them, pray to them, make their offerings to them: the being that has the largest number of adorers is the most satisfied, the most glorified, the most puffed up. How can you imagine that a true god, a god even of the Overmindalthough those of this region are already somewhat touched by human frailties that is to say, one who has the higher consciousness, would get any pleasure out of these things? I repeat, an act of real kindness, intelligence, unselfishness or fine understanding or sincere aspiration is for him an altogether higher and more valuable thing than any petty religious ceremony. There is no comparison. You speak of religious ceremonies. There is, for example, a being called Kali; there are many Kalis, of many varieties, installed in temples and homes. All of them almost are vital beings and forces, some are ugly and terrible. I have known people who had such a fear of Kalitheir household Kali that they trembled at the thought of offending her in any way, of committing the least fault that would displease her; for that means Kali's vengeance. I know, I know very well these entities: they are beings of the vital world, they are vital formations the forms are given by the human mind and what forms! To think that men worship such terrible and demoniac things!
From this standpoint it is good that for a time humanity should come out of the religious atmosphere, full of fear and blind superstitious submission by which the adverse forces have profited so monstrously. The age of negation, of atheism and positivism is from this view quite indispensable for man's liberation from sheer ignorance. It is only when you have come out of this, this abject submission to the evil forces of the Vital that you can rise to truly spiritual heights and then become there collaborators and right instruments of the forces of the Truth and Consciousness and Power. The superstitions of the lower levels you must leave far behind to rise high.
1.007 - Initial Steps in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
A novitiate cannot comprehend all these things, because generally we are fired up with a kind of sudden Enthusiasm. That is all we don't know anything else. "I want to realise God in this very birth now itself, if possible." This is all we say. But what are the things necessary for this purpose? How many difficulties are there? These things will not come to the mind easily, because every little event in this world is connected with many other events and conditions. There is no single, isolated event in this world. This is why we say that steps in the direction of the practice of yoga particularly, should be taken only under the guidance of a competent teacher, one who is an expert in this field. It is more dangerous and more difficult than flying an airplane, because we cannot know what is ahead of us. We also cannot know what influence our past will have upon our present, what effect external conditions will have upon us, and what sudden reactions will be set up from factors within nothing of the kind will be clear in the beginning. When we take a few steps in the practice of yoga, an all-round change will take place. There will be internal change, external change, and even a feeling that God Himself is getting related to us in a more tangible manner than it appeared earlier.
Even after we succeed in sitting for awhile in a particular posture, the mind will refuse, after a time, to continue the practice. We will not find anyone in this world as clever as the mind very clever in everything. It will look quite all right for some time and the path will appear rosy, but after awhile there will be resentment of the mind even to sit, and it will produce excuses. There will be rationality behind our inability to practise, and we know very well that rationality is the highest thing that can justify anything. When there is reason brought forth in a very judicious manner, justifying our inability to sit for some time and the worthlessness of the practice itself, then there is no argument against it. The greatest danger is rationality, when it is used as a weapon against what is good for us. It is a double-edged sword it can cut us this way and can cut us that way also such is reason. Reason can justify what is good for us, and it can also justify what is dangerous or what is not good for us. Many sadhakas justify themselves in a wrong way altogether, by bringing about reasons which try to point out that the way of life they are living is quite inevitable and unavoidable. "If it is unavoidable, what can I do?" This is what the sadhaka will say. But it would not be unavoidable if proper precautions had been taken. We make initial mistakes without proper thought, and then these small mistakes look very big and, like a mountain, they stand before us. Later on I shall have occasion to refer to the mistakes we generally commit initially, without proper understanding.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Every name is a number: and "Every number is infinite; there is no difference." (AL I, 4). But one Name, or system of Names, may be more convenient either (a) to you personally or (b) to the work you are at. E.g. I have very little sympathy with Jewish Theology or ritual; but the Qabalah is so handy and congenial that I use it more than almost any or all the others together for daily use and work. The Egyptian Theogony is the noblest, the most truly magical, the most bound to me (or rather I to it) by some inmost instinct, and by the memory of my incarnation as Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, that I use it (with its Grco-Phoenician child) for all work of supreme import. Why stamp my vitals, madam! The Abramelin Operation itself turned into this form before I could so much as set to work on it! Like the Duchess' baby (excuse this Enthusiasm; but you have aroused the British Lion-Serpent.)
Note, please, that the equivalents given in 777 are not always exact. Tahuti is not quite Thoth, still less Hermes; Mercury is a very much more comprehensive idea, but not nearly so exalted: Hanuman hardly at all. Nor is Tetragrammaton IAO, though even etymology asserts the identity.
1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The remarkable treatise, which I introduce to your notice, is a translation from one of the numerous works of the Arabian Philosopher, Abou Hamid Mohammed ben Mohammed al Ghazzali, who flourished in the eleventh century. He was born about the year A. D. 1056, or 450 of the Mohammedan era, at Tous in Khorasan, and he died in the prime of life in his native country about the year 1011, or 505 A. H. Although educated by Mohammedan parents, he avows that during a considerable period of his life he was a prey to doubts about the truth, and that at times he was an absolute sceptic. While yet comparatively young, his learning and genius recommended him to the renowned sovereign Nizam ul Mulk, who gave him a professorship in the college which he had founded at Bagdad. His speculative mind still harassing him with doubts, in his Enthusiasm to arrive at a solid foundation for knowledge, he resigned his position, visited Mecca and Jerusalem, and finally returned to Khorasan, where he led a life of both monastic study and devotion, and consecrated his pen to writing the results of his meditations.
Mohammedan scholars of the present day still hold him in such high respect, that his name is never mentioned by them without some such distinctive epithet, as the "Scientific [6] Imaum," or "Chief witness for Islamism." His rank in the eastern world, as a philosopher and a theologian, had naturally given his name some distinction in our histories of philosophy, and it is enumerated in connection with those of Averroes (Abu Roshd) and Avicenna (Abu Sina) as illustrating the intellectual life and the philosophical schools of the Mohammedans. Still his writings were less known than either of the two others. His principal work, The Destruction of the Philosophers, called forth in reply one of the two most important works of Averroes entitled The Destruction of the Destruction. Averroes, in his commentary upon Aristotle, extracts from Ghazzali copiously for the purpose of refuting bis views. A short treatise of his had been published at Cologne, in 1506, and Pocock had given in Latin his interpretation of the two fundamental articles of the Mohammedan creed. Von Hammer printed in 1838, at Vienna, a translation of a moral essay, Eyuha el Weled, as a new year's token for youth.
1.012 - Sublimation - A Way to Reshuffle Thought, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
So, in the process of practice of yoga, whose essential ingredient is self-control or self-restraint, what is expected is a gradual blossoming of the flower of consciousness into a deeper insight into the nature of things, tending towards a wider experience, rather than a forceful suppression of really perceived values or a crushing of desires for things which are expected to bring about real satisfaction to the individual personality. This is a very important aspect which many seekers may miss due to their Enthusiasm.
In our system, the culture of Bharatvarsha, four aims of existence are always emphasised dharma, artha, kama and moksha. None of them can be ignored. There are people who are fired up with an Enthusiasm for moksha, and under this impulse of a love for moksha or salvation of the soul, an immature mind may apply the wrong technique of forcing the will to abandon the real values of life, namely dharma, artha and kama, under the impression that they are obstacles to the salvation of the soul or the liberation of the spirit. Most people commit this mistake, and so they achieve neither anything in this world nor anything in the other world they live a miserable life. They have not been properly instructed, and so have taken a wrong direction altogether.
The culture of yoga does not tell us to reject, abandon, or to cut off anything if it is real, because the whole question is an assessment of values, and reality is, of course, the background of every value. What is achieved in spiritual education is a rise of consciousness from a lower degree of reality to a higher degree of reality, and in no degree is there a rejection of reality. It is only a growth from a lower level to a higher one. So when we go to the higher degree of reality, we are not rejecting the lower degree of reality, but rather we have overcome it. We have transcended it, just as when a student goes to a higher class in an educational career, that higher class transcends the lower degrees of kindergarten, first standard, second standard and third standard, but it does not reject them. Rejection is not what is implied; rather it is an absorption of values into a higher inclusive condition of understanding, insight and education.
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live,if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and Enthusiasm of lovers,and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Baal Shem Tov in the first half of the eighteenth century is sufficiently important to warrant some mention here. For although Chassidism, as that movement was called, derives its Enthusiasm from contact with nature and the great out-doors of the Carpathians, it has its primary literary origin and significant inspiration in the books which consti- tute the Qabalah. Chassidism gave the doctrines of the
Aohar to the " Am ha-aretz " in a way in which no previous set of Rabbis had succeeded in doing, and it would, more- over, appear that the Practical Qabalah received a con- siderable impetus at the same time. For we find that
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
enables the scientist to retain undimmed Enthusiasm, while he endlessly studies his fruitflies.
How, precisely, did people think, not so very long ago, before they were experimentalists? What were
1.01 - Meeting the Master - Authors first meeting, December 1918, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
"Because I have done the work and I know its difficulties. Young men come forward to join the movement, driven by idealism and Enthusiasm. But these elements do not last long. It becomes very difficult to observe and extract discipline. Small groups begin to form within the organisation, rivalries grow between groups and even between individuals. There is competition for leadership. The agents of the Government generally manage to join these organisations from the very beginning. And so the organisations are unable to act effectively. Sometimes they sink so low as to quarrel even for money," he said calmly.
"But even supposing that I grant sadhana to be of greater importance, and even intellectually understand that I should concentrate upon it, my difficulty is that I feel intensely that I must do something for the freedom of India. I have been unable to sleep soundly for the last two years and a half. I can remain quiet if I make a very strong effort. But the concentration of my whole being turns towards India's freedom. It is difficult for me to sleep till that is secured."
1.01 - The Science of Living, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
desires, of Enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can
set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most
1.01 - Who is Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
compassion, joy, equanimity, generosity, ethical discipline, patience, Enthusiasm, concentration, wisdom, and so forthalthough each manifestation
may emphasize a particular quality. For example, Tara symbolizes enlightened activity, while Avalokiteshvara embodies compassion. Among the
1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his Enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness.
PC work is treating employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that's what they are. They volunteer the best part -- their hearts and minds.
1.02 - The Age of Individualism and Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
They found and held it with Enthusiasm in the discoveries of physical Science. The triumphant domination, the all-shattering and irresistible victory of Science in nineteenth-century Europe is explained by the absolute perfection with which it at least seemed for a time to satisfy these great psychological wants of the Western mind. Science seemed to it to fulfil impeccably its search for the two supreme desiderata of an individualistic age. Here at last was a truth of things which depended on no doubtful Scripture or fallible human authority but which Mother Nature herself had written in her eternal book for all to read who had patience to observe and intellectual honesty to judge. Here were laws, principles, fundamental facts of the world and of our being which all could verify at once for themselves and which must therefore satisfy and guide the free individual judgment, delivering it equally from alien compulsion and from erratic self-will. Here were laws and truths which justified and yet controlled the claims and desires of the individual human being; here a science which provided a standard, a norm of knowledge, a rational basis for life, a clear outline and sovereign means for the progress and perfection of the individual and the race. The attempt to govern and organise human life by verifiable Science, by a law, a truth of things, an order and principles which all can observe and verify in their ground and fact and to which therefore all may freely and must rationally subscribe, is the culminating movement of European civilisation. It has been the fulfilment and triumph of the individualistic age of human society; it has seemed likely also to be its end, the cause of the death of individualism and its putting away and burial among the monuments of the past.
For this discovery by individual free-thought of universal laws of which the individual is almost a by-product and by which he must necessarily be governed, this attempt actually to govern the social life of humanity in conscious accordance with the mechanism of these laws seems to lead logically to the suppression of that very individual freedom which made the discovery and the attempt at all possible. In seeking the truth and law of his own being the individual seems to have discovered a truth and law which is not of his own individual being at all, but of the collectivity, the pack, the hive, the mass. The result to which this points and to which it still seems irresistibly to be driving us is a new ordering of society by a rigid economic or governmental Socialism in which the individual, deprived again of his freedom in his own interest and that of humanity, must have his whole life and action determined for him at every step and in every point from birth to old age by the well-ordered mechanism of the State.1 We might then have a curious new version, with very important differences, of the old Asiatic or even of the old Indian order of society. In place of the religio-ethical sanction there will be a scientific and rational or naturalistic motive and rule; instead of the Brahmin Shastrakara the scientific, administrative and economic expert. In the place of the King himself observing the law and compelling with the aid and consent of the society all to tread without deviation the line marked out for them, the line of the Dharma, there will stand the collectivist State similarly guided and empowered. Instead of a hierarchical arrangement of classes each with its powers, privileges and duties there will be established an initial equality of education and opportunity, ultimately perhaps with a subsequent determination of function by experts who shall know us better than ourselves and choose for us our work and quality. Marriage, generation and the education of the child may be fixed by the scientific State as of old by the Shastra. For each man there will be a long stage of work for the State superintended by collectivist authorities and perhaps in the end a period of liberation, not for action but for enjoyment of leisure and personal self-improvement, answering to the Vanaprastha and Sannyasa Asramas of the old Aryan society. The rigidity of such a social state would greatly surpass that of its Asiatic forerunner; for there at least there were for the rebel, the innovator two important concessions. There was for the individual the freedom of an early Sannyasa, a renunciation of the social for the free spiritual life, and there was for the group the liberty to form a sub-society governed by new conceptions like the Sikh or the Vaishnava. But neither of these violent departures from the norm could be tolerated by a strictly economic and rigorously scientific and unitarian society. Obviously, too, there would grow up a fixed system of social morality and custom and a body of socialistic doctrine which one could not be allowed to question practically, and perhaps not even intellectually, since that would soon shatter or else undermine the system. Thus we should have a new typal order based upon purely economic capacity and function, guakarma, and rapidly petrifying by the inhibition of individual liberty into a system of rationalistic conventions. And quite certainly this static order would at long last be broken by a new individualist age of revolt, led probably by the principles of an extreme philosophical Anarchism.
--
We already see a violent though incomplete beginning of this line of social evolution in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia. The trend is for more and more nations to accept this beginning of a new order, and the resistance of the old order is more passive than activeit lacks the fire, Enthusiasm and self-confidence which animates the innovating Idea.
This is no longer recognised by the new order, Fascist or Communistic,here the individual is reduced to a cell or atom of the social body. "We have destroyed" proclaims a German exponent "the false view that men are individual beings; there is no liberty of individuals, there is only liberty of nations or races."
1.02 - The Necessity of Magick for All, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Let me sum up, very succinctly; as usual, my Enthusiasm has lured me into embroidering my sage discourse with Poets' Imagery!
Why should you study and practice Magick? Because you can't help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly. You are on the links, whether you like it or not; why go on topping your drive, and slicing your brassie, and fluffing your niblick, and pulling your iron, and socketing your mashie and not being up with your putt that's 6, and you are not allowed to pick up. It's a far cry to the Nineteenth, and the sky threatens storm before the imminent night.
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
the most dangerous enemies on the way to knowledge of the higher worlds lurk in such fantastical reveries and superstitions. Yet no one need to believe that the student loses all sense of poetry in life, all power of Enthusiasm because the words: You must be rid of all prejudice, are written over the portal leading to the second trial of initiation, and because over the portal at the entrance to the first trial he read: Without normal common sense all thine efforts are in vain.
If the candidate is in this way sufficiently advanced, a third trial awaits him. He finds here no definite goal to be reached. All is left in his own hands. He finds himself in a situation where nothing impels him to act. He must find his way all alone and out of himself. Things or people to stimulate him to action are non-existent. Nothing and nobody can give him the strength he needs but he himself alone. Failure to find this inner strength will leave him standing where he was. Few of those, however, who have successfully passed the previous trials will fail to find the necessary strength at this point. Either they will have turned back already or they succeed at this point also. All that the candidate requires is
1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Sometimes it so happens that these impediments persist for a long time. They do not cease after a few days. We should not worry if they continue even for a few years, in the case of certain people. Then it happens that we get fed up. There is a feeling of dullness, and a sense of having had enough with the practice. This is what Patanjali refers to as styana, which follows vyadhi; vyadhi is illness and styana is dullness. The Enthusiasm comes down and all our vigour goes. The ardour that we felt for the practice vanishes because we have been suffering and suffering for months and years, and who would like that pain or agony? Then, naturally, the alternative for the mind would be to slow down the intensity of the practice, and slow down even the feeling and the longing that it had earlier. But the trouble will not end merely with this arising of dullness.
There is a series of difficulties that follows this condition of lethargic inactivity and the slowing down of the intensity of meditation. The mind will expect only one chance to enter in, and if we give the least chance for this peculiar trait of the mind to counteract any good thing that we do, it will set up a tempest, a cyclone of counteracting work, which will prevent us from taking further steps in the practice of yoga. It will create doubts in the mind. "Oh, maybe something is seriously wrong either with the initiation that I have received, or I may not be fit for the practice. Otherwise, why have I been suffering like this for years? I have achieved nothing. I have not had the vision of God after ten years or fifteen years of meditation, and the only thing that I have is purging. I have no desire to eat anything, and I cannot sleep.
1.04 - A Leader, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
However, even in the heat of action, I was aware that there was something better to do, that our methods were not the best ones, that we were wasting our finest energies in vain, and that in spite of the almost fanatical Enthusiasm which urged us on, we might well be defeated.
The collapse came, mowing us down like corn in a field; and misfortune compelled us to regain possession of ourselves, to think carefully. The best of us are lost. The most intelligent, those who were most able to guide and direct us paid for their courageous self-sacrifice with exile or death. Consternation reigned in our ranks; at last I was able to make the others listen to what I thought, to what I felt.
--
I am happy, Madame, he said, turning towards me, to see a woman concerned with such matters. Women can do so much to hasten the coming of better days! There, in Russia, their services have been invaluable to us. Without them we would never have had so much courage, energy and endurance. They move about among us, going from town to town, from group to group, uniting us to one another, comforting the disheartened, cheering the downcast, nursing the sick and everywhere bringing with them, in them, a hope, a confidence, an Enthusiasm that never tire.
So it was that a woman came to assist me in my work, when my eyes were overstrained by my long vigils spent writing by candle-light. For during the day I had to have some kind of occupation so as not to attract attention. It was only at night that I could prepare our plans, compose our propaganda leaflets and make numerous copies of them, draw up lists and do other work of the same kind. Little by little my eyes were burnt up. Now I can hardly see. So a young woman, out of devotion for the cause, became my secretary and writes to my dictation, as long as I wish, without ever showing the slightest trace of fatigue or boredom. And his expression softened and grew tender at the thought of this humble devotion, this proof of self-abnegation.
1.04 - Body, Soul and Spirit, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
rest of the body. There are many prejudices prevalent regarding such statements about thinking as are brought forward here. Many persons are inclined to undervalue thinking, and to place higher the "warm life of feeling" or "emotion." Some, indeed, say it is not by "dry thinking" but by warmth of feeling, by the immediate power of "the emotions," that one raises oneself to higher knowledge. Persons who speak thus fear to blunt the feelings by clear thinking. This certainly results from the ordinary thinking that refers only to matters of utility. But in the case of thoughts that lead to higher regions of existence, the opposite is the result. There is no feeling and no Enthusiasm to be compared with the sentiments of warmth, beauty, and exaltation which are enkindled through the pure, crystal-clear thoughts which refer to the higher worlds. For the highest feelings are, as a matter of fact, not those which come "of themselves," but those which are gained by energetic and persevering thinking.
The human body has a construction adapted to thinking. The same materials and forces which are present in the mineral kingdom are
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
"...It is on this basis that she (Mother) planned the Golconde. First, she wanted a high architectural beauty, and in this she succeeded architects and people with architectural knowledge have admired it with Enthusiasm as a remarkable achievement; one spoke of it as the finest building of its kind he had seen, with no equal in all Europe or America; and a French architect, pupil of a great master, said it executed superbly the idea which his master had been seeking for but failed to realise..."2
Next in magnitude comes the Press. Today the Ashram Printing Press holds a premier place in India. That is because the Mother set from the very start the ideal of perfection before her and exacted from the workers that ideal. Kinds of business run on a commercial basis there are many outside, but here the ideal is quite different, as I have stated. This is what the Mother recently told the manager of the Press, "If any part of the world makes a demand for perfection in printing, it should be able to say to itself, The Pondicherry Ashram Press fulfils the ideal." Yet this Press began as some big establishments have done, in a very humble way; I don't know how the proposal was mooted that we must have a Press of our own to publish mainly Sri Aurobindo's books. The Mother caught the idea at once. But how to start, was the question. It was not so much the money that was wanting, as men of knowledge and experience in this field. She would not engage workers from outside; it must be run by the Ashram inmates. We had at that time made some connection with the Hyderabad Government through Sir Akbar Hydari who was instrumental in, procuring a donation from the Nizam's Government for Golconde, hence the name[3]. This connection opened the channel for an experienced officer of the Government to come and give a start to our Press. As soon as things began moving, the Mother put all her available force into it and bundled off sadhaks and sadhikas old and young, philosopher, scholar, professor, whoever was at hand, to the Press. Naturally, many difficulties cropped up; quarrels, disharmony, complaints human conflicts instead of natural calamities. The Mother was certainly prepared for them, for she knows our human nature, also that it is through work that it has to be changed, not through the escape-gate of inaction. We heard from time to time the Mother reporting about these troubles to Sri Aurobindo. With his silent Purusha-like support, and her regular visits to the Press, the initial difficulties were gradually overcome and a modicum of harmony established. One after another, Sri Aurobindo's books began to come out. Thus with our raw but energetic young band and a handful of trained paid workers, this institution was built up piecemeal, illustrating the Mother's method of working, the ideal to be achieved, and Sri Aurobindo's dictum that things must grow out of life itself, not according to a set mental pattern. In our case, of course, the process was sustained by a directly acting Divine Force. "All can be done if the God-touch is there." In fact all our institutions, the Ashram itself, have grown up in this way, from scratch, and Auroville is the latest example. We must remember, however, that activity by itself, of whatever kind, is of secondary importance, but "taken as pan of the sadhana offered to the Divine or done with the consciousness or faith that it is done by the Divine Power" that is the important point.
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Everyone does not share this Enthusiasm. Those
searching for extraterrestrial intelligence have published
1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
A disciple once had to make a critical decision. He wrote to Sri Aurobindo for advice and was quite puzzled when he was told to make his decision from the "summit" of his consciousness." He was a Westerner and wondered what on earth this could mean. Was this "summit of consciousness" a special way of thinking very intensely, a sort of Enthusiasm produced when the brain warms up? For this is the only kind of "consciousness" we know in the West. For us,
consciousness is always a mental process: "I think, therefore I am."
--
consciousness perhaps because consciousness is not something to be found ready-made, but something to kindle like a fire. At certain privileged moments in our existence, we have felt something like a warmth in our being, a kind of inner impetus or vivid energy that no words can describe, no reason can explain, because it arises from nowhere, without cause, naked like a need or a flame. Our childhood often bears witness to this pure Enthusiasm, this inexplicable nostalgia; but soon we grow out of adolescence. The mind seizes upon this force as it does with everything else and covers it with pretentious, idealistic words; it channels it into a physical undertaking,
a job, or a church. Or else the vital captures it and daubs it with more or less lofty sentiments unless it uses it for some personal adventure,
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
scientist) to accept the post of brigadier offered him. He hoed and scythed with Enthusiasm. And even
more stupidly: in Ekibastuz at the stone quarry he refused to be a work checker only because he would
--
furnace in view of this totally negative result we must ask on what the Enthusiasm and infatuation of
the adepts could possibly have been based.
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
A word on this. Vulgar minds, such as are happy with a personal God, Vishnu, Jesus, Melcarth, Mithras, or another, often excite themselves call it "Energized Enthusiasm" if you want to be sarcastic! to the point of experiencing actual Visions of the objects of their devotion. But these people have not so much as asked themselves the original question of "How come?" which is our present subject. Sweep them into the discard!
M. Beyond Vishvarupadarshana, the vision of the Form of Vishnu, beyond that yet loftier vision which corresponds in Hindu classification to our "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel", is that called Atmadarshana, the vision (or apprehension, a much better word) of the Universe as a single_phenomenon, outside all limitations, whether of time, space, causality, or what not.
1.05 - Work and Teaching, #Words Of The Mother I, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if, in our Enthusiasm, we were convinced that they are the only appropriate words to express correctly what Sri Aurobindo is and the experience he has given us, we would become dogmatic and be on the point of founding a religion.
He who has a spiritual experience and a faith, formulates it in the most appropriate words for himself.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Because it was German and spelt with a K, Kultur was an object, during the first World War, of derisive contempt. All this has now been changed. In Russia, Literature, Art and Science have become the three persons of a new humanistic Trinity. Nor is the cult of Culture confined to the Soviet Union. It is practised by a majority of intellectuals in the capitalist democracies. Clever, hard-boiled journalists, who write about everything else with the condescending cynicism of people who know all about God, Man and the Universe, and have seen through the whole absurd caboodle, fairly fall over themselves when it comes to Culture. With an earnestness and Enthusiasm that are, in the circumstances, unutterably ludicrous, they invite us to share their positively religious emotions in the face of High Art, as represented by the latest murals or civic centres; they insist that so long as Mrs. X. goes on writing her inimitable novels and Mr. Y. his more than Coleridgean criticism, the world, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, makes sense. The same overvaluation of Culture, the same belief that Art and Literature are ends in themselves and can flourish in isolation from a reasonable and realistic philosophy of life, have even invaded the schools and colleges. Among advanced educationists there are many people who seem to think that all will be well, so long as adolescents are permitted to express themselves, and small children are encouraged to be creative in the art class. But, alas, plasticine and self-expression will not solve the problems of education. Nor will technology and vocational guidance; nor the classics and the Hundred Best Books. The following criticisms of education were made more than two and a half centuries ago; but they are as relevant today as they were in the seventeenth century.
He knoweth nothing as he ought to know, who thinks he knoweth anything without seeing its place and the manner how it relateth to God, angels and men, and to all the creatures in earth, heaven and hell, time and eternity.
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from becoming a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness, are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. Always the greater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the old law, the deceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with reluctance, alarm or revolt or obstructing inertia the voices and the forces that call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being and a wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance or a qualified or temporising acquiescence; for even if they follow the call, they yet tend - when not consciously, then by automatic habit - to bring into the spiritual action their own natural disabilities and errors. At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Natureforces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind's and the life's falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind's ardours and the blind Enthusiasms of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure.
And yet even the leading of the inmost psychic being is not found sufficient until it has succeeded in raising itself out of this mass of inferior Nature to the highest spiritual levels and the divine spark and flame descended here have rejoined themselves to their original fiery Ether. For there is there no longer a spiritual consciousness still imperfect and half lost to itself in the thick sheaths of human mind, life and body, but the full spiritual consciousness in its purity, freedom and intense wideness. There, as it is the eternal Knower that becomes the Knower in us and mover and user of all knowledge, so it is the eternal All-Blissful who is the Adored attracting to himself the eternal divine portion of his being and joy that has gone out into the play of the universe, the infinite Lover pouring himself out in the multiplicity of his own manifested selves in a happy Oneness.
1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Master was beside himself with love for the Divine Mother. He sang with fiery Enthusiasm:
If only I can pass away repeating Durga's name, How canst Thou then, O Blessed One,
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
These practices are practically the be-all and end-all of the preliminaries of yoga. Though they are usually called preliminaries, they are such essentials that without them it would be impossible to imagine any success in yoga, because yoga is not merely sitting in a posture, restraining the breath, and so on, as one may imagine in ones Enthusiasm. Though it is true that meditation proper starts with the direct practices commencing from asana, etc., these higher stages will be impossible of approach, and success will be far from oneself, if there is a pull permanently exerted on oneself from behind. Whatever be our ardour for a movement forward, that will be prevented by the pull that is exerted by certain forces from behind us; and if this pull is not stopped by adoption of proper means, there will be no movement.
Even Garuda, who is the fastest of birds, cannot move if he is shackled with iron chains. What is the use of saying that he is a very fast bird? He cannot move, because he has been tied to a peg with strong ropes or chains. Likewise, whatever be our ardour, whatever be our longing or fervour, that would be set at naught by the calls of the earth the demands of the senses, the feelings of the mind, and the loves of the emotions. These are terrific things, and the teacher of yoga has been cautious in laying the basic foundations in the very beginning itself so that these impediments may be obviated to a large extent. No one can be completely free from them, not even the best of sages. One day or the other they will come in some form, but at least they will be in a milder form not in a violent, wind-like form.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
only an approximate insight but use it to increase our Enthusiasm for practice, it was useful.
People can have all sorts of wonderful experiences in meditation and
1.07 - Samadhi, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
23:But in all this one feels inclined to suggest that it will be better and more convincing if the meditation is directed to an object which in itself is apparently unimportant. One does not want the mind to be excited in any way, even by adoration. See the three meditative methods in Liber HHH (Equinox VI.). footnote: These are the complements of the three methods of Enthusiasm (A.'.A.'. instruction not yet issued up to March 1912.) At the same time, one would not like to deny positively that it is very much "easier" to take some idea towards which the mind would naturally flow.
24:The Hindus assert that the nature of the object determines the Samadhi; that is, the nature of those lower Samadhis which confer so-called "magic powers." For example, there are the Yogapravritti. Meditating on the tip of the nose, one obtains what may be called the "ideal smell"; that is, a smell which is not any particular smell, but is the archetypal smell, of which all actual smells are modifications. It is "the smell which is "not" a smell." This is the only reasonable description; for the experience being contrary to reason, it is only reasonable that the words describing it should be contrary to reason too. footnote: Hence the Athanasian Creed. Compare the precise parallel in the Zohar: "The Head which is above all heads; the Head which is "not" a Head.'
1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"All such things as attachment to the world and Enthusiasm for 'woman and gold'
disappear after the attainment of the Knowledge of Brahman. Then comes the cessation of all passions. When the log burns, it makes a crackling noise and one sees the flame.
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This brings us quite naturally to vital austerity, the austerity of the sensations, the tapasya of power. For the vital being is the seat of power, of effective Enthusiasm. It is in the vital that thought is transformed into will and becomes a dynamism for action. It is also true that the vital is the seat of desires and passions, of violent impulses and equally violent reactions, of revolt and depression. The normal remedy is to strangle and starve the vital by depriving it of all sensation; sensations are indeed its main sustenance and without them it falls asleep, grows sluggish and starves to death.
In fact, the vital has three sources of subsistence. The one most easily accessible to it comes from below, from the physical energies through the sensations.
1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We need not go into the details of every one of these sutras because not only will they be of no help to anyone here who is attempting to practise yoga, but also it may stir up some kind of unnecessary Enthusiasm in the minds of some people which may not be to their advantage, since it cannot be pursued under the existing conditions of these days. However, I shall try to give a general idea as to what is at the back of this system which the author of the sutras is trying to explain as a philosophical and psychological background.
As I mentioned previously, these powers are of three kinds, or categories: the objective, the subjective and the Absolute, or we may call it the Universal. Powers that one gains in respect of the objective world are of one kind; those pertaining to the subjective faculties are of a different kind; and those that are intended to bring about the salvation of the spirit, ultimately, are of a third kind altogether. The secret of this practice, or rather the technique behind this samyama in respect of any chosen object, is given in a sutra in the Samadhi Pada itself, which we studied long ago.
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It is not the intention of the Yoga Shastra to describe what powers come to a yogi when he concentrates or practises samyama, as these are temptations and sidetracking issues. But anyhow, for the purpose of giving an idea of the greatness of the practice, and also to give some sort of an Enthusiasm to the practitioners, the Yoga Sutra has gone into some detail as to the nature of these powers.
Our main point is samyama. There is no use merely counting the number of rich persons in the world and trying to find out the means by which they have become rich. Well, that may be a good science as a kind of theoretical pursuit, but what do we gain by knowing how many rich people are there in this world and how they have become rich? We will not become rich by knowing these methods, because it is a science by itself and not merely a historical study or a survey that we make statistically. The science is a more important aspect of the matter than merely a statement of the consequences or results that follow by the pursuit of the science. What is the science? That is samyama, the subject that we have been studying all along. How are we able to concentrate the mind? For this purpose the author has taken great pains in some of the sutras to explain how the mind can be made to agree, wholeheartedly, with the pursuit of yoga, and how distractions can be eliminated. It is this that is the intention of the sutras, right from those which dealt with the nirodha parinama, etc., onwards.
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
30. Disease, mental laziness, doubt, lack of Enthusiasm, lethargy, clinging to sense-enjoyments, false perception, non-attaining concentration, and falling away from the state when obtained, are the obstructing distractions.
