TERMS STARTING WITH
magnificent ::: 1. Making a splendid appearance or show; of exceptional beauty, size, etc. 2. Extraordinarily fine; superb. 3. Noble; sublime. magnificently.
magnificent ::: a. --> Doing grand things; admirable in action; displaying great power or opulence, especially in building, way of living, and munificence.
Grand in appearance; exhibiting grandeur or splendor; splendid&
magnificently ::: adv. --> In a Magnificent manner.
Magnificently natural at this height
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. Large and impressive in size, scope, or extent; magnificent. 2. Most important; chief. 3. Eminent; great in position; stately; majestic. 4. Impressive in size, appearance or general effect. 5. Magnificent or splendid. grander.
25. broad and magnificent frame (S. pṛthucārumandalagātraḥ; T. sku kho lag yangs shing bzang ba; C. shenzhi qimiao/shen runze/miao guangxia xiangcheng 身肢奇妙/身潤澤/妙廣狹相稱)
Al-Azim ::: The magnificent glory beyond any manifestation’s capacity of comprehension.
Al-Jalil ::: The One who, with His magnificent comprehensiveness and perfection, is the sultan of the world of acts.
Al-Majeed ::: The One whose majestic glory is evident through His magnificent manifestations!
Al-Majid ::: The magnificent and glorious One with unrestricted, infinite generosity and endowment (benevolence).
Asuka. (飛鳥). Japan's first historical epoch, named after a region in the plains south of modern NARA. Until the eighth century (710) when the capital was moved to Nara, a new palace, and virtually a new capital, was built every time a new ruler succeeded to the throne. One of the earliest capitals was located in the region of Asuka. The Asuka period is characterized by the rise of powerful aristocratic clans such as the Soga and Mononobe and attempts such as the Taika reform (646) to counteract the rise of these clans and to strengthen the authority of the emperor. According to the NIHON SHOKI ("Historical Records of Japan"), the inception of Buddhism occurred in the Japanese isles during this period, when Emperor Kimmei (r. 532-571) received an image of the Buddha from the King Songmyong of the Korean kingdom of Paekche in 552 (var. 538). Buddhism became the central religion of the Asuka court with the support of such famous figures as Prince SHoTOKU, Empress Suiko (r. 593-628), and Empress Jito (r. 686-697). After the establishment of the grand monastery ASUKADERA by the descendants of a Korean clan, other temples modeled after early Chinese monastery campuses, such as HoRYuJI, were also constructed during this period. These temples enshrined the magnificent sculptures executed by Tori Busshi.
Aura ::: An extremely subtle and therefore invisible essence or fluid that emanates from and surrounds not onlyhuman beings and beasts, but as a matter of fact plants and minerals also. It is one of the aspects of theauric egg and therefore the human aura partakes of all the qualities that the human constitution contains.It is at once magneto-mental and electrovital, suffused with the energies of mind and spirit -- the qualityin each case coming from an organ or center of the human constitution whence it flows. It is the sourceof the sympathies and antipathies that we are conscious of. Under the control of the human will it can beboth life-giving and healing, or death-dealing; and when the human will is passive the aura has an actionof its own which is automatic and follows the laws of character and latent impulses of the being fromwhom it emanates. Sensitives have frequently described it in more or less vague terms as a light flowingfrom the eyes or the heart or the tips of the fingers or from other parts of the body. Sometimes this fluid,instead of being colorless light, manifests itself by flashing and scintillating changes of color -- the coloror colors in each case depending not only upon the varying moods of the human individual, but alsopossessing a background equivalent to the character or nature of the individual. Animals are extremelysensitive to auras, and some beasts even descry the human being surrounded with the aura as with acloud or veil. In fact, everything has its aura surrounding it with a light or play of color, and especially isthis the case with so-called animated beings.The essential nature of the aura usually seen is astral and electrovital. The magnificent phenomena ofradiation that astronomers can discern at times of eclipse, long streamers with rosy and other coloredlight flashing forth from the body of the sun, are not flames nor anything of the sort, but are simply theelectrovital aura of the solar body -- a manifestation of solar vitality, for the sun in occultism is a livingbeing, as indeed everything else is.
auxesis ::: n. --> A figure by which a grave and magnificent word is put for the proper word; amplification; hyperbole.
magnificent ::: 1. Making a splendid appearance or show; of exceptional beauty, size, etc. 2. Extraordinarily fine; superb. 3. Noble; sublime. magnificently.
magnificent ::: a. --> Doing grand things; admirable in action; displaying great power or opulence, especially in building, way of living, and munificence.
Grand in appearance; exhibiting grandeur or splendor; splendid&
magnificently ::: adv. --> In a Magnificent manner.
bright ::: 1. Emitting or reflecting light readily or in large amounts; shining; radiant. 2. Magnificent; glorious. 3. Favourable or auspicious. 4. Fig. Characterized by happiness or gladness; full of promise and hope. 5. Distinct and clear to the mind, etc. 6. Intensely clear and vibrant in tone or quality. 7. Polished; glistening as with brilliant color. brighter, brightest, bright-hued, bright-pinioned, flame-bright, moon-bright, pearl-bright, sun-bright.
buddhayAna. (T. sangs rgyas kyi theg pa; C. fo sheng; J. butsujo; K. pul sŭng 佛乘). In Sanskrit, "buddha vehicle," the conveyance leading to the state of buddhahood. In general, the buddhayAna is synonymous with both the BODHISATTVAYANA and the MAHAYANA, although in some contexts it is considered superior to them, being equivalent to a supreme EKAYANA. When this path is perfected, the adept achieves the full range of special qualities unique to the buddhas (AVEnIKA[BUDDHA]DHARMA), which result from mastery of the perfections (PARAMITA). This understanding of the term buddhayAna and its significance is explained in chapter two of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). There, the Buddha compares three means of salvation to three carts promised to children in an effort to convince them to come out from a burning house. The three carts are said to correspond to the three vehicles (TRIYANA). The first is the sRAVAKAYANA, the vehicle for sRAVAKAs ("disciples"), in which teachings were learned from a buddha and which culminates in becoming a "worthy one" (ARHAT). Next is the PRATYEKABUDDHAYANA, the vehicle of the PRATYEKABUDDHA or "solitary buddha," those who strive for enlightenment but do not rely on a buddha in their last life. The third is the bodhisattvayAna, the path followed by the BODHISATTVA to buddhahood. In the parable in the "Lotus Sutra," the Buddha uses the prospect of these three vehicles to entice the children to leave the burning house; once they are safely outside, they find not three carts waiting for them but instead a single magnificent cart. The Buddha then declares the three vehicles to be a form of skillful means (UPAYAKAUsALYA), for there is in fact only one vehicle (ekayAna), also referred to as the buddha vehicle (buddhayAna). Later exegetes, especially in East Asia, engaged in extensive scholastic investigation of the relationships between the terms bodhisattvayAna, buddhayAna, and ekayAna.
Byodoin. (平等院). A famous Japanese temple located in Uji, south of Kyoto, now associated with the TENDAISHu and JoDOSHu sects. Byodoin is especially famous for its Phoenix Hall (Hoodo), which houses a magnificent image of AMITABHA made by the artist Jocho (d. 1057). The hall, the statue, and fifty-two other small sculptures of BODHISATTVAs making offerings of music to the central AmitAbha statue have been designated as national treasures. The Byodoin AmitAbha image is highly regarded as a representative piece of the refined art of the Fujiwara period (894-1185). Byodoin was originally a villa that belonged to the powerful regent Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1027). The private villa was later transformed by Michinaga's son Yorimichi (992-1074) into a temple in 1052, and the Phoenix Hall was constructed the following year. Many halls dedicated to the buddha AmitAbha were built in this period by powerful aristocrats who were influenced by the growing belief in the notion of mappo (see MOFA), or "the demise of the dharma," wherein the only means of salvation was the practice of nenbutsu, the recitation of AmitAbha's name (see also NIANFO; BUDDHANUSMṚTI). The monk Myoson (d. 1063), originally the abbot of another temple called ONJoJI, was installed as the first abbot of Byodoin.
CulatanhAsankhayasutta. In PAli, "Shorter Discourse on the Destruction of Craving"; the thirty-seventh sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (two separate recensions appear, but without title, in the Chinese translations of the EKOTTARAGAMA and SAMYUKTAGAMA), preached by the Buddha to Sakka (S. sAKRA), king of the gods, in the city of SAvatthi (S. sRAVASTĪ). Sakka inquires how the Buddha trained himself so that he achieved the destruction of craving and reached the ultimate goal of liberation, whereby he became foremost among humans and gods. In response, the Buddha describes how a householder, after renouncing the world, trains himself to purify his mind of mental defilements and reaches the final goal. MahAmoggallAna (MAHAMAUDGALYAYANA) overhears the sermon and travels to the heaven of the thirty-three (P. tAvatiMsa; S. TRAYASTRIMsA) to find out whether Sakka had correctly understood the meaning of the Buddha's words. While there, Sakka gives MahAmoggallAna a tour of his magnificent palace, which the king explains was constructed following the defeat of the demigods (ASURA).
divine ::: adj. **1. Of or pertaining to God or the Supreme Being. 2. Of, relating to, emanating from, or being the expression of a deity. 3. Being in the service or worship of a deity; sacred. 4. Heavenly, celestial. 5. Supremely good or beautiful; magnificent. diviner, divinest, divinely, half-divine. v. 6. To perceive by intuition or insight. divines, divined, divining.**
Ephesus The chief of the twelve Ionic cities on the coast of Asia Minor, where the cultures of western Asia and Greece blended. Associated with Artemis or Diana of the Ephesians, Greek name of the Mylitta, Cybele, etc., of the Asiatic cults. The Ephesian Artemis is represented as a female figure with many breasts, the Great Mother Multimamma. The original temple was built in the 6th century BC, burnt in 356 BC and so magnificently restored that it was enumerated among the seven wonders of the world.
feaster ::: n. --> One who fares deliciously.
One who entertains magnificently.
gallant ::: a. --> Showy; splendid; magnificent; gay; well-dressed.
Noble in bearing or spirit; brave; high-spirited; courageous; heroic; magnanimous; as, a gallant youth; a gallant officer.
Polite and attentive to ladies; courteous to women; chivalrous. ::: n.
glorious ::: 1. Full of glory. 2. Brilliantly beautiful or magnificent; splendid. gloriously.
gorgeous ::: dazzlingly beautiful or magnificent.
gorgeous ::: n. --> Imposing through splendid or various colors; showy; fine; magnificent.
grandeur ::: 1. Nobility or greatness of character. 2. The quality of being magnificent or splendid or grand. Grandeur, grandeur"s, grandeurs.
grand ::: superl. --> Of large size or extent; great; extensive; hence, relatively great; greatest; chief; principal; as, a grand mountain; a grand army; a grand mistake.