Disease. This body is the boat which will carry us to the other shore of the ocean of life. It must be taken care of. Unhealthy persons cannot be Yogis. Mental laziness makes us lose all lively interest in the subject, without which there will neither be the will nor the energy to practise. Doubts will arise in the mind about the truth of the science, however strong one's intellectual conviction may be, until certain peculiar psychic experiences come, as hearing or seeing at a distance, etc. These glimpses streng then the mind and make the student persevere. Falling away ... when obtained. Some days or weeks when you are practicing, the mind will be calm and easily concentrated, and you will find yourself progressing fast. All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall.
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
or Enthusiasm in its shirt sleeves.--Carlyle, or Pessimism after
undigested meals.--John Stuart Mill, or offensive lucidity.--The
1.09 - Stead and Maskelyne, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The vexed question of spirit communication has become a subject of permanent public controversy in England. So much that is of the utmost importance to our views of the world, religion, science, life, philosophy, is crucially interested in the decision of this question, that no fresh proof or disproof, establishment or refutation of the genuineness and significance of spirit communications can go disregarded. But no discussion of the question which proceeds merely on first principles can be of any value. It is a matter of evidence, of the value of the evidence and of the meaning of the evidence. If the ascertained facts are in favour of spiritualism, it is no argument against the facts that they contradict the received dogmas of science or excite the ridicule alike of the enlightened sceptic and of the matter-of-fact citizen. If they are against spiritualism, it does not help the latter that it supports religion or pleases the imagination and flatters the emotions of mankind. Facts are what we desire, not Enthusiasm or ridicule; evidence is what we have to weigh, not unsupported arguments or questions of fitness or probability. The improbable may be true, the probable entirely false.
In judging the evidence, we must attach especial importance to the opinion of men who have dealt with the facts at first hand. Recently, two such men have put succinctly their arguments for and against the truth of spiritualism, Mr. W. T. Stead and the famous conjurer, Mr. Maskelyne. We will deal with Mr. Maskelyne first, who totally denies the value of the facts on which spiritualism is based. Mr. Maskelyne puts forward two absolutely inconsistent theories, first, that spiritualism is all fraud and humbug, the second, that it is all subconscious mentality. The first was the theory which has hitherto been held by the opponents of the new phenomena, the second the theory to which they are being driven by an accumulation of indisputable evidence. Mr. Maskelyne, himself a professed master of jugglery and illusion, is naturally disposed to put down all mediums as irregular competitors in his own art; but the fact that a conjuror can produce an illusory phenomenon, is no proof that all phenomena are conjuring. He farther argues that no spiritualistic phenomena have been produced when he could persuade Mr. Stead to adopt conditions which precluded fraud. We must know Mr. Maskelynes conditions and have Mr. Steads corroboration of this statement before we can be sure of the value we must attach to this kind of refutation. In any case we have the indisputable fact that Mr Stead himself has been the medium in some of the most important and best ascertained of the phenomena. Mr. Maskelyne knows that Mr. Stead is an honourable man incapable of a huge and impudent fabrication of this kind and he is therefore compelled to fall back on the wholly unproved theory of the subconscious mind. His arguments do not strike us as very convincing. Because we often write without noticing what we are writing, mechanically, therefore, says this profound thinker, automatic writing must be the same kind of mental process. The one little objection to this sublimely felicitous argument is that automatic writing has no resemblance whatever to mechanical writing. When a an writes mechanically, he does not notice what he is writing; when he writes automatically, he notices it carefully and has his whole attention fixed on it. When he writes mechanically, his hand records something that it is in his mind to write; when he writes automatically, his hand transcribes something which it is not in his mind to write and which is often the reverse of what his mind would tell him to write. Mr. Maskelyne farther gives the instance of a lady writing a letter and unconsciously putting an old address which, when afterwards questioned, she could not remember. This amounts to no more than a fit of absent-mindedness in which an old forgotten fact rose to the surface of the mind and by the revival of old habit was reproduced on the paper, but again sank out of immediate consciousness as soon as the mind returned to the present. This is a mental phenomenon essentially of the same class as our continuing unintentionally to write the date of the last year even in this years letters. In one case it is the revival, in the other the persistence of an old habit. What has this to do with the phenomena of automatic writing which are of an entirely different class and not attended by absent-mindedness at all? Mr. Maskelyne makes no attempt to explain the writing of facts in their nature unknowable to the medium, or of repeated predictions of the future, which are common in automatic communications.
1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
When there is a chidra, or a little loophole in the meditative effort which means when we are not meditating these vrittis will come up. Now we are ready, they will say. You have forgotten us, so we are up. And nobody can do anything at that time, because the starved emotions and the frustrated desires have a strength of their own. They are not weaklings. To avoid this problem of having to confront unforeseen vrittis at a later stage, the Yoga Shastras prescribe very graduated ascents, even in the earlier stages of yoga. We are not supposed to jump up in great Enthusiasm, as if we are going to catch God in a few days. It is this kind of Enthusiasm that leads to such problems.
We have to move gradually, with a tremendous caution with regard to our strengths and weaknesses. It is something like striking a balance sheet. The profit and loss account is struck with great care, and we know where we stand financially at the end of any particular year. Likewise, it is necessary to strike a psychological balance sheet of our life almost every day, towards the end of the day, we may say, and find out where we stand in spiritual life. It is no use imagining that we are seekers and yogins everyone can imagine that. Our actual condition will be known only to us. Many a time there are very difficult situations inwardly which cannot be explained, nor can they be observed by other people; only we can know. But, due to being busy in extraneous activities, and sometimes due to an incorrect idea of ones own strength, which may not be a real strength a kind of wrong estimation of oneself one may be led into erroneous corners and slacken the effort at concentration.
1.1.1.04 - Joy of Poetic Creation, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Poetry takes its start from any plane of the consciousness, but, like all art, one might even say all creation, it must be passed through the vital, the life-soul, gather from it a certain force for manifestation if it is to be itself alive. And as there is always a joy in creation, that joy along with a certain enthousiasmosnot Enthusiasm, if you please, but an invasion and exultation of creative force and creative ecstasy, nandamaya veamust always be there, whatever the source. But where the inspiration comes from the linking of the vital creative instrument to a deeper psychic experience, that imparts another kind of intensive originality and peculiar individual power, a subtle and delicate perfection, a linking on to something that is at once fine to etheriality and potent, intense as fire yet full of sweetness. But this is exceedingly rare in its absolute quality,poetry as an expression of mind and life is common, poetry of the mind and life touched by the soul and given a spiritual fineness is to be found but more rare; the pure psychic note in poetry breaks through only once in a way, in a brief lyric, a sudden line, a luminous passage. It was indeed because this linking-on took place that the true poetic faculty suddenly awoke in you,for it was not there before, at least on the surface. The joy you feel, therefore, was no doubt partly the simple joy of creation, but there comes also into it the joy of expression of the psychic being which was seeking for an outlet since your boyhood. It is this inner expression that makes the writing of poetry a part of sadhana.
29 May 1931
1.1.1.06 - Inspiration and Effort, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Merciful heavens, what a splashing and floundering! When you miss a verse or a poem, it is better to wait in an entire quietude about it (with only a silent expectation) until the true inspiration comes, and not to thrash the inner air vainly for possible variantslike that the true form is much more likely to come, as people go to sleep on a problem and find it solved when they awake. Otherwise, you are likely to have only a series of misses, the half-gods of the semi-poetic mind continually intervening with their false Enthusiasms and misleading voices.
11 July 1931
1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But even the man who is capable of governing his life by ideas, who recognises, that is to say, that it ought to express clearly conceived truths and principles of his being or of all being and tries to find out or to know from others what these are, is not often capable of the highest, the free and disinterested use of his rational mind. As others are subject to the tyranny of their interests, prejudices, instincts or passions, so he is subjected to the tyranny of ideas. Indeed, he turns these ideas into interests, obscures them with his prejudices and passions and is unable to think freely about them, unable to distinguish their limits or the relation to them of other, different and opposite ideas and the equal right of these also to existence. Thus, as we constantly see, individuals, masses of men, whole generations are carried away by certain ethical, religious, aesthetic, political ideas or a set of ideas, espouse them with passion, pursue them as interests, seek to make them a system and lasting rule of life and are swept away in the drive of their action and do not really use the free and disinterested reason for the right knowledge of existence and for its right and sane government. The ideas are to a certain extent fulfilled, they triumph for a time, but their very success brings disappointment and disillusionment. This happens, first, because they can only succeed by compromises and pacts with the inferior, irrational life of man which diminish their validity and tarnish their light and glory. Often indeed their triumph is convicted of unreality, and doubt and disillusionment fall on the faith and Enthusiasm which brought victory to their side. But even were it not so, the ideas themselves are partial and insufficient; not only have they a very partial triumph, but if their success were complete, it would still disappoint, because they are not the whole truth of life and therefore cannot securely govern and perfect life. Life escapes from the formulas and systems which our reason labours to impose on it; it proclaims itself too complex, too full of infinite potentialities to be tyrannised over by the arbitrary intellect of man.
This is the cause why all human systems have failed in the end; for they have never been anything but a partial and confused application of reason to life. Moreover, even where they have been most clear and rational, these systems have pretended that their ideas were the whole truth of life and tried so to apply them. This they could not be, and life in the end has broken or undermined them and passed on to its own large incalculable movement. Mankind, thus using its reason as an aid and justification for its interests and passions, thus obeying the drive of a partial, a mixed and imperfect rationality towards action, thus striving to govern the complex totalities of life by partial truths, has stumbled on from experiment to experiment, always believing that it is about to grasp the crown, always finding that it has fulfilled as yet little or nothing of what it has to accomplish. Compelled by nature to apply reason to life, yet possessing only a partial rationality limited in itself and confused by the siege of the lower members, it could do nothing else. For the limited imperfect human reason has no self-sufficient light of its own; it is obliged to proceed by observation, by experiment, by action, through errors and stumblings to a larger experience.
1.11 - The Soul or the Astral Body, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The choleric temper, in its active polarity, has the following good qualities: activity, Enthusiasm, eagerness, resolution, courage, productivity, etc. In the negative form these qualities are: gluttony, jealousy, passion, irritability, intemperance, bent to destruction, etc.
The sanguine temper in its active form shows: capacity of penetrating, diligence, joy, adroitness, kindness, clearness, lack of grief, cheerfulness, optimism, eagerness, independence, familiarity, etc. In the negative form: continual feeling of being affronted, contempt, propensity to gossiping, lack of endurance, slyness, garrulousness, dishonesty, fickleness, etc.
1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Those who know a little, who feel, who have begun to perceive the great Wave of Truth, will therefore not fall into the trap of superman recruiting. The earth is unequally prepared; men are spiritually unequal despite all our democratic protests to the contrary though they are essentially equal and vast in the great Self, and only one body with millions of faces they have not all become the greatness that they are. They are on the way, and some dawdle while others seem to travel more swiftly, but the detours of the former are also part of the great geography of our indivisible domain, their delay or the brake they seem to apply to our motion is part of the fullness of perfection that we seek and which compels us to a greater meticulousness of truth. They too are going there, by their own way and what is outside the way, in the end, since everything is the Way? He who knows a little, who feels, knows first and foremost, from having experienced it in his own flesh, that men are never truly brought together by artifices and when they persist in their artifice, everything finally collapses and the meeting is brief; the beautiful school, the lovely sect, the little iridescent bubble of a moment's Enthusiasm or faith is short-lived they are brought together through a finer and more discreet law, a tiny little searchlight across time and space, and touches a similar ray here and there, a twin frequency, a light source with the same intensity and he goes. He goes haphazardly, takes a train, a plane, travels to this country and that one, believes he is searching for this or that, that he is in quest of adventure, the exotic, drugs or philosophy he believes. He believes a lot of things. He thinks he has to have this power or that solution, this panacea or that revolution, this slogan or that one. He thinks he set out because of that thirst or revolt, that unhappy love affair or need for action, this hope or that old insoluble discord in his heart. But then, there is none of that! One day he stops, without knowing why, without planning to be there, without having looked for that place or that face, that insignificant village under the stars of one hemisphere or the other and there it is. He has arrived. He has opened his one door, found his kindred fire, that look forever known; and he is exactly at the right place, at the right time, to do the right work. The world is a fabulous clockwork, if only we knew the secret of those little fires glowing in another space, dancing on a great inner sea where our skiffs sail as if guided by an invisible beacon.
There are ten or twenty, perhaps fifty, here or there, in one latitude or another, who yearn to till a truer plot of land, a small patch of man to grow a truer being within themselves, perhaps create together a laboratory of the superman, lay the first stone of the City of Truth on earth. They do not know, they do not know anything, except that they need something else and that there exists a Law of Harmony, a marvelous something of the Future seeking to be incarnated. They want to find the conditions of that incarnation, to lend themselves to the trial, to offer their substance for that living experiment. They know nothing except that everything must be different: in hearts, in gestures, in matter and the handling of matter. They are not seeking to create a new civilization, but another man; not a supercity among the millions of buildings of the world, but a listening post for the forces of the future, a supreme yantra of Truth, a conduit, a channel to try to capture and inscribe in matter a first note of the great Harmony, a first tangible sign of the new world. They do not pose as the champions of anything; they do not defend any liberty or attack any ism. They simply try together. They are the champions of their own pure little note, which is unlike the next person's and yet is everyone's note. They are no longer from a country, a family, a religion or a party; they belong to their own party, which is no one else's and yet is the party of the world, because what becomes true at one point becomes true for the whole world and brings the whole world together. They are from a family to be invented, from a country yet to be born. They do not try to correct others or anybody, to pour self-glorifying charities over the world, to cure the poor and the lepers; they try to cure the great poverty of smallness in themselves, the gray elf of the inner misery, to reclaim one single parcel of truth from themselves, one single ray of harmony. For if that Disease is cured in our own heart or a few hearts, the world will be that much lighter, and, through our clarity, the Law of Truth will better penetrate matter and radiate all around spontaneously. What liberation, what relief can a man who suffers in his own heart bring to the world? They do not work for themselves, though they are the primary ground of the experience, but as an offering, pure and simple, to that which they do not really know, but which shimmers at the edge of the world like the dawn of a new age. They are the prospectors of the new cycle. They have given themselves to the future, body and soul, the way one jumps into the fire, without a look back. They are the servants of the infinite in the finite, of the totality in the infinitesimal, of eternity in each second and each gesture. They create their heaven with each step and carve the new world out of the banality of the day. And they are not afraid of failure, for they have left behind the failures and success of the prison they live in the sole infallibility of a right little note.
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The illumined mind has a different nature. As the higher mind gradually accepts silence, it gains access to this region, meaning that its substance gradually clarifies, and what came one drop at a time now comes flowing in: The ground is no longer a general neutrality but pure spiritual ease and happiness upon which the special tones of the aesthetic consciousness come out or from which they arise. This is the first fundamental change.191 The consciousness is filled with a flood of light, often golden, infused with colors that vary with the inner state; this is a luminous irruption. And simultaneously, a state of Enthusiasm, in the Greek sense of the word, a sudden awakening as if the whole being were on the alert, immersed in a very fast rhythm and in a brand-new world, with new values; new perspectives, and unexpected associations. The smoke screen of the world is lifted.
Everything is interconnected within a great, joyous vibration. Life becomes vaster, truer, more alive; little truths twinkle everywhere, wordlessly, as if each thing held a secret, a special sense, a special life. One bathes in an indescribable state of truth, without understanding anything about it it just is. And it is marvelously. It is light, alive, loving.
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Along with its beauty, we are also discovering the limits of the illumined mind: illumined poetry produces streams of images and revelatory words (because vision, and even hearing, often open at this stage), almost an avalanche of luxuriant, sometimes incoherent images, as if the consciousness were hard put to contain the flood of light and unaccustomed intensity; it is overwhelmed. Enthusiasm easily changes into exhilaration, and if the rest of the being has not been sufficiently prepared and purified, any of the lower parts can seize hold of the descending light and force and use them for their own ends; this is a frequent snare. Whenever the lower parts of the being, especially the vital, seize upon the luminous flood, they harden it, dramatize it, distort it. There is still power, but compelling and hard while the essence of the illumined mind is joy. Here we could cite the names of many poets and creative geniuses. 193 Furthermore, the substance of the illumined mind is not truly transparent, but only translucent; its light is diffused, somewhat as if it could feel the truth everywhere without concretely touching it; hence the frequent instances of incoherence and vagueness. It is only the beginning of a new birth. Before going higher, more purification is necessary, and above all more peace, more natural equilibrium, and more silence. The higher we ascend in consciousness, the sturdier the equilibrium required.
191 - Letters, 3rd Series, 124
1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
It was the day of the annual festival of the Sinduriapatti Brahmo Samaj. The ceremony was to be performed in Manilal Mallick's house. The worship hall was beautifully decorated with flowers, wreaths, and evergreens, and many devotees were assembled, eagerly awaiting the worship. Their Enthusiasm had been greatly heightened by the news that Sri Ramakrishna was going to grace the occasion with his presence. Keshab, Vijay, Shivanath, and other leaders of the Brahmo Samaj held him in high respect. His God intoxicated state of mind, his intense love of spiritual life, his burning faith, his intimate communion with God, and his respect for women, whom he regarded as veritable manifestations of the Divine Mother, together with the unsullied purity of his character, his complete renunciation of worldly talk, his love and respect for all religious faiths, and his eagerness to meet devotees of all creeds, attracted the members of the Brahmo Samaj to him. Devotees came that day from far-off places to join the festival, for it would give them a chance to get a glimpse of the Master and listen to his inspiring talk.
Sri Ramakrishna arrived at the house before the worship began, and became engaged in conversation with Vijaykrishna Goswami and the other devotees. The lamps were lighted and the divine service was about to begin.
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Now we are drawing nearer. The seeker began his journey with a positive experience. He set out on the way because he needed something else. He strove for mental silence and found that his very effort produced an Answer. He felt a descending Force, a new vibration within him, which made life clearer, more alive. Perhaps he even experienced a sudden tearing of the limits and emerged at another altitude. The signs might have come in a thousand ways to indicate that a new rhythm was setting in. But then, after this hopeful start, everything became veiled, as if he had been dreaming or had become carried away by some childish Enthusiasm: something within him is now busy taking its revenge through a spell of skepticism, disgust, or revolt. This will be the second sign, perhaps the true sign, that he is progressing and has come to grips with the realities of his nature or, rather, that the descending Force has begun its churning work. Ultimately, progress is not so much a matter of ascending as of clearing up the prevailing obstructions for when we are clear, everything is right there. Thus the seeker begins to discover his many obstructions. On the path of integral yoga, the feeling is often of finding the worst when we had wished for the best, of waging war when we had sought peace and light. Actually, let us face it, it is a battle. As long as we are swimming with the current, we can believe ourselves to be very nice, proper and well-intentioned individuals, but the instant we take another direction, everything begins to resist. We begin tangibly to appreciate the colossal forces that weigh upon human beings and stupefy them; yet it is only by trying to get out of their clutches that we can realize this. Once the seeker has had a first decisive opening above, once he has seen the Light, then almost simultaneously he feels a kick in the shins, as if something in him were in pain. Now he knows what Sri Aurobindo meant by the wounded gloom complaining against light.229 And he will have learned his first lesson: each step upward is necessarily followed by a step downward. Instead of taking these sharp jolts as a kind of fatality, the seeker will make them the basis of his work. Indeed, this dual movement of ascent and descent is the fundamental process of the integral yoga: On each height we conquer we have to turn to bring down its power and its illumination into the lower mortal movement.
Such is the price for transforming life, otherwise we merely poeticize and spiritualize on the peaks, while below the old life keeps bumping along. In practice, the downward movement is never created by an arbitrary mental decision; the less the mind interferes in this, the better. Besides, one wonders how the Mind could ever "descend," comfortably seated, as it is, behind its little desk. It is the awakened and individualized consciousness-force in us that does all the work, automatically. The moment we have attained a certain intensity of consciousness and light, it automatically exerts a pressure on the rest of our nature, which results in corresponding reactions of obscurity or resistance. It is as if an overdose of oxygen were abruptly pumped into the ocean's underworld: the deep-sea creatures would struggle frantically, or even explode. This reversal of consciousness is strange indeed, as if going from a well-lighted room to the same room filled with darkness, or from a joyous room to the same room riddled with pain: everything is the same, and yet everything is changed. As if it were the same force, the same vibratory intensity perhaps even the same vibration but with a minus sign in front of it instead of a plus sign. One can then observe, almost step by step, how love changes into hate, for example, or how the pure becomes impure; everything is the same, only reversed. Yet, as long as our psychological states are merely the reverse of one another, and our good the back side (perhaps we should say the front side?) of evil, life will never change.
1.14 - The Suprarational Beauty, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But again this is true only in restricted bounds or, if anywhere entirely true, then only on a middle plane of our aesthetic seeking and activity. Where the greatest and most powerful creation of beauty is accomplished and its appreciation and enjoyment rise to the highest pitch, the rational is always surpassed and left behind. The creation of beauty in poetry and art does not fall within the sovereignty or even within the sphere of the reason. The intellect is not the poet, the artist, the creator within us; creation comes by a suprarational influx of light and power which must work always, if it is to do its best, by vision and inspiration. It may use the intellect for certain of its operations, but in proportion as it subjects itself to the intellect, it loses in power and force of vision and diminishes the splendour and truth of the beauty it creates. The intellect may take hold of the influx, moderate and repress the divine Enthusiasm of creation and force it to obey the prudence of its dictates, but in doing so it brings down the work to its own inferior level, and the lowering is in proportion to the intellectual interference. For by itself the intelligence can only achieve talent, though it may be a high and even, if sufficiently helped from above, a surpassing talent. Genius, the true creator, is always suprarational in its nature and its instrumentation even when it seems to be doing the work of the reason; it is most itself, most exalted in its work, most sustained in the power, depth, height and beauty of its achievement when it is least touched by, least mixed with any control of the mere intellectuality and least often drops from its heights of vision and inspiration into reliance upon the always mechanical process of intellectual construction. Art-creation which accepts the canons of the reason and works within the limits laid down by it, may be great, beautiful and powerful; for genius can preserve its power even when it labours in shackles and refuses to put forth all its resources: but when it proceeds by means of the intellect, it constructs, but does not create. It may construct well and with a good and faultless workmanship, but its success is formal and not of the spirit, a success of technique and not the embodiment of the imperishable truth of beauty seized in its inner reality, its divine delight, its appeal to a supreme source of ecstasy, Ananda.
There have been periods of artistic creation, ages of reason, in which the rational and intellectual tendency has prevailed in poetry and art; there have even been nations which in their great formative periods of art and literature have set up reason and a meticulous taste as the sovereign powers of their aesthetic activity. At their best these periods have achieved work of a certain greatness, but predominantly of an intellectual greatness and perfection of technique rather than achievements of a supreme inspired and revealing beauty; indeed their very aim has been not the discovery of the deeper truth of beauty, but truth of ideas and truth of reason, a critical rather than a true creative aim. Their leading object has been an intellectual criticism of life and nature elevated by a consummate poetical rhythm and diction rather than a revelation of God and man and life and nature in inspired forms of artistic beauty. But great art is not satisfied with representing the intellectual truth of things, which is always their superficial or exterior truth; it seeks for a deeper and original truth which escapes the eye of the mere sense or the mere reason, the soul in them, the unseen reality which is not that of their form and process but of their spirit. This it seizes and expresses by form and idea, but a significant form, which is not merely a faithful and just or a harmonious reproduction of outward Nature, and a revelatory idea, not the idea which is merely correct, elegantly right or fully satisfying to the reason and taste. Always the truth it seeks is first and foremost the truth of beauty,not, again, the formal beauty alone or the beauty of proportion and right process which is what the sense and the reason seek, but the soul of beauty which is hidden from the ordinary eye and the ordinary mind and revealed in its fullness only to the unsealed vision of the poet and artist in man who can seize the secret significances of the universal poet and artist, the divine creator who dwells as their soul and spirit in the forms he has created.
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This predominance given to reason and taste first and foremost, sometimes even almost alone, in the creation and appreciation of beauty arises from a temper of mind which is critical rather than creative; and in regard to creation its theory falls into a capital error. All artistic work in order to be perfect must indeed have in the very act of creation the guidance of an inner power of discrimination constantly selecting and rejecting in accordance with a principle of truth and beauty which remains always faithful to a harmony, a proportion, an intimate relation of the form to the idea; there is at the same time an exact fidelity of the idea to the spirit, nature and inner body of the thing of beauty which has been revealed to the soul and the mind, its svarpa and svabhva. Therefore this discriminating inner sense rejects all that is foreign, superfluous, otiose, all that is a mere diversion distractive and deformative, excessive or defective, while it selects and finds sovereignly all that can bring out the full truth, the utter beauty, the inmost power. But this discrimination is not that of the critical intellect, nor is the harmony, proportion, relation it observes that which can be fixed by any set law of the critical reason; it exists in the very nature and truth of the thing itself, the creation itself, in its secret inner law of beauty and harmony which can be seized by vision, not by intellectual analysis. The discrimination which works in the creator is therefore not an intellectual self-criticism or an obedience to rules imposed on him from outside by any intellectual canons, but itself creative, intuitive, a part of the vision, involved in and inseparable from the act of creation. It comes as part of that influx of power and light from above which by its divine Enthusiasm lifts the faculties into their intense suprarational working. When it fails, when it is betrayed by the lower executive instruments rational or infrarational, and this happens when these cease to be passive and insist on obtruding their own demands or vagaries,the work is flawed and a subsequent act of self-criticism becomes necessary. But in correcting his work the artist who attempts to do it by rule and intellectual process, uses a false or at any rate an inferior method and cannot do his best. He ought rather to call to his aid the intuitive critical vision and embody it in a fresh act of inspired creation or recreation after bringing himself back by its means into harmony with the light and law of his original creative initiation. The critical intellect has no direct or independent part in the means of the inspired creator of beauty.
In the appreciation of beauty it has a part, but it is not even there the supreme judge or law-giver. The business of the intellect is to analyse the elements, parts, external processes, apparent principles of that which it studies and explain their relations and workings; in doing this it instructs and enlightens the lower mentality which has, if left to itself, the habit of doing things or seeing what is done and taking all for granted without proper observation and fruitful understanding. But as with truth of religion, so with the highest and deepest truth of beauty, the intellectual reason cannot seize its inner sense and reality, not even the inner truth of its apparent principles and processes, unless it is aided by a higher insight not its own. As it cannot give a method, process or rule by which beauty can or ought to be created, so also it cannot give to the appreciation of beauty that deeper insight which it needs; it can only help to remove the dullness and vagueness of the habitual perceptions and conceptions of the lower mind which prevent it from seeing beauty or which give it false and crude aesthetic habits: it does this by giving to the mind an external idea and rule of the elements of the thing it has to perceive and appreciate. What is farther needed is the awakening of a certain vision, an insight and an intuitive response in the soul. Reason which studies always from outside, cannot give this inner and more intimate contact; it has to aid itself by a more direct insight springing from the soul itself and to call at every step on the intuitive mind to fill up the gap of its own deficiencies.
1.1.5 - Thought and Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is no difficulty about explaining [how a thought rejected by one person gets picked up by another]. You are as naive and ignorant as a newborn lamb. That is the way things come, only one does not notice. Thoughts, ideas, happy inventions etc. etc. are always wandering about (in thought waves or otherwise) seeking a mind that may embody them. One mind takes, looks, rejectsano ther takes, looks, accepts. Two different minds catch the same thought-form or thought-wave, but the mental activities being different make different results out of them. Or it comes to one and he does nothing, then it walks off, crying O this unready animal! and goes to another who promptly annexes it and it settles into expression with a joyous bubble of inspiration, illumination or Enthusiasm of original discovery or creation and the recipient cries proudly, I, I have done this. Ego, sir! ego! You are the recipient, the conditioning medium, if you likenothing more.
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1.19 - The Curve of the Rational Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This series seems to follow always a typical course, first a luminous seed-time and a period of enthusiastic effort and battle, next a partial victory and achievement and a brief era of possession, then disillusionment and the birth of a new idea and endeavour. A principle of society is put forward by the thinker, seizes on the general mind and becomes a social gospel; brought immediately or by rapid stages into practice, it dethrones the preceding principle and takes its place as the foundation of the communitys social or political life. This victory won, men live for a time in the Enthusiasm or, when the Enthusiasm sinks, in the habit of their great achievement. After a little they begin to feel less at ease with the first results and are moved to adapt, to alter constantly, to develop more or less restlessly the new system,for it is the very nature of the reason to observe, to be open to novel ideas, to respond quickly to new needs and possibilities and not to repose always in the unquestioning acceptance of every habit and old association. Still men do not yet think of questioning their social principle or imagine that it will ever need alteration, but are intent only to perfect its forms and make its application more thorough, its execution more sincere and effective. A time, however, arrives when the reason becomes dissatisfied and sees that it is only erecting a mass of new conventions and that there has been no satisfying change; there has been a shifting of stresses, but the society is not appreciably nearer to perfection. The opposition of the few thinkers who have already, perhaps almost from the first, started to question the sufficiency of the social principle, makes itself felt and is accepted by increasing numbers; there is a movement of revolt and the society starts on the familiar round to a new radical progression, a new revolution, the reign of a more advanced social principle.
This process has to continue until the reason can find a principle of society or else a combination and adjustment of several principles which will satisfy it. The question is whether it will ever be satisfied or can ever rest from questioning the foundation of established things,unless indeed it sinks back into a sleep of tradition and convention or else goes forward by a great awakening to the reign of a higher spirit than its own and opens into a suprarational or spiritual age of mankind. If we may judge from the modern movement, the progress of the reason as a social renovator and creator, if not interrupted in its course, would be destined to pass through three successive stages which are the very logic of its growth, the first individualistic and increasingly democratic with liberty for its principle, the second socialistic, in the end perhaps a governmental communism with equality and the State for its principle, the thirdif that ever gets beyond the stage of theoryanarchistic in the higher sense of that much-abused word, either a loose voluntary cooperation or a free communalism with brotherhood or comradeship and not government for its principle. It is in the transition to its third and consummating stage, if or whenever that comes, that the power and sufficiency of the reason will be tested; it will then be seen whether the reason can really be the master of our nature, solve the problems of our interrelated and conflicting egoisms and bring about within itself a perfect principle of society or must give way to a higher guide. For till this third stage has its trial, it is Force that in the last resort really governs. Reason only gives to Force the plan of its action and a system to administer.
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This is a symptom that can have a considerable significance. In Russia the Marxist system of Socialism has been turned almost into a gospel. Originally a rationalistic system worked out by a logical thinker and discoverer and systematiser of ideas, it has been transformed by the peculiar turn of the Russian mind into something like a social religion, a collectivist mystique, an inviolable body of doctrines with all denial or departure treated as a punishable heresy, a social cult enforced by the intolerant piety and Enthusiasm of a converted people. In Fascist countries the swing away from Rationalism is marked and open; a surface vital subjectivism has taken its place and it is in the name of the national soul and its self-expression and manifestation that the leaders and prophets teach and violently enforce their totalitarian mystique. The essential features are the same in Russia and in Fascist countries, so that to the eye of the outsider their deadly quarrel seems to be a blood-feud of kinsmen fighting for the inheritance of their slaughtered parentsDemocracy and the Age of Reason. There is the seizure of the life of the community by a dominant individual leader, Fhrer, Dux, dictator, head of a small active minority, the Nazi, Fascist or Communist party, and supported by a militarised partisan force; there is a rapid crystallisation of the social, economic, political life of the people into a new rigid organisation effectively controlled at every point; there is the compulsory casting of thought, education, expression, action, into a set iron mould, a fixed system of ideas and life-motives, with a fierce and ruthless, often a sanguinary repression of all that denies and differs; there is a total unprecedented compression of the whole communal existence so as to compel a maximum efficiency and a complete unanimity of mind, speech, feeling, life.
If this trend becomes universal, it is the end of the Age of Reason, the suicide or the executionby decapitation or lethal pressure, peine forte et dure,of the rational and intellectual expansion of the human mental being. Reason cannot do its work, act or rule if the mind of man is denied freedom to think or freedom to realise its thought by action in life. But neither can a subjective age be the outcome; for the growth of subjectivism also cannot proceed without plasticity, without movement of self-search, without room to move, expand, develop, change. The result is likely to be rather the creation of a tenebrous No Mans Land where obscure mysticisms, materialistic, vitalistic or mixed, clash and battle for the mastery of human life. But this consummation is not certain; chaos and confusion still reign and all hangs in the balance. Totalitarian mysticism may not be able to carry out its menace of occupying the globe, may not even endure. Spaces of the earth may be left where a rational idealism can still survive. The terrible compression now exercised on the national mind and life may lead to an explosion from within or, on the other hand, having fulfilled its immediate aim may relax and give way in calmer times to a greater plasticity which will restore to the human mind or soul a more natural line of progress, a freer field for their self-expanding impulse.