Great in size, and fine or imposing in appearance or impression; illustrious, dignifled, or noble (said of persons); majestic, splendid, magnificent, or sublime (said of things); as, a grand monarch; a grand lord; a grand general; a grand view; a grand conception.
hastināga. (P. hatthināga; C. longxiang; J. ryuzo; K. yongsang 龍象). In Sanskrit, "elephant," often referring to an especially magnificent or noble elephant, but sometimes parsed, especially in translation, as the dual compound "elephants and NĀGAs"; a metaphor for a highly advanced Buddhist practitioner. (The Chinese characters translate the compound as "dragons and elephants.") Hastināgas were said to be synonymous with religious virtuosi or worthies (DADE), because dragons and elephants were respectively the most powerful animals in water (and in the water vapor of clouds) and on land. In the East Asia CHAN (J. Zen; K. Son) tradition, "dragons and elephants" as advanced adepts are contrasted with YUNSHUI (J. unsui; K. unsu), lit. "clouds and water," referring to itinerant practitioners and especially novice monks, who were expected to travel to various monasteries to learn from different teachers as part of their training. In Korean monasteries, the "dragons and elephants" (yongsang; C. longxiang) roster is a list of monastic duties, along with the assigned incumbents of the offices, that is posted during the retreat periods (K. kyolche; C. JIEZHI) of winter and summer.
How these magnificent lines from Savitri continue to reverberate in the mind and heart and soul I do not know. I know only this, that Savitri, as Mother has said, is”a mantra for the transformation of the world.” As understanding grows within, not in the mind but in the inner cathedral which is always drenched in light, certain lines repeat themselves as mantra and I share what comes to me in a spirit of wonder and hushed elation.
humble ::: superl. --> Near the ground; not high or lofty; not pretentious or magnificent; unpretending; unassuming; as, a humble cottage.
Thinking lowly of one&
imperial ::: 1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of an empire or a sovereign, especially an emperor or empress. 2. Regal; majestic. 3. Something magnificent or outstanding in size or quality.
::: In India"s languages, they have this OM … which is a marvel. You know what they say? That OM is the totality of the sounds of the creation perceived by the Supreme; He hears OM as a call to Him—as an idea, it"s magnificent! As a symbol, as a … Only …
In India’s languages, they have this OM … which is a marvel. You know what they say? That OM is the totality of the sounds of the creation perceived by the Supreme; He hears OM as a call to Him—as an idea, it’s magnificent! As a symbol, as a … Only …
inspiring mingled reverence and admiration; impressing the emotions or imagination as magnificent; majestic, stately, sublime, solemnly grand; venerable, revered; of supreme dignity.
ita palm ::: --> A magnificent species of palm (Mauritia flexuosa), growing near the Orinoco. The natives eat its fruit and buds, drink its sap, and make thread and cord from its fiber.
Jambupati. In Pāli, lit. "Lord of the Rose Apple"; a type of buddha image found most commonly in the art of Burma (Myanmar) and its Shan state, in which the Buddha is adorned in the royal attire of a "wheel-turning monarch" (CAKRAVARTIN), wearing a magnificent crown and jewels, and seated on a throne. This image derives from a Southeast Asian Buddhist legend (which is apparently unknown in India) about an arrogant king named Jambupati, who terrorized his people. In order to convince him to repent of his unwholesome actions and practice compassion toward his subjects, the Buddha had himself adorned with full royal regalia and seated in a magnificent palace; when Jambupati was brought before the crowned Buddha, he was so humbled by the Buddha's majesty that he repented of his arrogance and took the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA) of a Buddhist layman (UPĀSAKA). In this royal form, the Buddha's UsnĪsA is often extended into a pronounced spire, perhaps suggesting the form of a STuPA. Jambupati Buddha images are most commonly seated in the "earth-touching gesture" (BHuMISPARsAMUDRĀ), although sometimes standing images are also found. The famous ARAKAN BUDDHA, viz., the Mahāmuni image in Arakan (present-day Mandalay), is now crowned in the Jambupati style.
Kanthaka. [alt. Kanthaka] (T. Bsngags ldan; C. Jianzhi; J. Kenjoku; K. Konch'ok 犍陟). In Sanskrit and Pāli, the name of the horse that GAUTAMA rode when he departed from his father's palace in KAPILAVASTU and renounced the world (PRAVRAJITA). Kanthaka was born on the same day as Gautama, as was his groom CHANDAKA. Kanthaka was destined from birth to carry the future buddha from the household life into homelessness and was suitably magnificent in stature for that honor. Eighteen cubits in length, he was white, the color of a conch shell, and the sound of his neighing and gallop resounded throughout the kingdom of Kapilavastu. When he was saddled to carry his master into the wilderness, Kanthaka realized the significance of the event and neighed in exultation. Lest Gautama's father be forewarned and attempt to prevent his departure, the divinities muffled his neighing and the sound of his hoofs. The prince rode on Kanthaka's back, while Chandaka held onto his tail. Outside the city gates, Gautama turned to take a final look at his capital; a shrine (CAITYA) was later erected on the spot in commemoration. Between midnight and dawn, they traveled thirty leagues to the river Anomā. Kanthaka crossed the river in one jump and Gautama and Chandaka dismounted on the other side. There, the BODHISATTVA gave Chandaka his ornaments and directed him to take Kanthaka back to the palace; a shrine commemorating the event was later erected on the spot as well. Kanthaka continued to look at his master as he departed, and when he disappeared from view, Kanthaka died of a broken heart. He was immediately reborn in TRAYASTRIMsA heaven as a deity named Kanthakadevaputra and dwelled in a magnificent palace made of gems, where the ARHAT MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA later visited him.
Kiyomizudera. (清水寺). In Japanese, "Pure Water Monastery"; an important monastery of the Japanese HoSSo school of YOGĀCĀRA Buddhism, located in the Higashiyama (Eastern Mountains) District of Kyoto. The monastery claims to have been founded in 778 by a monk named Enchin and the general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, who stopped on the site for a drink from a waterfall fed by a natural spring, where he met the monk. Together, they contracted to create a magnificent image of an eleven-faced and forty-armed Kannon (AVALOKITEsVARA), which was enshrined in 798 in a temporary hall that was given the name Kiyomizudera. The monastery became a state shrine in 810 and a focus of state-protection Buddhism (see HUGUO FOJIAO) in Japan. The current buildings date from the latest reconstruction of the monastery in 1633. The monastery is perhaps best known for its long veranda that juts over the hillside in front of the main shrine hall; there is a folk tradition dating back to the Edo period that anyone who survives a plunge off the veranda is granted whatever one wishes. The monastery was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.
Klu khang. (Lukang). In Tibetan, the "NĀGA Temple"; a small temple located in the middle of an artificial lake behind the PO TA LA Palace in LHA SA, Tibet, reached by a stone bridge. Its full name is Rdzong rgyab klu khang, the "Nāga Temple Behind the Fortress [i.e., the Po ta la]." According to legend, the regent of the fifth DALAI LAMA, SDE SRID SANGS RGYAS RGYA MTSHO, negotiated an agreement with the king of the nāgas at the time of construction of the Po ta la, receiving the king's permission to dig up the soil in return for building a temple in honor of the nāga king in the center of the lake that formed in the pit from groundwater. The temple was constructed around 1700 during the reign of the sixth Dalai Lama, who is said to have used the upper chamber for romantic assignations. The temple is a small three-storied pavilion in the shape of a MAndALA, with doors in each of the cardinal directions. The temple was rebuilt by the eighth Dalai Lama in 1791 and restored by the thirteenth Dalai Lama, who used it as a retreat. The temple is renowned for a magnificent set of murals on the second and third floors. The murals depict the eighty-four MAHĀSIDDHAs, PADMASAMBHAVA and his chief disciples, illustrations of the human body drawn from Tibetan medicine, a wide arrary of RDZOGS CHEN practices, scenes from the life of the renowned treasure revealer (GTER STON) PADMA GLING PA, and the peaceful and wrathful deities of the BAR DO.
Kusinagarī. [alt. Kusinagara] (P. Kusinārā; T. Rtswa mchog grong; C. Jushinajieluo; J. Kushinagara; K. Kusinagera 拘尸那羅). The town in Uttar Pradesh where the Buddha entered into PARINIRVĀnA among a grove of sĀLA trees. While he was sojourning in VAIsĀLĪ, the Buddha had repeatedly hinted to his disciple ĀNANDA that it would be possible for him to live out the KALPA, if only Ānanda would make such a request. (See CĀPĀLACAITYA.) However, Ānanda did not understand what the Buddha was insinuating and neglected to make the request, so the Buddha renounced his will to live, saying that he would pass away three months hence. (Ānanda is said to have had to confess this mistake when the first Buddhist council was convened; see COUNCIL, FIRST.) After they had traveled to Kusinagarī for the parinirvāna, Ānanda had asked the Buddha not to attain parinirvāna in such a "little mud-walled town, a back-woods town, a branch township," but the Buddha disabused him of this notion, telling him that Kusinagarī had previously been the magnificent capital of an earlier CAKRAVARTIN king named Sudarsana (P. Sudassana). The Buddha passed away on a couch arranged between twin sāla trees. Following the Buddha's cremation, the brāhmana DROnA was called upon to decide the proper procedure for apportioning the Buddha's relics (sARĪRA). Drona divided the relics into eight parts that the disputing kings could carry back to their home kingdoms for veneration and built a reliquary STuPA in Kusinagarī to house the vessel that had temporarily held the relics. As the site of the Buddha's parinirvāna, Kusinagarī became one of the four major Indian pilgrimage sites (MAHĀSTHĀNA) and is often depicted in Buddhist art.
magnifical ::: a. --> Grand; splendid; illustrious; magnificent.
magnificence ::: 1. The quality or state of being magnificent; splendour, grandeur; sublimity, majesty. 2. Greatness or lavishness of surroundings; splendor; luxuriousness, opulence.
magnificence ::: n. --> The act of doing what magnificent; the state or quality of being magnificent.
Magnificently natural at this height
magnifico: magnificent
Mahāparinibbānasuttanta. (S. MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA; C. Youxing jing/Da banniepan jing; J. Yugyokyo/Daihatsunehangyo; K. Yuhaeng kyong/Tae panyolban kyong 遊行經/大般涅槃經). In Pāli, the "Discourse on the Great Decease" or the "Great Discourse on the Final Nirvāna"; the sixteenth sutta of the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA and longest discourse in the Pāli canon. (There were also either Sanskrit or Middle Indic recensions of this mainstream Buddhist version of the scripture, which should be distinguished from the longer MAHĀYĀNA recension of the scripture that bears the same title; see MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA.) There are six different Chinese translations of this mainstream version of the text, including a DHARMAGUPTAKA recension in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHĀGAMA and an independent translation in three rolls by FAXIAN. This scripture recounts in six chapters the last year of Buddha's life, his passage into PARINIRVĀnA, and his cremation. In the text, the Buddha and ĀNANDA travel from Rājagaha (S. RĀJAGṚHA) to Kusināra (S. KUsINAGARĪ) in fourteen stages, meeting with different audiences to whom the Buddha gives a variety of teachings. The narrative contains numerous sermons on such subjects as statecraft, the unity of the SAMGHA, morality, the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, and the four great authorities (MAHĀPADEsA) for determining the authenticity of Buddhist doctrines following the Buddha's demise. The Buddha crosses a river using his magical powers and describes to the distraught where their deceased loved ones have been reborn. Becoming progressively more ill, the Buddha decides to spend his final rains retreat (P. vassa; S. VARsĀ) with Ānanda meditating in the forest near VEnUGRĀMAKA, using his powers of deep concentration to hold his disease in check. He is eighty years old and describes his body as being like an old cart held together by straps. When the Buddha expresses his wish to address the saMgha, Ānanda assumes that there is a teaching that the Buddha has not yet taught. The Buddha replies that he was not one who taught with a "teacher's fist" (P. ācariyamutthi) or "closed fist," holding back some secret teaching, but that he has in fact already revealed everything. The Buddha also says that he is not the head of the saMgha and that after his death each monk should "be an island unto himself" with the DHARMA as his island (P. dīpa; S. dvīpa) and his refuge. ¶ While meditating at the CĀPĀLACAITYA, the Buddha mentions to Ānanda three times that a TATHĀGATA has the power to live for an eon or until the end of an eon. (The Pāli commentaries take "eon" here to mean "his full allotted lifespan," not a cosmological period.) Ānanda, however, misses the hint and does not ask him to do so. MĀRA then appears to remind the Buddha of what he told him at the time of his enlightenment: that he would not enter nibbāna (NIRVĀnA) until he had trained monks and disciples who were able to teach the dhamma (S. DHARMA). Māra tells the Buddha that that task has now been accomplished, and the Buddha eventually agrees, "consciously and deliberately" renouncing his remaining lifespan and informing Māra that he will pass away in three months' time. The earth then quakes, causing the Buddha to explain to Ānanda the eight reasons for an earthquake, one of which is that a tathāgata has renounced his life force. It is only at that point that Ānanda implores the Buddha to remain until the end of the eon, but the Buddha tells him that the appropriate time for his request has passed, and recalls fifteen occasions on which he had told Ānanda of this remarkable power and how each time Ānanda had failed to ask him to exercise it. The Buddha then explains to a group of monks the four great authorities (MAHĀPADEsA), the means of determining the authenticity of a particular doctrine after the Buddha has died and is no longer available to arbitrate. He then receives his last meal from the smith CUNDA. The dish that the Buddha requests is called SuKARAMADDAVA, lit., "pig's delight." There has been a great deal of scholarly discussion on the meaning of this term, centering upon whether it is a pork dish, such as mincemeat, or something eaten by pigs, such as truffles or mushrooms. At the meal, the Buddha announces that he alone should be served the dish and what was left over should be buried, for none but a buddha could survive eating it. Shortly after finishing the dish, the Buddha is afflicted with the dysentery from which he would eventually die. The Buddha then converts a layman named Pukkusa, who offers him gold robes. Ānanda notices that the color of the robes pales next to the Buddha's skin, and the Buddha informs him that the skin of the Buddha is particularly bright on two occasions, the night when he achieves enlightenment and the night that he passes away. Proceeding to the outskirts of the town of Kusinagarī, the Buddha lies down on his right side between twin sāla (S. sĀLA) trees, which immediately bloom out of season. Shortly before dying, the Buddha instructs Ānanda to visit Cunda and reassure him that no blame has accrued to him; rather, he should rejoice at the great merit he has earned for having given the Buddha his last meal. Monks and divinities assemble to pay their last respects to the Buddha. When Ānanda asks how monks can pay respect to the Buddha after he has passed away, the Buddha explains that monks, nuns, and laypeople should visit four major places (MAHĀSTHĀNA) of pilgrimage: the site of his birth at LUMBINĪ, his enlightenment at BODHGAYĀ, his first teaching at ṚsIPATANA (SĀRNĀTH), and his PARINIRVĀnA at Kusinagarī. Anyone who dies while on pilgrimage to one of these four places, the Buddha says, will be reborn in the heavens. Scholars have taken these instructions as a sign of the relatively late date of this sutta (or at least this portion of it), arguing that this admonition by the Buddha is added to promote pilgrimage to four already well-established shrines. The Buddha instructs the monks to cremate his body in the fashion of a CAKRAVARTIN. He says that his remains (sARĪRA) should be enshrined in a STuPA to which the faithful should offer flowers and perfumes in order to gain happiness in the future. The Buddha then comforts Ānanda, telling him that all things must pass away and praising him for his devotion, predicting that he will soon become an ARHAT. When Ānanda laments the fact that the Buddha will pass away at such a "little mud-walled town, a backwoods town, a branch township," rather than a great city, the Buddha disabuses him of this notion, telling him that Kusinagarī had previously been the magnificent capital of an earlier cakravartin king named Sudarsana (P. Sudassana). The wanderer SUBHADRA (P. Subhadda) then becomes the last person to be ordained by the Buddha. When Ānanda laments that the monks will soon have no teacher, the Buddha explains that henceforth the dharma and the VINAYA will be their teacher. As his last disciplinary act before he dies, the Buddha orders that the penalty of brahmadanda (lit. the "holy rod") be passed on CHANDAKA (P. Channa), his former charioteer, which requires that he be completely shunned by his fellow monks. Then, asking three times whether any of the five hundred monks present has a final question, and hearing none, the Buddha speaks his last words, "All conditioned things are subject to decay. Strive with diligence." The Buddha's mind then passed into the first stage of meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA) and then in succession through the other three levels of the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU) and then through the four levels of the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYADHĀTU). He then passed back down through the same eight levels to the first absorption, then back up to the fourth absorption, and then passed away, at which point the earth quaked. Seven days later, his body was prepared for cremation. However, the funeral pyre could not be ignited until the arrival of MAHĀKĀsYAPA (P. Mahākassapa), who had been away at the time of the Buddha's death. After he arrived and paid his respects, the funeral pyre ignited spontaneously. The relics (sARĪRA) of the Buddha remaining after the cremation were taken by the Mallas of Kusinagarī, but seven other groups of the Buddha's former patrons also came to claim the relics. The brāhmana DROnA (P. Dona) was called upon to decide the proper procedure for apportioning the relics. Drona divided the relics into eight parts that the disputing kings could carry back to their home kingdoms for veneration. Drona kept for himself the urn he used to apportion the relics; a ninth person was given the ashes from the funeral pyre. These ten (the eight portions of relics, the urn, and the ashes) were each then enshrined in stupas. At this point the scripture's narrative ends. A similar account, although with significant variations, appears in Sanskrit recensions of the Mahāparinirvānasutra.
Mallā. (T. Gyad kyi yul; C. Moluo [guo]; J. Mara [koku]; K. Mara [kuk] 摩羅[國]). In the plural, the Sanskrit and Pāli name of the people in one of the sixteen countries (MAHĀJANAPADA) that flourished in northern India during the Buddha's lifetime. According to Pāli sources, the Mallā people were divided into two kingdoms, each with its own capital, Pāvā and Kusināra (S. KUsINAGARĪ). The inhabitants of the former city were named Pāveyyakā Mallā, while those of the latter were named Kosinārakā. The Buddha is described as having inaugurated a new assembly hall in Pāvā by offering a sermon there for the populace. This hall was located in the Ambavana grove, which belonged to CUNDA, the blacksmith. Later, in the final year of his life, the Buddha would accept his last meal of SuKARAMADDAVA (pork or possibly mushrooms) from Cunda, on account of which he would fall deathly ill with dysentery. From Cunda's residence in Pāvā, the Buddha made his way to Kusināra where, lying down between twin sāla (S. sĀLA) trees, he passed into parinibbāna (S. PARINIRVĀnA). When Ānanda laments the fact that the Buddha will pass away at such a "little mud-walled town, a backwoods town, a branch township," rather than a great city, the Buddha disabused him of this notion, telling him that Kusinagarī had previously been the magnificent capital named Kusāvatī of an earlier CAKRAVARTIN king named Sudarsana (P. Sudassana). The Buddha's body was cremated at the Makutabandhana shrine in Kusinagarī, after which the relics were removed to the assembly hall. There, the brāhmana Dona (S. DROnA) distributed them among the many claimants from different kingdoms and clans that were demanding their share. The Buddha claimed many disciples from the Mallā country as did his rival, the JAINA leader, Nigantha Nātaputta (S. NIRGRANTHA-JNĀTĪPUTRA). The Mallā belonged to the warrior caste (P. khattiya; S. KsATRIYA), although they are depicted in Buddhist texts as living amicably with their neighbors. In Greek accounts, they are called Malloi, a people who for a time successfully resisted attack by Alexander's forces. If this identification is correct, it would place their country in the area of modern Punjab.
mausoleum ::: n. --> A magnificent tomb, or stately sepulchral monument.
More commonly, a practitioner of one or more various subordinate branches of yoga. There are many grades and kinds of yogis, and the term has become in India a generic name for every kind of ascetic. “In some cases, yogins are men who strive in various ways to conquer the body and physical temptations, for instance by torture of the body. They also study more or less some of the magnificent philosophical teachings of India coming down from far-distant ages of the past; but mere mental study will not make a man a Mahatma, nor will any torture of the body bring about the spiritual vision — the Vision Sublime” (OG 183).
Music of the Spheres ::: Every sphere that runs its course in the abysmal depths of space sings a song as it passes along. Everylittle atom is attuned to a musical note. It is in constant movement, in constant vibration at speeds whichare incomprehensible to the ordinary brain-mind of man; and each such speed has its own numericalquantity, in other words its own numerical note, and therefore sings that note. This is called the music ofthe spheres, and if man had the power of spiritual clairaudience, the life surrounding him would be onegrand sweet song: his very body would be as it were a symphonic orchestra, singing some magnificent,incomprehensible, musical symphonic composition. The growth of a flower, for instance, would be like achanging melody running along from day to day; he could hear the grass grow, and understand why itgrows; he could hear the atoms sing and see their movements, and hear the unison of the songs of allindividual atoms, and the melodies that any physical body produces; and he would know what the stars intheir courses are constantly singing.
nāga. (T. klu; C. long; J. ryu; K. yong 龍). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "serpent" or "dragon" (as in the Chinese), autochthonous beings said to inhabit bodies of water and the roots of great trees, often guarding treasures hidden there. They are depicted iconographically with human heads and torsos but with the tail and hood of a cobra. They inhabit an underwater kingdom filled with magnificent palaces, and they possess a range of magical powers, including the ability to masquerade as humans. Nāgas appear frequently in Buddhist literature in both benevolent and malevolent forms. They are said to be under the command of VIRuPĀKsA, the god of the west, and are guards of the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven. They sometimes appear in the audience of Buddha, most famously in the twelfth chapter of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), where an eight-year-old nāga princess offers a gem to the Buddha. She instantaneously transforms into a male, traverses the ten bodhisattva stages (BHuMI), and achieves buddhahood. This scene is sometimes cited as evidence that women have the capacity to achieve buddhahood. In the story of the Buddha's enlightenment, the Buddha is protected during a rainstorm by the nāga MUCILINDA. The Buddha is said to have entrusted the sATASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ ("Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Lines") to the safekeeping of the nāgas at the bottom of the sea, from whom NĀGĀRJUNA recovered it. Digging the earth is said to displease nāgas, who must therefore be propitiated prior to the construction of a building.