1.24 - Necromancy and Spiritism, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
What sublimity of approach! What ingenuity of "considerations!" With what fatally sure steps marches his preparation! With what superb technique does he carry out his energized Enthusiasm! And, finally, with what exact judicial righteousness does he sum the results of his great Evocation of Apollonius of Tyana!
Contrast with this elaborate care, rightness of every detail, earnestness and intentness upon the goal contrast, I say, the modern Spiritist in the dingy squalor of her foul back street in her suburban slum, the room musty, smelling of stale food, the hideous prints, the cheap and rickety furniture, calling up any one required from Jesus Christ to Queen Victoria, all at a bob-a-nob!
1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Listen to a story. Once a woman went to see her weaver friend. The weaver, who had been spinning different kinds of silk thread, was very happy to see her friend and said to her: 'Friend, I can't tell you how happy I am to see you. Let me get you some refreshments.' She left the room. The woman looked at the threads of different colours and was tempted. She hid a bundle of thread under one arm. The weaver returned presently with the refreshments and began to feed her guest with great Enthusiasm. But, looking at the thread, she realized that her friend had taken a bundle. Hitting upon a plan to get it back, she said: 'Friend, it is so long since I have seen you. This is a day of great joy for me. I feel very much like asking you to dance with me.' The friend said, 'Sister, I am feeling very happy too.' So the two friends began to dance together. When the weaver saw that her friend danced without raising her hands, she said: 'Friend, let us dance with both hands raised. This is a day of great joy.' But the guest pressed one arm to her side and danced raising only the other. The weaver said: 'How is this, friend?
Why should you dance with only one hand raised? Dance with me raising both hands.
1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
24. One who had learnt about this from experience wanted to tell others about it exactly and in detail, but he was afraid in case he should damp the Enthusiasm of those already practising it, or frighten off with the noise of his words those who were making up their minds to embark upon it.
1 Variant reading: and the mind of the solitary jumps over them safely.
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27. The solitary is one who runs away from all company though without hatred, just as others run towards it though without Enthusiasm. He wishes to go on receiving the divine sweetness.
28. Go and distribute immediately (because to sell would take a long time) all that thou hast, and give to the poor3 monks, so that in their prayers they may accompany you to solitude. And take up thy cross, and carry it with the help of obedience, and vigorously bear the burden of the loss of thy will, and for the future come and follow Me4 to union with most blessed solitude, and I will teach you the visible activity and life of the spiritual powers. They never weary of praising their Maker to all eternity, and he who ascends to the heaven of solitude never ceases to praise his Creator. Immaterial spirits will not think about the material, nor will those who have become immaterial in a material body think about food. The first will not be aware of food, and the second will need no promise of it. The former do not think about money and possessions, nor do the latter think about the malice of the evil spirits. Those in heaven above have no desire for the visible creation, and those here on earth below have no desire for things perceived by the senses. The former will never cease to advance in love, and the latter vie with them daily. Those are well aware of the wealth of their progress, and these are conscious of their love of the ascent. Those will not stop until they reach seraphic perfection, and these will not weary until they become angels. Blessed is he who hopes; thrice-blessed is he who has the promise; but he who has the reality is an angel.
13.05 - A Dream Of Surreal Science, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Things went on well, at least one thought like that, for sometime, but then it was realised soon enough that something was missing in this rationalistic frame of life, for it was almost lifeless, dry: it does not evoke Enthusiasm, does not drive man spontaneously towards higher hights and deeper depths. Man remains a groundling. God need not be there: but the feeling that is associated with God and the conception of Godwhich is usually called the religious feeling is a genuine human feeling and with the rejection of God, the feeling does not go, it persists. So a new religion is proposed, a Godless religion, a Natural Religion and it came to be called the Religion of Humanity. God was replaced by Humanity. Humanity is a collective reality: to serve it became the ideal, the summum bonum. And to serve is to worship and adore. Thus a new deity was installed. To give yourself wholly, to work for the welfare of humanity, body and mind, to love one and all human beings, particularly those who deserve love and care the poor, the needy, the lowlyto work so that they may be comforted, is to bring comfort to yourself, to your own soul. It is nothing short of the purest and deepest religious feeling.
Is it so? The Age of Reason made its momentous declaration long ago: it is now almost two hundred years, but actually we find man refuses to forget God. Churches and temples, communities and corporations have been cropping up always demanding that God is to be called God, He cannot be called by any other name. He is to be worshipped as God. No lesser gods but the Supreme God Himself. Does not the Bible say: "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" ?2
1.30 - Do you Believe in God?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Is this the fault of my own sophistication? I asked myself. Tell you what! I'll trot round to my masseuse, and put it up to her. She is a simple country soul, by no means over-educated, but intelligent; capable of a firm grasp of the principles of her job; a steady church-goer on what she considers worthwhile occasions; dislikes the rector, but praises his policy of keeping his discourse within bounds. She has done quite a lot of thinking for herself; distrusts and despises the Press and the Radio, has no use for ready-made opinions. She shares with the flock their normal prejudices and phobias, but is not bigoted about them, and follows readily enough a line of simply-expressed destructive criticism when it is put to her. This is, however, only a temporary reaction; a day later she would repeat the previous inanities as if they had never been demolished. In the late fifties, at a guess. I sprang your question on her out of the blue, la "doodle-bug;" premising merely that I had been asked the question, and was puzzled as to how to answer it. Her reply was curious and surprising: without a moment's hesitation and with great Enthusiasm, "Quickly, yes!" The spontaneous reservation struck me as extremely interesting. I said: of course, but suppose you think it over and out a bit, what am I to understand? She began glibly "He's a great big " and broke off, looking foolish. Then, although omnipotent, He needed our help we were all just as powerful as He, for we were little bits of each other but exactly how, or to what end, she did not make clear. An exclamation: "Then there is the Devil!"
She went on without a word from me for a long while, tying herself up into fresh knots with every phase. She became irreverent, then downright blasphemous; stopped short and began to laugh at herself. And so forth but, what struck me as curious and significant, in the main her argument followed quite closely the lines which came naturally to me, at the beginning of this letter!
1.42 - This Self Introversion, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This matter is of importance, because it influences one's attitude to invocation. I can, for instance, work myself up to a "Divine Consciousness," in which I can understand, and act, as I cannot in my normal state. I become "inspired;" I feel, and I express, ideas of almost illimitable exaltation. But this is totally different from the "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel," which is the special aim of the Adeptus Minor. It is ruin to that Work if one deceives oneself by mistaking one's own "energized Enthusiasm" for external communication. The parallel on the physical plane is the difference between Onanism and Sexual Intercourse.
Probably, my reason for insistence on this point is my antipathy to introversion in any form. The "mystic path" itself is packed with dangers. Unless the strongest counter-irritants are exhibited, the process is almost certain to become morbid. It is only one step from the Invocation of Zeus, or Apollo, or Dionysus, which does demand identification of oneself with the object of one's worship, to a form of self-worship which soon develops into a maniacal exacerbation of the Ego; and if one persists in this involuted curve, one becomes a "Black Brother," or departs for the local loony-bin.
1.45 - Unserious Conduct of a Pupil, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
If you put half as much Enthusiasm into what you quite rightly claim to be the most important factor in life as other old ladies do into Culbertson Contract, you might get somewhere.
What you need, in the way of a Guru, is some fat, greasy Swami, who would not allow you to enter or leave his presence without permission, or address him without being formally invited to do so. After seven years at menial household drudgeries, you might with luck be allowed to listen to some of his improving discourse.
1.51 - How to Recognise Masters, Angels, etc., and how they Work, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
She was very unsatisfactory as a clairvoyant; she resented these precautions. She was a quick-tempered and impulsive woman, always eager to act with reckless Enthusiasm. My cold scepticism no doubt prevented her from doing her best. Ab-ul-Diz himself constantly demanded that I should show "faith," and warned me that I was wrecking my chances by my attitude. I prevailed upon him, however, to give adequate proof of his existence, and his claim to speak with authority. The main purport of his message was to instruct me to write a book on my system of Mysticism and Magick, to be called Book 4, and told me that by means of this book, I should prevail against public neglect. I saw no objection to writing such a book; on quite rational grounds, it was a proper course of action. I therefore agreed to do so. But Ab-ul-Diz was determined to dictate the conditions in which the book should be written; and this was a difficult matter. He wanted us to travel to an appropriate place. On this point I was not wholly satisfied with the result of my cross-examination. I know now that I was much to blame throughout. I was not honest either with him, myself, or Virakam. I allowed material considerations to influence me, and I clung oh triple fool! to my sentimental obligations towards Laylah.[107]
We finally decided to do what he asked, though part of my objection was founded on his refusal to give us absolutely definite instruction. However, we crossed the Passes in a sleigh to Chiavenna, whence we took the train to Milan. In this city we had a final conversation with Ab-ul-Diz. I had exhausted his patience, as he mine, and he told us that he would not visit us any more. He gave us his final instructions. We were to go to Rome, though he refused to name the exact spot. We were to take a villa and there write Book 4. I asked him how we might recognize the right Villa. I forget what answer he gave through her, but for the first time he flashed a message directly into my own consciousness. "You will recognize it beyond the possibility of doubt or error," he told me. With this a picture came into my mind of a hillside on which were a house and garden marked by two tall Persian Nuts.
1.54 - On Meanness, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Firstly (dearly beloved brethern) meanness is flat contradiction to the Teaching of The Book of the Law. For "The word of Sin is Restriction...." and meanness is plainly a most flagrant case of Restriction. Also, there is nearly always an element of Fear in meanness; at least, I would like to bet that 95% of mean people originally became so because they foresaw a friendless and penniless old age. And fear is particularly forbidden in the Book: II, 16 "...fear not to undergo the curses...." Waxing in wrath, III, 17 goes on: "...Fear not at all; fear neither men nor Fates, nor gods, nor anything. Money fear not, nor laughter of the folk folly, nor any other power in heaven or upon the earth or under the earth...." Then pretty well all the positive injunctions imply reckless Enthusiasm. "Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us." (AL II, 20)
What's more, meanness does not even pay! I propose to tell you why this is, and how things work out.
1.57 - Beings I have Seen with my Physical Eye, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Finally, at the climax of the ritual we had got as far as the "stronger and more potent conjuration" we both saw, vaguely enough, but yet beyond doubt, parts of a quite definite figure. In particular, there was a helmet suggesting Athene (or horror! Brittania!), part of a tunic or chlamys, and very solid footgear. (I thought of "the well-greaved Greeks.") Now this was very far from satisfactory; it corres- ponded in no wise with the appearance of Buer which the Goetia had led us to expect. Worse, this was as far as it went; no doubt, seeing it at all had disturbed our concentration. (This is where training in Yoga would have helped our Magick.) From that point it was all a wash-out. We could not get back the Enthusiasm necessary to persist. We called it a day, did the banishings, closed the temple, and went to bed with our tails between our legs.
(And yet, from a saner point of view, the Operation had been a shining success. "Miraculous" things began to happen; in one way and another the gates opened for Allan to migrate to less asthmatic climes; and the object of our work was amply attained.)
1.64 - The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
grotesque figures, spoke of them with patriotic Enthusiasm, and
never wearied of gazing at them. At Antwerp the giant was so big
1.66 - Vampires, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Tte--tte, they shake one's resolution, kill one's Enthusiasm, devitalize one's faith and courage.
Yes, we all know such people. Mercury, by the way, is the planet responsible. I have examined a considerable number of nativities, both of murderers and of people murdered; in both cases it was not a "malefic" that did the dirty work, but poor tiny innocent silvery-shining Mercury!
1915 03 08p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the most part the condition is one of calm and profound indifference; the being feels neither desire nor repulsion, neither Enthusiasm nor depression, neither joy nor sorrow. It regards life as a spectacle in which it takes only a very small part; it perceives its actions and reactions, conflicts and forces as things that at once belong to its own existence which overflows the small personality on every side and yet to that personality are altogether foreign and remote.
But from time to time a great breath passes, a great breath of sorrow, of anguished isolation, of spiritual destitution,one might almost say, the despairing appeal of Earth abandoned by the Divine. It is a pang as silent as it is cruel, a sorrow submissive, without revolt, without any desire to avoid or pass out of it and full of an infinite sweetness in which suffering and felicity are closely wedded, something infinitely vast, great and deep, too great, too deep perhaps to be understood by men something that holds in it the seed of To-morrow.
1915 11 02p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For throughout its life, without knowing it or with some presentiment of it, it was Thou whom it was seeking; in all its passions, all its Enthusiasms, all its hopes and disillusionments, all its sufferings and all its joys, it was Thou whom it ardently wanted. And now that it has found Thee, now that it possesses Thee in a supreme Peace and Felicity, it wonders that it should have needed so many sensations, emotions, experiences to discover Thee.
But all this, which was a struggle, a turmoil, a perpetual effort, has become through the sovereign grace of Thy conscious Presence, a priceless fortune which the being rejoices to offer as its gift to Thee. The purifying flame of Thy illumination has turned it into jewels of price laid down as a living holocaust on the alter of my heart.
1916 12 08p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The vital being was the first to awake to consciousness and, with the Enthusiasm natural to it, exclaimed: I am ready, O Lord, Thou mayst rely upon me! The mind, weaker and more timid, though more docile too, added: What Thou willest, I will. Thou knowest well, O Lord, that I belong entirely to Thee. But shall I be able to prove equal to the task, shall I have the power of organising what the vital being has the capacity to realise?It is to prepare thee for this that I am working at the moment; this is why thou art undergoing a discipline of plasticity and enrichment. Do not worry about anything: power comes with the need. Not because thou hast been confined, even as the vital being, to very small activities at a time when this was useful, to allow things which had to be prepared the time for preparationnot because of this, I say, art thou incapable of living outside these smallnesses in a field of action consonant with thy true stature. I have appointed thee from all eternity to be my exceptional representative upon the earth, not only invisibly, in a hidden way, but also openly before the eyes of all men. And what thou wert created to be, thou wilt be.
As always, Lord, when the voice of the depths fell silent, Thy sublime and all-powerful benediction enveloped me completely.
1929-06-09 - Nature of religion - Religion and the spiritual life - Descent of Divine Truth and Force - To be sure of your religion, country, family-choose your own - Religion and numbers, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All your relations must be newly built upon an inner freedom of choice. The traditions in which you live or are brought up have been imposed on you by the pressure of the environment or by the general mind or by the choice of others. There is an element of compulsion in your acquiescence. Religion itself has been imposed on men; it is often supported by a suggestion of religious fear or by some spiritual or other menace. There can be no such imposition in your relation with the Divine; it must be free, your own minds and hearts choice, taken up with Enthusiasm and joy. What union can that be in which one trembles and says, I am compelled, I cannot do otherwise? Truth is self-evident and has not to be imposed upon the world. It does not feel the need of being accepted by men. For it is self-existent; it does not live by what people say of it or on their adherence. But one who is founding a religion needs to have many followers. The strength and greatness of a religion is adjudged by men according to the number of those that follow it, although the real greatness is not there. The greatness of spiritual truth is not in numbers. I knew the head of a new religion, the son of its founder, and heard him say once that such and such a religion took so many hundreds of years to be built up, and such another so many hundreds of years, but they within fifty years had already over four million followers. And so you see, he added, what a great religion is ours! Religions may reckon their greatness by the number of their believers, but Truth would still be Truth if it had not even a single follower. The average man is drawn towards those who make great pretensions; he does not go where Truth is quietly manifesting. Those who make great pretensions need to proclaim loudly and to advertise; for otherwise they would not attract great numbers of people. The work that is done with no care for what people think of it is not so well known, does not so easily draw multitudes. But Truth requires no advertisement; it does not hide itself but it does not proclaim itself either. It is content to manifest, regardless of results, not seeking approbation or shunning disapprobation, not attracted or troubled by the worlds acceptance or denial.
When you come to the Yoga, you must be ready to have all your mental buildings and all your vital scaffoldings shattered to pieces. You must be prepared to be suspended in the air with nothing to support you except your faith. You will have to forget your past self and its clingings altogether, to pluck it out of your consciousness and be born anew, free from every kind of bondage. Think not of what you were, but of what you aspire to be; be altogether in what you want to realise. Turn from your dead past and look straight towards the future. Your religion, country, family lie there; it is the DIVINE.
1950-12-25 - Christmas - festival of Light - Energy and mental growth - Meditation and concentration - The Mother of Dreams - Playing a game well, and energy, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When we play badly we find that we have no energy, but if we play well, with great Enthusiasm, we find that energy comes. Why?
This is perfectly true. To enter into contact with terrestrial energy, one must establish a certain harmony within oneself. If you know the game well, if you know how to make the moves and if you take an enthusiastic interest, if you have a sort of ambition (quite childish perhaps), a desire to win, then as you go on succeeding you feel a kind of inner joy, not perhaps very profound, but creating the harmony necessary for the interchange of energy. On the other hand, those who do not know how to accept defeat, who get angry and bad-tempered when things do not go according to their wish, lose their energy more and more.
1951-01-25 - Needs and desires. Collaboration of the vital, mind an accomplice. Progress and sincerity - recognising faults. Organising the body - illness - new harmony - physical beauty., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of Enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depression, of passions and revolt. It can set in motion everything, build up and realise, it can also destroy and mar everything. It seems to be, in the human being, the most difficult part to train. It is a long labour requiring great patience, and it demands a perfect sincerity, for without sincerity one will deceive oneself from the very first step, and all endeavour for progress will go in vain.
The Science of Living, On Education
1951-02-22 - Surrender, offering, consecration - Experiences and sincerity - Aspiration and desire - Vedic hymns - Concentration and time, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, some begin with an offering and end with surrender. It depends upon the character of each one. You may perhaps begin by having a feeling of inferiorityyou are a little crushed by the grandeur of the Divine, and then you feel a little freer and give with joy what you are. This is not always so. Many begin by self-giving; for them the easiest movement is to give themselves. In the beginning the giving is a little indefinite, then one has to make an effort at times to surrender in detail; you can give yourself with much Enthusiasm, but when at every step you have to submit to the higher Will, the thing becomes more difficult.
Does not offering imply surrender?
Not at all. You can give for the joy of giving, without any idea of surrender. In a movement of Enthusiasm, when you have glimpsed something infinitely higher than yourself, you can give yourself in an lan, but when it is a question of living that every minute, of surrendering oneself every minute to the higher Will and when every minute requires this surrender, it is more difficult. But if by offering you mean the integral offering of all your movements, all your activities, that is equivalent to surrender, without implying it necessarily. But then it is no longer a movement made in Enthusiasm, it is something which has to be realised in detail. One may say that any movement made in ardour and Enthusiasm is relatively easy (that depends upon the intensity of the movement in you), but when it is a question of realising ones aspiration every minute of ones life and in all its details, the Enthusiasm recedes a little and one feels the difficulty.
Is there an experience which proves that one is living in the presence of the Divine?
1951-03-26 - Losing all to gain all - psychic being - Transforming the vital - physical habits - the subconscient - Overcoming difficulties - weakness, an insincerity - to change the world - Psychic source, flash of experience - preparation for yoga, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
First, a sort of Enthusiasm takes hold of you. You set to work earnestly. In this Enthusiasm you think, I am going to do this and that, I am going to reach my goal immediately, everything is going to be magnificent! It will see, this vital, how I am going to treat it if it doesnt obey! And if you look carefully you will see that the vital is saying to itself, Ah, at last, heres an opportunity! It accepts, it starts working with all its zeal, all its Enthusiasm and all its impatience.
The second thing may be the very opposite. A sort of uneasiness: I am not well, how tedious life is, how wearisome everything. How am I going to do all that? Will I ever reach the goal? Is it worth while beginning? Is it at all possible? Isnt it impossible? It is the vital which is not very happy about what is going to be done for it, which does not want anyone to meddle in its affairs, which does not like all that very much. So it suggests depression, discouragement, a lack of faith, doubtis it really worth the trouble?
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Depression, unless one has a strong will, suggests, This is not worth while, one may have to wait a lifetime. Enthusiasm, it expects to see the vital transformed overnight: I am not going to have any difficulty henceforth, I am going to advance rapidly on the path of yoga, I am going to gain the divine consciousness without any difficulty. There are some other difficulties. One needs a little time, much perseverance. So the vital, after a few hoursperhaps a few days, perhaps a few monthssays to itself: We havent gone very far with our Enthusiasm, has anything been really done? Doesnt this movement leave us just where we were?perhaps worse than we were, a little troubled, a little disturbed? Things are no longer what they were, they are not yet what they ought to be. It is very tiresome, what I am doing. And then, if one pushes a little more, heres this gentleman saying, Ah, no! I have had enough of it, leave me alone. I dont want to move, I shall stay in my corner, I wont trouble you, but dont bother me! And so one has not gone very much farther than before.
This is one of the big obstacles which must be carefully avoided. As soon as there is the least sign of discontentment, of annoyance, the vital must be spoken to in this way, My friend, you are going to keep calm, you are going to do what you are asked to do, otherwise you will have to deal with me. And to the other, the enthusiast who says, Everything must be done now, immediately, your reply is, Calm yourself a little, your energy is excellent, but it must not be spent in five minutes. We shall need it for a long time, keep it carefully and, as it is wanted, I shall call upon your goodwill. You will show that you are full of goodwill, you will obey, you wont grumble, you will not protest, you will not revolt, you will say yes, yes, you will make a little sacrifice when asked, you will say yes whole-heartedly.
1951-04-05 - Illusion and interest in action - The action of the divine Grace and the ego - Concentration, aspiration, will, inner silence - Value of a story or a language - Truth - diversity in the world, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So you think you are not in the illusion? You imagine you are outside the illusion? In the world as it is now, all is illusion. It is perhaps an advantage, but you see only the surface of things, at most a very small partyou do not see the depth of things, you do not see the core of things, you do not see the cause of things. Do you know what is going to happen tomorrow? You may guess it more or less, telling yourself that it will be like today but you dont know it at all. You do not know what is going to happen tomorrow, still less in a months time, yet less in a year. And do you know where you were before your birth? And do you know what will happen to you after your death? You take interest in what you do just because you do not know what is going to happen. If you were fully in the know of what is going to happen, I am sure that 999 persons in a 1000 would sit down quietly waiting for it to happen. If you know exactly what is going to take place, all your Enthusiasm would evaporate and in most cases you would say, Have I to do all this to get there? Ah! no
Then illusion is necessary?
1951-04-19 - Demands and needs - human nature - Abolishing the ego - Food- tamas, consecration - Changing the nature- the vital and the mind - The yoga of the body - cellular consciousness, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How is it to be done? How to abolish the ego?First of all, you must want to do it, and there are very few people who want to. And that is exactly what they say, it is this justification of their way of being, That is the way I am made, I cant do otherwise. And then, if I change this, if I change that or if I do without this thing or if I get rid of that other, I shall no longer exist! And if one doesnt say this openly, one thinks it. And all these little desires, these little satisfactions, these little reactions, all these small ways of being, one clings to them, clings hardone sticks to them, one doesnt want to let them go. I have seen hundreds of cases where someones difficulty had been removed (with a particular power a certain difficulty had been removed), but after a few days he brought it back with Enthusiasm. He said, But without that I do not exist any longer! I have known people who had been given mental silence almost spontaneously and who, after a day or two, came back frightened: Have I become an idiot?for the mental machine was not working all the time. You cannot imagine it, you dont know how very difficult it is to separate oneself from this little ego; how much it gets into the way though it is so small. It takes up so much room while being so microscopic. It is very difficult. One pushes it away in certain very obvious things; for example, if there is something good and someone rushes forward to make sure of having it first, even jostling his neighbour (this happens very frequently in ordinary life), then here one becomes quite aware that this is not very, very elegant, so one begins to suppress these crudities, one makes a big effortand one becomes highly self-satisfied: I am not selfish, I give what is good to others, I dont keep it for myself, and one begins to get puffed up. And so one is filled with a moral egoism which is much worse than physical egoism, for it is conscious of its superiority. And then there are those who have left everything, given up everything, who have left their families, distributed their belongings, gone into solitude, who live an ascetic life, and who are terribly conscious of their superiority, who look down at poor humanity from the height of their spiritual grandeur and they have, these people, such a formidable ego that unless it is broken into small bits, never, never will they see the Divine. So it is not such an easy task. It takes a lot of time. And I must tell you that even when the work is done, it must always be begun again.
Physically, we depend upon food to liveunfortunately. For with food, we daily and constantly take in a formidable amount of inconscience, of tamas, heaviness, stupidity. One cant do otherwiseunless constantly, without a break, we remain completely aware and, as soon as an element is introduced into our body, we immediately work upon it to extract from it only the light and reject all that may darken our consciousness. This is the origin and rational explanation of the religious practice of consecrating ones food to God before taking it. When eating one aspires that this food may not be taken for the little human ego but as an offering to the divine consciousness within oneself. In all yogas, all religions, this is encouraged. This is the origin of that practice, of contacting the consciousness behind, precisely to diminish as much as possible the absorption of an inconscience which increases daily, constantly, without ones being aware of it.
1951-04-23 - The goal and the way - Learning how to sleep - relaxation - Adverse forces- test of sincerity - Attitude to suffering and death, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One must go and ask them! But there is a conclusion, the last sentences give a very clear explanation. It is said: Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling?2 This comes back to the question why the adverse forces have the right to interfere, to harass you. But this is precisely the test necessary for your sincerity. If the way were very easy, everybody would start on the way, and if one could reach the goal without any obstacle and without any effort, everybody would reach the goal, and when one has come to the end, the situation would be the same as when one started, there would be no change. That is, the new world would be exactly what the old has been. It is truly not worth the trouble! Evidently a process of elimination is necessary so that only what is capable of manifesting the new life remains. This is the reason and there is no other, this is the best of reasons. And, you see, it is a tempering, it is the ordeal of fire, only that which can stand it remains absolutely pure; when everything has burnt down, there remains only the little ingot of pure gold. And it is like that. What puts things out very much in all this is the religious idea of fault, sin, redemption. But there is no arbitrary decision! On the contrary, for each one it is the best and most favourable conditions which are given. We were saying the other day that it is only his friends whom God treats with severity; you thought it was a joke, but it is true. It is only to those who are full of hope, who will pass through this purifying flame, that the conditions for attaining the maximum result are given. And the human mind is made in such a way that you may test this; when something extremely unpleasant happens to you, you may tell yourself, Well, this proves I am worth the trouble of being given this difficulty, this proves there is something in me which can resist the difficulty, and you will notice that instead of tormenting yourself, you rejoiceyou will be so happy and so strong that even the most unpleasant things will seem to you quite charming! This is a very easy experiment to make. Whatever the circumstance, if your mind is accustomed to look at it as something favourable, it will no longer be unpleasant for you. This is quite well known; as long as the mind refuses to accept a thing, struggles against it, tries to obstruct it, there are torments, difficulties, storms, inner struggles and all suffering. But the minute the mind says, Good, this is what has to come, it is thus that it must happen, whatever happens, you are content. There are people who have acquired such control of their mind over their body that they feel nothing; I told you this the other day about certain mystics: if they think the suffering inflicted upon them is going to help them cross the stages in a moment and give them a sort of stepping-stone to attain the Realisation, the goal they have put before them, union with the Divine, they no longer feel the suffering at all. Their body is as it were galvanised by the mental conception. This has happened very often, it is a very common experience among those who truly have Enthusiasm. And after all, if one must for some reason or other leave ones body and take a new one, is it not better to make of ones death something magnificent, joyful, enthusiastic, than to make it a disgusting defeat? Those who cling on, who try by every possible means to delay the end even by a minute or two, who give you an example of frightful anguish, show that they are not conscious of their soul. After all, it is perhaps a means, isnt it? One can change this accident into a means; if one is conscious one can make a beautiful thing of it, a very beautiful thing, as of everything. And note, those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness are those who never think about it, who are not haunted all the time by this horror facing them which they must escape and which they try to push as far away from them as they can. These, when the occasion comes, can lift their head, smile and say, Here I am.
It is they who have the will to make the best possible use of their life, it is they who say, I shall remain here as long as it is necessary, to the last second, and I shall not lose one moment to realise my goal; these, when the necessity comes, put up the best show. Why?it is very simple, because they live in their ideal, the truth of their ideal; because that is the real thing for them, the very reason of their being, and in all things they can see this ideal, this reason of existence, and never do they come down into the sordidness of material life.
1953-05-13, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If while doing what you have to dowhatever it may be, whatever work it isif you do it and while doing it are careful not to forget the Divine, to offer to Him what you do and try so to give yourself to Him that He may change all your reactionsinstead of their being selfish, petty, stupid and ignorant, making them luminous, generous then in that way you will make progress. Not only will you have made some progress but you will have helped in the general progress. I have never seen people who have left everything in order to go and sit down in a more or less empty contemplation (for it is more or less empty), I have never seen such people making any progress, or in any case their progress is very trifling. I have seen persons who had no pretensions of doing yoga, who were simply filled with Enthusiasm by the idea of terrestrial transformation and of the descent of the Divine into the world and who did their little bit of work with that Enthusiasm in the heart, giving themselves wholly, without reserve, without any selfish idea of a personal salvation; these I have seen making magnificent progress, truly magnificent. And sometimes they are wonderful. I have seen sannyasis, I have seen people who live in monasteries, I have seen people who professed to be yogis, well, I would not exchange one of the others for a dozen such people (I mean, from the standpoint of terrestrial transformation and world progress, that is to say, from the standpoint of what we want to do, to try that this world may no longer be what it is and may become truly the instrument of the divine Will, with the divine Consciousness). It is not by running away from the world that you will change it. It is by working there, modestly, humbly but with a fire in the heart, something that burns like an offering. Voil.
So meditation is of no use?
1953-05-20, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind ofhow to put it?luminous Enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
1953-06-10, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is the same thing with the vital. The vital is meant to put in the drive, the realising force, the Enthusiasm, the energy necessary for the idea formed by the mind to be transmitted to the body and realised in action. Well, so long as the vital limits itself to this activity, that is, sets all its energy, Enthusiasm, strength to work in order to collaborate with the idea, it is very good. But if instead of that, all of a sudden, it is seized by a desire and this happens to it quite often and it uses all its qualities to realise, not the higher idea which wanted to manifest, but its own desire, then it steps beyond its zone of action, it gets perverted, it deforms everything and succeeds in creating catastrophes.
Sometimes we do not notice that the adverse forces are attaching us; why dont we?
1953-09-09, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this vital is a strange creature. It is a being of passion, Enthusiasm and naturally of desire; but, for example, it is quite capable of getting enthusiastic over something beautiful, of admiring, sensing anything greater and nobler than itself. And if really anything very beautiful occurs in the being, if there is a movement having an exceptional value, well, it may get enthusiastic and it is capable of giving itself with complete devotionwith a generosity that is not found, for example, in the mental domain nor in the physical. It has that fullness in action that comes precisely from its capacity to get enthused and throw itself wholly without reserve into what it does. Heroes are always people who have a strong vital, and when the vital becomes passionate about something, it is no longer a reasonable being but a warrior; it is wholly involved in its action and can perform exceptional things because it does not calculate, does not reason, does not say One must take precautions, one must not do this, must not do that. It becomes reckless, it gets carried away, as people say, it gives itself totally. Therefore, it can do magnificent things if it is guided in the right way.
A converted vital is an all-powerful instrument. And sometimes it gets converted by something exceptionally beautiful, morally or materially. When it witnesses, for example, a scene of total self-abnegation, of uncalculating self-giving oneof those things so exceedingly rare but splendidly beautifulit can be carried away by it, it can be seized by an ambition to do the same thing. It begins by an ambition, it ends with a consecration.
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And this vital, if you place it in a bad environment, it will imitate the bad environment and do bad things with violence and to an extreme degree. If you place it in the presence of something wonderfully beautiful, generous, great, noble, divine, it can be carried away with that also, forget everything else and give itself wholly. It will give itself more completely than any other part of the being, for it does not calculate. It follows its passion and Enthusiasm. When it has desires, its desires are violent, arbitrary, and it does not at all take into account the good or bad of others; it doesnt care the least bit. But when it gives itself to something beautiful, it does not calculate either, it will give itself entirely without knowing whether it will do good or harm to it. It is a very precious instrument.
It is like a horse of pure breed: if it lets itself be directed, then it will win all the races, everywhere it will come first. If it is untamed, it will trample people and cause havoc and break its own legs or back! It is like that. The one thing to know is to which side it will turn. It loves exceptional thingsexceptionally bad or exceptionally good, it loves the exceptional. It does not like ordinary life. It becomes dull, it becomes half inert. And if it is shut up in a corner and told: Keep quiet there, it will remain there and become more and more like something crumbling away, and finally just like a mummy: there is no more life in it, it is dried up. And one will no longer have the strength to do what one wants to do. One will have fine ideas, excellent intentions, but one wont have the energy to execute them.
1954-06-30 - Occultism - Religion and vital beings - Mothers knowledge of what happens in the Ashram - Asking questions to Mother - Drawing on Mother, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if you take real divine beings, this is not at all something they value. They do not like to be worshipped. No, it does not give them any special pleasure at all! Dont think they are happy, for they have no pride. It is because of pride that a man likes to be worshipped; if a man has no pride he doesnt like to be worshipped; and if, for instance, they see a good intention or a fine feeling or a movement of unselfishness or Enthusiasm, a joy, a spiritual joy, these things have for them an infinitely greater value than prayers and acts of worship and pujas.
I assure you what I am telling you is very serious: if you seat a real god in a chair and oblige him to remain there all the while you are doing puja, he may perhaps have a little fun watching you do it, but it certainly gives him no satisfaction. None at all! He does not feel either flattered or happy or glorified by your pujas You must get rid of that idea There is an entire domain between the spiritual and the material worlds which belongs to vital beings, and it is this domain that is full of all these things, because these beings live upon that, are happy with it, and it immediately gives them importance; and the one who has the greatest number of believers, devotees and worshippers is the happiest and the most puffed up. But how can anyone imagine that the gods could value The gods I am speaking of the true gods, even those of the Overmind, though they are still a bit well, so-so they seem to have taken on many human defects, but still, despite all that, they really have a higher consciousness it does not please them at all. An act of true goodness, intelligence, unselfishness or a subtle understanding or a very sincere aspiration are for them infinitely higher than a small religious ceremony. Infinitely! There is no comparison. Religious ceremony! For example, there are so many of these entities called Kaliwho are given, besides, quite terrible appearancesso many are even placed in houses as the family-goddess; they are full of a terrible vital force! I knew people who were so frightened of the Kali they had at home that indeed they trembled to make the least mistake, for when catastrophes came they thought it was Kali who sent them! It is a frightful thing, thought. I know them, those entities. I know them very well, but they are vital beings, vital forms which, so to say, are given a form by human thought, and what forms! And to think that men worship such terrible and monstrous things; and whats more that these poor gods are given, are paid the compliment of believing that it is
1954-07-28 - Money - Ego and individuality - The shadow, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After a silence) And this is somethingan experience that one can have daily, or almost when one has those movements of great Enthusiasm, great aspiration, when one suddenly becomes conscious of the divine goal, the urge towards the Divine, the desire to take part in the divine work, when one comes out of oneself in a great joy and great force and then, a few hours later, one is miserable for a tiny little thing; one indulges in so petty, so narrow, so commonplace a self-interestedness, has such a dull desire and all the rest has evaporated as if it did not exist. One is quite accustomed to contradictions; one doesnt pay attention to this and that is why all these things live comfortably together as neighbours. One must first discover them and prevent them from intermingling in ones consciousness: decide between them, separate the shadow from the light. Later one can get rid of the shadow.
There we are, and now it is time. Anything urgent to ask? No?
1954-08-04 - Servant and worker - Justification of weakness - Play of the Divine - Why are you here in the Ashram?, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is the opposite of a passive or inert identification. It is an identification that is full of energy, will, action, Enthusiasm; whereas one can be identified also in a kind of torpor.
You have written in Words of Long Ago that we justify all our weaknesses when we lack self-confidence. Why do we do this?
1954-08-25 - Ananda aspect of the Mother - Changing conditions in the Ashram - Ascetic discipline - Mothers body, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am even astonished that you dont feel an intense need for it: How can one know? For you knowyou have been told, told repeatedly, it has been dinned into your earsyou know that you have a divine consciousness within you, and you can sleep night after night and play day after day and learn day after day, and not have the Enthusiasm and intense will to enter into contact with yourself, yes, with yourself, here within! (Mother points to the centre of her chest.) This, this indeed, is beyond me!
The first time I knew and nobody told me this, I knew it by experience the first time I knew that there was a discovery to make within me, well, that was the most important thing. This had to be put before everything. And when I found, as I said, a book, a man, just to give me a little indication, to tell me, Here you are. If you do this the path will open before you, why, I rushed headlong like a like a cyclone, and nothing could have stopped me.
1954-09-22 - The supramental creation - Rajasic eagerness - Silence from above - Aspiration and rejection - Effort, individuality and ego - Aspiration and desire, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Eagerness? It is vehemence, it is violence. It is an excessive ardour; and rajasicit is the over-active and violent element, it is the turbulent element in the being. Rajasic thats the nature of all transports, flarings-up and Enthusiasms, and of all violences and passion, and all over-activity also, in contrast to tamas which is inert, and to sattwa which is balanced. This is the over-active and violent element.
Mother, does keeping ones consciousness high mean trying to have higher thoughts?
1954-12-08 - Cosmic consciousness - Clutching - The central will of the being - Knowledge by identity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This may come with a very strong emotion, with a very great sorrow, a very great Enthusiasm. When one is called to perform a fairly exceptional action, in circumstances which are a little exceptional, all of a sudden, one feels something as though breaking or opening within him, and one feels as though he were dominating himself, as though he had climbed up a higher rung and from there was looking at his own existence with the habitual sees. Once one has experienced this, one does not forget; even if only once it has happened, one does not forget it. And one can by concentration reproduce the state at will, later. This is the first step to cultivate it.
Afterwards one can very easily call up this state each time a decision is to be taken, and then one takes it in full awareness of the implications and foreseeing everything thats going to happen. I dont think theres one individual in the world who hasnt experienced itin any case one cultured individualat least once in his life, something that breaks and opens and one understands. This seems to astonish you very much! (To a child) You have never felt this, you? Yes?
1954-12-22 - Possession by hostile forces - Purity and morality - Faith in the final success -Drawing back from the path, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When you have started, you must go to the very end. Sometimes, you see, to people who come to me with Enthusiasm I say, Think a little, it is not an easy path, you will need time, you will need patience. You will need much endurance, much perseverance and courage and an untiring goodwill. Look and see if you are capable of having all this, and then start. But once you have started, it is finished, there is no going back any more; you must go to the very end.
Sometimes I tell them, I tell them that I give them a few days or a few months. There are some to whom I have given a few years for reflection. I told them, Look well, be quite sure. But once they come and say, Now I have decided, I want to start, it is good. Now, one must go on to the very end, whatever the cost; even if it is very difficult, one has to go to the very end.
1955-02-09 - Desire is contagious - Primitive form of love - the artists delight - Psychic need, mind as an instrument - How the psychic being expresses itself - Distinguishing the parts of ones being - The psychic guides - Illness - Mothers vision, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the vitalis the same thing, exactly the same phenomenon for the vital. The vital as it is at present is said to be the cause of all the troubles and all the difficulties, the seat of the desires, passions, impulses, revolts, etc., etc. But if the vital is entirely surrendered to the psychic, it becomes a wonderful instrument, full of Enthusiasm, power, force of realisation, impetus, courage.
And then there remains the poor physical The poor physical being has been accused of all the misdeeds. In the days of old it was always said that it was impossible, one could do nothing with something so inert, so obscure, so little receptive. But if it too was surrendered to the psychic it also would do the right thing in the right way, and then it would have a stability, a quietude, an exactness in its movements which the other parts of the being dont have, a precision in the execution which one cant have without a body. You have only to see when the body is just a little out of order, when it is ill, how many things you can no longer do, even with a strong will, a great concentration of the vital and the mind. Even when one has the precise knowledge of what ought to be done, if the body is out of order one can no longer do it. Even I mean, even an activity which is not purely physical, as for instance, writing something.
1955-12-28 - Aspiration in different parts of the being - Enthusiasm and gratitude - Aspiration is in all beings - Unlimited power of good, evil has a limit - Progress in the parts of the being - Significance of a dream, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1955-12-28 - Aspiration in different parts of the being - Enthusiasm and gratitude - Aspiration is in all beings - Unlimited power of good, evil has a limit - Progress in the parts of the being - Significance of a dream
class:chapter
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You may also feel that there are certain things which suddenly push you, lift you above yourself, open a kind of door upon something greater. It can be many things; and it depends upon each ones nature. Its the part of the being which enthuses over something; it is this capacity for Enthusiasm.
There are two principal things. This, the capacity for Enthusiasm which makes one come out of his greater or lesser inertia in order to throw himself more or less totally into the thing which rouses him. As for instance, the artist for his art, the scientist for his science. And in general, every person who creates or builds has an opening, the opening of a special faculty, a special possibility, creating an Enthusiasm in him. When this is active, something in the being awakens, and there is a participation of almost the whole being in the thing done.
There is this. And then there are those who have an innate faculty of gratitude, those who have an ardent need to respond, respond with warmth, devotion, joy, to something which they feel like a marvel hidden behind the whole of life, behind the tiniest little element, the least little event of life, who feel this sovereign beauty or infinite Grace which is behind all things.
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We say: the capacity for Enthusiasm, something which throws you out of your miserable and mean little ego; and the generous gratitude, the generosity of the gratitude which also flings itself in thanksgiving out of the little ego. These are the two most powerful levers to enter into contact with the Divine in ones psychic being. This serves as a link with the psychic being the surest link.
(Silence)
1956-01-04 - Integral idea of the Divine - All things attracted by the Divine - Bad things not in place - Integral yoga - Moving idea-force, ideas - Consequences of manifestation - Work of Spirit via Nature - Change consciousness, change world, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is an idea which gives you will, Enthusiasm and a power of realisation. A moving thing is that which tends towards realisation and gives you the impetus towards realisation.
Here Sri Aurobindo writes, But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker.
1956-01-25 - The divine way of life - Divine, Overmind, Supermind - Material body for discovery of the Divine - Five psychological perfections, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have devotion, and you keep your ego. And then your ego makes you do all sorts of things out of devotion, things which are terribly egoistic. That is to say, you think only of yourself, not of others, nor of the world, nor of the work, nor of what ought to be doneyou think only of your devotion. And you become tremendously egoistic. And so, when you find out that the Divine, for some reason, does not answer to your devotion with the Enthusiasm you expected of Him, you despair and fall back into the same three difficulties I was just speaking about: either the Divine is cruelwe have read that, there are many such stories, of enthusiastic devotees who abuse the Divine because He is no longer as gentle and near to them as before, He has withdrawn, Why hast Thou deserted me? Thou hast abandoned me, O monster! They dont dare to say this, but think it, or else they say, Oh! I must have made such a serious mistake that I am thrown out, and they fall into despair.
But there is another movement which should constantly accompany devotion. That kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which truly fills you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine, the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you either directly or indirectly in contact with this sublime Reality of divine existence, the heart is filled with so intense, so marvellous a joy, such a gratitude as of all things has the most delightful taste.
1956-08-15 - Protection, purification, fear - Atmosphere at the Ashram on Darshan days - Darshan messages - Significance of 15-08 - State of surrender - Divine Grace always all-powerful - Assumption of Virgin Mary - SA message of 1947-08-15, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is here that the emergence of the secret psychic being in us as the leader of the sacrifice is of the utmost importance; for this inmost being alone can bring with it the full power of the spirit in the act, the soul in the symbol. It alone can assure, even while the spiritual consciousness is incomplete, the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol and prevent it from being a dead form or a corrupted and corrupting magic; it alone can preserve for the act its power with its significance. All the other members of our being, mind, life-force, physical or body consciousness are too much under the control of the Ignorance to be a sure instrumentation and much less can they be a guide or the source of an unerring impulse. Always the greater part of the motive and action of these powers clings to the old law, the deceiving tablets, the cherished inferior movements of Nature and they meet with reluctance, alarm or revolt or obstructing inertia the voices and the forces that call and impel us to exceed and transform ourselves into a greater being and a wider Nature. In their major part the response is either a resistance or a qualified or temporising acquiescence; for even if they follow the call, they yet tendwhen not consciously, then by automatic habitto bring into the spiritual action their own natural disabilities and errors. At every moment they are moved to take egoistic advantage of the psychic and spiritual influences and can be detected using the power, joy or light these bring into us for a lower life-motive. Afterwards too, even when the seeker has opened to the Divine Love transcendental, universal or immanent, yet if he tries to pour it into life, he meets the power of obscuration and perversion of these lower Nature-forces. Always they draw away towards pitfalls, pour into that higher intensity their diminishing elements, seek to capture the descending Power for themselves and their interests and degrade it into an aggrandised mental, vital or physical instrumentation for desire and ego. Instead of a Divine Love creator of a new heaven and a new earth of Truth and Light, they would hold it here prisoner as a tremendous sanction and glorifying force of sublimation to gild the mud of the old earth and colour with its rose and sapphire the old turbid unreal skies of sentimentalising vital imagination and mental idealised chimera. If that falsification is permitted, the higher Light and Power and Bliss withdraw, there is a fall back to a lower status; or else the realisation remains tied to an insecure half-way and mixture or is covered and even submerged by an inferior exaltation that is not the true Ananda. It is for this reason that the Divine Love which is at the heart of all creation and the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive, the least creative. Human nature has been unable to bear it in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the divine energies; what little could be seized has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism of the roseate coloured mind or passionately turbid life-impulse and with these simulations compensated its inability to house the Mystic Flame that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the minds and the lifes falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the minds ardours and the blind Enthusiasm of the misleading life-force. But all things that are true at their core in mind and life and the physical being it extricates and takes with it in the journey till they stand on the heights, new in spirit and sublime in figure.
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, pp. 155-57
1956-10-17 - Delight, the highest state - Delight and detachment - To be calm - Quietude, mental and vital - Calm and strength - Experience and expression of experience, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Delight without detachment would be a very dangerous gift which could very easily be perverted. So, to seek Delight before having acquired detachment does not seem to be very wise. One must first be above all possible opposites: indeed, above pain and pleasure, suffering and happiness, Enthusiasm and depression. If one is above all that, then one may safely aspire for Delight.
But as long as this detachment is not realised, one can easily confuse Delight with an exalted state of ordinary human happiness, and this would not at all be the true thing nor even a perversion of the thing, for the nature of the two is so different, almost opposite, that you cannot pass from one to the other. So, if one wants to be safe on the path, it seems to me that to seek for peace, for perfect calm, perfect equality, for a widening of the consciousness, a vaster understanding and liberation from all desire, all preference, all attachment, is certainly an indispensable preliminary condition.
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Now, one quickly realises that there is another quietude which is necessary, and even very urgently neededthis is vital quietude, that is to say, the absence of desire. Only, the vital when not sufficiently developed, as soon as it is told to keep quiet, either goes to sleep or goes on strike; it says, Ah! no. Nothing doing! I wont go any farther. If you dont give me the sustenance I need, excitement, Enthusiasm, desire, even passion, I prefer not to move and I wont do anything any longer. So there the problem becomes a little more delicate and perhaps even more difficult still; for surely, to fall from excitement into inertia is very far from being a progress! One must never mistake inertia or a somnolent passivity for calm.
Quietude is a very positive state; there is a positive peace which is not the opposite of conflictan active peace, contagious, powerful, which controls and calms, which puts everything in order, organises. It is of this I am speaking; when I tell someone, Be calm, I dont mean to say Go and sleep, be inert and passive, and dont do anything, far from it! True quietude is a very great force, a very great strength. In fact one can say, looking at the problem from the other side, that all those who are really strong, powerful, are always very calm. It is only the weak who are agitated; as soon as one becomes truly strong, one is peaceful, calm, quiet, and one has the power of endurance to face the adverse waves which come rushing from outside in the hope of disturbing one. This true quietude is always a sign of force. Calmness belongs to the strong.
1956-12-26 - Defeated victories - Change of consciousness - Experiences that indicate the road to take - Choice and preference - Diversity of the manifestation, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, thats all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of Enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.
First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will find, you do find it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.
1957-05-08 - Vital excitement, reason, instinct, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because in the vast majority of cases, what gives interest is vital satisfaction. For you to be interested in training exercises which dont have the stimulus of games, the reason must govern the being. In ordinary men reason is the summit of human consciousness, and this is the part of the being which must govern the rest, for it is orderly and reasonable, that is, it does things with a feeling for order, for goodness, usefulness, and in accordance with a plan, a specific plan, recognised and used by each one, whereas the vital part of the being likes excitement, the unexpected, adventureall that makes games attractiveabove all, competition, the effort to win, victory over the opponent, all these things; it is the vital impulse, and the vital in man being the seat of Enthusiasm, ardour, normal energy, when the attraction of the unexpected, of struggle and victory is not there, it goes to sleep, unless it is in the habit of obeying, regularly and spontaneously, the will of the reason. And this is even one of the first things for which all physical training is useful: the fact that it cannot be done really well unless the body is in the habit of obeying the reason rather than the vital impulse. For instance, the whole development of bodily perfection, of physical culture with dumb-bells and the exercises which have nothing particularly exciting and demand a discipline, habits which must be regular, reasonable, which give no scope to passion, desire, impulseone must order ones life according to a very strict and very regular disciplinewell, in order to do them really well one must be in the habit of governing ones life by the reason.
This is not very common. Usually, unless one has taken good care to make it otherwise, the impulses the impulses of desireall the Enthusiasms and passions with all their reactions are the masters of human life. One must already be something of a sage to be able to undergo a rigorous discipline of the body and obtain from it the ordered, regular effort which can perfect it. There is no longer any room there for all the fancies of desire. You see, as soon as one gives way to excesses, to immoderation of any kind and a disorderly life, it becomes quite impossible to control ones body and develop it normally, not to mention that, naturally, one spoils ones health and as a result the most important part of the ideal of a perfect body disappears; for with bad health, impaired health, one is not much good for anything. And it is certainly the satisfaction of desires and impulses of the vital or the unreasonable demands of certain ambitions which make the body suffer and fall ill.
Naturally, there is all the ignorance of those who dont even know the most elementary rules of life; but everybody knows one must learn how to live and, for instance, that fire burns and water can drown! People dont need to be told all that, it is something they learn fast as they grow up; but the fact that the control of reason over life is absolutely indispensable even for good health, is not always accepted by the inferior man for whom life has no savour unless he can live out his passions.
1957-07-10 - A new world is born - Overmind creation dissolved, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One day, I went as usual to relate to Sri Aurobindo what had been happeningwe had come to something really very interesting, and perhaps I showed a little Enthusiasm in my account of what had taken place then Sri Aurobindo looked at me and said: Yes, this is an Overmind creation. It is very interesting, very well done. You will perform miracles which will make you famous throughout the world, you will be able to turn all events on earth topsy-turvy, indeed, and then he smiled and said: It will be a great success. But it is an Overmind creation. And it is not success that we want; we want to establish the Supermind on earth. One must know how to renounce immediate success in order to create the new world, the supramental world in its integrality.
With my inner consciousness I understood immediately: a few hours later the creation was gone and from that moment we started anew on other bases.
1957-07-31 - Awakening aspiration in the body, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In former times, when yoga was a flight from life, it was a common practice for people, apart from a few predestined ones, not to think about yoga until they were old, when they had experienced much, known all the vicissitudes of life, its pleasures, its sorrows, its joys and miseries, its responsibilities, disillusionments, indeed all that life usually brings to human beings; and naturally, all this had disabused them a little of their illusions about the joys of existence, so they were ready to think of something else, and their body, if not full of youthful Enthusiasm (!), was at least not a hindrance, for as it had been satiated, it no longer asked for much. To start from this end is all very well when one wants to leave life behind with a spiritual attitude and does not expect any collaboration from it in the transformation. This is obviously the easiest method. But it is also obvious that if one wants this material existence to participate in the divine life, to be the field of action and realisation, it is preferable not to wait until with wear and tear the body becomes sufficiently quiet so as not to obstruct the yoga. It is much better, on the contrary, to take it quite young when it is full of all its energies and can put enough ardour and intensity into its aspiration. In this case, instead of relying on a weariness which no longer demands anything, one should rely on a kind of inner Enthusiasm for the unknown, the new for perfection. And if you have the good fortune to be in conditions where you can receive help and guidance from childhood, try while still very young to discern between the fugitive joys and superficial pleasures life can give and the marvellous thing that life, action, growth would be in a world of perfection and truth, where all the ordinary limitations, all the ordinary incapacities would be done away with.
When one is very young and as I say well-born, that is, born with a conscious psychic being within, there is always, in the dreams of the child, a kind of aspiration, which for its childs consciousness is a sort of ambition, for something which would be beauty without ugliness, justice without injustice, goodness without limits, and a conscious, constant success, a perpetual miracle. One dreams of miracles when one is young, one wants all wickedness to disappear, everything to be always luminous, beautiful, happy, one likes stories which end happily. This is what one should rely on. When the body feels its miseries, its limitations, one must establish this dream in itof a strength which would have no limit, a beauty which would have no ugliness, and of marvellous capacities: one dreams of being able to rise into the air, of being wherever it is necessary to be, of setting things right when they go wrong, of healing the sick; indeed, one has all sorts of dreams when one is very young. Usually parents or teachers pass their time throwing cold water on it, telling you, Oh! its a dream, it is not a reality. They should do the very opposite! Children should be taught, Yes, this is what you must try to realise and not only is it possible but it is certain if you come in contact with the part in you which is capable of doing this thing. This is what should guide your life, organise it, make you develop in the direction of the true reality which the ordinary world calls illusion.
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When a child is full of Enthusiasm, never throw cold water on it, never tell him, You know, life is not like that! You should always encourage him, tell him, Yes, at present things are not always like that, they seem ugly, but behind this there is a beauty that is trying to realise itself. This is what you should love and draw towards you, this is what you should make the object of your dreams, of your ambitions.
And if you do this when you are very small, you have much less difficulty than if later on you have to undo, undo all the bad effects of a bad education, undo that kind of dull and vulgar common sense which means that you expect nothing good from life, which makes it insipid, boring, and contradicts all the hopes, all the so-called illusions of beauty. On the contrary, you must tell a childor yourself if you are no longer quite a babyEverything in me that seems unreal, impossible, illusory, that is what is true, that is what I must cultivate. When you have these aspirations: Oh, not to be always limited by some incapacity, all the time held back by some bad will!, you must cultivate within you this certitude that that is what is essentially true and that is what must be realised.
1958-06-04 - New birth, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At first this truth of the spirit and of spirituality is not self-evident to the mind; man becomes mentally aware of his soul as something other than his body, superior to his normal mind and life, but he has no clear sense of it, only a feeling of some of its effects on his nature. As these effects take a mental form or a life-form, the difference is not firmly and trenchantly drawn, the soul-perception does not acquire a distinct and assured independence. Very commonly indeed, a complex of half-effects of the psychic pressure on the mental and vital parts, a formation mixed with mental aspiration and vital desires, is mistaken for the soul, just as the separative ego is taken for the self, although the self in its true being is universal as well as individual in its essence,or just as a mixture of mental aspiration and vital Enthusiasm and ardour up-lifted by some kind of strong or high belief or self-dedication or altruistic eagerness is mistaken for spirituality. But this vagueness and these confusions are inevitable as a temporary stage of the evolution which, because ignorance is its starting-point and the whole stamp of our first nature, must necessarily begin with an imperfect intuitive perception and an instinctive urge or seeking without any acquired experience or clear knowledge. Even the formations which are the first effects of the perception or urge or the first indices of a spiritual evolution, must inevitably be of this incomplete and tentative nature. But the error so created comes very much in the way of a true understanding, and it must therefore be emphasised that spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable value to mind and life; they are of value to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to the mental evolution,the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.
The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 856-57
1958-09-17 - Power of formulating experience - Usefulness of mental development, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But those whose intellectual activity is very dominant find it almost absolutely necessary to catch hold of everything, all inner experiences, and to begin to formulate them. If, in addition, they have a power of expression, they try to formulate them in words and sentences; and when one has lived these experiences and becomes aware of the descending curve, one sees at each stage the deep reality of the experience withdrawing, fading into the background, instead of being in the forefront and commanding the whole being; it retreats slowly like this (gesture), and outside there remains only something which is a kind of dry and cold imitation. It may be expressed in very enthusiastic words, but in comparison with what the thing itself was, in itself, in its deep truth, it is so shrivelled up, diminished. All the true joy, the true beauty, the inner Enthusiasm, that wonderful warmth of the experienceall this retreats far behind. You try to keep a hold on it, but it eludes you. And you pay dearly for this power of formulation.
Mother, in our life here, what do we mean by the development of the mind? And how is it useful?
1958 10 10, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even in moments of greatest Enthusiasm, even when one is filled with an exceptional, marvellous experienceit rises from the lowest depths. It is ugly, slimy, disgusting. And yet it rises, and spoils everything.
To conquer it, one must be a mighty warrior. One must struggle against all the obscurities of Nature, against all her tricks, all her temptations.
1958-11-12 - The aim of the Supreme - Trust in the Grace, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if one goes to the very depth of things, if, stripped not only of all egoism but also of the ego, one gives oneself totally, without reserve, so completely and disinterestedly that one becomes capable of understanding the plan of the Lord, then one knows that it is not a bad joke, not a tortuous path by which you return, a little battered, to the starting-point; on the contrary, it is to teach the entire creation the delight of being, the beauty of being, the greatness of being, the majesty of a sublime life, and the perpetual growth, perpetually progressive, of that delight, that beauty, that greatness. Then everything has a meaning, then one no longer regrets having struggled and suffered, one has only the Enthusiasm to realise the divine goal, and one plunges headlong into the realisation with the certitude of the goal and victory.
But to know that, one must stop being egoistic, being a separate person turned in on oneself and cut off from the supreme origin. That is what must be done: to cast off ones ego. Then one can know the true goal and this is the only way!
1963 08 11? - 94, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have itwhen the whole consciousness is centralised in union; at any time, in the midst of anything, with this movement of concentration of the consciousness on union, the rapture comes. But I must say that it disappears when I am working. It is a worlda very chaotic world of work, where I act on everything around me; and necessarily, I am obliged to receive what is around me, so as to be able to act on it. I have reached a state in which all that I receive, even the things that are considered most painful, leave me absolutely calm and indifferentindifferent, not an inactive indifference: without any painful reaction of any kind, absolutely neutral (gesture turned towards the Eternal), with perfect equality. But in this equality there is a precise knowledge of what is to be done, of what is to be said, of what is to be written, of what is to be decided, in short, everything that action entails. All that happens in a state of perfect neutrality, with the sense of Power at the same time: the Power flows, the Power acts, and the neutrality remains but there is no rapture. I do not have the Enthusiasm, the delight, the fullness of action.
And I must say that this rapturous state of consciousness would be dangerous in the present condition of the world. Because it produces reactions that are almost absolute I see that this state of rapture has a formidable power. But I insist on the word formidable, in the sense that it is intolerant or intolerableintolerable ratherto everything that is unlike it. It is the same thing or almostnot quite the same, but almostas the supreme divine Love; the vibration of this ecstasy or rapture is a small beginning of the vibration of divine Love, and that is absolutelyyes, there is no other word for itintolerant, in the sense that it will not permit the presence of anything that is contrary to it
1964 02 05 - 98, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must have a kind of very austere sincerity. You are seized with Enthusiasm, because the experience brings an extraordinary power: the Power is there it is there, before the words, and it diminishes with the words but the Power is there and with this Power you feel very universal, you have the feeling: It is a universal revelationyes, it is a universal revelation, but when you put it into words, it is no longer universal; then it is relevant only for minds that are built to understand this way of speaking. The Force is behind, but you have to go beyond the words.
(Silence)
1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen
[5] Plato had a better idea of the relation of prophecy generally to the state of sober consciousness than many moderns, who supposed that the Platonic language on the subject of Enthusiasm authorized their belief in the sublimity of the revelations of somnambulistic vision. Plato says in the Timaeus (p. 71),
'The author of our being so ordered our inferior parts that they too might obtain a measure of truth, and in the liver placed their oracle (the power of divination by dreams). And herein is a proof that God has given the art of divination, not to the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man; for no man when in his wits attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled by sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession ( Enthusiasm).' Plato very correctly notes not merely the bodily conditions on which such visionary knowledge depends, and the possibility of the truth of the dreams, but also the inferiority of them to the reasonable frame of mind.
1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Enthusiasm. McTighe, who had hastily translated a few high spots as
they came from the droning receiving set, wrote out the entire message
1f.lovecraft - Herbert West-Reanimator, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
martial Enthusiasms and censures of supine neutrality. There was,
however, something he wanted in embattled Flanders; and in order to
1f.lovecraft - Medusas Coil, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
conscious effort to make her duplicate his Enthusiasms and
extravagances. For one thing, I think she was piqued to learn that we
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the dominant quality of artistic Enthusiasm.
Moonlight! Good God, what cheap sentimentality! For a supposedly
1f.lovecraft - The Alchemist, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
His Enthusiasm had seemed for the moment to remove from his terrible
eyes the hatred that had at first so haunted them, but suddenly the
1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
little considering his first Enthusiasm over it, but seemed to find
something of positive humour in its sudden crumbling.
1f.lovecraft - The Horror in the Museum, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
artists Enthusiasm. The adult alcove, crowded with nameless horrors,
held no visitors. In the farther corner a large niche had been
1f.lovecraft - The Last Test, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Quentin Penitentiary in 189- was greeted with the keenest Enthusiasm
throughout California. San Francisco had at last the honour of
1f.lovecraft - The Shadow out of Time, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
I should have had a discoverers Enthusiasm. The next forenoon I told
the others about my find, and Dyer, Freeborn, Boyle, my son, and I set
1f.lovecraft - The Temple, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
terraces and embankments once verdant and beautiful. In my Enthusiasm I
became nearly as idiotic and sentimental as poor Klenze, and was very
1.ia - Modification Of The R Poem, #Arabi - Poems, #Ibn Arabi, #Sufism
If you transgress, don't fear their Enthusiasm
they are more sublime than you be harmed by their company
1.jk - A Song About Myself, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
(stanza 4): There is an under-current of dissatisfaction with things Caledonian in this fourth stanza; and indeed I do not think Keats ever got entirely rid of this during the whole of the tour, albeit he enjoyed many transient visitations of true Enthusiasm inspired both by fine scenery and by associations.
~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
1.pbs - Hymn To Mercury, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Drunk with divine Enthusiasm, and utter
With earnest willingness the truth they know;
1.pbs - Ode To Naples, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiae with the Enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.SHELLEYS NOTE.
Composed at San Juliano di Pisa, August 17-25, 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, 1824. There is a copy, 'for the most part neat and legible,' amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library
1.pbs - Prince Athanase, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
'On thine own bird the sweet Enthusiasm
Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness,
1.pbs - The Boat On The Serchio, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
But the clear stream in full Enthusiasm
Pours itself on the plain, then wandering
1.pbs - The Revolt Of Islam - Canto I-XII, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Which wrap the world; a wide Enthusiasm,
To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake's spasm!
1.rb - Sordello - Book the Second, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
The minstrel left in his Enthusiasm,
Mistaking its true versionwas the tale
1.whitman - Drum-Taps, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
The unpent Enthusiasmthe wild cheers of the crowd for their
favorites;
2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Some medical students left their studies, went to work in the villages and came back within a short time shorn of all emotional Enthusiasm.
Sri Aurobindo: What do they mean by village organisation? Have they any idea? They always cite the example of Russia, but they don't know how the Russians worked.
2.03 - The Purified Understanding, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the term buddhi is also used in another and profounder sense. The intellectual understanding is only the lower hhddhi; there is another and a higher buddhi which is not intelligence but vision, is not understanding but rather an over-standings297 in knowledge, and does not seek knowledge and attain it in subjection to the data it observes but possesses already the truth and brings it out in the terms of a revelatory and intuitional thought. The nearest the human mind usually gets to this truth-conscious knowledge is that imperfect action of illumined finding which occurs when there is a great stress of thought and the intellect electrified by constant discharges from behind the veil and yielding to a higher Enthusiasm admits a considerable instreaming from the intuitive and inspired faculty of knowledge. For there is an intuitive mind in man which serves as a recipient and channel for these instreamings from a supramental faculty. But the action of intuition and inspiration in us is imperfect in kind as well as intermittent in action; ordinarily, it comes in response to a claim from the labouring and struggling heart or intellect and, even before its givings enter the conscious mind, they are already affected by the thought or aspiration which went up to meet them, are no longer pure but altered to the needs of the heart or intellect; and after they enter the conscious mind, they are immediately seized upon by the intellectual understanding and dissipated or broken up so as to fit in with our imperfect intellectual knowledge, or by the heart and remoulded to suit our blind or half-blind emotional longings and preferences, or even by the lower cravings and distorted to the vehement uses of our hungers and passions.