Nandimitra. (T. Dga' ba'i bshes gnyen; C. Qingyou; J. Keiyu; K. Kyongu 慶友) (c. second century CE). An Indian ARHAT, presumed to have been born in Sri Lanka, who is traditionally regarded as the author the Nandimitrāvadāna (Da aluohan Nantimiduoluo suoshuo fazhu ji, abbr. Fazhu ji; "Record of the Duration of the Dharma Spoken by the Great Arhat Nandimitra"), the primary source for the cult of the sixteen (alt. eighteen) ARHAT, or LUOHAN. In this text, which was translated by XUANZANG in 654 CE, Nandimitra explains that, when the Buddha was on his deathbed, he entrusted his religion to sixteen great arhats (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged with watching over and caring for the welfare of the laity and protecting the religious interests of Buddhism. These arhats were to remain in the world until the BODHISATTVA MAITREYA appears as the next buddha. They will then collect all the relics (sARĪRA) of sĀKYAMUNI and build a magnificent STuPA to contain them. After paying homage to the stupa, they will then vanish into PARINIRVĀnA. Nandimitra gives the names of these sixteen arhats and identifies their domains and the size of their retinues.
noble ::: superl. --> Possessing eminence, elevation, dignity, etc.; above whatever is low, mean, degrading, or dishonorable; magnanimous; as, a noble nature or action; a noble heart.
Grand; stately; magnificent; splendid; as, a noble edifice.
Of exalted rank; of or pertaining to the nobility; distinguished from the masses by birth, station, or title; highborn; as, noble blood; a noble personage.
nobly ::: adv. --> Of noble extraction; as, nobly born or descended.
In a noble manner; with greatness of soul; heroically; with magnanimity; as, a deed nobly done.
Splendidly; magnificently.
palace ::: n. --> The residence of a sovereign, including the lodgings of high officers of state, and rooms for business, as well as halls for ceremony and reception.
The official residence of a bishop or other distinguished personage.
Loosely, any unusually magnificent or stately house.
palatial ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a palace; suitable for a palace; resembling a palace; royal; magnificent; as, palatial structures.
Palatal; palatine. ::: n. --> A palatal letter.
pomp ::: 1. Dignified or magnificent display; splendour. Also fig. 2. A procession or pageant. 3. Vain or ostentatious display. pomps.
pompous ::: a. --> Displaying pomp; stately; showy with grandeur; magnificent; as, a pompous procession.
Ostentatious; pretentious; boastful; vainlorious; as, pompous manners; a pompous style.
Prabhutaratna. (T. Mthu ldan rin chen; C. Duobao rulai; J. Taho nyorai; K. Tabo yorae 多寶如來). In Sanskrit, "Abounding in Jewels"; the name of a buddha who appears in chapter eleven of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, the influential "Lotus Sutra." In this chapter, the audience is surprised to see a magnificent jeweled STuPA emerge from the earth and float in space. The Buddha explains that it is the stupa of the buddha Prabhutaratna, who resides in a buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) named ratnavisuddha, or "bejeweled purity." Prabhutaratna appears because, as a BODHISATTVA, he made a vow that he would appear in his bejeweled stupa whenever the Saddharmapundarīkasutra was taught by any TATHĀGATA, in any world system. At the invitation of Prabhutaratna, sĀKYAMUNI Buddha enters the jeweled stupa, and the two buddhas sit side by side. The audience also rises into the sky so that they can see the two buddhas. Although Prabhutaratna never became an object of cultic worship, the image of the two buddhas sitting together was a frequent subject of Buddhist sculpture as early as the fifth century.
princely ::: a. --> Of or relating to a prince; regal; royal; of highest rank or authority; as, princely birth, character, fortune, etc.
Suitable for, or becoming to, a prince; grand; august; munificent; magnificent; as, princely virtues; a princely fortune. ::: adv. --> In a princely manner.
proud ::: 1. Having, proceeding from, or showing a high opinion, dignity, importance, or superiority. 2. Feeling or showing justifiable self-respect. 3. Feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality, or relationship by which one measures one"s stature or self-worth. 4. Of lofty dignity or distinction. 5. Majestic; magnificent. 6. In a bad sense: filled with or showing excessive self-esteem. 7. Highly honourable or creditable.
proud ::: superl. --> Feeling or manifesting pride, in a good or bad sense
Possessing or showing too great self-esteem; overrating one&
regal ::: 1. Of or pertaining to a king or queen; royal. 2. Belonging to or befitting a monarch; magnificent; splendid.
rich ::: 1. Abounding in desirable elements or qualities. 2. Having great worth or value. 3. Abundant. 4. Possessing great material wealth: Also fig. **5. Expensively elegant, elaborate, or fine; costly. 6. Magnificent; sumptuous. 7. Warm and strong in colour. 8. Of sounds: Pleasantly full and mellow. Also fig. richer, richest, richly, rich-coloured, rich-hearted, rich-plumaged.**
royal ::: a. --> Kingly; pertaining to the crown or the sovereign; suitable for a king or queen; regal; as, royal power or prerogative; royal domains; the royal family; royal state.
Noble; generous; magnificent; princely.
Under the patronage of royality; holding a charter granted by the sovereign; as, the Royal Academy of Arts; the Royal Society. ::: n.
Saddharmapundarīkasutra. (T. Dam pa'i chos padma dkar po'i mdo; C. Miaofa lianhua jing/Fahua jing; J. Myohorengekyo/Hokekyo; K. Myobop yonhwa kyong/Pophwa kyong 妙法蓮華經/法華經). In Sanskrit, "Sutra of the White Lotus of the True Dharma," and known in English simply as the "Lotus Sutra"; perhaps the most influential of all MAHĀYĀNA sutras. The earliest portions of the text were probably composed as early as the first or second centuries of the Common Era; the text gained sufficient renown in India that a number of chapters were later interpolated into it. The sutra was translated into Chinese six times and three of those translations are extant. The earliest of those is that made by DHARMARAKsA, completed in 286. The most popular is that of KUMĀRAJĪVA in twenty-eight chapters, completed in 406. The sutra was translated into Tibetan in the early ninth century. Its first translation into a European language was that of EUGÈNE BURNOUF into French in 1852. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra is perhaps most famous for its parables, which present, in various versions, two of the sutra's most significant doctrines: skill-in-means (UPĀYA) and the immortality of the Buddha. In the parable of the burning house, a father lures his children from a conflagration by promising them three different carts, but when they emerge they find instead a single, magnificent cart. The three carts symbolize the sRĀVAKA vehicle, the PRATYEKABUDDHA vehicle, and the BODHISATTVA vehicle, while the one cart is the "one vehicle" (EKAYĀNA), the buddha vehicle (BUDDHAYĀNA). This parable indicates that the Buddha's previous teaching of three vehicles (TRIYĀNA) was a case of upāya, an "expedient device" or "skillful method" designed to attract persons of differing capacities to the dharma. In fact, there is only one vehicle, the vehicle whereby all beings proceed to buddhahood. In the parable of the conjured city, a group of weary travelers take rest in a magnificent city, only to be told later that it is a magical creation. This conjured city symbolizes the NIRVĀnA of the ARHAT; there is in fact no such nirvāna as a final goal in Buddhism, since all will eventually follow the bodhisattva's path to buddhahood. The apparently universalistic doctrine articulated by the sutra must be understood within the context of the sectarian polemics in which the sutra seems to have been written. The doctrine of upāya is intended in part to explain the apparent contradiction between the teachings that appear in earlier sutras and those of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. The former are relegated to the category of mere expedients, with those who fail to accept the consummate teaching of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra as the authentic word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) repeatedly excoriated by the text itself. In a device common in Mahāyāna sutras, the sutra itself describes both the myriad benefits that accrue to those who recite, copy, and revere the sutra, as well as the misfortune that will befall those who fail to do so. The immortality of the Buddha is portrayed in the parable of the physician, in which a father feigns death in order to induce his sons to commit to memory an antidote to poison. The apparent death of the father is compared to the Buddha's entry into nirvāna, something which he only pretended to do in order to inspire his followers. Elsewhere in the sutra, the Buddha reveals that he did not achieve enlightenment as the prince Siddhārtha who left his palace, but in fact had achieved enlightenment eons before; the well-known version of his departure from the palace and successful quest for enlightenment were merely a display meant to inspire the world. The immortality of the Buddha (and other buddhas) is also demonstrated when a great STuPA emerges from the earth. When the door to the funerary reliquary is opened, ashes and bones are not found, as would be expected, but instead the living buddha PRABHuTARATNA, who appears in his stupa whenever the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is taught. sĀKYAMUNI joins him on his seat, demonstrating another central Mahāyāna doctrine, the simultaneous existence of multiple buddhas. Other famous events described in the sutra include the miraculous transformation of a NĀGA princess into a buddha after she presents a gem to sākyamuni and the tale of a bodhisattva who immolates himself in tribute to a previous buddha. The sutra contains several chapters that function as self-contained texts; the most popular of these is the chapter devoted to the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA, which details his ability to rescue the faithful from various dangers. The Saddharmapundarīkasutra was highly influential in East Asia, inspiring both a range of devotional practices as well as the creation of new Buddhist schools that had no Indian analogues. The devotional practices include those extolled by the sutra itself: receiving and keeping the sutra, reading it, memorizing and reciting it, copying it, and explicating it. In East Asia, there are numerous tales of the miraculous benefits of each of these practices. The practice of copying the sutra (or having it copied) was a particularly popular form of merit-making either for oneself or for departed family members. Also important, especially in China, was the practice of burning either a finger or one's entire body as an offering to the Buddha, emulating the self-immolation of the bodhisattva BHAIsAJYARĀJA in the twenty-third chapter (see SHESHEN). In the domain of doctrinal developments, the Saddharmapundarīkasutra was highly influential across East Asia, its doctrine of upāya providing the rationale for the systems of doctrinal taxonomies (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) that are pervasive in East Asian Buddhist schools. In China, the sutra was the central text of the TIANTAI ZONG, where it received detailed exegesis by a number of important figures. The school's founder, TIANTAI ZHIYI, divided the sutra into two equal parts. In the first fourteen chapters, which he called the "trace teaching" (C. jimen, J. SHAKUMON), sākyamuni appears as the historical buddha. In the remaining fourteen chapters, which Zhiyi called the "origin teaching" (C. benmen, J. HONMON), sākyamuni reveals his true nature as the primordial buddha who achieved enlightenment many eons ago. Zhiyi also drew on the Saddharmapundarīkasutra in elucidating two of his most famous doctrines: the three truths (SANDI, viz., emptiness, the provisional, and the mean) and the notion of YINIAN SANQIAN, or "the trichiliocosm in an instant of thought." In the TENDAISHu, the Japanese form of Tiantai, the sutra remained supremely important, providing the scriptural basis for the central doctrine of original enlightenment (HONGAKU) and the doctrine of "achieving buddhahood in this very body" (SOKUSHIN JoBUTSU); in TAIMITSU, the tantric form of Tendai, sākyamuni Buddha was identified with MAHĀVAIROCANA. For the NICHIREN schools (and their offshoots, including SoKA GAKKAI), the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is not only its central text but is also considered to be the only valid Buddhist sutra for the degenerate age (J. mappo; see C. MOFA); the recitation of the sutra's title is the central practice in Nichiren (see NAMU MYoHoRENGEKYo). See also SADĀPARIBHuTA.