If this higher Buddhi could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future298a no less than the past. Certainly, we are intended to grow in our receptivity to this higher faculty of truth-conscious knowledge, but its full and unveiled use is as yet the privilege of the gods and beyond our present human stature.
2.05 - Aspects of Sadhana, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Aspiration, trust, idealism, Enthusiasm and generous selfgiving, for spiritual examinations.
Vigilance, sincerity and humility for the examinations from hostile forces.
2.06 - The Wand, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
102:If you have done this thoroughly, these points of view will cease to trouble you; you can then assert your own point of view with the calm of a master, which is more convincing than the Enthusiasm of a learner.
103:You will cease to be interested in controversies; politics, ethics, religion will seem so many toys, and your Magical Will will be free from these inhibitions.
2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: Some Congressmen in the Godavari District have left their propaganda of non-cooperation and taken to village reconstruction because Enthusiasm has waned among the people. No one comes to attend meetings, no money is subscribed to the Tilak Swaraj Fund. Khadi does not evoke response.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, I had that experience in 1909 when I was in Bengal. That gave me an insight into my countrymen. After the arrests and deportations we used to hold meetings in the College Square and some sixty or seventy persons used to attend, mostly passers-by; and I had the honour to preside over several of those meetings!
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Disciple: There are disparaging reports about the political situation in Maharashtra and Andhra. People's Enthusiasm has ebbed and it is hard to find office-bearers for the Congress.
Sri Aurobindo: Our people are wonderful they always want some excitement. They have not yet realised that politics is a serious affair and of long breath. They say: "Give us Swaraj in one year or sensation!"
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Disciple: It is a fine trio! I do not know how long their Enthusiasm is going to last.
Disciple: Now the proposal made by the Mahatma is very simple.
2.07 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If this view of things had a complete validity, then only the absolute idealist, sent perhaps out of some higher existence, unable to forget his mission, stung into indomitable Enthusiasm by a divine oestrus or sustained in a calm and infinite fortitude by the light and force and voice of the unseen Godhead, could persist under such circumstances in holding up before himself, much more before an incredulous or doubting world, the hope of a full success for the human endeavour. Actually, for the most part, men either reject it from the beginning or turn away from it eventually, after some early Enthusiasm, as a proved impossibility. The consistent materialist seeks a partial and short-lived power, knowledge, happiness, so much only as the dominant inconscient order of Nature will allow to the struggling selfconsciousness of man if he accepts his limitations, obeys her laws and makes as good a use of them by his enlightened will as their inexorable mechanism will tolerate. The religionist seeks his reign of enlightened will, love or divine being, his kingdom of
God, in that other world where they are unalloyed and eternal.
2.08 - The Sword, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The rational mind supports life, but about seventy-nine per cent. of it not only refuses itself to enter into combination, but prevents the remaining twenty-one per cent. from doing so. Enthusiasms are checked; the intellect is the great enemy of devotion. One of the tasks of the Magician is to manage somehow to separate the
Oxygen and Nitrogen in his mind, to stifle four-fifths so that he may burn up the remainder, a flame of holiness. But this cannot be done by the Sword.
2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
his strength and his Enthusiasm.... He must honour himself, he must
love himself; he must be absolutely free with regard to himself....
2.1.1 - The Nature of the Vital, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Why the Apollyon do you suppose that all vital things are impure? The vital has strength, ardour, Enthusiasm, self-confidence, generosity, the victor spirita host of other very necessary things. The only difficulty is that they get mixed up with others that are impure. All the same they are there and much needed.
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2.1.3 - Wrong Movements of the Vital, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The ordinary freshness, energy, Enthusiasm of the nature comes either from the vital, direct when it is satisfying its own instincts and impulses, indirect when it cooperates with or assents to the mental, physical or spiritual activities. If the vital resists, there is revolt and struggle. If the vital no longer insists on its own impulses and instincts but does not cooperate, there is either dryness or a neutral state. Dryness comes in when the vital is quiescent but passively unwilling, not interested, the neutral state when it neither assents nor is unwilling,simply quiescent, passive. This however, the neutral state, can deepen into positive calm and peace by a greater influx from above which keeps the vital not only quiescent but at least passively acquiescent. With the active interest and consent of the vital the peace becomes a glad or joyful peace or a strong peace supporting and entering into action or active experience.
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2.1.4.2 - Teaching, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The criticisms made in the report apply to the teachers as much as to the students. For students of high capacity, one teacher well versed in his subject is enougheven a good text-book, together with encyclopedias and dictionaries would be enough. But as one goes down the scale and the capacity of the student becomes lower, the teacher must have higher and higher capacities: discipline, self-control, consecration, psychological understanding, infectious Enthusiasm, to awaken in the student the part which is asleep the will to know, the need for progress, self-control.
Just as we organise the school in such a way as to be able to discover and help outstanding students, in the same way, the responsibility for classes should be given to outstanding teachers.
2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
The standard response from the Eco camps is that if people truly learned and really understood the holistic oneness of reality and the great web, that would force them to give up their egos and they would indeed truly transform. But, as we have seen, it is actually quite the contrary: embracing a monological worldview in flatl and terms results precisely in divine egoism. (Because the Right-Hand-only view of systems theory lacks an understanding of the interior stages of consciousness development-from preconventional/egocentric to conventional/sociocentric to postconventional/worldcentric-or more precisely, because it lacks an understanding of all nine fulcrums of interior unfolding, it has no way to carefully gauge consciousness evolution and development. For this reason, flatl and cannot spot the difference between infrarational consciousness and suprarational consciousness-because it cannot spot interior consciousness at all-and thus it constantly falls prey to massive pre/trans fallacies. This allows its proponents to embrace preconventional interiors as if they were postconventional realities: allows them to fall into preconventional/egocentric Enthusiasms, even as they champion exterior holism and the great Web of Life, precisely as we saw with the Romantics.)
This approach, then, focuses almost exclusively on Dharma, or the objective Truth, and not enough on Buddha (subjective) and Sangha (intersubjective), or how that Truth refracts as well through the psychological and cultural domains (how that Spirit manifests as all four quadrants of the Kosmos). And when objective truth is made the "total truth"-when it is really thought to be "utterly holistic" and "all-encompassing"-then Buddha and Sangha are violently reduced to flatl and objectivist terms, and an approach that originally wishes us to transcend and include, ends up being a merely and purely Descended worldview that effectively blocks transcendence altogether.
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But that is exactly what Feuerbach would recommend: "Politics," he says, "must become our religion." Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were paying very close attention. "Apart from Nature and human beings," Engels would write, "nothing exists; and the higher beings which our religious fantasy created are only the fantastic reflection of our own essence. The Enthusiasm was general; we were all for the moment followers of Feuerbach."
And the entire modern (and postmodern) world is, in effect, the followers of Feuerbach.
2.16 - The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But, finally, there must open in us, as our mental life deepens and subtler knowledge develops, the perception that the terrestrial and the supraterrestrial are not the only terms of being; there is something which is supracosmic and the highest remote origin of our existence. This perception is easily associated by spiritual Enthusiasm, by the height and ardour of the soul's aspiration, by the philosophic aloofness or the strict logical intolerance of our intellect, by the eagerness of our will or by a sick disgust in our vital being discouraged by the difficulties or disappointed by the results of life, - by any or all of these motive-forces, - with a sense of the entire vanity and unreality of all else than this remote Supreme, the vanity of human life, the unreality of cosmic existence, the bitter ugliness and cruelty of earth, the insufficiency of heaven, the aimlessness of the repetition of births in the body. Here again the ordinary man cannot really live with these ideas; they can only give at most a greyness and restless dissatisfaction to the life in which he must still continue: but the exceptional man abandons all to follow the truth he has seen and for him they can be the needed food of his spiritual impulse or a stimulus to the one achievement that is now for him the one thing that matters. Periods and countries there have been, in which this view of being has become very powerful; a considerable part of the race has swerved aside to the life of the ascetic, - not always with a real call to it, - the rest adhered to the normal life but with an underlying belief in its unreality, a belief which can bring about by too much reiteration and insistence an unnerving of the life-impulse and an increasing littleness of its motives, or even, by a subtle reaction, an absorption in an ordinary narrow living through a missing of our natural response to the Divine Being's larger joy in cosmic existence and a failure of the great progressive human idealism by which we are spurred to a collective self-development and a noble embrace of the battle and the labour. Here again there is a sign of some insufficiency in the statement of the supracosmic Reality, perhaps an overstatement or a mistaken opposition, a missing of the divine equation, of the total sense of creation and the entire will of the Creator.
That equation can only be found if we recognise the purport of our whole complex human nature in its right place in the cosmic movement; what is needed is to give its full legitimate value to each part of our composite being and many-sided aspiration and find out the key of their unity as well as their difference.
2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: When Isee Pondicherry and Calcutta Corporation Ibegin to wonder why I was so eager for democracy. They are two object-lessons which can take away all Enthusiasm for self-government.
Disciple: Was the Calcutta Corporation so bad before the Congress came there?
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Sri Aurobindo: English will be all right and even necessary if India is to be an international State. In that case English has to be the medium of expression, especially as English is now replacing French as a world-language. But the national spirit won't allow it and also it is a foreign language. At the same time Hindi can't replace English in the universities nor the provincial languages. When the national spirit grows it is difficult to say what will happen. In Ireland before the revolution they wanted to abolish English and adopt Gaelic but as time went on and things settled themselves their Enthusiasm waned and English came back.
Disciple: I do not understand why the Jews are being so much persecuted by Hitler.
2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Suren Banerji had a personal magnetism and he was sweet-spoken; he could get round anybody. His idea was to become the undisputed leader of Bengal by using the Nationalists for the sword and the Moderates for the public face. In private he would go up to and accept the revolutionary movement. He even wanted to set up a provincial board of control of the revolutionaries! Barin once took a bomb to him and he was full of Enthusiasm. He even had a letter from Suren Banerji, when he was arrested at Maniktolla Garden. But in the court they hushed up the matter as soon as Norton pronounced S. N. Banerji.
Disciple: Aundh State has given a very fine constitution to the people. It has conferred wide powers on the Panchayats. Such constructive work among the villagers would prevent communism. They are thinking of introducing co-operative farming.
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They had the faith that nothing could happen to them. Once when the police came to arrest them they were all singing and dancing. Seeing them in exaltation the police went away. They thought that they were invincible. The Government sent soldiers who arrested them. Then their faith was shaken. One of the prominent disciples, Mahindra Dey, also lost his faith, though he was the victim of his own Enthusiasm.
Disciple: How can ones vital forces be drawn out when one is in contact with the Divine?
2.2.01 - Work and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One must be able to do the same work always with Enthusiasm and at the same time be ready to do something else or enlarge ones scope at a moments notice.
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As a rule, I mean in their unchanged condition, the lower parts get interested and enthusiastic [about work] when the ego mixes with the interest. But the pure Enthusiasm can come into them as they get more and more converted and purified and they then become very indispensable forces for the realisation.
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Joy and Enthusiasm and buoyancy are good things, but it must be on a basis of calm and with the head clear for work.
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2.2.03 - The Divine Force in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What happened is a thing that often happens andtaking your account of itit reproduced in your case the usual stages. First you sat down in prayer that means a call to the Above, if I may so express it. Next came the necessary condition for the answer to the prayer to be effectivelittle by little a sort of restfulness came, in other words, the quietude of the consciousness which is necessary before the Power that has to act can act. Then the rush of the Force or Power, a flood of energy and sense of power and glow and the natural concentration of the being in inspiration and expression, the action of the Power. This is the thing that used to happen daily to the physical workers in the Asram. Working with immense energy and Enthusiasm, with a passion for the work they might after a time feel tired then they would call the Mother and a sense of rest came into them and with or after it a flood of energy so that twice the amount of work could be done without the least fatigue or reaction. In many there was a spontaneous call of the vital for the Force, so that they felt the flood of energy as soon as they began the work and it continued so long as the work had to be done.
The vital is the means of effectuation on the physical plane, so its action and energy are necessary for all workwithout it, if the mind only drives without the cooperation and instrumentation of the vital, there is hard and disagreeable labour and effort with results which are usually not at all of the best kind. The ideal state for work is when there is a natural concentration of the consciousness in the special energy, supported by an easeful rest and quiescence of the consciousness as a whole. Distraction of the mind by other activities disturbs this balance of ease and concentrated energy,fatigue also disturbs or destroys it. The first thing therefore that has to be done is to bring back the supporting restfulness and this is ordinarily done by cessation of work and repose. In the experience you had that was replaced by a restfulness that came from above in answer to your station of prayer and an energy that also came from above. It is the same principle as in sadhana the reason why we want people to make the consciousness quiet so that the higher peace may come in and on the basis of that peace a new Force from above.
2.2.05 - Creative Activity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What do you mean by vital excitement [while painting]? There is an intensity and Enthusiasm of the vital without which it would be difficult to do any poem, picture or music of a creative kind. That intensity is not harmful.
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2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: They would get France also if they ask strongly? Nivedita [a French sadhika] was saying that those French who have joined the war this time have no Enthusiasm or idealism. If that is their mentality, they will be defeated. It is a stupid and tamasically sattwic quality.
Disciple: Have you seen Sir Arthur Hendersons book The Failure of My Mission in Germany?
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Disciple: I quite understand how it must be impossible for France to continue the war. They began without Enthusiasm for the war, but even afterwards Government servants are seen actually wishing for such a peace! There is a soldier in the hospital who even says, "What is the use of fighting? for whom?" etc.
Sri Aurobindo: That is the decadent mind, when men think more of their safety and comfortable living and want to live in peace at any price.
2.23 - THE MASTER AND BUDDHA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Narendra's visit to Bodh-Gaya — Buddha's doctrines — The meaning of Buddha — Narendra's Enthusiasm about Buddha — Master about himself — Master's vision of God — Different kinds of samadhi — Power of God's name — Surendra's faith — Master's love for Girish — Nature of the mind — Monks and householders — About Rakhal — Radha's love for Krishna — The crazy woman — Good use of money — Master's anxiety about M.'s wife.
Friday, April 9, 1886
2.24 - Gnosis and Ananda, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The life-soul and life-consciousness in man, pranamaya purusa, can in the same way directly reflect and enter into the self of Sachchidananda by a large and splendid and blissful reflection of the Soul in universal Life or by losing its separate sense of life and existence in the vast Self within or without it. The result is either a profound state of sheer self-oblivion or else an action driven irresponsibly by the life nature, an exalted Enthusiasm of self-abandonment to the great world-energy in its vitalistic dance. The outer being lives in a God-possessed frenzy careless of itself and the world, inmattavat, or with an entire disregard whether of the conventions and proprieties of fitting human action or of the harmony and rhythms of a greater Truth. It acts as the unbound vital being, pisacavat, the divine maniac or else the divine demoniac. Here too there is no mastery or supreme sublimation of nature. There is only a joyful static possession by the Self within us and an unregulated dynamic possession by the physical and the vital Nature without us.
The mind-soul and mind-consciousness in man, manomaya purusa, can in the same direct way reflect and enter into Sachchidananda by a reflection of the Soul as it mirrors itself in the nature of pure universal mind luminous, unwalled, happy, plastic, illimitable, or by absorption in the vast free unconditioned uncentred Self within it and without it. The result is either an immobile cessation of all mind and action or a desire-free unbound action watched by the unparticipating inner Witness. The mental being becomes the eremite soul alone in the world and careless of all human ties or the secret soul that lives in a rapturous God-nearness or felicitous identity and in joyful relations of pure love and ecstasy towards all creatures. The mental being may even realise the Self in all three planes together. Then
2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Very commonly indeed, a complex of half-effects of the psychic pressure on the mental and vital parts, a formation mixed with mental aspiration and vital desires, is mistaken for the soul, just as the separative ego is taken for the self, although the self in its true being is universal as well as individual in its essence, - or just as a mixture of mental aspiration and vital Enthusiasm and ardour uplifted by some kind of strong or high belief or self-dedication or altruistic eagerness is mistaken for spirituality. But this vagueness and these confusions are inevitable as a temporary stage of the evolution which, because ignorance is its starting-point and the whole stamp of our first nature, must necessarily begin with an imperfect intuitive perception and an instinctive urge or seeking without any acquired experience or clear knowledge. Even the formations which are the first effects of the perception or urge or the first indices of a spiritual evolution, must inevitably be of this incomplete and tentative nature.
But the error so created comes very much in the way of a true understanding, and it must therefore be emphasised that spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable value to mind and life; they are of value to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to the mental evolution, - the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.
2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But this psychic influence or action does not come up to the surface quite pure or does not remain distinct in its purity; if it did, we would be able to distinguish clearly the soul element in us and follow consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and turn it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, smallness and error of mind and life and body. After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished, it is taken hold of by the surface nature in an obscure reception and ignorant formation, and there is or can be by this cause a still further deviation and mixture. A twist is given, a wrong direction is imparted, a wrong application, a wrong formation, an erroneous result of what is in itself pure stuff and action of our spiritual being; a formation of consciousness is accordingly made which is a mixture of the psychic influence and its intimations jumbled with mental ideas and opinions, vital desires and urges, habitual physical tendencies. There coalesce too with the obscured soul-influence the ignorant though well-intentioned efforts of these external parts towards a higher direction; a mental ideation of a very mixed character, often obscure even in its idealism, sometimes even disastrously mistaken, a fervour and passion of the emotional being throwing up its spray and foam of feelings, sentiments, sentimentalisms, a dynamic Enthusiasm of the life-parts, eager responses of the physical, the thrills and excitements of nerve and body, - all these influences coalesce in a composite formation which is frequently taken as the soul and its mixed and confused action for the soul-stir, for a psychic development and action or a realised inner influence. The psychic entity is itself free from stain or mixture, but what comes up from it is not protected by that immunity; therefore this confusion becomes possible.
Moreover, the psychic being, the soul personality in us, does not emerge full-grown and luminous; it evolves, passes through a slow development and formation; its figure of being may be at first indistinct and may afterwards remain for a long time weak and undeveloped, not impure but imperfect: for it rests its formation, its dynamic self-building on the power of soul that has been actually and more or less successfully, against the resistance of the Ignorance and Inconscience, put forth in the evolution upon the surface. Its appearance is the sign of a soulemergence in Nature, and if that emergence is as yet small and defective, the psychic personality also will be stunted or feeble.
It is too, by the obscurity of our consciousness, separated from its inner reality, in imperfect communication with its own source in the depths of the being; for the road is as yet ill-built, easily obstructed, the wires often cut or crowded with communications of another kind and proceeding from another origin: its power to impress what it receives upon the outer instruments is also imperfect; in its penury it has for most things to rely on these instruments and it forms its push to expression and action on their data and not solely on the unerring perceptions of the psychic entity. In these conditions it cannot prevent the true psychic light from being diminished or distorted in the mind into a mere idea or opinion, the psychic feeling in the heart into a fallible emotion or mere sentiment, the psychic will to action in the lifeparts into a blind vital Enthusiasm or a fervid excitement: it even accepts these mistranslations for want of something better and tries to fulfil itself through them. For it is part of the work of the soul to influence mind and heart and vital being and turn their ideas, feelings, Enthusiasms, dynamisms in the direction of what is divine and luminous; but this has to be done at first imperfectly, slowly and with a mixture. As the psychic personality grows stronger, it begins to increase its communion with the psychic entity behind it and improve its communications with the surface: it can transmit its intimations to the mind and heart and life with a greater purity and force; for it is more able to exercise a strong control and react against false mixtures; now more and more it makes itself distinctly felt as a power in the nature. But even so this evolution would be slow and long if left solely to the difficult automatic action of the evolutionary Energy; it is only when man awakes to the knowledge of the soul and feels a need to bring it to the front and make it the master of his life and action that a quicker conscious method of evolution intervenes and a psychic transformation becomes possible.
This slow development can be aided by the mind's clear perception and insistence on something within that survives the death of the body and an effort to know its nature. But at first this knowledge is impeded by the fact that there are many elements in us, many formations which present themselves as soul elements and can be mistaken for the psyche. In the early Greek and some other traditions about the after-life, the descriptions given show very clearly that what was then mistaken for the soul was a subconscious formation, a subphysical impressionmould or shadow-form of the being or else a wraith or ghost of the personality. This ghost, which is mistakenly called the spirit, is sometimes a vital formation reproducing the man's characteristics, his surface life-mannerisms, sometimes a subtle-physical prolongation of the surface form of the mind-shell: at best it is a sheath of the life personality which still remains in the front for some time after the departure from the body. Apart from these confusions born of an after-death contact with discarded phantasms or remnants of the sheaths of the personality, the difficulty is due to our ignorance of the subliminal parts of our nature and the form and powers of the conscious being or Purusha which preside over their action; owing to this inexperience we can easily mistake something of the inner mind or vital self for the psyche. For as Being is one yet multiple, so also the same law prevails in ourselves and our members; the spirit, the Purusha is one but it adapts itself to the formations of Nature.
2.3.08 - The Physical Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
So far as it [living in the physical consciousness] can be said to be distinguishable by outward signs, it is a state of fundamental passivity in which one is and does what the forces of the physical plane make one be and do. When one lives in the mind, there is an active mental intelligence and mental will that tries to control and shape action and experience and life and everything else. When one is in the vital one is full of energy and Enthusiasm and passion and force which may be right or wrong, but is very much alive. These things in the physical inertia either disappear or become weak or are forces that act upon the system occasionally but are not possessed by it. This condition may not be absolute, for one has a mind and a vital, but it is what predominates. There are two ways of getting out of this - one is to rise above in the self and see the physical from there as an instrument, not oneself, the other is to bring down the divine
Force from above and make the physical the instrument of that
2.4.01 - Divine Love, Psychic Love and Human Love, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When the vital joins in the love for the Divine, it brings into it heroism, Enthusiasm, intensity, absoluteness, exclusiveness, the spirit of self-sacrifice, the total and passionate self-giving of all the nature. It is the vital passion for the Divine that creates the spiritual heroes, conquerors or martyrs.
***
2.4.02 - Bhakti, Devotion, Worship, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Vital bhakti is usually full of desires and demands,it expects a return for what it gives; it loves the Divine more for its own sake than for the sake of the Divine. If it does not get what it wants, it is capable of revolting or turning elsewhere. It is often pursued by jealousy, misunderstanding, unfaithfulness, anger etc.,the usual imperfections of human love, and can turn these against its object of bhakti. On the other hand, if there is vital bhakti governed by the psychic, these defects disappear and the vital gives an ardour and Enthusiasm to the love and bhakti which gives it a greater push for effectuation in action and life. The vital should always be the instrument of the soul for self-expression in life and not act on its own account (ego, desire) or on its own separate impulse.
***
3.01 - Towards the Future, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What a wonderful coincidence! Yesterday evening I was introduced to this young lady and she seems to be very charming indeed. We had a long chat together and in the course of the conversation she expressed her admiration for your poetry, which she seems to read with Enthusiasm. She also told me that she is all alone in life, that she has to fend for herself and that sometimes she finds it difficult to pull through, and so on. She dreams of becoming a concert-singer. I immediately thought of you and all your connections. Everyone knows how obliging you are. So I volunteered to speak to you about her and to ask
458
3.02 - The Psychology of Rebirth, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
instance a positive Enthusiasm which spurs the individual to
noble deeds, or an equally positive feeling of human solidarity.
3.02 - The Soul in the Soul World after Death, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The fifth stage of the soul world is that of Soul Light. In it sympathy with others has already reached a high degree of power. Souls are connected with it in so far as they have not during their physical lives entirely devoted themselves to satisfying lower necessities, but have had joy and pleasure in their surroundings. Enthusiasm for nature, for example, in so far as it has borne something of a sensuous character undergoes cleansing here. It is necessary, however, to distinguish clearly this kind of love of nature from that higher living in nature which is of the spiritual kind, and which seeks for the spirit that reveals itself in the things and events of nature. This kind of feeling for nature is one of the things that develop the spirit itself and establish something permanent in the spirit. But one must distinguish between this feeling
p. 125
3.03 - The Ascent to Truth, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All arrive together, full of energy and Enthusiasm.
They look down on the valley below. Then the Philanthropist calls them together with a gesture.
--
No, no, there's no question of giving up. But why don't we rest a while and sit down for a moment to get our breath back? My legs are hurting me. We shall climb much better after relaxing a little. Have a heart, let's sit down for a moment, only for a moment. Afterwards we shall set out with more Enthusiasm.
You'll see!
--
Wherefore to have lived, wherefore to die? What is the sense of this fleeting appearance upon earth, all this effort and struggle, all this success balanced against so much suffering? The marvellous hopes and the triumphant Enthusiasms leading but to abysses of inconscience and ignorance that nothing can fill up?
And the inevitable finale of it all: disappearance, dissolution, more mysterious than appearance, that gives the impression of something absurd, a bad joke at once gruesome and useless.
3.05 - The Conjunction, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
therapeutic Enthusiasm. Psychological work is full of snags, but it is just
here that incompetents swarm. The medical faculties are largely to blame
3.07 - The Formula of the Holy Grail, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
sentence is combined sublimity and Enthusiasm with sneering
bitterness, scepticism, grossness and scorn. It is evidently the
3.09 - Evil, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Hasten towards the good, leave behind all evil thoughts, for to do good without Enthusiasm is to have a mind which delights in evil.
If one does an evil action, he should not persist in it, he should not delight in it. For full of suffering is the accumulation of evil.
3.09 - Of Silence and Secrecy, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I (9), Energized Enthusiasm [Liber 811], and Equinox III (1), Liber XV, Ecclesi
Gnostic Catholic Canon Miss [also Appendix VI, p. 317 of this book]. The
3.0 - THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
have welcomed with great Enthusiasm, at the time when I was having my
first struggles with the spirit of this great German sage's life work.
3.1.05 - A Vision of Science, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The second with Enthusiasm bright,
Flame in her heart but round her brows the night,
3.15 - Of the Invocation, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
In the essay Energised Enthusiasm in No. 9, Vol. I of the
Equinox2 is given a concise account of one of the classical methods of
3.2.03 - Conservation and Progress, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Mankind thinks naturally in extremes or else reconciles by a patchwork and compromise. Whether he makes a fetish of moderation or surrenders himself to the Enthusiasm of the single idea, the human being misses always truth of vision and the right pitch of action because instead of seeing, feeling and becoming in obedience to his nature like other animate existences he tries always to measure things by a standard he has set up in his intelligence. But it is the character of his intelligence that it finds it an easy task to distinguish and separate but is clumsy in combining. When it combines, it tends to artificialise and falsify. It feels at ease in pursuing a single idea to its logical consequences and in viewing things from a single standpoint; but to harmonise different ideas in action and to view the facts from different standpoints is contrary to its native impulse; therefore it does that badly, with an ill grace and without mastery. Oftenest it makes an incongruous patchwork rather than a harmony. The human mind is strong and swift in analysis; it synthesises with labour and imperfectly and does not feel at home in its syntheses. It divides, opposes and, placed between the oppositions it creates, becomes an eager partisan of one side or another; but to think wisely and impartially and with a certain totality is irksome and disgusting to the normal human being.
All human action as all human thought suffers from these disabilities. For it is seduced by a trenchant idea which it follows without proper attention to collateral issues, to necessary companion ideas, to the contrary forces in operation, or else it regards these merely as enemies, brands them as pure falsehood and evil and strives with more or less violence to crush them out of existence. Then it sees other ideas which it attempts to realise in turn, either adding them to its past notions and possessions or else rejecting these entirely for the new light; it makes a fresh war and a new clearance and denies its past work in the interest of a future attainment. But it has also its repentances, its returns, its recalls and re-enthronings of banished gods and even of lifeless ghosts and phantoms to which it gives a temporary and false appearance of life. And on the way it has continually its doubts, scruples, hesitations, its portentous assumptions of a sage moderation and a gradual and cautious advance. But human moderation is usually a wiseacre and a botcher; it sews a patch of new velvet on old fustian or of new fustian on old velvet and admires its deplorable handiwork. And its cautious advance means an accumulation of shams, fictions and dead conventions till the burden of falsehood becomes too great for life to bear and a violent revolution is necessary to deliver the soul of humanity out of the immobilising cerements of the past. Such is the type of our progress; it is the advance of an ignorant and purblind but always light-attracted spirit, a being half-animal, half-god, stumbling forward through the bewildering jungle of its own errors.
3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If she consents to marry, that would be the best. All these vital disturbances proceed from suppressed sex-instinct, suppressed but not rejected and overcome. A mental acceptance or Enthusiasm for the sadhana is not a sufficient guarantee nor a sufficient ground for calling people, especially young people, to begin it. Afterwards these vital instincts rise up and there is nothing sufficient to balance or prevail against them, only mental ideas which do not prevail against the instinct but on the other hand also stand in the way of their natural social means of satisfaction. If she marries now and gets experience of the human vital life, then hereafter there may be a chance of her mental aspiration for sadhana turning into the real thing.
***
33.01 - The Initiation of Swadeshi, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I myself attended a number of meetings, particularly at Hedua, in Panti's Math and College Square, in the evening after college hours. At one of those meetings in Panti's Math, I had a view of Rabindranath as a leader and high-priest of nationalism, calm and handsome and sweet-tongued and self-possessed but breathing words of fire charged with strength and Enthusiasm. On another day I chanced to see, in the fading twilight of evening at a meeting in College Square, Sri Aurobindo. He was wrapped in a shawl from head to foot - perhaps he was slightly ill. He spoke in soft tones, but every word he uttered came out distinct and firm. The huge audience stood motionless under the evening sky listening with rapt attention in pin-drop silence. I can now recall only these few words of his: it was a matter of shame and regret for him that he was unable to speak in his native tongue, his early training and environment had been such as compelled him to express himself in a foreign language; he was asking to be pardoned by his countrymen. And the other thing I remember was the sweet musical rhythm that graced the entire speech. This was the first time I saw him with my own eyes and heard him.
The events of another day come to mind. Perhaps it was on the occasion of the first declaration of Boycott, on the 7th of August, 1905. The Town Hall of Calcutta was the venue of the meeting. What a huge crowd had gathered there and what an oceanic movement! I had been taken there by Atul Gupta, the friend, philosopher and guide of my student days; I had been his disciple in every respect, in my studies as in patriotic work. He made me sit by his side and gave me the necessary instructions. The entire audience at one time stood up in a body and shouted their unanimous approval of a resolution: "All, all," they cried. I too had to do the same. You will perhaps call it drama, but after all, the critical moments of life are nothing but drama. There was no hypocrisy about the thing, it was just a manner of expression. One thing deserves to be mentioned here: the voices I heard of the many orators of that epoch. The glory of those voices is now lost, thanks to the kindness of the mike. Surendranath Banerjee, Ambikacharan Majumdar, Sachindranath Bose and of course Bepinchandra Pal - what high-pitched voices they had and how graceful in movement! How was it possible to combine in a single voice such power and strength with so much sweetness! I had read about the orations of Demos thenes and Cicero, heard the eulogies of France's Mirabeau and Danton, of Burke and Gladstone of England. But it was truly an experience to have heard with one's own ears a human voice of their calibre. One cannot do without a mike today if one is to address an audience of a thousand. In those days ten thousand people could easily listen to those superhuman voices. But why need we go so far? You have all listened to the voice of our Sahana, a voice that held the heart of Rabindranath enthralled. Let me here tell you an amusing story in this connection, though it belongs to a much later date. There was a musical soireat the residence of one of Dilip's relatives; it was at his uncle's I believe. I too was among the invitees and there was a fairly big crowd. The performers of the evening were to be a virtuoso, one of the well-known ones though I forget the name, and our Sahana. A question arose: who would sing first, Sahana or the virtuoso? It was agreed to have Sahana first and the virtuoso to follow; after all, a master must have the last word! Sahana finished her songs and now it was the master's turn. But he dropped a bombshell! He said, "One cannot sing anything after that, it would fall flat!" He did sing, though, after a while. Those were the days indeed.
--
Perhaps it was in October, there was a day of special oath-taking. The day was to be a day of complete fasting, no smoke should appear over the top of any house, any house showing signs of smoke would be marked in black for treachery. I too undertook a complete fast on that day - the first and the last time I have ever done such a thing. I did not even touch a drop of water during the twenty-four hours. But that did not keep me indoors doing nothing. I roamed the streets as usual, shouting "Bande Mataram" with the processions. The vital being in us, in its Enthusiasm and excitement, cares not a whit for anything.
Something rather out of the ordinary came to pass one day. There was an order served on the town as a whole and on certain individuals in particular, forbidding all processions.