sakra. (P. Sakka; T. Brgya byin; C. Di-Shi; J. Taishaku; K. Che-Sok 帝釋). Sanskrit name of a divinity who is often identified with the Vedic god INDRA (with whom he shares many epithets), although it is perhaps more accurate to describe him as a Buddhist (and less bellicose) version of Indra. Typically described in Buddhist texts by his full name and title as "sakra, the king of the gods" (sAKRO DEVĀNĀM INDRAḤ), he is the divinity (DEVA) who appears most regularly in Buddhist texts. sakra is chief of the gods of the heaven of the thirty-three (TRĀYASTRIMsA), located on the summit of Mount SUMERU. As such, he is a god of great power and long life, but is also subject to death and rebirth; the Buddha details in various discourses the specific virtues that result in rebirth as sakra. In both the Pāli canon and the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, sakra is depicted as the most devoted of the divine followers of the Buddha, descending from his heaven to listen to the Buddha's teachings and to ask him questions (and according to some accounts, eventually achieving the state of stream-enterer), and rendering all manner of assistance to the Buddha and his followers. In the case of the Buddha, this assistance was extended prior to his achievement of buddhahood, both in his previous lives (as in the story of Vessantara in the VESSANTARA JĀTAKA) and in his last lifetime as Prince SIDDHĀRTHA; when the prince cuts off his royal locks and throws them into the sky, proclaiming that he will achieve buddhahood if his locks remain there, it is sakra who catches them and installs them in a shrine in the heaven of the thirty-three. When the Buddha later visited the heaven of the thirty-three to teach the ABHIDHARMA to his mother MĀYĀ (who had been reborn there), sakra provided the magnificent ladder for his celebrated descent to JAMBUDVĪPA that took place at SĀMKĀsYA. When the Buddha was sick with dysentery near the end of his life, sakra carried his chamber pot. sakra often descends to earth disguised as a brāhmana in order to test the virtue of the Buddha's disciples, both monastic and lay, offering all manner of miraculous boons to those who pass the test. In the Pāli canon, a section of the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA consists of twenty-five short suttas devoted to him.
sea cocoa ::: --> A magnificent palm (Lodoicea Sechellarum) found only in the Seychelles Islands. The fruit is an immense two-lobed nut. It was found floating in the Indian Ocean before the tree was known, and called sea cocoanut, and double cocoanut.
solempne ::: a. --> Solemn; grand; stately; splendid; magnificent.
solomon ::: n. --> One of the kings of Israel, noted for his superior wisdom and magnificent reign; hence, a very wise man.
splendid ::: 1. Glorious or illustrious; having great beauty and splendour. 2. Distinguished or glorious, as a name, reputation, victory, etc. 3. Imposing by reason of showiness or grandeur; magnificent. 4. Brilliant with light or colour; radiant. (Sometimes used, by way of contrast, to qualify nouns having an opposite or different connotation.) splendidly.
splendid ::: a. --> Possessing or displaying splendor; shining; very bright; as, a splendid sun.
Showy; magnificent; sumptuous; pompous; as, a splendid palace; a splendid procession or pageant.
Illustrious; heroic; brilliant; celebrated; famous; as, a splendid victory or reputation.
splendidly ::: adv. --> In a splendid manner; magnificently.
splendour ::: 1. Great light or lustre; brilliance. 2. Of a quality that outshines the usual; grand, imposing. 3. Magnificent appearance or display. Splendour, splendour"s, splendours, splendour-peaks, splendour-stream, splendour-trance.
stateroom ::: n. --> A magnificent room in a place or great house.
A small apartment for lodging or sleeping in the cabin, or on the deck, of a vessel; also, a somewhat similar apartment in a railway sleeping car.
sumptuous ::: 1. Rich and superior in quality. 2. Magnificent; splendid. 3. Luxuriously fine or large; lavish; splendid.
The Cromagnons were a magnificent race with splendid physical development. The capacity of the skull is 1550 cm cubed while that of the Neanderthal skull is only 1200 cm cubed. “If I had to seek for the people which most nearly represent the Cromagnon blood in the modern world, I would seek them among the tall races of the Punjab in India” (Keith, The Antiquity of Man). Some of the Cromagnons said to show a marked African negroid strain are found on the Mediterranean coast on the frontiers of France and Italy.
triumph ::: n. --> A magnificent and imposing ceremonial performed in honor of a general who had gained a decisive victory over a foreign enemy.
Hence, any triumphal procession; a pompous exhibition; a stately show or pageant.
A state of joy or exultation for success.
Success causing exultation; victory; conquest; as, the triumph of knowledge.
A trump card; also, an old game at cards.
Uttarā-Nandamātā. An eminent laywoman declared by the Buddha to be foremost in the attainment of meditative power. According to Pāli accounts, she was the daughter of Punnaka, a servant of the wealthy man Sumana of Rājagaha (S. RĀGAGṚHA). Uttarā's family was devoted to the Buddha and, on one occasion, while listening to a sermon he was preaching, Uttarā and her parents became stream-enterers (P. sotāpanna; S. SROTAĀPANNA). When Sumana requested that Uttarā be betrothed to his son, he was at first refused on the grounds that his family was not Buddhist. Agreement was reached when Sumana promised that Uttarā would be supplied with sufficient requisites to continue her daily devotions to the Buddha. Her new husband, however, reneged on the agreement and refused to allow her to observe the uposatha (S. UPOsADHA) retreat day because she would have to refrain from intercourse for the night. In order that she could observe the uposatha, Uttarā requested money from her father-in-law so she could hire a courtesan named Sirimā to service her husband. According to legend, there subsequently ensued an incident that led to the enlightenment of the courtesan, her husband, and her father-in-law. It so happened that one day while Uttarā busied herself preparing a magnificent offering for the Buddha and his disciples, her husband was strolling hand in hand with Sirimā. Seeing his wife toiling, he smiled at her foolishness for not using her riches for herself. Uttarā saw her husband and likewise smiled at his foolishness for wasting his life in self-indulgence. Sirimā, misunderstanding their smiles, flew into a jealous rage and threw boiling oil at Uttarā. But through the power of Uttarā's compassion for Sirimā, the oil did not burn her, and, witnessing this miracle, Sirimā understood her mistake and begged forgiveness. Uttarā brought Sirimā to the Buddha, who preached to her, whereupon she became a once-returner (P. sakadāgamī; S. SAKṚDĀGĀMIN). Uttarā's husband and father-in-law, who also heard the sermon, became stream-enterers.
vatican ::: n. --> A magnificent assemblage of buildings at Rome, near the church of St. Peter, including the pope&
Vedic Religion: Or the Religion of the Vedas (q.v.). It is thoroughly cosmological, inspirational and ritualistic, priest and sacrifice playing an important role. It started with belief in different gods, such as Indra, Agni, Surya, Vishnu, Ushas, the Maruts, usually interpreted as symbolizing the forces of nature, but with the development of Hinduism it deteriorated into a worship of thousands of gods corresponding to the diversification of function and status in the complex social organism. Accompanying there was a pronounced tendency toward magic even in Vedic times, while the more elevated thoughts which have found expression in magnificent praises of the one or the other deity finally became crystallized in the philosophic thought of the Upanishads (q.v.). There is a distinct break, however, between Vedic culture with its free and autochthonous religious consciousness and the rigidly caste and custom controlled religion as we know it in India today, as also the religion of bhakti (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Vestals enjoyed special privileges in the State, and in most respects were not subject to the Roman law. On state occasions they were preceded by a lictor and at public spectacles the best seats were reserved for them. In all the greater ceremonies and state festivals they took a prominent part. They had undisputed power to pardon any criminal whom they might meet when on his way to execution, providing the meeting was not prearranged. They could be buried within the walls, a privilege they shared with the Roman Emperor alone. Public slaves were appointed to serve them; they were the custodians of important state papers. They lived in almost royal splendor in the magnificent Atrium Vestae which adjoined the official fanum of the pontifex maximus himself. Their chief festival was the Vestalia, held on June 9th. From the central fire which they tended, the altars of other gods obtained their fires, and even distant colonies were not held to be consecrated until their own altar fires were lighted with fire from the central hearth. Compared with this cult in other parts of the world, especially in India where originally there was a lofty worship requiring the completest chastity and renunciation of the devadasis or nachnis of the temples, the cult in Rome, despite worldliness, seems to have suffered less degeneration than might have been expected from the theoretical and actual power surrounding it.
yāna. (T. theg pa; C. sheng; J. jo; K. sŭng 乘). In Sanskrit, "vehicle," "conveyance"; a common Sanskrit term for any means of transportation (in Pāli materials and in many of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS, the term is generally used in this literal sense). In MAHĀYĀNA literature, the term takes on great significance in the metaphorical sense of a mode of transportation along the path to enlightenment, becoming a constituent of the term Mahāyāna ("Great Vehicle") itself. In Mahāyāna SuTRAs and sĀSTRAs, this rhetorical sense of the term is often put to polemical use, with the followers of the Buddha being placed into three or two vehicles. The three vehicles are the BODHISATTVAYĀNA or Mahāyāna, the PRATYEKABUDDHAYĀNA, and the sRĀVAKAYĀNA. The two vehicles are the Mahāyāna and the HĪNAYĀNA (the "lesser vehicle," or even more disparagingly, "base vehicle" or "vile vehicle"), which subsumes the pratyekabuddhayāna and the srāvakayāna. Other uses of the term yāna include the BUDDHAYĀNA and the EKAYĀNA ("one vehicle"), whose precise relationship to the bodhisattvayāna and the Mahāyāna is discussed in the scholastic literature. Among the Mahāyāna sutras, the most celebrated expression of the rhetoric of the yānas occurs in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") where, in the parable of the burning house, a father promises to reward his children with three different carriages (yāna) when in fact there is only a single magnificent carriage. With the rise of tantric Buddhism, the Mahāyāna itself is divided into two, the PĀRAMITĀYĀNA or "perfection vehicle," referring to the path to buddhahood involving successive mastery of the perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) as set forth in the sutras, and the MANTRAYĀNA or "mantra vehicle," referring to the path to buddhahood as set forth in the TANTRAs (although some scholars have argued that the proper term here is not yāna, but naya, meaning "mode" or "principle"). The tantric teachings are also variously referred to as the GUHYAMANTRAYĀNA ("secret mantra vehicle"), the PHALAYĀNA ("fruition vehicle"), and, most famously, as the VAJRAYĀNA ("diamond vehicle" or "thunderbolt vehicle").
Yogi(Yogin, Sanskrit) ::: A yogi is a devotee, one who practices the Yoga system or one or more of its varioussubordinate branches.In some cases, yogis are those who strive in various ways to conquer the body and physical temptations,for instance by torture of the body. They also study more or less some of the magnificent philosophicalteachings of India coming down from far distant ages of the past; but mere mental study will not make aman a mahatma, nor will any torture of the body bring about the spiritual vision -- the vision sublime.(See also Yoga)
Zenkoji. (善光寺). In Japanese, "Monastery of the Radiance of Goodness"; located in modern-day Nagano. According to the Zenkoji engi, the monastery was built at the beginning of the seventh century by a certain Honda Yoshimitsu to enshrine a famous Amida (AMITĀBHA) triad. In the ancient Indian kingdom of VAIsĀLĪ, a merchant by the name of Somachattra is said to have warded off epidemic demons and cured his daughter by invoking the name of the buddha Amitābha ten times. Somachattra was so moved by the appearance of Amitābha and his two attendants AVALOKITEsVARA and MAHĀSTHĀMAPRĀPTA in the sky that he asked the Buddha for an icon to be made in their likeness. The triad was then forged with special gold from the dragon king's palace and worshipped as a living manifestation of Amitābha and his attendants. Somachattra was later reborn as King Song (r. 523-553) of the Korean kingdom of Paekche. The triad first traveled to Paekche to aid King Song, after which it was taken to Japan. Honda Yoshimitsu is said to have discovered the triad in the Naniwa Canal and enshrined it in his house, which was later transformed into a magnificent buddha hall by Empress Kogyoku (r. 642-645). With support from the Hojo bakufu, a Zenkoji cult proliferated especially during the Kamakura period and onwards, and numerous replicas of the "original" (Shinano) Zenkoji triad were made and enshrined in Shin ("New") Zenkoji temples. For centuries, the (Shinano) Zenkoji in Nagano remained under the control of another powerful TENDAISHu monastery known as MIIDERA. Zenkoji was devastated by fire in 1179, but legendary accounts testify to the miraculous escape of the "original" triad, which now remains as a secret buddha (HIBUTSU) image largely unavailable for public viewing. After the Japanese monk IPPEN's visit to Zenkoji, several Shin Zenkoji temples also came to be associated with his tradition, the JISHu.
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1 Gabby Bernstein
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1 Saint Teresa of Avila
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1:What is more magnificent than the beauty of God? ~ Saint Basil of Caesarea, #KEYS
2:Leave your pain here. Go out and do your magnificent things." ~ Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, #KEYS
3:A new day is coming, the magnificent day of radiant beauty when I return to myself. ~ Quetzalcoatl, #KEYS
4:My soul endures a magnificent longing. ~ Hafiz, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
5:Accept right now that you are magnificent. Being your real, true, authentic self is what's most awesome about you." ~ Gabby Bernstein, #KEYS
6:Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
7:170. A magnificent temple towers to heaven by the Eternal Bridge.
Priests rival in its halls the sermons of rocks and streams.
I, for one, would gladly sacrifice my brows for my brethren,
But I fear I might aggravate the war, already rank as weeds. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#KEYS
8:The magnificent cosmos is a palace that has the sun and the moon as its lamps and the stars as its candles; time is like a rope or ribbon hung within it, on to which the Glorious Creator each year threads a new world. ~ - Said Nursi, @Sufi_Path #KEYS
9:All this is Brahman immortal, naught else; Brahman is in front of us, Brahman behind us, and to the south of us and to the north of us and below us and above us; it stretches everywhere. All this is Brahman alone, all this magnificent universe.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena And Other Upanishads,#KEYS
10:8. Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, #KEYS
11:Drugs are able to bring humans into the neighborhood of divine experience and can thus carry us up from our personal fate and the everyday circumstances of our life into a higher form of reality. It is, however, necessary to understand precisely what is meant by the use of drugs. We do not mean the purely physical craving...That of which we speak is something much higher, namely the knowledge of the possibility of the soul to enter into a lighter being, and to catch a glimpse of deeper insights and more magnificent visions of the beauty, truth, and the divine than we are normally able to spy through the cracks in our prison cell. But there are not many drugs which have the power of stilling such craving. The entire catalog, at least to the extent that research has thus far written it, may include only opium, hashish, and in rarer cases alcohol, which has enlightening effects only upon very particular characters. ~ The Hashish Eater, (1857) pg. 181 #KEYS
12:The key one and threefold, even as universal science. The division of the work is sevenfold, and through these sections are distributed the seven degrees of initiation into is transcendental philosophy.
The text is a mystical commentary on the oracles of Solomon, ^ and the work ends with a series of synoptic schedules which are the synthesis of Magic and the occult Kabalah so far as concerns that which can be made public in writing. The rest, being the esoteric and inexpressible part of the science, is formulated in magnificent pantacles carefully designed and engraved. These are nine in number, as follows
(1) The dogma of Hermes;
(2) Magical realisation;
(3) The path of wisdom and the initial procedure in the work
(4) The Gate of the Sanctuary enlightened by seven mystic rays;
(5) A Rose of Light, in the centre of which a human figure is extending its arms in the form of a cross;
(6) The magical laboratory of Khunrath, demonstrating the necessary union of prayer and work
(7) The absolute synthesis of science;
(8) Universal equilibrium ;
(9) A summary of Khunrath's personal embodying an energetic protest against all his detractors. ~ Eliphas Levi, The History Of Magic,#KEYS
13:When I was a child of about thirteen, for nearly a year every night as soon as I had gone to bed it seemed to me that I went out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the city, very high above. Then I used to see myself clad in a magnificent golden robe, much longer than myself; and as I rose higher, the robe would stretch, spreading out in a circle around me to form a kind of immense roof over the city. Then I would see men, women, children, old men, the sick, the unfortunate coming out from every side; they would gather under the outspread robe, begging for help, telling of their miseries, their suffering, their hardships. In reply, the robe, supple and alive, would extend towards each one of them individually, and as soon as they had touched it, they were comforted or healed, and went back into their bodies happier and stronger than they had come out of them. Nothing seemed more beautiful to me, nothing could make me happier; and all the activities of the day seemed dull and colourless and without any real life, beside this activity of the night which was the true life for me. Often while I was rising up in this way, I used to see at my left an old man, silent and still, who looked at me with kindly affection and encouraged me by his presence. This old man, dressed in a long dark purple robe, was the personification-as I came to know later-of him who is called the Man of Sorrows. ~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, #KEYS
14:If we analyse the classes of life, we readily find that there are three cardinal classes which are radically distinct in function. A short analysis will disclose to us that, though minerals have various activities, they are not "living." The plants have a very definite and well known function-the transformation of solar energy into organic chemical energy. They are a class of life which appropriates one kind of energy, converts it into another kind and stores it up; in that sense they are a kind of storage battery for the solar energy; and so I define THE PLANTS AS THE CHEMISTRY-BINDING class of life.
The animals use the highly dynamic products of the chemistry-binding class-the plants-as food, and those products-the results of plant-transformation-undergo in animals a further transformation into yet higher forms; and the animals are correspondingly a more dynamic class of life; their energy is kinetic; they have a remarkable freedom and power which the plants do not possess-I mean the freedom and faculty to move about in space; and so I define ANIMALS AS THE SPACE-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE.
And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them-I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,#KEYS
15:HOW CAN I READ SAVITRI?
An open reply by Dr Alok Pandey to a fellow devotee
A GIFT OF LOVE TO THE WORLD
Most of all enjoy Savitri. It is Sri Aurobindo's gift of Love to the world. Read it from the heart with love and gratitude as companions and drown in its fiery bliss. That is the true understanding rather than one that comes by a constant churning of words in the head.
WHEN
Best would be to fix a time that works for you. One can always take out some time for the reading, even if it be late at night when one is done with all the daily works. Of course, a certain receptivity is needed. If one is too tired or the reading becomes too mechanical as a ritual routine to be somehow finished it tends to be less effective, as with anything else. Hence the advice is to read in a quiet receptive state.
THE PACE
As to the pace of reading it is best to slowly build up and keep it steady. To read a page or a passage daily is better than reading many pages one day and then few lines or none for days. This brings a certain discipline in the consciousness which makes one receptive. What it means is that one should fix up that one would read a few passages or a page or two daily, and then if an odd day one is enjoying and spontaneously wants to read more then one can go by the flow.
COMPLETE OR SELECTIONS?
It is best to read at least once from cover to cover. But if one is not feeling inclined for that do read some of the beautiful cantos and passages whose reference one can find in various places. This helps us familiarise with the epic and the style of poetry. Later one can go for the cover to cover reading.
READING ALOUD, SILENTLY, OR WRITING DOWN?
One can read it silently. Loud reading is needed only if one is unable to focus with silent reading. A mantra is more potent when read subtly. I am aware that some people recommend reading it aloud which is fine if that helps one better. A certain flexibility in these things is always good and rigid rules either ways are not helpful.
One can also write some of the beautiful passages with which one feels suddenly connected. It is a help in the yoga since such a writing involves the pouring in of the consciousness of Savitri through the brain and nerves and the hand.
Reflecting upon some of these magnificent lines and passages while one is engaged in one\s daily activities helps to create a background state for our inner being to get absorbed in Savitri more and more.
HOW DO I UNDERSTAND THE MEANING? DO I NEED A DICTIONARY?
It is helpful if a brief background about the Canto is known. This helps the mind top focus and also to keep in sync with the overall scene and sense of what is being read.
But it is best not to keep referring to the dictionary while reading. Let the overall sense emerge. Specifics can be done during a detailed reading later and it may not be necessary at all. Besides the sense that Sri Aurobindo has given to many words may not be accurately conveyed by the standard dictionaries. A flexibility is required to understand the subtle suggestions hinted at by the Master-poet.