33.02 - Subhash, Oaten: atlas, Russell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It was in the year 1905. The Swadeshi movement was in full tide, flooding the land with its Enthusiasm, particularly the student community. But how about the Calcutta Presidency College? That was an institution meant for the "good" boys and for the sons of the rich, that is, for those who, in the parlance of the time, "had a stake in the country," those who, in other words, had something to lose. How far were they touched by that flood? Those that were touched might be described as something of a phenomenon.
In 1905, I was in my Second Year class. Among my classmates were Narendra Nath Law, a well-known name in later years, and perhaps also Bhupati Mohan Sen, who subsequently came to be known as Principal B. M. Sen.1
--
Ullaskar - "one who abounds in energy" - fully lived up to his name: he was indeed an inexhaustible fount of energy and Enthusiasm. When they used to escort us in a prison van from the jail to the court room (during the trial of the Alipore Bomb case), we rent the air all the way with our shouts and songs as we drove along. It was Ullaskar's idea; he led the chorus and the rest of us followed. Some of the old refrains still ring in my ears, I can still recall the words of songs like "Deep from the heart of Bengal today", "The soil, the rivers of Bengal", "My golden Hindusthan".
I have heard that Ullas is still alive, though almost halfdead, they say. Ten or twelve years of jail in the Andamans deranged him in body and mind. But this after all was part of the ritual of sacrifice. As Barin used to say, "Such indeed was the vow in this kind of marriage."
For, the Enthusiasm of that day, that reawakening to new life, took no account whatever of the gains and the losses. It forged ahead by itself, it drew its secret support from its own momentum. That was why people gazed wide-eyed in wonder, that was why they all joined in a mighty chorus:
"A day indeed has dawned,
33.03 - Muraripukur - I, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Empire. I ran through the lengthy volumes from end to end with tremendous Enthusiasm and added a great deal to my learning and knowledge. I had a hope that the book might throw some light as to how to bring about the "decline and fall" of the British rule in India. I fear much help did not come that way.
Now, to come back to the Gardens and our organisational system. Nothing could be arranged by way of an armed force, for our work itself took another turn. A military organisation was now to give place to a terrorist organisation. In the earlier stages, we did not have much faith in terrorist methods, for, as we had seen about Russia, this path led only to mutual assassinations; murder and revenge seemed to follow in an endless succession, leading to no final issue. That is why we had decided on the military solution. To that end, our efforts had been directed towards forming a new military force on the one hand and on the other towards sowing the seeds of revolt among the British Indian troops. I remember about a military police force stationed at Rungpore where the commandant had been won over to a large extent, although I could not say how it would have turned out at the .end.
--
But in spite of all, the place was absolutely quiet and silent, a reason being that it was practically outside the city limits. The lire we lived in such surroundings could be compared with that of nomads. The strange thing is that despite such irregular habits, or rather the habitual irregularities of our life there, we never fell ill. The abundance of vitality and the Enthusiasm and joy kept at bay all attacks of disease. It was very similar to the kind of life we lived here in Pondicherry during the first few years. Motilal when he saw us then exclaimed in utter surprise, "What! Is this the way you live? And you keep him (Sri Aurobindo) too like this?" Perhaps some day I may give you a picture of that life of ours, that life of utter freedom which looked so rustic in the eyes of "civilised" people.
Let me end this story today with something nice and sweet. It was during my stay at the Gardens that I had my first meeting and interview with Sri Aurobindo. Barin had asked me to go and see him, saying that Sri Aurobindo would be coming to see the Gardens and that I should fetch him. Manicktolla was in those days at the far end of North Calcutta and Sri Aurobindo lived with Raja Subodh Mullick near Wellington Square to the South. I went by tram and it was about four in the afternoon when I reached there. I asked the doorman at the gate to send word to Mr. Ghose - this was how he used to be called in those days at the place - saying that I had come from Barin of the Manicktolla Gardens. As I sat waiting in one of the rooms downstairs, Sri Aurobindo came down, stood' near me and gave me an inquiring look. I said, in Bengali, "Barin has sent me. Would it be possible for you to come to the Gardens with me now?" He answered very slowly, pausing on each syllable separately - it seemed he had not yet got used to speaking Bengali - and said, "Go and tell Barin, I have not yet had my lunch. It will not be possible to go today." So, that was that. I did not say a word, did my namaskara- and came away. This was my first happy meeting with him, my first Darshan and interview.
33.05 - Muraripukur - II, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we took up these revolutionary activities, we discovered that it was not easy to carryon this kind of secret work unless there was common in the country as a whole a keen desire I and hope for freedom. What was needed was a favourable atmosphere from which the revolutionaries could get the desired sympathy and support. One could not expect anything but opposition from a people cowed down by fear, shut up within its narrow selfishnesses and wholly preoccupied with its dull routine. That is why Sri Aurobindo started his daily newspaper, Bandemataram, which was the first to declare in clear language that what we wanted was the freedom of India, a total freedom, a freedom untrammelled by any kind of domination by the British. Its aim was to carry into the ears and hearts of our people a message of hope and faith and Enthusiasm, a message that spoke of independence full and absolute, not the kind of freedom that looked to England for protection and help, and such independence too not as a distant possibility of the remote future but an immediate gain of the morrow.
Even so, Bandemataram had to keep within the letter of the law; its advocacy of freedom had to follow as far as possible the lines of peace, its path had to be that of Passive Resistance.
33.07 - Alipore Jail, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Upenda occupied the position of both leader and teacher. It was he who taught us the Gita at the Manicktolla Gardens. Here in Jail, by living In his company, I learned a lot of things from him, he gave me much courage and energy and Enthusiasm and some very good advice. I am grateful to him for all that. He had a particularly soft corner for me, perhaps because his wife's name was also Nolini. He had given me a suggestion as to what sort of defence I should put up in court. "You should say," he explained, "that you do not know anything, that you met me accidentally at your Mess, and that it was I who on finding in the course of our talk that you were interested in Indian philosophy invited you to come to my readings in the Gita's philosophy. You had no other motives or evil intentions." Upenda had also explained to me certain ways of doing meditation and this helped me pass some of my time in jail.
It was not altogether bad during our first month of jail. And afterwards, when the case came up before the trying Magistrate, we began to have a really good time. For henceforth we had an opportunity to know and meet and talk with everybody else. We drove to court together making a lot of noise on the way; we stayed together in court for the most part of the day; and we drove back again in company. That was enough to keep us gay.
33.13 - My Professors, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The youngest of all our teachers of English was Prafulla Ghose. He had just passed out of the University. Precisely because he was a raw young man, he could infuse into his feelings and attitude, his manner and language, a degree of warmth and Enthusiasm. One day he asked a question in class. One Kiran Mukherji (he was first in English in his B.A. and M.A. and a Greats scholar at Oxford later) stood up and gave a fine answer. .But Prafulla Ghose remarked, "I see the Roman hand of the master", that is to say, the answer had been given after getting hold of Percival's Notes on the point.1
A stark moss-trooping Scot was he.
33.14 - I Played Football, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the British team had a generous captain who became interested in the matter and undertook to coach and train the Indians. A big tournament came on at about that time and this Indian team was pitted against a famous Military team, Blackwatch or something. The manager - the guiding spirit of the Indian team - was, as I said, a high-spirited, enthusiastic, ebullient personage - he had only one defect, if defect you call it: he was addicted to drinking. That was a fillip to increase his Enthusiasm and buoyancy and daredevilry. He used to invite his players to feastings and revelry - to inspire them and encourage them. Now the day of days approached. And the-gentleman was in jitters, terribly nervous: how were his boys to face these giants? And a change came upon him. On the previous day he refrained from drinking, fasted, observed maunaor silence, went to Kalighat and worshipped Mother Kali.
On the next day the hour struck and the players were about to take the field. The team of British soldiers came in carriages (there were horse-carriages in those days), with music, bugle and drum, singing and shouting, sure of their victory. They were giants indeed, each a Hercules, and the Indians were pigmies before them. The play started. Just then our manager noticed that at a distance, away from the field, under a tree was sitting a Sannyasi. Directly he saw the Sannyasi, he ran, ran towards him and sat before him. The Sannyasi asked what was the matter. He answered that there was to be a fight with British soldiers, our Bengali boys had to be protected, they must win. The Sannyasi enquired whether they had guns and cannon and what was the strength of the enemy. He was answered that it was not that kind of battle - it was a football game. The Sannyasi shook his head and sent him away.
33.15 - My Athletics, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have told you, we received the call to join the Playground activities. I was enlisted in the Blue Group. In those days it was the Mother who decided who would go to which group; in any case it was done with her knowledge and approval. Udar was our captain. We started learning the steps, "Un, deux, un, deux". Ages ago, I had done some military marching with the Volunteer Corps, but that was only for a few days. I remember how in that Enthusiasm for everything Swadeshi, they had started giving the marching orders in Bengali.
I had to start on this new athletic career without any preliminary practice or training. Many of you may recall how we joined in our first competitive tournament, on the site along the sea-face where the Tennis grounds stand - they had not yet been built. I had no knowledge of the special technique, there was no warming up or anything. We just walked in and took our positions along the starting line, and off we went as soon as the whistle blew. We simply ran for our lives, with the result that I sprained a thigh muscle in my first run. Luckily, this happened near the finishing line, so I could somehow finish the race. The results were not bad: I shared the second place with Pavitra and Yogananda - the first position went to someone, a sadhu who is no longer with us. I took part in the long jump in the "same manner, without any previous practice or warming up. Some people advised me to do a little preliminary training but my reply was, "My sole events in the course of a whole year are a single race and three jumps. They do not deserve more." This is the opening chapter in my new career of athletics.
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I have to mention another name in this connection. For much of what I have now achieved in the field of athletics I owe a deep debt to our Chinmoy. He has been my coach. What have I learnt from him? It is Enthusiasm. What do I mean by Enthusiasm? I shall explain. One of the secrets of physical training is that you must always try to perform a little more than your capacity, or what you may think is the limit of your powers. Perhaps it was with this end in view that in our time when one had to exercise a particular part of the body, the instructions were to go on repeating the movement until one began to sweat and felt exhausted. For how long am I to manipulate the dumb-bells or the Indian clubs? Until you are tired, the chart said, that is, until you felt you could do no more. Now of course nothing is done by such haphazard guesswork. You have to repeat the movements for a certain definite number of times, by actual count, say, five or six repetitions for the first day, to be increased by one or two every day or week, a final limit being set in respect of each individual according to his capacity. This is the method of scientific training today.
Whatever the method you adopt, your strength and capacity have to be increased in this manner. If you go beyond your limits, there is always a chance of accidents, but some accept the risk. The carefree enthusiast asks you to hitch your wagon to a star whereas the more cautious would point to the tragedy of Icarus. The legendary hero of Greek mythology had invented wings for man to fly, but he built them of wax. His aim had been to reach the sun, but as he came near that burning orb the wax got melted by the heat and his wings vanished and he was hurled back headlong down to earth.
33.17 - Two Great Wars, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It was in the course of this War that we saw from the Ashram so many aeroplanes flying directly overhead, by day and by night, although the enemy's missiles did not quite reach us. Trainloads of troops passed through Pondicherry and soldiers came in their batches to obtain the Mother's darshan and blessings. The Mother kept open door for the soldiers; they could come and have darshan almost at any time. I remember one officer, a Rajput and very fine man; his name was Arjun Singh, I think. About himself and a friend of his, a senior officer, he said they had a particular love and Enthusiasm for the practice of yoga in spite of their having taken up the profession of war. We lost touch with them later on.
India had to feel the impact of this War to a considerable extent, though it was mostly our own doing. Perhaps the patriots and lovers of Indian freedom had been losing their patience and they thought that the discomfiture of England was going to be their last and best opportunity; so they created a good deal of trouble. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother held a very different view. What they said in effect was this: "Help the British government to the best of your abilities. Enter every branch of their civil administration and their military organisation. Associate with them everywhere, on land, in the air and at sea; capture all positions of power, master the technical details. The position that you make for yourself in this manner, the position of competence and authority, will not slip away from you; it will be the unshakable foundation of freedom." Had the way shown by Sri Aurobindo been adopted, the winning of India's independence would have been an easier task and it would have been more complete; many have begun to admit this now. In the actual result what was achieved was a kind of compromise between the two points of view.
3.4.2 - The Inconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The extreme acuteness of your difficulties is due to the Yoga having come down against the bedrock of Inconscience which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the individual and in the world to the victory of the Spirit and the Divine Work that is leading toward that victory. The difficulties themselves are general in the Asram as well as in the outside world. Doubt, discouragement, diminution or loss of faith, waning of the vital Enthusiasm for the ideal, perplexity and a baffling of the hope for the future are the common features of the difficulty. In the world outside there are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure to the exclusion of higher things and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world. All that, however acute, is a temporary phenomenon for which those who know anything about the workings of the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were prepared. I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the darkness of night before the dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the first signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand firm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come.
This letter was written in April 1944, the one that follows it in June 1944. The final letter in the group was written in April 1947.Ed.
3.7.1.07 - Involution and Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This spirit in things is not apparent from the beginning, but self-betrayed in an increasing light of manifestation. We see the compressed powers of Nature start released from their original involution, disclose in a passion of work the secrets of their infinite capacity, press upon themselves and on the supporting inferior principle to subject its lower movement on which they are forced to depend into a higher working proper to their own type and feel their proper greatness in the greatness of their selfrevealing effectuations. Life takes hold of matter and breathes into it the numberless figures of its abundant creative force, its subtle and variable patterns, its Enthusiasm of birth and death and growth and act and response, its will of more and more complex organisation of experience, its quivering search and feeling out after a self-consciousness of its own pleasure and pain and understanding gust of action; mind seizes on life to make
322
3.7.2.04 - The Higher Lines of Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This kind of high absoluteness in the ethical demand is appalling to the flesh and the ego, for it admits of no comfortable indulgence and compromise, no abating reserves or conditions, no profitable compact between the egoistic life and virtue. It is offensive too to the practical reason, for it ignores the complexity of the world and of human nature and seems to savour of an extremism and exclusive exaggeration as dangerous to life as it is exalted in ideal purpose. Fiat justitia ruat coelum, let justice and right be done though the heavens fall, is a rule of conduct that only the ideal mind can accept with equanimity or the ideal life tolerate in practice. And even to the larger ideal mind this absoluteness becomes untrustworthy if it is an obedience not to the higher law of the soul, but to an outward moral law, a code of conduct. For then in place of a lifting Enthusiasm we have the rigidity of the Pharisee, a puritan fierceness or narrowness or the life-killing tyranny of a single insufficient side of the nature. This is not yet that higher mental movement, but a straining towards it, an attempt to rise above the transitional law and the vitalistic compromise. And it brings with it an artificiality, a tension, a coercion, often a repellent austerity which, disregarding as it does sanity and large wisdom and the simple naturalness of the true ethical mind and the flexibilities of life, tyrannising over but not transforming it, is not the higher perfection of our nature. But still even here there is the feeling out after a great return to the output of moral energy, an attempt well worth making, if the aim can indeed so be accomplished, to build up by the insistence on a rigid obedience to a law of moral action that which is yet non-existent or imperfectly existent in us but which alone can make the law of our conduct a thing true and living,an ethical being with an inalienably ethical nature. No rule imposed on him from outside, whether in the name of a supposed mechanical or impersonal law or of God or prophet, can be, as such, true or right or binding on man: it becomes that only when it answers to some demand or aids some evolution of his inner being. And when that inner being is revealed, evolved, at each moment naturally active, simply and spontaneously imperative, then we get the true, the inner and intuitive Law in its light of self-knowledge, its beauty of self-fulfilment, its intimate life significance. An act of justice, truth, love, compassion, purity, sacrifice becomes then the faultless expression, the natural outflowering of our soul of justice, our soul of truth, our soul of love and compassion, our soul of purity or sacrifice. And before the greatness of its imperative mandate to the outer nature the vital being and the practical reason and surface seeking intelligence must and do bow down as before something greater than themselves, something that belongs directly to the divine and the infinite.
Meanwhile we get the clue to the higher law of Karma, of the output and returns of energy, and see it immediately and directly to be, what all law of Karma, really and ultimately, if at first covertly, is for man, a law of his spiritual evolution. The true return to the act of virtue, to the ethically right output of his energyhis reward, if you will, and the sole recompense on which he has a right to insist,is its return upon him in a growth of the moral strength within him, an upbuilding of his ethical being, a flowering of the soul of right, justice, love, compassion, purity, truth, strength, courage, self-giving that he seeks to be. The true return to the act of evil, to the ethically wrong output of energyhis punishment, if you will, and the sole penalty he has any need or right to fear,is its return upon him in a retardation of the growth, a demolition of the upbuilding, an obscuration, tarnishing, impoverishing of the soul, of the pure, strong and luminous being that he is striving to be. An inner happiness he may gain by his act, the calm, peace, satisfaction of the soul fulfilled in right, or an inner calamity, the suffering, disturbance, unease and malady of its descent or failure, but he can demand from God or moral Law no other. The ethical soul,not the counterfeit but the real,accepts the pains and sufferings and difficulties and fierce intimidations of life, not as a punishment for its sins, but as an opportunity and trial, an opportunity for its growth, a trial of its built or native strength, and good fortune and all outer success not as a coveted reward of virtue, but as an opportunity also and an even greater more difficult trial. What to this high seeker of Right can mean the vital law of Karma or what can its gods do to him that he can fear or long for? The ethical-vitalistic explanation of the world and its meaning and measures has for such a soul, for man at this height of his evolution no significance. He has travelled beyond the jurisdiction of the Powers of the middle air, the head of his spirits endeavour is lifted above the dull grey-white belt that is their empire.
4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[445] Here Angelus expresses as a religious and psychological experience what the alchemists experienced in and through matter, and what Ripley is describing in his tortuous allegory. The nature of this experience is sufficient to explain the rapt language of certain verses in the Cantilena. He was speaking of something greater than the effects of grace in the sacraments: God himself, through the Holy Ghost, enters the work of man, in the form of inspiration as well as by direct intervention in the miraculous transformation. In view of the fact that such a miracle never did occur in the retort, despite repeated assertions that someone had actually succeeded in making gold, and that neither a panacea nor an elixir has demonstrably prolonged a human life beyond its due, and that no homunculus has ever flown out of the furnacein view of this totally negative result we must ask on what the Enthusiasm and infatuation of the adepts could possibly have been based.
[446] In order to answer this difficult question one must bear in mind that the alchemists, guided by their keenness for research, were in fact on a hopeful path since the fruit that alchemy bore after centuries of endeavour was chemistry and its staggering discoveries. The emotional dynamism of alchemy is largely explained by a premonition of these then-unheard-of possibilities. However barren of useful or even enlightening results its labours were, these efforts, notwithstanding their chronic failure, seem to have had a psychic effect of a positive nature, something akin to satisfaction or even a perceptible increase in wisdom. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain why the alchemists did not turn away in disgust from their almost invariably futile projects. Not that such disillusionments never came to them; indeed the futility of alchemy brought it into increasing disrepute. There remain, nevertheless, a number of witnesses who make it quite clear that their hopeless fumbling, inept as it was from the chemical standpoint, presents a very different appearance when seen from a psychological angle. As I have shown in Psychology and Alchemy, there occurred during the chemical procedure psychic projections which brought unconscious contents to light, often in the form of vivid visions. The medical psychologist knows today that such projections may be of the greatest therapeutic value. It was not for nothing that the old Masters identified their nigredo with melancholia and extolled the opus as the sovereign remedy for all afflictions of the soul; for they had discovered, as was only to be expected, that though their purses shrank their soul gained in statureprovided of course that they survived certain by no means inconsiderable psychic dangers. The projections of the alchemists were nothing other than unconscious contents appearing in matter, the same contents that modern psycho therapy makes conscious by the method of active imagination before they unconsciously change into projections. Making them conscious and giving form to what is unformed has a specific effect in cases where the conscious attitude offers an overcrowded unconscious no possible means of expressing itself. In these circumstances the unconscious has, as it were, no alternative but to generate projections and neurotic symptoms. The conscious milieu of the Middle Ages provided no adequate outlet for these things. The immense world of natural science lay folded in the bud, as also did that questing religious spirit which we meet in many of the alchemical treatises and which, we may well conjecture, was closely akin to the empiricism of scientific research.
4.15 - Soul-Force and the Fourfold Personality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The other turn is towards work and service. This was in the old order the Dharma or soul-type of the Sudra and the Sudra in that order was considered as not one of the twice-born, but an inferior type. A more recent consideration of the values of existence lays stress on the dignity of labour and sees in its toil the bed-rock of the relations between man and man. There is a truth in both attitudes. For this force in the material world is at once in its necessity the foundation of material existence or rather that on which it moves, the feet of the creator Brahma in the old parable, and in its primal state not uplifted by knowledge, mutuality or strength, a thing which reposes on instinct, desire and inertia. The well-developed Sudra soul-type has the instinct often and the capacity of labour and service; but toil as opposed to easy or natural action is a thing imposed on the natural man which he bears because without it he cannot assure his existence or get his desires and he has to force himself or be forced by others or circumstances to spend himself in work. The natural Sudra works not from a sense of the dignity of labour or from the Enthusiasm of service, -- though that comes by the cultivation of his Dharma, --not as the man of knowledge for the joy or gain of knowledge, not from a sense of honour, nor as the born craftsman or artist for love of his work or ardour for the beauty of its technique, nor from an ordered sense of mutuality or large utility, but for the maintenance of his existence and gratification of his primal wants, and when these are satisfied, he indulges, if left to himself, his natural indolence, the indolence which is normal to the tamasic quality in all of us, but comes out most clearly in the uncompelled primitive man, the savage. The unregenerated Sudra is born therefore for service rather than for free labour and his temperament is prone to an inert ignorance, a gross unthinking self-indulgence of the instincts, a servility, an unrefiective obedience and mechanical discharge of duty varied by indolence, evasion, spasmodic revolt, an instinctive and uninformed life. The ancients held that all men are born in their lower nature as Sudras and only regenerated by ethical and spiritual culture, but in their highest inner self are Brahmanas capable of the full spirit and godhead, a theory which is not far perhaps from the psychological truth of our nature.
And yet when the soul develops, it is in this Swabhava and Dharma of work and service that there are found some of the most necessary and beautiful elements of our greatest perfection and the key to much of the secret of the highest spiritual evolution. For the soul powers that belong to the full development of this force in us are of the greatest importance, -- the power of service to others, the will to make our life a thing of work and use to God and man, to obey and follow and accept whatever great influence and needful discipline, the love which consecrates service, a love which asks for no return, but spends itself for the satisfaction of that which we love, the power to bring down this love and service into the physical field and the desire to give our body and life as well as our soul and mind and will and capacity to God and man, and, as a result, the power of complete self-surrender, atma-samarpana, which transferred to the spiritual life becomes one of the greatest and most revealing keys to freedom and perfection. In these things lies the perfection of this Dharma and the nobility of this Swabhava. Man could not be perfect and complete if he had not this element of nature in him to raise to its divine power.
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These things are the ordinary aspects of the soul while it is working out its force in nature, but when we get nearer to our inner selves, then we get too a glimpse and experience of something which was involved in these forms and can disengage itself and stand behind and drive them, as if a general Presence or Power brought to bear on the particular working of this living and thinking machine. This is the force of the soul itself presiding over and filling the powers of its nature. The difference is that the first way is personal in its stamp, limited and determined in its action and mould, dependent on the instrumentation, but here there emerges something impersonal in the personal form, independent and self-sufficient even in the use of the instrumentation, indeterminable though determining both itself and things, something which acts with a much greater power upon the world and uses particular power only as one means of communication and impact on man and circumstance. The Yoga of self-perfection brings out this soul-force and gives it its largest scope, takes up all the fourfold powers and throws them into the free circle of an integral and harmonious spiritual dynamis. The godhead, the soul-power of knowledge rises to the highest degree of which the individual nature can be the supporting basis. A free mind of light develops which is open to every kind of revelation, inspiration, intuition, idea, discrimination, thinking synthesis; an enlightened life of the mind grasps at all knowledge with a delight of finding and reception and holding, a spiritual Enthusiasm, passion, or ecstasy; a power of light full of spiritual force, illumination and purity of working manifests its empire, brahma-tejas, brahma-varcas; a bottomless steadiness and illimitable calm upholds all the illumination, movement, action as on some rock of ages, equal, unperturbed, unmoved, acyuta.
The godhead, the soul-power of will and strength rises to a like largeness and altitude. An absolute calm fearlessness of the free spirit, an infinite dynamic courage which no peril, limitation of possibility, wall of opposing force can deter from pursuing the work or aspiration imposed by the spirit, a high nobility of soul and will untouched by any littleness or baseness and moving with a certain greatness of step to spiritual victory or the success of the God-given work through whatever temporary defeat or obstacle, a spirit never depressed or cast down from faith and confidence in the power that works in the being, are the signs of this perfection. There comes too to fulfilment a large godhead, a soul-power of mutuality, a free self-spending and spending of gift and possession in the work to be done, lavished for the production, the creation, the achievement, the possession, gain, utilisable return, a skill that observes the law and adapts the relation and keeps the measure, a great taking into oneself from all beings and a free giving out of oneself to all, a divine commerce, a large enjoyment of the mutual delight of life. And finally there comes to perfection the godhead, the soul-power of service, the universal love that lavishes itself without demand of return, the embrace that takes to itself the body of God in man and works for help and service, the abnegation that is ready to bear the yoke of the Master and make the life a free servitude to Him and under his direction to the claim and need of his creatures, the self-surrender of the whole being to the Master of our being and his work in the world. These things unite, assist and enter into each other, become one. The full consummation comes in the greatest souls most capable of perfection, but some large manifestation of this fourfold soul-power must be sought and can be attained by all who practise the integral Yoga.
5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
greater the Enthusiasm with which it was celebrated. In other
places the ass was decked with a golden canopy whose corners
6.08 - THE CONTENT AND MEANING OF THE FIRST TWO STAGES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[741] Self-knowledge is an adventure that carries us unexpectedly far and deep. Even a moderately comprehensive knowledge of the shadow can cause a good deal of confusion and mental darkness, since it gives rise to personality problems which one had never remotely imagined before. For this reason alone we can into its former bondage and everything would have been as before. The volatile essence so carefully shut up and preserved in the Hermetic vessel of the unio mentalis could not be left to itself for a moment, because this elusive Mercurius would then escape and return to its former nature, as, according to the testimony of the alchemists, not infrequently happened. The direct and natural way would have been to give the soul its head, since we are told that it always inclines to the body. Being more attached to this than to the spirit, it would separate itself from the latter and slip back into its former unconsciousness without taking with it anything of the light of the spirit into the darkness of the body. For this reason the reunion with the body was something of a problem. Psychologically, it would mean that the insight gained by the withdrawal of projections could not stand the clash with reality and, consequently, that its truth could not be realized in fact, at least not to the desired degree or in the desired way. You can, as you know, forcibly apply the ideals you regard as right with an effort of will, and can do so for a certain length of time and up to a certain point, that is, until signs of fatigue appear and the original Enthusiasm wanes. Then free will becomes a cramp of the will, and the life that has been suppressed forces its way into the open through all the cracks. That, unfortunately, is the lot of all merely rational resolutions.
[742] Since earliest times, therefore, men have had recourse in such situations to artificial aids, ritual actions such as dances, sacrifices, identification with ancestral spirits, etc., in the obvious attempt to conjure up or reawaken those deeper layers of the psyche which the light of reason and the power of the will can never reach, and to bring them back to memory. For this purpose they used mythological or archetypal ideas which expressed the unconscious. So it has remained to the present time, when the day of the believer begins and ends with prayer, that is, with a rite dentre et de sortie. This exercise fulfils its purpose pretty well. If it did not, it would long since have fallen into disuse. If ever it lost its efficacy to any great extent, it was always in individuals or social groups for whom the archetypal ideas have become ineffective. Though such ideas or reprsentations collectives are always true in so far as they express the unconscious archetype, their verbal and pictorial form is greatly influenced by the spirit of the age. If this changes, whether by contact with understand why the alchemists called their nigredo melancholia, a black blacker than black, night, an affliction of the soul, confusion, etc., or, more pointedly, the black raven. For us the raven seems only a funny allegory, but for the medieval adept it was, as we have said, a well-known allegory of the devil.216 Correctly assessing the psychic danger in which he stood, it was therefore of the utmost importance for him to have a favourable familiar as a helper in his work, and at the same time to devote himself diligently to the spiritual exercise of prayer; all this in order to meet effectively the consequences of the collision between his consciousness and the darkness of the shadow. Even for modern psychology the confrontation with the shadow is not a harmless affair, and for this reason it is often circumvented with cunning and caution. Rather than face ones own darkness, one contents oneself with the illusion of ones civic rectitude. Certainly most of the alchemists handled their nigredo in the retort without knowing what it was they were dealing with. But it is equally certain that adepts like Morienus, Dorn, Michael Maier, and others knew in their way what they were doing. It was this knowledge, and not their greed for gold, that kept them labouring at the apparently hopeless opus, for which they sacrificed their money, their goods, and their life.
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
The sign in the left top half is "Yii, Enthusiasm" (No. 16).
It means "Thunder comes resounding out of the earth," i.e., a
7.04 - The Vital, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The vital is the seat of our power, energy, Enthusiasm, effective dynamism. It needs a systematic education.
Vital centre: passionate and strong, it asks for control.
It is the vital that gives Enthusiasm, but the vital by nature is unsteady and always wants new things. Unless it is converted and becomes a docile servant of the Divine, things are always fluctuating.
Power of vital expression is useful only when the vital is converted.
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
I have seen people, full of Enthusiasm for the work of
transformation in the world, devote themselves to that
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luminous Enthusiasm that possesses you, an irresistible
necessity of your being to dissolve in the divine and not
APPENDIX I - Curriculum of A. A., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Liber DCCCXI. (811) [] - Energised Enthusiasm ::: Specially adapted to the task of Attainment of Control of the Body of Light, development of Intuition and Hathayoga. Equinox IX, p. 17.
Liber DCCCXIII. (813) [A] - vel ARARITA ::: An account of the Hexagram and the method of reducing it to the Unity, and Beyond. Unpublished.
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
However, the Scientists in their anti-clerical Enthusiasm and despair of any alternative theory to
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-3-01.htm (2 von 12) [06.05.2003 03:37:25]
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hearts with a glow of Enthusiasm and to enlarge our mental and spiritual grasp, do but in reality cause
a factitious stimulation, and blind us more and more to our ignorance not only of the world we inhabit,
ENNEAD 01.06 - Of Beauty., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
5. Let us now propound a question about experiences to these men who feel love for incorporeal beauties. What do you feel in presence of the noble occupations, the good morals, the habits of temperance, and in general of virtuous acts and sentiments, and of all that constitutes the beauty of souls? What do you feel when you contemplate your inner beauty? What is the source of your ecstasies, or your Enthusiasms? Whence come your desires to unite yourselves to your real selves, and to refresh yourselves by retirement from your bodies? Such indeed are the experiences of those who love genuinely. What then is the object which causes these, your emotions? It is neither a figure, nor a color, nor any size; it is that (colorless)47 invisible soul, which possesses a wisdom equally invisible; this soul in which may be seen shining the splendor of all the virtues, when one discovers in oneself, or contemplates in others, the greatness of character, the justice of the heart, the pure temperance, the imposing countenance of valor, dignity and modesty, proceeding alone firmly, calmly, and imperturbably; and above all, intelligence, resembling the divinity, by its brilliant light. What is the reason that we declare these objects to be beautiful, when we are transported with admiration and love for them? They exist, they manifest themselves, and whoever beholds them will never be able to restrain himself from confessing them to be veritable beings. Now what are these genuine beings? They are beautiful.
LOVE OF BEAUTY EXPLAINED BY AVERSION FOR OPPOSITE.