In this sense Savitri is in the line of Vedic poetry using images that are at once profound as well as commonplace. That is the beauty of mystic poetry. These are things actually experienced and seen by Sri Aurobindo, and ultimately it is Their Grace that alone can reveal the intrinsic sense of this supreme revelation of the Supreme. ~ Dr Alok Pandey,#KEYS
16:The supreme Form is then made visible. It is that of the infinite Godhead whose faces are everywhere and in whom are all the wonders of existence, who multiplies unendingly all the many marvellous revelations of his being, a world-wide Divinity seeing with innumerable eyes, speaking from innumerable mouths, armed for battle with numberless divine uplifted weapons, glorious with divine ornaments of beauty, robed in heavenly raiment of deity, lovely with garlands of divine flowers, fragrant with divine perfumes. Such is the light of this body of God as if a thousand suns had risen at once in heaven. The whole world multitudinously divided and yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods. Arjuna sees him, God magnificent and beautiful and terrible, the Lord of souls who has manifested in the glory and greatness of his spirit this wild and monstrous and orderly and wonderful and sweet and terrible world, and overcome with marvel and joy and fear he bows down and adores with words of awe and with clasped hands the tremendous vision. "I see" he cries "all the gods in thy body, O God, and different companies of beings, Brahma the creating lord seated in the Lotus, and the Rishis and the race of the divine Serpents. I see numberless arms and bellies and eyes and faces, I see thy infinite forms on every side, but I see not thy end nor thy middle nor thy beginning, O Lord of the universe, O Form universal. I see thee crowned and with thy mace and thy discus, hard to discern because thou art a luminous mass of energy on all sides of me, an encompassing blaze, a sun-bright fire-bright Immeasurable. Thou art the supreme Immutable whom we have to know, thou art the high foundation and abode of the universe, thou art the imperishable guardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soul of existence."
But in the greatness of this vision there is too the terrific image of the Destroyer. This Immeasurable without end or middle or beginning is he in whom all things begin and exist and end.
This Godhead who embraces the worlds with his numberless arms and destroys with his million hands, whose eyes are suns and moons, has a face of blazing fire and is ever burning up the whole universe with the flame of his energy. The form of him is fierce and marvellous and alone it fills all the regions and occupies the whole space between earth and heaven. The companies of the gods enter it, afraid, adoring; the Rishis and the Siddhas crying "May there be peace and weal" praise it with many praises; the eyes of Gods and Titans and Giants are fixed on it in amazement. It has enormous burning eyes; it has mouths that gape to devour, terrible with many tusks of destruction; it has faces like the fires of Death and Time. The kings and the captains and the heroes on both sides of the world-battle are hastening into its tusked and terrible jaws and some are seen with crushed and bleeding heads caught between its teeth of power; the nations are rushing to destruction with helpless speed into its mouths of flame like many rivers hurrying in their course towards the ocean or like moths that cast themselves on a kindled fire. With those burning mouths the Form of Dread is licking all the regions around; the whole world is full of his burning energies and baked in the fierceness of his lustres. The world and its nations are shaken and in anguish with the terror of destruction and Arjuna shares in the trouble and panic around him; troubled and in pain is the soul within him and he finds no peace or gladness. He cries to the dreadful Godhead, "Declare to me who thou art that wearest this form of fierceness. Salutation to thee, O thou great Godhead, turn thy heart to grace. I would know who thou art who wast from the beginning, for I know not the will of thy workings." ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita, 2.10_-_The_Vision_of_the_World-Spirit_-_Time_the_Destroyer,#KEYS
17: 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
18:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.
Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6
The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called "half-dream states" provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:
I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7
Ouspensky's half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all "without definite efforts." 8
Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky's: "While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention." 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:
Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.
At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.
I thought, "Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?" As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints - delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10
Hypnagogic Imagery Technique
1. Relax completely
While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.
Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,
slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.
2. Observe the visual images
Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind's eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.
3. Enter the dream
When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,
but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don't forget that you are dreaming now!
Commentary
Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, "It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,
since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear." 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey's words, "Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively." 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: "While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand." 13
Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport's WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,#KEYS
19:
Why do we forget our dreams?
Because you do not dream always at the same place. It is not always the same part of your being that dreams and it is not at the same place that you dream. If you were in conscious, direct, continuous communication with all the parts of your being, you would remember all your dreams. But very few parts of the being are in communication.
For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and five o'clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentive - quietly attentive - and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is established - very rarely is there no communication.
Now, dreams are mostly forgotten because you have a dream while in a certain state and then pass into another. For instance, when you sleep, your body is asleep, your vital is asleep, but your mind is still active. So your mind begins to have dreams, that is, its activity is more or less coordinated, the imagination is very active and you see all kinds of things, take part in extraordinary happenings.... After some time, all that calms down and the mind also begins to doze. The vital that was resting wakes up; it comes out of the body, walks about, goes here and there, does all kinds of things, reacts, sometimes fights, and finally eats. It does all kinds of things. The vital is very adventurous. It watches. When it is heroic it rushes to save people who are in prison or to destroy enemies or it makes wonderful discoveries. But this pushes back the whole mental dream very far behind. It is rubbed off, forgotten: naturally you cannot remember it because the vital dream takes its place. But if you wake up suddenly at that moment, you remember it. There are people who have made the experiment, who have got up at certain fixed hours of the night and when they wake up suddenly, they do remember. You must not move brusquely, but awake in the natural course, then you remember.
After a time, the vital having taken a good stroll, needs to rest also, and so it goes into repose and quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of adventures. Then something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering, seeing the rooms and... why, this thing that was there, but it has come here and that other thing which was in that room is now in this one, and so on. If you wake up without stirring, you remembeR But this has pushed away far to the back of the consciousness all the stories of the vital. They are forgotten and so you cannot recollect your dreams. But if at the time of waking up you are not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long as you wish, you need not even open your eyes; you keep your head exactly where it was and you make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of the tail of your dream. You catch it and start pulling gently, without stirring in the least. You begin pulling quite gently, and then first one part comes, a little later another. You go backward; the last comes up first. Everything goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole dream reappears: "Ah, there! it was like that." Above all, do not jump up, do not stir; you repeat the dream to yourself several times - once, twice - until it becomes clear in all its details. Once that dream is settled, you continue not to stir, you try to go further in, and suddenly you catch the tail of something else. It is more distant, more vague, but you can still seize it. And here also you hang on, get hold of it and pull, and you see that everything changes and you enter another world; all of a sudden you have an extraordinary adventure - it is another dream. You follow the same process. You repeat the dream to yourself once, twice, until you are sure of it. You remain very quiet all the time. Then you begin to penetrate still more deeply into yourself, as though you were going in very far, very far; and again suddenly you see a vague form, you have a feeling, a sensation... like a current of air, a slight breeze, a little breath; and you say, "Well, well...." It takes a form, it becomes clear - and the third category comes. You must have a lot of time, a lot of patience, you must be very quiet in your mind and body, very quiet, and you can tell the story of your whole night from the end right up to the beginning.
Even without doing this exercise which is very long and difficult, in order to recollect a dream, whether it be the last one or the one in the middle that has made a violent impression on your being, you must do what I have said when you wake up: take particular care not even to move your head on the pillow, remain absolutely still and let the dream return.
Some people do not have a passage between one state and another, there is a little gap and so they leap from one to the other; there is no highway passing through all the states of being with no break of the consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not remember. It is like a precipice across which one has to extend the consciousness. To build a bridge takes a very long time; it takes much longer than building a physical bridge.... Very few people want to and know how to do it. They may have had magnificent activities, they do not remember them or sometimes only the last, the nearest, the most physical activity, with an uncoordinated movement - dreams having no sense.
But there are as many different kinds of nights and sleep as there are different days and activities. There are not many days that are alike, each day is different. The days are not the same, the nights are not the same. You and your friends are doing apparently the same thing, but for each one it is very different. And each one must have his own procedure.
Why are two dreams never alike?
Because all things are different. No two minutes are alike in the universe and it will be so till the end of the universe, no two minutes will ever be alike. And men obstinately want to make rules! One must do this and not that.... Well! we must let people please themselves.
You could have put to me a very interesting question: "Why am I fourteen years old today?" Intelligent people will say: "It is because it is the fourteenth year since you were born." That is the answer of someone who believes himself to be very intelligent. But there is another reason. I shall tell this to you alone.... I have drowned you all sufficiently well! Now you must begin to learn swimming!