ENNEAD 02.09 - Against the Gnostics; or, That the Creator and the World are Not Evil., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
How could it ever be considered pious to claim that divine Providence does not extend to sense-objects, or at least interests itself only in some of them (the spiritual men, not the psychical)? Such an assertion must surely be illogical. The (Gnostics) claim that divine Providence interests itself only in them. Was this the case while they were living on high, or only since they live here below? In the first case, why did they descend onto this earth? In the second, why do they remain here below? Besides, why should the Divinity not be present here below also? Otherwise how could He know that the (Gnostics), who are here below, have not forgotten Him, and have not become perverse? If He know those that have not become perverse, He must also know those who have become perverse, to distinguish the former from the latter. He must therefore be present to all men, and to the entire world, in some manner or other. Thus the world will participate in the Divinity. If the Divinity deprived the world of His presence, He would deprive you also thereof, and you could not say anything of Him or of the beings below Him. The world certainly derives its existence from Him whether the divinity protect you by His providence or His help, and whatever632 be the name by which you refer to Him. The world never was deprived of the Divinity, and never will be. The world has a better right than any individuals to the attentions of Providence, and to participation in divine perfections. This is particularly true in respect to the universal Soul, as is proved by the existence and wise arrangement of the world. Which of these so proud individuals is as well arranged, and as wise as the universe, and could even enter into such a comparison without ridicule or absurdity? Indeed, unless made merely in the course of a discussion, such a comparison is really an impiety. To doubt such truths is really the characteristic of a blind and senseless man, without experience or reason, and who is so far removed from knowledge of the intelligible world that he does not even know the sense-world? Could any musician who had once grasped the intelligible harmonies hear that of sense-sounds without profound emotion? What skilful geometrician or arithmetician will fail to enjoy symmetry, order and proportion, in the objects that meet his view? Though their eyes behold the same objects as common people, experts see in them different things; when, for instance, with practiced glance, they examine some picture. When recognizing in sense-objects an image of intelligible (essence), they are disturbed and reminded of genuine beauty: that is the origin of love.378 One rises to the intelligible by seeing a shining image of beauty glowing in a human face. Heavy and senseless must be that mind which could contemplate all the visible beauties, this harmony, and this imposing arrangement, this grand panoramic view furnished by the stars in spite of their distance, without being stirred to Enthusiasm, and admiration of their splendor and magnificence. He who can fail to experience such feelings must have failed to observe sense-objects, or know even less the intelligible world.
633
ENNEAD 03.01 - Concerning Fate., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
To begin with, even if we do admit such atomic principles, their existence does not in any way inevitably lead to either the necessity of all things, or fatality. Let us, indeed, grant the existence of atoms; now some will move downwards that is, if there is an up and down in the universeo thers obliquely, by chance, in various directions. As there will be no order, there will be nothing determinate. Only what will be born of the atoms will be determinate. It will therefore be impossible to guess or predict events, whether by artand indeed, how could there be any art in the midst of orderless things?or by Enthusiasm, or divine inspiration; for prediction implies that the future is determined. True, bodies will obey the impulses necessarily communicated to them by the atoms; but how could you explain the operations and affections of the soul by movements of atoms? How could atomic shock, whether vertical or oblique, produce in the soul these our reasonings, or appetites, whether necessarily, or in any other way? What explanation could they give of the soul's resistance to the impulsions of the body? By what concourse of atoms will one man become a geometrician, another become a mathematician and astronomer, and the other a philosopher? For, according to that doctrine we no longer produce any act for which we are responsible, we are even no longer living beings, since we undergo the impulsion of bodies that affect us just as they do inanimate things.
APPLICATION OF THIS POLEMIC TO THE PHYSICISTS.
ENNEAD 05.03 - The Self-Consciousnesses, and What is Above Them., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
14. How then do we speak of Him? Because we can assert something about Him, though we cannot express Him by speech. We could not know Him, nor grasp Him by thought. How then do we speak of Him, if we cannot grasp Him? Because though He does escape our knowledge, He does not escape us completely. We grasp Him enough to assert something about Him without expressing Him himself, to say what He is not, without saying what He is; that is why in speaking of Him we use terms that are suitable to designate only lower things. Besides we can embrace Him without being capable of expressing1115 Him, like men who, transported by a divine Enthusiasm, feel that they contain something superior without being able to account for it. They speak of what agitates them, and they thus have some feeling of Him who moves them, though they differ therefrom. Such is our relation with Him; when we rise to Him by using our pure intelligence, we feel that He is the foundation of our intelligence, the principle that furnishes "being" and other things of the kind; we feel that He is better, greater, and more elevated than we, because He is superior to reason, to intelligence, and to the senses, because He gives these things without being what they are.
RADIATION OF MULTIPLE UNITY.
ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
xviii Enthusiasm of ecstasy, vi. 9.11 (9-169).
Entire essence loved by being, vi. 5.10 (23-325).
ENNEAD 06.09 - Of the Good and the One., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
As (this vision of the divinity) did not imply (the existence of) two things, and as he who was identical to Him whom he saw, so that he did not see Him, but was united thereto, if anyone could preserve the memory of what he was while thus absorbed into the Divinity, he would within himself have a faithful image of the Divinity. Then indeed had he attained at-one-ment,170 containing no difference, neither in regard to himself, nor to other beings. While he was thus transported into the celestial region, there was within him no activity, no anger, nor appetite, nor reason, nor even thought. So much the more, if we dare say so, was he no longer himself, but sunk in trance or Enthusiasm, tranquil and solitary with the divinity, he enjoyed an the calm. Contained within his own "being," (or, essence), he did not incline to either side, he did not even turn towards himself, he was indeed in a state of perfect stability, having thus, so to speak, become stability itself.
ABOVE BEAUTY AND ABOVE VIRTUE THIS ECSTATIC SIMPLIFICATION IS A COMMUNION.
Ion, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The Ion is the shortest, or nearly the shortest, of all the writings which bear the name of Plato, and is not au thenticated by any early external testimony. The grace and beauty of this little work supply the only, and perhaps a sufficient, proof of its genuineness. The plan is simple; the dramatic interest consists entirely in the contrast between the irony of Socrates and the transparent vanity and childlike Enthusiasm of the rhapsode Ion. The theme of the Dialogue may possibly have been suggested by the passage of Xenophon's Memorabilia in which the rhapsodists are described by Euthydemus as 'very precise about the exact words of Homer, but very idiotic themselves.' (Compare Aristotle, Met.)
Ion the rhapsode has just come to Athens; he has been exhibiting in Epidaurus at the festival of Asclepius, and is intending to exhibit at the festival of the Pana thenaea. Socrates admires and envies the rhapsode's art; for he is always well dressed and in good companyin the company of good poets and of Homer, who is the prince of them. In the course of conversation the admission is elicited from Ion that his skill is restricted to Homer, and that he knows nothing of inferior poets, such as Hesiod and Archilochus;he brightens up and is wide awake when Homer is being recited, but is apt to go to sleep at the recitations of any other poet. 'And yet, surely, he who knows the superior ought to know the inferior also;he who can judge of the good speaker is able to judge of the bad. And poetry is a whole; and he who judges of poetry by rules of art ought to be able to judge of all poetry.' This is confirmed by the analogy of sculpture, painting, flute-playing, and the other arts. The argument is at last brought home to the mind of Ion, who asks how this contradiction is to be solved. The solution given by Socrates is as follows:
Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
life; it is the dignity of courage, and the reality of Enthusiasm.
Faith does not consist of the affirmation of this symbol or that, but
--
it is the Enthusiasm of our children, who mean, one day, to be also
soldiers of the old guard!
--
passionate cerebral love lives only on Enthusiasm, dashes itself
against all duties, treats the beloved object as a prize of conquest,
--
denied the existence of the devil with an Enthusiasm often full of
eloquence.
--
One day Vintras, in an access of Enthusiasm, was preaching before his
heterodox altar; twenty-five persons were present. An empty chalice was
--
intermediate spirits, in their Enthusiasm, which led them to search
Nature in its depths, they gave themselves over to the influence of
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in the school of Enthusiasm, of the arts, and of glory; they become
ugly in prison, and of sad countenance in seminaries and in convents.
--
exaggerations, while partaking their Enthusiasm, one grows accustomed
to their logic that has lost its way, one ends by finding that they are
Liber, #Liber Null, #Peter J Carroll, #Occultism
Liber DCCCXI. (811) [C] - Energised Enthusiasm ::: Specially adapted to the task of Attainment of Control of the Body of Light, development of Intuition and Hathayoga. Equinox IX, p. 17.
Liber DCCCXIII. (813) [A] - vel ARARITA ::: An account of the Hexagram and the method of reducing it to the Unity, and Beyond. Unpublished.
Meno, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. The philosopher only has knowledge, and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired. There may be a sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius. But there is no reason to suppose that he is deriding them, any more than he is deriding the phenomena of love or of Enthusiasm in the Symposium, or of oracles in the Apology, or of divine intimations when he is speaking of the daemonium of Socrates. He recognizes the lower form of right opinion, as well as the higher one of science, in the spirit of one who desires to include in his philosophy every aspect of human life; just as he recognizes the existence of popular opinion as a fact, and the Sophists as the expression of it.
This Dialogue contains the first intimation of the doctrine of reminiscence and of the immortality of the soul. The proof is very slight, even slighter than in the Phaedo and Republic. Because men had abstract ideas in a previous state, they must have always had them, and their souls therefore must have always existed. For they must always have been either men or not men. The fallacy of the latter words is transparent. And Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their weakness; for he adds immediately afterwards, 'I have said some things of which I am not altogether confident.' (Compare Phaedo.) It may be observed, however, that the fanciful notion of pre-existence is combined with a true but partial view of the origin and unity of knowledge, and of the association of ideas. Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion.
Phaedo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of allowing or of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no health or soundness in any arguments at all. Rather say that we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of mindyou and all other men having regard to the whole of your future life, and I myself in the prospect of death. For at this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a philosopher; like the vulgar, I am only a partisan. Now the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions. And the difference between him and me at the present moment is merely thisthat whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is true, I am rather seeking to convince myself; to convince my hearers is a secondary matter with me. And do but see how much I gain by the argument. For if what I say is true, then I do well to be persuaded of the truth, but if there be nothing after death, still, during the short time that remains, I shall not distress my friends with lamentations, and my ignorance will not last, but will die with me, and therefore no harm will be done. This is the state of mind, Simmias and Cebes, in which I approach the argument. And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my Enthusiasm, and like the bee, leave my sting in you before I die.
And now let us proceed, he said. And first of all let me be sure that I have in my mind what you were saying. Simmias, if I remember rightly, has fears and misgivings whether the soul, although a fairer and diviner thing than the body, being as she is in the form of harmony, may not perish first. On the other hand, Cebes appeared to grant that the soul was more lasting than the body, but he said that no one could know whether the soul, after having worn out many bodies, might not perish herself and leave her last body behind her; and that this is death, which is the destruction not of the body but of the soul, for in the body the work of destruction is ever going on. Are not these, Simmias and Cebes, the points which we have to consider?
Prayers and Meditations by Baha u llah text, #Prayers and Meditations by Baha u llah, #unset, #Zen
Lift not the veil, O Thou Who art the Concealer! From eternity the tokens of Thy bounty have encompassed the universe, and the splendors of Thy Most Great Name have been shed over all created things. Deny not Thy servants the wonders of Thy grace. Cause them to be made aware of Thee, that they may bear witness to Thy unity, and enable them to recognize Thee, that they may hasten towards Thee. Thy mercy hath embraced the whole creation, and Thy grace hath pervaded all things. From the billows of the ocean of Thy generosity the seas of eagerness and Enthusiasm were revealed. Thou art what Thou art. Aught except Thee is unworthy of any mention unless it entereth beneath Thy shadow, and gaineth admittance into Thy court.
Whatever betide us, we beseech Thine ancient forgiveness, and seek Thine all-pervasive grace. Our hope is that Thou wilt deny no one Thy grace, and wilt deprive no soul of the ornament of fairness and justice. Thou art the King of all bounty, and the Lord of all favors, and supreme over all who are in heaven and on earth.
r1912 10 27, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The tejas is the chief obstacle to the fulfilment in permanence and completeness of the vijnana-siddhi. The confused remnants of the tejas are being progressively expelled, & the trikaldrishti, jnana and prakamya vyapti are growingsteadily & methodically, but without Enthusiasm or any positive ananda,in precision, correctness & range. This misplacement of circumstance, due to the tejasic attempt in the manas tattwa to fix things instead of seeing them as they are, is diminishing in insistence & effect. In the body tamas, not tejas is the chief enemy, as the nature of the annamaya is tamasic, just as the nature of the manomaya is tejasic.
Anandasiddhi has been reconstituted, the shuddhi & mukti & bhukti with the samata, but the perfection of the second chatusthaya is still to seek. The reason is that although there is sraddha now in the Yoga and in God, there is not sufficient sraddha in the Lilamaya Purusha, & therefore none in the increasing rapidity of the siddhi or in the inevitable and perfect fulfilment of the Adesha.
r1913 07 08, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(6) Obstacles to Enthusiasm of faith & tejas remove[d].
The chief obstacle removed was dependence on favourable result & success; but the tendency to temporary depression of force from subjective causes is not yet altogether eliminated.
r1913 09 18, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The day passed largely in a struggle ending in disturbance & reaction, owing to the old insistence of the mental tejas, which had been suffered to act, on overstress & exaggeration and a blind undiscriminating belief; but the disturbance was not acute nor very prolonged nor the reaction very obstinate or far-reaching. The chief loss was the Enthusiasm & reach of the faith which returned to its normal belief in final success with an added disposition to accept the truth of a steady & increasingly rapid success in the Yoga, as distinct from the life-work. As usual circumstances apparent & real crowded to justify the element of unfaith, but also there were some that supported the faith. The balance was more even than formerly. Trikaldrishti continues to deal with the old intellectualities which still persist in external suggestion; it is usually correct when the mind is not in haste; the suggestions of the external mind are often precise & correct but are so interspersed, like most of the other movements of knowledge, with overstressed & misapplied truths, that uncertainty still reigns. Power grows in effectiveness. The rupa failed to preserve in the daytime the sudden advance made last evening. Rupas were non-lifelike, crude or dense of the crude tendency &, seldom, developed tendency, limited to a few forms and did not come easily & spontaneously or effect an assured union of clearness & stability. Lipi, on the other hand, after [having] become hesitating & infertile, recovered almost all its previous force and more than its previous frequency of comparative perfection. It is almost always intelligible, not always easily or perfectly legible. The reaction in the teeth grows in force. Saundarya makes no progress and weakness of the body continues. Dasya of the body has been perfected in the secondary stage of tertiary dasya, in which all physical action is done under visible compulsion of Krishna, but of Krishna through Prakriti, not direct. This dasya is extending to the mind & feelings. The progress of the personal relation has been troubled by false and simulative vani. Kamananda has been usually intense, & fairly continuous in intensity or subdued force, but not entirely continuous. Telepathy of thought etc has been much in abeyance in favour of telepathy of impulse & tendency. There is no certain progress in arogya. Sahitya has been for these two days suspended.
Neither the faith nor the energy recovered its tone during the evening and night. Still, progress was made. Something like the full bhava of the personal relation was manifested, and the relation itself is now permanent and secured against successful attack. The simulative vanis attempt to persist, but they cannot prevail, endure or pervert. The bhavas permanently manifest are those of conqueror and master, playmate and guide & instructor. There was also progress in the samadhi, smell & touch manifesting vividly, both combined with sight & action &, in the latter case, with sound; but the attempt to confirm & extend continuity failed. Dream manifested again full ihabhava of form & association, which could not, however, disturb the continuity & intelligibility of the series of incidents portrayed. Both in samadhi & jagrat perfect intelligibility of even fragmentary, confused or ill-decipherable lipi was firmly & suddenly established; undecipherable lipi still offers a difficulty to the thought perception. Telepathy flowered freely, but is not yet perfect in range or precision. Kamananda reached a high intensity, but was suspended, as commonly, during the night. Roga showed some reaction, & the physical siddhi generally is passing through a stage of persistent & concentrated obstruction.
r1914 10 23, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Sraddha (swashaktyam bhagavati cha) is now well-founded, but not sufficient either in range or in Enthusiasm and intensity.
***
r1914 11 02, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6) Enthusiasm.
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The dasya established, energetic faith will be possible without the returns of egoism. Enthusiasm can then return.
St.
r1914 11 28, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Arms 2 hours with 3 interruptions, of 20 minutes, 2 minutes & 5 minutes, two of them for correcting proofs. Entire absence of pranic Enthusiasm, void of mahima, absence of force in laghima; great defect of anima in the whole back. The physical being is depressed & discouraged in the matter of utthapana.
***
r1914 12 04, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Asamata is now only manifest in occasional, separated & more or less subdued touches. Force becomes depressed, but no longer entirely inactive, although it lacks certitude and Enthusiasm and regularity of action
***
r1915 05 24, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The siddhi is now restored with a more direct presence of the Ishwara in the thought and script and a more intimate prabhutwa in the dasya by the diminution of the role and insistence of the instrumental ganas. Only the intensity of the Sraddha is lowered by the exclusion of the hasty tapasic element in the enthusiastic faith. The faith is now deficient in Enthusiasm & entirety, because it is deficient in certainty.
***
r1918 05 08, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Kamananda is redeveloping against a strong, but still weakened physical obstruction (from the environmental ether, not in the body), but it is still subject to the old difficulties, limitations and disabilities. It has not yet any force of pervasion or the massed intensity and Enthusiasm of former accesses of kamananda.
This has come subsequently, a pronounced and pervasive ananda. At first proceeding from the centre to pervade the lower parts of the body and occupying, from thence rising to pervade the upper parts to the brain. It was only by application of tapas that the contrary movement was induced; but it is a noteworthy instance of the tendency of the physicality to make laws of imperfections which are in their origin only temporary movements and stages in the complete evolution, that the normalising of this latter movement and the full occupation by it is still resisted and is not so complete as that of the former. This kamananda is long continuous, but not entirely continuous; it has however already the habit of constant return. It can be continued into samadhi, but there tends to drop away.
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
of God. He warms up with devout Enthusiasm as soon as he hears the 'name' of the Lord.
241. Just as gold and brass are tested by a touch-stone, so are the sincere and the hypocritical Sadhus
--
the milk stands still again. So the heart of the neophyte boils with Enthusiasm only so long as he goes on
with his spiritual exercises.
--
filled with a strange Enthusiasm, creating an unbounded disgust for the body, and would lose itself in
the comfort of the Mother's Divine Vision and consoling words."
Sophist, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
These are some of the doubts and suspicions which arise in the mind of a student of Hegel, when, after living for a time within the charmed circle, he removes to a little distance and looks back upon what he has learnt, from the vantage-ground of history and experience. The Enthusiasm of his youth has passed away, the authority of the master no longer retains a hold upon him. But he does not regret the time spent in the study of him. He finds that he has received from him a real enlargement of mind, and much of the true spirit of philosophy, even when he has ceased to believe in him. He returns again and again to his writings as to the recollections of a first love, not undeserving of his admiration still. Perhaps if he were asked how he can admire without believing, or what value he can attri bute to what he knows to be erroneous, he might answer in some such manner as the following:
1. That in Hegel he finds glimpses of the genius of the poet and of the common sense of the man of the world. His system is not cast in a poetic form, but neither has all this load of logic extinguished in him the feeling of poetry. He is the true countryman of his contemporaries Goe the and Schiller. Many fine expressions are scattered up and down in his writings, as when he tells us that 'the Crusaders went to the Sepulchre but found it empty.' He delights to find vestiges of his own philosophy in the older German mystics. And though he can be scarcely said to have mixed much in the affairs of men, for, as his biographer tells us, 'he lived for thirty years in a single room,' yet he is far from being ignorant of the world. No one can read his writings without acquiring an insight into life. He loves to touch with the spear of logic the follies and self-deceptions of mankind, and make them appear in their natural form, stripped of the disguises of language and custom. He will not allow men to defend themselves by an appeal to one-sided or abstract principles. In this age of reason any one can too easily find a reason for doing what he likes (Wallace). He is suspicious of a distinction which is often made between a person's character and his conduct. His spirit is the opposite of that of Jesuitism or casuistry (Wallace). He affords an example of a remark which has been often made, that in order to know the world it is not necessary to have had a great experience of it.
Symposium translated by B Jowett, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
But Plato seems also to be aware that there is a mystery of love in man as well as in nature, extending beyond the mere immediate relation of the sexes. He is conscious that the highest and noblest things in the world are not easily severed from the sensual desires, or may even be regarded as a spiritualized form of them. We may observe that Socrates himself is not represented as originally unimpassioned, but as one who has overcome his passions; the secret of his power over others partly lies in his passionate but self-controlled nature. In the Phaedrus and Symposium love is not merely the feeling usually so called, but the mystical contemplation of the beautiful and the good. The same passion which may wallow in the mire is capable of rising to the loftiest heightsof penetrating the inmost secret of philosophy. The highest love is the love not of a person, but of the highest and purest abstraction. This abstraction is the far-off heaven on which the eye of the mind is fixed in fond amazement. The unity of truth, the consistency of the warring elements of the world, the Enthusiasm for knowledge when first beaming upon mankind, the relativity of ideas to the human mind, and of the human mind to ideas, the faith in the invisible, the adoration of the eternal nature, are all included, consciously or unconsciously, in Plato's doctrine of love.
The successive speeches in praise of love are characteristic of the speakers, and contri bute in various degrees to the final result; they are all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the threads anew, and skims the highest points of each of them. But they are not to be regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another to a climax. They are fanciful, partly facetious performances, 'yet also having a certain measure of seriousness,' which the successive speakers dedicate to the god. All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than dialectical, but glimpses of truth appear in them. When Eryximachus says that the principles of music are simple in themselves, but confused in their application, he touches lightly upon a difficulty which has troubled the moderns as well as the ancients in music, and may be extended to the other applied sciences. That confusion begins in the concrete, was the natural feeling of a mind dwelling in the world of ideas. When Pausanias remarks that personal attachments are inimical to despots. The experience of Greek history confirms the truth of his remark. When Aristophanes declares that love is the desire of the whole, he expresses a feeling not unlike that of the German philosopher, who says that 'philosophy is home sickness.' When Agathon says that no man 'can be wronged of his own free will,' he is alluding playfully to a serious problem of Greek philosophy (compare Arist. Nic. Ethics). So naturally does Plato mingle jest and earnest, truth and opinion in the same work.
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The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed; the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man in the speech of Pausanias. He does not suppose his feelings to be peculiar to himself: there are several other persons in the company who have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been deceived by him. The singular part of this confession is the combination of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement. Such an union is not wholly untrue to human nature, which is capable of combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted: compare his public rebuke of Critias for his shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorabilia) does not regard the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a subject for irony, no less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's Symp.). It is also used as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (compare Xen. Symp.). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connexion with nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him as a saint, who has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of human nature. The fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was recognized by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus), was not perceived by Plato himself. We are still more surprised to find that the philosopher is incited to take the first step in his upward progress (Symp.) by the beauty of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the modern feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took the spurious form of an Enthusiasm for the ideal of beautya worship as of some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth when not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty, the one being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to an elder man was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their beloved who would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie' (Symp.), is not a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have existed at Thebes in the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we may believe writers cited anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. It is observable that Plato never in the least degree excuses the depraved love of the body (compare Charm.; Rep.; Laws; Symp.; and once more Xenophon, Mem.), nor is there any Greek writer of mark who condones or approves such connexions. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the subject these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless, to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship (Rep.), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the bodily appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably attri buted to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of a real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities; and they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship. They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them to train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely that a Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should to a schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him, but rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than was possible in a great household of slaves.
It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against such practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine whether he is speaking of 'the heavenly and philosophical love, or of the coarse Polyhymnia:' and he often refers to this (e.g. in the Symposium) half in jest, yet 'with a certain degree of seriousness.' We observe that they entered into one part of Greek literature, but not into another, and that the larger part is free from such associations. Indecency was an element of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as it has been in other ages and countries. But effeminate love was always condemned as well as ridiculed by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy the allusions to such topics have disappeared. They seem to have been no longer tolerated by the greater refinement of the age. False sentiment is found in the Lyric and Elegiac poets; and in mythology 'the greatest of the Gods' (Rep.) is not exempt from evil imputations. But the morals of a nation are not to be judged of wholly by its literature. Hellas was not necessarily more corrupted in the days of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators, than England in the time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the nineteenth century. No one supposes certain French novels to be a representation of ordinary French life. And the greater part of Greek literature, beginning with Homer and including the tragedians, philosophers, and, with the exception of the Comic poets (whose business was to raise a laugh by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas who have been preserved to us, are free from the taint of indecency.
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The Symposium is connected with the Phaedrus both in style and subject; they are the only Dialogues of Plato in which the theme of love is discussed at length. In both of them philosophy is regarded as a sort of Enthusiasm or madness; Socrates is himself 'a prophet new inspired' with Bacchanalian revelry, which, like his philosophy, he characteristically pretends to have derived not from himself but from others. The Phaedo also presents some points of comparison with the Symposium. For there, too, philosophy might be described as 'dying for love;' and there are not wanting many touches of humour and fancy, which remind us of the Symposium. But while the Phaedo and Phaedrus look backwards and forwards to past and future states of existence, in the Symposium there is no break between this world and another; and we rise from one to the other by a regular series of steps or stages, proceeding from the particulars of sense to the universal of reason, and from one universal to many, which are finally reunited in a single science (compare Rep.). At first immortality means only the succession of existences; even knowledge comes and goes. Then follows, in the language of the mysteries, a higher and a higher degree of initiation; at last we arrive at the perfect vision of beauty, not relative or changing, but eternal and absolute; not bounded by this world, or in or out of this world, but an aspect of the divine, extending over all things, and having no limit of space or time: this is the highest knowledge of which the human mind is capable. Plato does not go on to ask whether the individual is absorbed in the sea of light and beauty or retains his personality. Enough for him to have attained the true beauty or good, without enquiring precisely into the relation in which human beings stood to it. That the soul has such a reach of thought, and is capable of partaking of the eternal nature, seems to imply that she too is eternal (compare Phaedrus). But Plato does not distinguish the eternal in man from the eternal in the world or in God. He is willing to rest in the contemplation of the idea, which to him is the cause of all things (Rep.), and has no strength to go further.
The Symposium of Xenophon, in which Socrates describes himself as a pander, and also discourses of the difference between sensual and sentimental love, likewise offers several interesting points of comparison. But the suspicion which hangs over other writings of Xenophon, and the numerous minute references to the Phaedrus and Symposium, as well as to some of the other writings of Plato, throw a doubt on the genuineness of the work. The Symposium of Xenophon, if written by him at all, would certainly show that he wrote against Plato, and was acquainted with his works. Of this hostility there is no trace in the Memorabilia. Such a rivalry is more characteristic of an imitator than of an original writer. The (so-called) Symposium of Xenophon may therefore have no more title to be regarded as genuine than the confessedly spurious Apology.
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This, or something like this, was the speech of Phaedrus; and some other speeches followed which Aristodemus did not remember; the next which he repeated was that of Pausanias. Phaedrus, he said, the argument has not been set before us, I think, quite in the right form;we should not be called upon to praise Love in such an indiscriminate manner. If there were only one Love, then what you said would be well enough; but since there are more Loves than one,should have begun by determining which of them was to be the theme of our praises. I will amend this defect; and first of all I will tell you which Love is deserving of praise, and then try to hymn the praiseworthy one in a manner worthy of him. For we all know that Love is inseparable from Aphrodite, and if there were only one Aphrodite there would be only one Love; but as there are two goddesses there must be two Loves. And am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses? The elder one, having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphroditeshe is the daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dioneher we call common; and the Love who is her fellow-worker is rightly named common, as the other love is called heavenly. All the gods ought to have praise given to them, but not without distinction of their natures; and therefore I must try to distinguish the characters of the two Loves. Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talkingthese actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise. The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soulthe most foolish beings are the objects of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quite indiscriminately. The goddess who is his mother is far younger than the other, and she was born of the union of the male and female, and partakes of both. But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother in whose birth the female has no part,she is from the male only; this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there is nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love turn to the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in the very character of their attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in choosing young men to be their companions, they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole life in company with them, not to take them in their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them. But the love of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their future is uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in body or soul, and much noble Enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this matter the good are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be restrained by force; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from fixing their affections on women of free birth. These are the persons who bring a reproach on love; and some have been led to deny the lawfulness of such attachments because they see the impropriety and evil of them; for surely nothing that is decorously and lawfully done can justly be censured. Now here and in Lacedaemon the rules about love are perplexing, but in most cities they are simple and easily intelligible; in Elis and Boeotia, and in countries having no gifts of eloquence, they are very straightforward; the law is simply in favour of these connexions, and no one, whether young or old, has anything to say to their discredit; the reason being, as I suppose, that they are men of few words in those parts, and therefore the lovers do not like the trouble of pleading their suit. In Ionia and other places, and generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians, the custom is held to be dishonourable; loves of youths share the evil repute in which philosophy and gymnastics are held, because they are inimical to tyranny; for the interests of rulers require that their subjects should be poor in spirit (compare Arist. Politics), and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by experience; for the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius had a strength which undid their power. And, therefore, the ill-repute into which these attachments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evil condition of those who make them to be ill-reputed; that is to say, to the self-seeking of the governors and the cowardice of the governed; on the other hand, the indiscriminate honour which is given to them in some countries is attri butable to the laziness of those who hold this opinion of them. In our own country a far better principle prevails, but, as I was saying, the explanation of it is rather perplexing. For, observe that open loves are held to be more honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honourable. Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit of his love the custom of mankind allows him to do many strange things, which philosophy would bitterly censure if they were done from any motive of interest, or wish for office or power. He may pray, and entreat, and supplicate, and swear, and lie on a mat at the door, and endure a slavery worse than that of any slavein any other case friends and enemies would be equally ready to prevent him, but now there is no friend who will be ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will charge him with meanness or flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace which ennobles them; and custom has decided that they are highly commendable and that there no loss of character in them; and, what is strangest of all, he only may swear and forswear himself (so men say), and the gods will forgive his transgression, for there is no such thing as a lover's oath. Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world. From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens to love and to be loved is held to be a very honourable thing. But when parents forbid their sons to talk with their lovers, and place them under a tutor's care, who is appointed to see to these things, and their companions and equals cast in their teeth anything of the sort which they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the reprovers and do not rebuke themany one who reflects on all this will, on the contrary, think that we hold these practices to be most disgraceful. But, as I was saying at first, the truth as I imagine is, that whether such practices are honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a simple question; they are honourable to him who follows them honourably, dishonourable to him who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to the evil, or in an evil manner; but there is honour in yielding to the good, or in an honourable manner. Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting. The custom of our country would have both of them proven well and truly, and would have us yield to the one sort of lover and avoid the other, and therefore encourages some to pursue, and others to fly; testing both the lover and beloved in contests and trials, until they show to which of the two classes they respectively belong. And this is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty attachment is held to be dishonourable, because time is the true test of this as of most other things; and secondly there is a dishonour in being overcome by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether a man is frightened into surrender by the loss of them, or, having experienced the benefits of money and political corruption, is unable to rise above the seductions of them. For none of these things are of a permanent or lasting nature; not to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them. There remains, then, only one way of honourable attachment which custom allows in the beloved, and this is the way of virtue; for as we admitted that any service which the lover does to him is not to be accounted flattery or a dishonour to himself, so the beloved has one way only of voluntary service which is not dishonourable, and this is virtuous service.
For we have a custom, and according to our custom any one who does service to another under the idea that he will be improved by him either in wisdom, or in some other particular of virtuesuch a voluntary service, I say, is not to be regarded as a dishonour, and is not open to the charge of flattery. And these two customs, one the love of youth, and the other the practice of philosophy and virtue in general, ought to meet in one, and then the beloved may honourably indulge the lover. For when the lover and beloved come together, having each of them a law, and the lover thinks that he is right in doing any service which he can to his gracious loving one; and the other that he is right in showing any kindness which he can to him who is making him wise and good; the one capable of communicating wisdom and virtue, the other seeking to acquire them with a view to education and wisdom, when the two laws of love are fulfilled and meet in onethen, and then only, may the beloved yield with honour to the lover. Nor when love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not being deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one's 'uses base' for the sake of money; but this is not honourable. And on the same principle he who gives himself to a lover because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his company, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his affection turn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is deceived he has committed a noble error. For he has proved that for his part he will do anything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which there can be nothing nobler. Thus noble in every case is the acceptance of another for the sake of virtue. This is that love which is the love of the heavenly godess, and is heavenly, and of great price to individuals and cities, making the lover and the beloved alike eager in the work of their own improvement. But all other loves are the offspring of the other, who is the common goddess. To you, Phaedrus, I offer this my contri bution in praise of love, which is as good as I could make extempore.
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
against self-government and one's Enthusiasm for it goes away.
NIRODBARAN: Was the Calcutta Corporation so bad before the Congress came
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but as time went on and things settled themselves their Enthusiasm waned
and English came back.
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Their Enthusiasm is something enormous. However much you may check
them, they can't help propagandising,
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Gaulle found the French people lacking in Enthusiasm.
PURANI: Yes. They all want safety and self-interest. Even the Governor's
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SRI AUROBINDO: This Egyptian ministry can't raise popular Enthusiasm.
Nahash Pasha could have.
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SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. The Nazis have more Enthusiasm and dash. But the
British individual is more awake and has more initiative and brain-power.
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the articles during the first Enthusiasm of my learning the language. Of
course we started learning it [at] Cambridge the judge, Beachcroft, was
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[2] Enthusiasm and time.
[3] Non-acceptance.
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
somewhat ambiguous label 'zeal': the Enthusiasm of the genius over
his problems keeps him working late into the night long after the
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guage the word Enthusiasm'e theosa god within. The grandeur
of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they
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pressures. The romantic bursts of Enthusiasm in adolescence are like a
last, euphoric flicker of the self-transcending emotions before they
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a few. No wonder that Weiss, carried away by Enthusiasm after hearing
Lashley 's brilliant paper on 'The Problem of Serial Order in Behaviour*, concluded
Theaetetus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Theaetetus, the hero of the battle of Corinth and of the dialogue, is a disciple of Theodorus, the great geometrician, whose science is thus indicated to be the propaedeutic to philosophy. An interest has been already excited about him by his approaching death, and now he is introduced to us anew by the praises of his master Theodorus. He is a youthful Socrates, and exhibits the same contrast of the fair soul and the ungainly face and frame, the Silenus mask and the god within, which are described in the Symposium. The picture which Theodorus gives of his courage and patience and intelligence and modesty is verified in the course of the dialogue. His courage is shown by his behaviour in the battle, and his other qualities shine forth as the argument proceeds. Socrates takes an evident delight in 'the wise Theaetetus,' who has more in him than 'many bearded men'; he is quite inspired by his answers. At first the youth is lost in wonder, and is almost too modest to speak, but, encouraged by Socrates, he rises to the occasion, and grows full of interest and Enthusiasm about the great question. Like a youth, he has not finally made up his mind, and is very ready to follow the lead of Socrates, and to enter into each successive phase of the discussion which turns up. His great dialectical talent is shown in his power of drawing distinctions, and of foreseeing the consequences of his own answers. The enquiry about the nature of knowledge is not new to him; long ago he has felt the 'pang of philosophy,' and has experienced the youthful intoxication which is depicted in the Philebus. But he has hitherto been unable to make the transition from mathematics to metaphysics. He can form a general conception of square and oblong numbers, but he is unable to attain a similar expression of knowledge in the abstract. Yet at length he begins to recognize that there are universal conceptions of being, likeness, sameness, number, which the mind contemplates in herself, and with the help of Socrates is conducted from a theory of sense to a theory of ideas.
There is no reason to doubt that Theaetetus was a real person, whose name survived in the next generation. But neither can any importance be attached to the notices of him in Suidas and Proclus, which are probably based on the mention of him in Plato. According to a confused statement in Suidas, who mentions him twice over, first, as a pupil of Socrates, and then of Plato, he is said to have written the first work on the Five Solids. But no early authority cites the work, the invention of which may have been easily suggested by the division of roots, which Plato attri butes to him, and the allusion to the backward state of solid geometry in the Republic. At any rate, there is no occasion to recall him to life again after the battle of Corinth, in order that we may allow time for the completion of such a work (Muller). We may also remark that such a supposition entirely destroys the pathetic interest of the introduction.
The Anapanasati Sutta A Practical Guide to Mindfullness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
means bringing up zeal, or joyful interest, or Enthusiasm
(chanda) in mind. However, some meditation teachers say
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interest or Enthusiasm. A mind which points towards a
wholesome object like joy has this quality of joyful interest.
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that has joyful interest and Enthusiasm so that mind
becomes clear and free from unwholesome states. Joy grows
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Mindfulness of joyful interest and Enthusiasm, i.e.,
having a smiling mind leads to a mind which is light, open,
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interest and Enthusiasm.
"He awakens zeal for the continuous, nondisappearance, streng thening, increase, and
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they put into their practice. One's Enthusiasm will naturally
increase too.
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
contrary they appear to have been built in the Enthusiasm of a powerful inspiration of ideal
and faith by a people happy to live in the midst of a flourishing and strongly organized
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sincere Enthusiasm on this topic in his Polycration. "When I saw the abundance of sustenance,
the cheerfulness of the people, the good conduct of the clergy, the majesty and glory of the
--
the medieval West was to receive later on with so much Enthusiasm.
Many controversies have been raised about the diverse etymologies attri buted to the word
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failure, turn against it. Attacked from all sides, its prestige disappears; Enthusiasm decreases,
opinion is modified. Practical operations, which had been collected, gathered after being
--
Exclamation of passionate Enthusiasm, exuberant joy, proud cry, one would say, of an Adept
in possession of the Magistery. Perhaps. But is it really what the authors thought wanted to
--
thoughtless Enthusiasm and never let our judgments be outwitted by the specious arguments
and the brilliant but hollow theories of the lovers of the marvelous. Science and nature keep
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
45) He who suffers himself to be transported by the love of things on high, who drinks at the sources of eternal beauty, who lives by the Infinite and combats for the ideal of all virtue and all knowledge, who shows for that cult an Enthusiasm pushed to a very fury,-he is the hero. ~ Giordano Bruno
46) Holy Knowledge, by thee illumined, I hymn by thee the ideal light; I rejoice with the joy of the Intelligence. ~ Hermes: "On the Rebirth"
The Logomachy of Zos, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
When Enthusiasm and effort are co-equal and joined in purpose-
realization is near, whatever its merit.
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All thoughts are dissatisfied desires which gives the Enthusiasm for life:
Thought is abstract semen seeking sentience.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra text, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
measure because of, the ebullient Enthusiasm of some of
the early English and American Nietzscheans. He has
Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The part of the soul which desires meat and drink was placed between the midriff and navel, where they made a sort of manger; and here they bound it down, like a wild animal, away from the council-chamber, and leaving the better principle undisturbed to advise quietly for the good of the whole. For the Creator knew that the belly would not listen to reason, and was under the power of idols and fancies. Wherefore he framed the liver to connect with the lower nature, contriving that it should be compact, and bright, and sweet, and also bitter and smooth, in order that the power of thought which originates in the mind might there be reflected, terrifying the belly with the elements of bitterness and gall, and a suffusion of bilious colours when the liver is contracted, and causing pain and misery by twisting out of its place the lobe and closing up the vessels and gates. And the converse happens when some gentle inspiration coming from intelligence mirrors the opposite fancies, giving rest and sweetness and freedom, and at night, moderation and peace accompanied with prophetic insight, when reason and sense are asleep. For the authors of our being, in obedience to their Father's will and in order to make men as good as they could, gave to the liver the power of divination, which is never active when men are awake or in health; but when they are under the influence of some disorder or Enthusiasm then they receive intimations, which have to be interpreted by others who are called prophets, but should rather be called interpreters of prophecy; after death these intimations become unintelligible. The spleen which is situated in the neighbourhood, on the left side, keeps the liver bright and clean, as a napkin does a mirror, and the evacuations of the liver are received into it; and being a hollow tissue it is for a time swollen with these impurities, but when the body is purged it returns to its natural size.
The truth concerning the soul can only be established by the word of God. Still, we may venture to assert what is probable both concerning soul and body.
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There was one more illusion to which the ancient philosophers were subject, and against which Plato in his later dialogues seems to be strugglingthe tendency to mere abstractions; not perceiving that pure abstraction is only negation, they thought that the greater the abstraction the greater the truth. Behind any pair of ideas a new idea which comprehended themthe (Greek), as it was technically termedbegan at once to appear. Two are truer than three, one than two. The words 'being,' or 'unity,' or essence,' or 'good,' became sacred to them. They did not see that they had a word only, and in one sense the most unmeaning of words. They did not understand that the content of notions is in inverse proportion to their universalitythe element which is the most widely diffused is also the thinnest; or, in the language of the common logic, the greater the extension the less the comprehension. But this vacant idea of a whole without parts, of a subject without predicates, a rest without motion, has been also the most fruitful of all ideas. It is the beginning of a priori thought, and indeed of thinking at all. Men were led to conceive it, not by a love of hasty generalization, but by a divine instinct, a dialectical Enthusiasm, in which the human faculties seemed to yearn for enlargement. We know that 'being' is only the verb of existence, the copula, the most general symbol of relation, the first and most meagre of abstractions; but to some of the ancient philosophers this little word appeared to attain divine proportions, and to comprehend all truth. Being or essence, and similar words, represented to them a supreme or divine being, in which they thought that they found the containing and continuing principle of the universe. In a few years the human mind was peopled with abstractions; a new world was called into existence to give law and order to the old. But between them there was still a gulf, and no one could pass from the one to the other.
Number and figure were the greatest instruments of thought which were possessed by the Greek philosopher; having the same power over the mind which was exerted by abstract ideas, they were also capable of practical application. Many curious and, to the early thinker, mysterious properties of them came to light when they were compared with one another. They admitted of infinite multiplication and construction; in Pythagorean triangles or in proportions of 1:2:4:8 and 1:3:9:27, or compounds of them, the laws of the world seemed to be more than half revealed. They were also capable of infinite subdivisiona wonder and also a puzzle to the ancient thinker (Rep.). They were not, like being or essence, mere vacant abstractions, but admitted of progress and growth, while at the same time they confirmed a higher sentiment of the mind, that there was order in the universe. And so there began to be a real sympathy between the world within and the world without. The numbers and figures which were present to the mind's eye became visible to the eye of sense; the truth of nature was mathematics; the other properties of objects seemed to reappear only in the light of number. Law and morality also found a natural expression in number and figure. Instruments of such power and elasticity could not fail to be 'a most gracious assistance' to the first efforts of human intelligence.
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The contradictions involved in the conception of time or motion, like the infinitesimal in space, were a source of perplexity to the mind of the Greek, who was driven to find a point of view above or beyond them. They had sprung up in the decline of the Eleatic philosophy and were very familiar to Plato, as we gather from the Parmenides. The consciousness of them had led the great Eleatic philosopher to describe the nature of God or Being under negatives. He sings of 'Being unbegotten and imperishable, unmoved and never-ending, which never was nor will be, but always is, one and continuous, which cannot spring from any other; for it cannot be said or imagined not to be.' The idea of eternity was for a great part a negation. There are regions of speculation in which the negative is hardly separable from the positive, and even seems to pass into it. Not only Buddhism, but Greek as well as Christian philosophy, show that it is quite possible that the human mind should retain an Enthusiasm for mere negations. In different ages and countries there have been forms of light in which nothing could be discerned and which have nevertheless exercised a life-giving and illumining power. For the higher intelligence of man seems to require, not only something above sense, but above knowledge, which can only be described as Mind or Being or Truth or God or the unchangeable and eternal element, in the expression of which all predicates fail and fall short. Eternity or the eternal is not merely the unlimited in time but the truest of all Being, the most real of all realities, the most certain of all knowledge, which we nevertheless only see through a glass darkly. The passionate earnestness of Parmenides contrasts with the vacuity of the thought which he is revolving in his mind.
Space is said by Plato to be the 'containing vessel or nurse of generation.' Reflecting on the simplest kinds of external objects, which to the ancients were the four elements, he was led to a more general notion of a substance, more or less like themselves, out of which they were fashioned. He would not have them too precisely distinguished. Thus seems to have arisen the first dim perception of (Greek) or matter, which has played so great a part in the metaphysical philosophy of Aristotle and his followers. But besides the material out of which the elements are made, there is also a space in which they are contained. There arises thus a second nature which the senses are incapable of discerning and which can hardly be referred to the intelligible class. For it is and it is not, it is nowhere when filled, it is nothing when empty. Hence it is said to be discerned by a kind of spurious or analogous reason, partaking so feebly of existence as to be hardly perceivable, yet always reappearing as the containing mother or nurse of all things. It had not that sort of consistency to Plato which has been given to it in modern times by geometry and metaphysics. Neither of the Greek words by which it is described are so purely abstract as the English word 'space' or the Latin 'spatium.' Neither Plato nor any other Greek would have spoken of (Greek) or (Greek) in the same manner as we speak of 'time' and 'space.'
--
The liver is imagined by Plato to be a smooth and bright substance, having a store of sweetness and also of bitterness, which reason freely uses in the execution of her mandates. In this region, as ancient superstition told, were to be found intimations of the future. But Plato is careful to observe that although such knowledge is given to the inferior parts of man, it requires to be interpreted by the superior. Reason, and not Enthusiasm, is the true guide of man; he is only inspired when he is demented by some distemper or possession. The ancient saying, that 'only a man in his senses can judge of his own actions,' is approved by modern philosophy too. The same irony which appears in Plato's remark, that 'the men of old time must surely have known the gods who were their ancestors, and we should believe them as custom requires,' is also manifest in his account of divination.
The appetitive soul is seated in the belly, and there imprisoned like a wild beast, far away from the council chamber, as Plato graphically calls the head, in order that the animal passions may not interfere with the deliberations of reason. Though the soul is said by him to be prior to the body, yet we cannot help seeing that it is constructed on the model of the bodythe threefold division into the rational, passionate, and appetitive corresponding to the head, heart and belly. The human soul differs from the soul of the world in this respect, that it is enveloped and finds its expression in matter, whereas the soul of the world is not only enveloped or diffused in matter, but is the element in which matter moves. The breath of man is within him, but the air or aether of heaven is the element which surrounds him and all things.
--
Although such a work can contri bute little or nothing to the understanding of Plato, it throws an interesting light on the Alexandrian times; it realizes how a philosophy made up of words only may create a deep and widespread Enthusiasm, how the forms of logic and rhetoric may usurp the place of reason and truth, how all philosophies grow faded and discoloured, and are patched and made up again like worn-out garments, and retain only a second-hand existence. He who would study this degeneracy of philosophy and of the Greek mind in the original cannot do better than devote a few of his days and nights to the commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus.
A very different account must be given of the short work entitled 'Timaeus Locrus,' which is a brief but clear analysis of the Timaeus of Plato, omitting the introduction or dialogue and making a few small additions. It does not allude to the original from which it is taken; it is quite free from mysticism and Neo-Platonism. In length it does not exceed a fifth part of the Timaeus. It is written in the Doric dialect, and contains several words which do not occur in classical Greek. No other indication of its date, except this uncertain one of language, appears in it. In several places the writer has simplified the language of Plato, in a few others he has embellished and exaggerated it. He generally preserves the thought of the original, but does not copy the words. On the whole this little tract faithfully reflects the meaning and spirit of the Timaeus.
--
HERMOCRATES: And we too, Socrates, as Timaeus says, will not be wanting in Enthusiasm; and there is no excuse for not complying with your request. As soon as we arrived yesterday at the guest-chamber of Critias, with whom we are staying, or rather on our way thither, we talked the matter over, and he told us an ancient tradition, which I wish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates, so that he may help us to judge whether it will satisfy his requirements or not.
CRITIAS: I will, if Timaeus, who is our other partner, approves.
Verses of Vemana, #is Book, #unset, #Zen
If he who go to Kasi with great Enthusiasm when by the wisdom of God they change their bodies, in transmigration he gives half his merits to his wife, and has only half to himself.
823
--- Overview of noun enthusiasm
The noun enthusiasm has 3 senses (first 3 from tagged texts)
1. (5) enthusiasm ::: (a feeling of excitement)
2. (5) exuberance, enthusiasm, ebullience ::: (overflowing with eager enjoyment or approval)
3. (3) enthusiasm ::: (a lively interest; "enthusiasm for his program is growing")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun enthusiasm
3 senses of enthusiasm
Sense 1
enthusiasm
=> feeling
=> state
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
exuberance, enthusiasm, ebullience
=> liveliness, life, spirit, sprightliness
=> animation, spiritedness, invigoration, brio, vivification
=> activeness, activity
=> trait
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
enthusiasm
=> interest, involvement
=> curiosity, wonder
=> cognitive state, state of mind
=> psychological state, psychological condition, mental state, mental condition
=> condition, status
=> state
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun enthusiasm
3 senses of enthusiasm
Sense 1
enthusiasm
=> gusto, relish, zest, zestfulness
=> eagerness, avidity, avidness, keenness
=> exuberance
=> technophilia
Sense 2
exuberance, enthusiasm, ebullience
=> lyricism
=> madness, rabidity, rabidness
Sense 3
enthusiasm
=> Anglomania
=> balletomania
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun enthusiasm
3 senses of enthusiasm
Sense 1
enthusiasm
=> feeling
Sense 2
exuberance, enthusiasm, ebullience
=> liveliness, life, spirit, sprightliness
Sense 3
enthusiasm
=> interest, involvement
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun enthusiasm
3 senses of enthusiasm
Sense 1
enthusiasm
-> feeling
=> affect
=> emotion
=> thing
=> glow
=> faintness
=> soul, soulfulness
=> passion, passionateness
=> sentiment
=> complex
=> ambivalence, ambivalency
=> apathy
=> desire
=> sex, sexual urge
=> pleasure, pleasance
=> pain, painfulness
=> pang, stab, twinge
=> liking
=> dislike
=> gratitude
=> ingratitude, ungratefulness
=> unconcern
=> shame
=> pride, pridefulness
=> humility, humbleness
=> astonishment, amazement
=> devastation
=> expectation
=> levity
=> gravity, solemnity
=> sensitivity, sensitiveness
=> agitation
=> calmness
=> fearlessness, bravery
=> happiness
=> sadness, unhappiness
=> hope
=> despair
=> affection, affectionateness, fondness, tenderness, heart, warmness, warmheartedness, philia
=> temper, mood, humor, humour
=> sympathy, fellow feeling
=> enthusiasm
Sense 2
exuberance, enthusiasm, ebullience
-> liveliness, life, spirit, sprightliness
=> pertness
=> airiness, delicacy
=> alacrity, briskness, smartness
=> energy, muscularity, vigor, vigour, vim
=> elan
=> esprit
=> breeziness, jauntiness
=> irrepressibility, buoyancy
=> high-spiritedness
=> exuberance, enthusiasm, ebullience
=> pep, peppiness, ginger
Sense 3
enthusiasm
-> interest, involvement
=> enthusiasm
=> concern
--- Grep of noun enthusiasm
enthusiasm
Wikipedia - Acclamatio -- An expression of enthusiasm in Ancient Roman and Byzantine tradition
Wikipedia - Curb Your Enthusiasm -- American television series
Wikipedia - Enthusiasm (film) -- 1931 film
Wikipedia - Enthusiasm -- Intense enjoyment, interest or approval towards something
Wikipedia - Fanaticism -- Belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal or an obsessive enthusiasm
Wikipedia - List of awards and nominations received by Curb Your Enthusiasm -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Curb Your Enthusiasm guest stars -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of Curb Your Enthusiasm recurring roles -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - Passion (emotion) -- Feeling of intense enthusiasm towards or compelling desire for someone or something
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1543785.Enthusiasm_Makes_the_Difference
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24935864-adventures-and-enthusiasms
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/595397.Enthusiasm
dedroidify.blogspot - curb-your-enthusiasm-occupy-this
Psychology Wiki - Enthusiasm
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnthusiasmVersusStoicism
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InfectiousEnthusiasm
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/CurbYourEnthusiasm
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Curb_Your_Enthusiasm
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curb_Your_Enthusiasm
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Enthusiasm
Daria (1997 - 2002) - The people of Lawndale just don't get Daria Morgendorffer. She's cool with that. See, Daria was born alienated, and now she's just trying to make it through high school with as little human contact as possible. Popularity, friends, activities... whatever. Daria lacks enthusiasm, but she makes up for...
Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000 - Current) - The life and times of Larry David (Seinfeld's executive producer and creator) and the predicaments he gets himself into with his friends and complete strangers.
Celtic Pride(1996) - Two basketball fans, whose enthusiasm overwhelms their intelligence, come up with a new but legally problematic way of helping their favorite team in this comedy. Physical education instructor Mike O'Hara (Daniel Stern) and plumber Jimmy Flaherty (Dan Aykroyd) are close friends and obsessive followe...
Radio(2003) - "Radio", a 23-year-old young man living with intellectual disability, pushes a shopping car along the streets. He is attracted by a high school football team, but after the team's coach (Coach Jones) - taking pity on Radio, both for his disability and his enthusiasm - asks him to help, the team memb...
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) ::: 8.0/10 -- Passed | 2h 32min | Drama, War | 24 August 1930 (USA) -- A German youth eagerly enters World War I, but his enthusiasm wanes as he gets a firsthand view of the horror. Director: Lewis Milestone Writers: Erich Maria Remarque (by), Maxwell Anderson (adaptation) | 3 more credits Stars:
Curb Your Enthusiasm ::: TV-MA | 28min | Comedy | TV Series (2000 ) Season 11 Premiere 2021 -- The life and times of Larry David and the predicaments he gets himself into with his friends and complete strangers. Creator:
Curb Your Enthusiasm ::: TV-MA | 28min | Comedy | TV Series (2000 ) -- The life and times of Larry David and the predicaments he gets himself into with his friends and complete strangers. Creator: Larry David
Curious George (2006) ::: 6.5/10 -- G | 1h 27min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy | 10 February 2006 (USA) -- The Man in the Yellow Hat is an oddball museum employee who looks after his pet monkey, an inquisitive and wonderful creature whose enthusiasm often gets the best of him. Director: Matthew O'Callaghan Writers: Ken Kaufman (screenplay), Ken Kaufman (story) | 3 more credits Stars:
Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999) ::: 8.4/10 -- TV-MA | 59min | Comedy | TV Movie 17 October 1999 -- Mock documentary about Seinfeld writer Larry David featuring contributions from his friends and colleagues. Larry makes a return to stand-up comedy and prepares to film a television special for HBO. Director:
Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999) ::: 8.4/10 -- TV-MA | 59min | Comedy | TV Movie 17 October 1999 -- Mock documentary about Seinfeld writer Larry David featuring contributions from his friends and colleagues. Larry makes a return to stand-up comedy and prepares to film a television special for HBO. Director: Robert B. Weide Writers: Larry David (creator), Larry David Stars:
Long Shot (2017) ::: 7.4/10 -- TV-14 | 40min | Documentary, Crime, Sport | TV Movie 29 September 2017 -- When Juan Catalan is arrested for a murder he insists he didn't commit, he builds his case for innocence around raw footage from a popular TV show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Director: Jacob LaMendola Stars:
Safety Last! (1923) ::: 8.1/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 14min | Action, Comedy, Thriller | 1 April 1923 (USA) -- A boy leaves his small country town and heads to the big city to get a job. As soon as he makes it big his sweetheart will join him and marry him. His enthusiasm to get ahead leads to some interesting adventures. Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer (as Fred Neymeyer), Sam Taylor Writers: Hal Roach (story), Sam Taylor (story) | 2 more credits Stars:
https://curb-your-enthusiasm.fandom.com/wiki/
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Curb_Your_Enthusiasm
https://luckystar.fandom.com/wiki/Agreement_and_Enthusiasm_(Chapter)
Azumanga Daioh -- -- J.C.Staff -- 26 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy School -- Azumanga Daioh Azumanga Daioh -- Chiyo Mihama begins her high school career as one of the strangest students in her freshman class—a tiny, 10-year-old academic prodigy with a fondness for plush dolls and homemade cooking. But her homeroom teacher, Yukari Tanizaki, is the kind of person who would hijack a student's bike to avoid being late, so "strange" is a relative word. -- -- There certainly isn't a shortage of peculiar girls in Yukari-sensei's homeroom class. Accompanying Chiyo are students like Tomo Takino, an energetic tomboy with more enthusiasm than brains; Koyomi Mizuhara, Tomo's best friend whose temper has a fuse shorter than Chiyo; and Sakaki, a tall, athletic beauty whose intimidating looks hide a gentle personality and a painful obsession with cats. In addition, transfer student Ayumu Kasuga, a girl with her head stuck in the clouds, fits right in with the rest of the girls—and she has a few interesting theories about Chiyo's pigtails! -- -- Together, this lovable group of girls experience the ups and downs of school life, their many adventures filled with constant laughter, surreal absurdity, and occasionally even touching commentary on the bittersweet, temporal nature of high school. -- -- 268,177 7.97
Azumanga Daioh -- -- J.C.Staff -- 26 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy School -- Azumanga Daioh Azumanga Daioh -- Chiyo Mihama begins her high school career as one of the strangest students in her freshman class—a tiny, 10-year-old academic prodigy with a fondness for plush dolls and homemade cooking. But her homeroom teacher, Yukari Tanizaki, is the kind of person who would hijack a student's bike to avoid being late, so "strange" is a relative word. -- -- There certainly isn't a shortage of peculiar girls in Yukari-sensei's homeroom class. Accompanying Chiyo are students like Tomo Takino, an energetic tomboy with more enthusiasm than brains; Koyomi Mizuhara, Tomo's best friend whose temper has a fuse shorter than Chiyo; and Sakaki, a tall, athletic beauty whose intimidating looks hide a gentle personality and a painful obsession with cats. In addition, transfer student Ayumu Kasuga, a girl with her head stuck in the clouds, fits right in with the rest of the girls—and she has a few interesting theories about Chiyo's pigtails! -- -- Together, this lovable group of girls experience the ups and downs of school life, their many adventures filled with constant laughter, surreal absurdity, and occasionally even touching commentary on the bittersweet, temporal nature of high school. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, Sentai Filmworks -- 268,177 7.97
Binbou Shimai Monogatari -- -- Toei Animation -- 10 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Drama Seinen -- Binbou Shimai Monogatari Binbou Shimai Monogatari -- The Yamada sisters, Kyou (15) and Asu (9), are students studying in secondary and primary schools respectively. Their mother passed away and their father ran away after incurring gambling debts. Despite the difficult circumstances, both of them decide to overcome the unhappiness and welcome their days with enthusiasm and pride. Fortunately, with the change in the law system several years ago, Kyou is able to study and simultaneously take temporary jobs (such as distributing newspapers and tutoring) to make ends meet. On the other hand, Asu takes charge of household chores, prepares meals, and manages the finances to assist her older sister. Surrounding them are also good and kind neighbors such as the novelist, Saegusa-san, and the aunt at the public bath who watch over them. Although life is difficult and at times painful, the sisters are happy to have each other. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 18,091 6.86
Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi -- -- Amuse, Group TAC -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Ecchi Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi -- Loudmouthed martial artist Junpei Ryuzouji, elegant actress Airi Komiyama, and cheery but artillery-obsessed student Ritsuko Inoue all find themselves transported from their homeland of Japan to an unfamiliar, magical world. When the elven priestess Celcia Marieclaire casts the spell to send them home, she is interrupted, and the spell is broken into parts that scatter throughout the world. The spell fragments imprint themselves onto the skin of various elves. -- -- The trio travels in Ritsuko's tank, searching for elves who might carry the spell fragments so that Celcia can transfer them to her own body and make the spell whole again. As they adventure, people begin to refer to them as "Those Who Hunt Elves," gaining a reputation as warriors that put a stop to evil-doers with their miraculous cannon, terrifying elves by stripping any that they find. Though they're not the smartest group, they make up for it with enthusiasm and their strong determination to get back to Japan. -- -- 21,535 7.02
Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi -- -- Amuse, Group TAC -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Ecchi Fantasy Magic Shounen -- Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi -- Loudmouthed martial artist Junpei Ryuzouji, elegant actress Airi Komiyama, and cheery but artillery-obsessed student Ritsuko Inoue all find themselves transported from their homeland of Japan to an unfamiliar, magical world. When the elven priestess Celcia Marieclaire casts the spell to send them home, she is interrupted, and the spell is broken into parts that scatter throughout the world. The spell fragments imprint themselves onto the skin of various elves. -- -- The trio travels in Ritsuko's tank, searching for elves who might carry the spell fragments so that Celcia can transfer them to her own body and make the spell whole again. As they adventure, people begin to refer to them as "Those Who Hunt Elves," gaining a reputation as warriors that put a stop to evil-doers with their miraculous cannon, terrifying elves by stripping any that they find. Though they're not the smartest group, they make up for it with enthusiasm and their strong determination to get back to Japan. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, Sentai Filmworks -- 21,535 7.02
Fune wo Amu -- -- Zexcs -- 11 eps -- Novel -- Slice of Life Drama Romance -- Fune wo Amu Fune wo Amu -- Kouhei Araki, a veteran editor of the dictionary editorial division at Genbu Publishing, plans to retire in order to better care for his ailing wife. However, before retiring, he must find a replacement to complete his latest project: a new dictionary called "The Great Passage." But no matter where he looks, he cannot find anyone suitable, as making a dictionary requires a wealth of patience, time, and dedication. -- -- Mitsuya Majime works in Genbu Publishing's sales division, yet he has poor social skills and an inability to read the mood in most situations. In spite of this, he excels at having an enthusiasm for words thanks to his love of reading and careful personality. It is these skills that draw Araki to him and prompt him to offer Majime a position in the dictionary editorial department. As Majime accepts his new position, he finds himself unsure of his abilities and questioning whether he will fit in with his new co-workers. Yet amid the vast sea of words, The Great Passage will bring them together. -- -- 91,862 7.64
Fune wo Amu -- -- Zexcs -- 11 eps -- Novel -- Slice of Life Drama Romance -- Fune wo Amu Fune wo Amu -- Kouhei Araki, a veteran editor of the dictionary editorial division at Genbu Publishing, plans to retire in order to better care for his ailing wife. However, before retiring, he must find a replacement to complete his latest project: a new dictionary called "The Great Passage." But no matter where he looks, he cannot find anyone suitable, as making a dictionary requires a wealth of patience, time, and dedication. -- -- Mitsuya Majime works in Genbu Publishing's sales division, yet he has poor social skills and an inability to read the mood in most situations. In spite of this, he excels at having an enthusiasm for words thanks to his love of reading and careful personality. It is these skills that draw Araki to him and prompt him to offer Majime a position in the dictionary editorial department. As Majime accepts his new position, he finds himself unsure of his abilities and questioning whether he will fit in with his new co-workers. Yet amid the vast sea of words, The Great Passage will bring them together. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- 91,862 7.64
GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class -- -- AIC PLUS+ -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy School Seinen -- GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class -- The Ayanoi High School features the Geijutsuka Art Design Class (GA) that focuses on the arts. Five close friends — the energetic "hime"-prankster Noda Miki; the level-headed, cynical Nozaki Namiko; the intelligent, observant, and kind Oomichi Miyabi; the lively and mischievous tomboy Tomokane; and the curious, innocent, glasses-wearing Yamaguchi Kisaragi — attend this class with great enthusiasm, learning about the many art techniques. Every day seems to pose a new and interesting challenge, be it struggling with the latest assignment or when dealing with the daily strangeness of school life. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- TV - Jul 7, 2009 -- 17,651 7.14
Kono Oto Tomare! -- -- Platinum Vision -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Drama Music Romance School Shounen -- Kono Oto Tomare! Kono Oto Tomare! -- Gen Kudou, a koto maker, believes that his delinquent grandson Chika would never understand the profoundness of the traditional musical instrument. In an attempt to make up for his naivety and understand the words of his late grandfather, Chika tries to join the Tokise High School Koto Club. -- -- Even though the club is in dire need of members, new club president Takezou Kurata is unwilling to easily accept Chika's application due to his bad reputation. Nonetheless, after seeing Chika's seriousness and enthusiasm, Takezou allows the problem child to join, along with koto prodigy Satowa Houzuki and three of Chika's energetic friends. Kono Oto Tomare! follows the merry band of musicians as they aspire to play at the national competition. -- -- 157,320 7.87
Kono Oto Tomare! -- -- Platinum Vision -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Drama Music Romance School Shounen -- Kono Oto Tomare! Kono Oto Tomare! -- Gen Kudou, a koto maker, believes that his delinquent grandson Chika would never understand the profoundness of the traditional musical instrument. In an attempt to make up for his naivety and understand the words of his late grandfather, Chika tries to join the Tokise High School Koto Club. -- -- Even though the club is in dire need of members, new club president Takezou Kurata is unwilling to easily accept Chika's application due to his bad reputation. Nonetheless, after seeing Chika's seriousness and enthusiasm, Takezou allows the problem child to join, along with koto prodigy Satowa Houzuki and three of Chika's energetic friends. Kono Oto Tomare! follows the merry band of musicians as they aspire to play at the national competition. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 157,320 7.87
Somali to Mori no Kamisama -- -- HORNETS, Satelight -- 12 eps -- Web manga -- Adventure Slice of Life Demons Drama Fantasy -- Somali to Mori no Kamisama Somali to Mori no Kamisama -- In a world inhabited by demons, cyclopes, and other fantastic creatures, humans stand apart as the outcasts. Quick to anger, the human race engaged in a war that all but wiped them out. The few humans that remain are seen as a delicacy, serving no purpose but to be hunted down and eaten. -- -- One day, Golem, a wandering protector of nature, encounters a lone human child while patrolling. Inspired by her enthusiasm, he takes the girl, named Somali, under his wing. Together, the duo embarks on a journey to find Somali's parents and bring her home. -- -- 204,462 7.82
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