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 36?,#KEYS
20:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:I believe in a magnificent God. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 2:Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 3:Life is to be lived as a magnificent adventure, or not at all. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 4:The world is a magnificent place. What are you going to do with it? ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 5:The visible is only the shoreline of the magnificent ocean of the invisible. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 6:I believe I have created something magnificent and I want to be a match to it. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 7:Be grateful everyday for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 8:This magnificent universe provides abundantly when you're in a state of gratitude. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 9:To succeed, work hard, never give up and above all cherish a magnificent obsession. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 10:the whole world is caught in her glance and at last the universe is magnificent. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 11:This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 12:Every aspect of life is magnificent and wonderful. It's so important to keep fit and healthy. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 13:You, of Canada, are building a magnificent record of achievement. My country rejoices in it. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 14:I pray you, magnificent Sir, do not trouble yourself to return to us, but await our coming to you. ~ giordano-bruno, @wisdomtrove 15:When you make feeling good a priority, that magnificent frequency will radiate and touch everyone close to you. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 16:Imitate the magnificent trees that speak no word of their rapture, but only breathe largely the luminous breeze. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 17:Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 18:Stand Tall, Stand Proud. Know that you are unique and magnificent. You do not need the approval of others. ~ jonathan-lockwood-huie, @wisdomtrove 19:When passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is incomprehensible and even a little despicable. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 20:Profanity is the parlance of the fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to discourse? ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 21:Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 22:There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 23:that your power of command with simple language was one of the magnificent things of our century. (from the poem: result) ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 24:Who you really are is a clear-minded, magnificent, good-feeling, brilliant, creative, loving genius. That is who you really are. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 25:I have a magnificent obsession. All I want to do is change the world ... make it a better place for this and future generations. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 26:The unmet need that can get met right now is the need to be whole, to be both your magnificent, divine self and your imperfect, human self. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 27:Your mind sparks, your soul sparkles, your peace is counterpoint to the clamor of life, you are a magnificent gift to the world. ~ jonathan-lockwood-huie, @wisdomtrove 28:The result was magnificent . . . I became the father of two girls and two boys, lovely children by good fortune they all look like my wife. ~ arthur-rubinstein, @wisdomtrove 29:The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 30:The winners in life treat their body as if it were a magnificent spacecraft that gives them the finest transportation and endurance for their lives. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 31:Human beings have created a mountain of words to explain the nature of reality, but under all the words the mystery of life remains as magnificent as ever. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 32:No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 33:Any time I have seen someone accomplishing something magnificent, they have been a monomaniac with a mission. A single-minded individual with a passion. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 34:The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 35:Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 36:Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 37:When a woman falls in love with the magnificent possibilities within herself, the forces that would limit those possibilities hold less and less sway over her. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 38:The Universe favors the brave. When you resolve to lift your life to its highest level, the strength of your soul will guide you to a magical place with magnificent treasures. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 39:It is safe to look within. As I move through the layers of other people's opinions and beliefs, I see within myself a magnificent being, wise and beautiful. I love what I see in me. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 40:Magnificent autumn! He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds; not like a hermit, clad in gray; but like a warrior with the stain of blood in his brazen mail. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 41:And still the mad magnificent herald Spring assembles beauty from forgetfulness with the wild trump of April:witchery of sound and odour drives the wingless thing man forth in the bright air. ~ e-e-cummings, @wisdomtrove 42:Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 43:I am a Divine, magnificent expression of life, and deserve the very best. I accept miracles. I accept healing. I accept wholeness. And most of all, I accept myself. I am precious, and I cherish who I am. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 44:Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal. ~ fred-rogers, @wisdomtrove 45:When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 46:If you go to a place of power, the beings are higher, magnificent beings of light. They are not from our world. They pass through it, the place where dimensions touch, where there are many worlds present. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 47:Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 48:Timeless awareness occurs to very few in this world, to step beyond the circle of fear. The body has created a magnificent arena of fear. We have developed ways of seeing life that exclude us from seeing life. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 49:A god who gave us everything we wanted would be the most malevolent god of all. With an infantile curiosity, we insist on tasting the cockroach on the floor while our father is preparing a magnificent feast for us. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 50:Celtic spirituality is awakening so powerfully now because it illuminates the fact that the visible is only one little edge of things. The visible is only the shoreline of the magnificent ocean of the invisible. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 51:The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine... . If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror and amusement, so magnificent is the spirit. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 52:Astronomy, that micography of heaven, is the most magnificent of the sciences. ... Astronomy has its clear side and its luminous side; on its clear side it is tinctured with algebra, on its luminous side with poetry. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 53:What kind of dog is that?" I would always give the same answer: "She's a brown dog." Similarly, when the question is raised, "What kind of God do you believe in?" my answer is easy: "I believe in a magnificent God. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 54:Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 55:The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 56:There is a magnificent new militancy within the Negro community all across this nation. And I welcome this as a marvelous development. The Negro of America is saying he's determined to be free and he is militant enough to stand up. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 57:Samskrit language, as has been universally recognized by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect, the most prominent and wonderfully sufficient literary instrument developed by the human mind. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 58:Nothing in the last few years has dazzled me more than Hilary Mantel's & 59:Since most of our fears are based on dark imaginings, it is vital for us to dwell on our magnificent obsessions and desired results - to look at where we want to go, as opposed to that troubled place where we may have been or may still be hiding. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 60:Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of things which are splendid or valuable in themselves is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 61:Energetically we are all of life that has ever been on this earth, all the trees and the flowers are energetically inside of us. What we are is utterly magnificent. Barry Long ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 62:Topographically the country is magnificent - and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 63:A man of 25 has before him some 100,000 working hours should he retire at 65. How many of your working hours will be alive with the magnificent force of positive mental attitude? And how many of them will have the life knocked out of them with the stunning blows of negative mental attitude? ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 64:There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind... There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove 65:I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 66:The whole world is, to me, very much "alive" - all the little growing things, even the rocks. I can't look at a swell bit of grass and earth, for instance, without feeling the essential life - the things going on - within them. The same goes for a mountain, or a bit of the ocean, or a magnificent piece of old wood. ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 67:In Hinduism, Shiva the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance - a magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the Universe. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove 68:He did not understand all he had heard, but from his clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 69:To the glistening Eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy, the Valiant. To the great Western Wood, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant Southern sun, Queen Susan, the Gentle; and to the clear Northern sky I give you King Peter, the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen. May your wisdom grace us 'til the stars rain down from the heavens. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 70:Paradoxically, it’s easier to relax into the mystery when we have a strong sense of our story. In my experience, when I am conscious that I both know and don’t know what life is, I fall in love with the magnificent enigma of existence. I feel the mystery around me like a warm embrace and within me like a reassuring presence. I am far from terrified. I am wonderstruck. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 71:Do not let a moment go by in which you have an opportunity to tell someone how magnificent they are. Give people the gift of self- esteem, and you will have given them a gift that many connot find a way to give themselves. Yet when they find themselves through their own grandest idea of who they really are, they are lost no more, for you have returned them to themselves. ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove 72:Life is a constant process of limitless creation. It is about recreating Who You are, by remembering all you have always known, and choosing what you want to experience of your Self. Go therefore into this magnificent world of your creation and make your lifetime an extraordinary statement of and a breath-taking experience of the greatest idea that you have ever had of yourself. ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove 73:For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 74:Within the miraculous brew of universal creativity , all you desire already exists. Spend five minutes each morning with your eyes closed, living in that dimension. Allow images to unfold without censor. Feel yourself living the most magnificent life - a life of joy, creativity and love - as you grow inwardly into the person you need to be in order to manifest it effortlessly. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 75:Our self-perception determines our behavior. If we think we’re small, limited, inadequate creatures, then we tend to behave that way, and the energy we radiate reflects those thoughts no matter what we do. If we think we’re magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that way. Once again, the energy around us reflects our state of awareness. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 76:We went all the way down the Himalayan chain for a day and a half. That was magnificent, except the Chinese told us they were going to shoot us down if we came out the far end. So I spent a lot of my time contacting former Prime Minister Tony Blair begging him to tell the Chinese we were coming in this direction by mistake and could he please say we have no nasty motives for flying into their territory. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 77:As I sit here bathing in the warm night air, I feel washed by the ebb and flow of the polarities of existence. I'm immersed in the mystery and I'm contemplating my story. I have a timeless perspective on a temporary world. I'm the presence of awareness appreciating the show. I'm insignificant and vulnerable, yet magnificent and secure. I'm a transitory speck of cosmic dust, but I'm the star of the story of Tim. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 78:Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish... The trouble is you won't fight. You've given in, continually dwelling on sickness and death. But there's something just as inevitable as death, and that's life. Life, life, life. Think of all the power that's in the universe, moving the earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you if you only have courage and the will to use it. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 79:One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest. ~ j-r-r-tolkien, @wisdomtrove 80:If we put the emphasis upon the right things, if we live the life that is worth while and then fail, we will survive all disasters, we will out-live all misfortune. We should be so well balanced and symmetrical, that nothing which could ever happen could throw us off our center, so that no matter what misfortune should overtake us, there would still be a whole magnificent man or woman left after being stripped of everything else. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 81:The only thing harder to understand than a law of statistical origin would be a law that is not of statistical origin, for then there would be no way for it—or its progenitor principles—to come into being. On the other hand, when we view each of the laws of physics—and no laws are more magnificent in scope or better tested—as at bottom statistical in character, then we are at last able to forego the idea of a law that endures from everlasting to everlasting. ~ john-wheeler, @wisdomtrove 82:I am not superstitious, but the first time I saw this medal, bearing the venerated likeness of John Calvin, I kissed it, imagining that no one saw the action. I was very greatly surprised when I received this magnificent present, which shall be passed round for your inspection. On the one side is John Calvin with his visage worn by disease and deep thought, and on the other side is a verse fully applicable to him: & 83:Life is not mean, it is grand; if it is mean to any, he or she makes it so. God made it glorious. It is paved with diamonds; its banks he fringed with flowers. He overarched it with stars. Around it He spread the glory of the physical universe-suns, moon, worlds, constellations, systems-all that is magnificent in motion, sublime in magnitude, and grand in order and obedience. God would not have attended life with this broad march of grandeur if it did not mean something. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 84:Sublime tobacco! which from east to west, Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest; Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides His hours, and rivals opium and his brides; Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand, Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand: Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe, When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe; Like other charmers wooing the caress, More dazzlingly when daring in full dress; Yet thy true lovers more admire by far Thy naked beauties Give me a cigar! ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 85:Some say that you should not want money at all because the desire for money is materialistic and not spiritual. But we want you to remember that you are here in this very physical world where Spirit has materialized. You cannot separate yourself from the aspect of yourself that is spiritual, and while you are here in these bodies, you cannot separate yourselves from that which is physical or material. All the magnificent things of a physical nature that are surrounding you are Spiritual in nature. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 86:This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 87:Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before herwho will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world? ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 88:I believe that you're great, that there's something magnificent about you. Regardless of what has happened to you in your life, regardless of how young or how old you think you might be, the moment you begin to think properly, this something that is within you, this power within you that's greater than the world, it will begin to emerge. It will take over your life. It will feed you, it will clothe you, it will guide you, protect you, direct you, sustain your very existence. If you let it! Now that is what I know, for sure. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 89:In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked & 90:You've got the right - you've got a wonderful person with Sheila Bair, most of the viewers have never heard of Sheila Bair. [She] has taken eight percent of the deposits in the United States and seamlessly moved those over to sound institutions which in turn have gotten more capital, ended up, it's been a magnificent job.She'll never get a golden parachute or any severance pay or anything. She's done a great job. We've got some great public servants. We have I think the right people in there to get the job done, and then they need more tools. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:magnificent canyon of fashion. ~ P G Kain, #NFDB
2:You’re magnificent,” he says. ~ Kyra Davis, #NFDB
3:Archie, magnificent Archie—she ~ Sarah Gailey, #NFDB
4:He’s magnificent,” Mellie sighed. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
5:Who has magnificent self-confidence ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
6:The magnificent cause of being, ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
7:I believe in a magnificent God. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
8:All this under a magnificent blue sky. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
9:At once i knew i was not magnificent. ~ Justin Vernon, #NFDB
10:Oh, most magnificent and noble Nature! ~ Humphry Davy, #NFDB
11:The vices of some men are magnificent. ~ Charles Lamb, #NFDB
12:The Emperor's state is always magnificent ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
13:After all, didnt I blow a magnificent career? ~ Dick York, #NFDB
14:George W. Bush has done a magnificent job. ~ Mike Huckabee, #NFDB
15:You are magnificent. You are extraordinary. ~ Tahereh Mafi, #NFDB
16:Everyone came here to do something magnificent. ~ Kim Coles, #NFDB
17:God bless you, sun, you magnificent bastard! ~ Sam Sisavath, #NFDB
18:It's more than magnificent; it's mediocre. ~ Samuel Goldwyn, #NFDB
19:To appear for the first time is magnificent. ~ Joanna Walsh, #NFDB
20:Portland is a pretty magnificent place to live. ~ Leni Zumas, #NFDB
21:Your light is more magnificent than sunrise or sunset ~ Rumi, #NFDB
22:Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth. ~ Laurel Clark, #NFDB
23:Her lack of magnificence in a magnificent world ~ Thomas Wolfe, #NFDB
24:Let's travel at magnificent speeds around the universe ~ Rakim, #NFDB
25:reality can be magnificent even when life is not. ~ Liv Ullmann, #NFDB
26:Like all magnificent things, it's very simple. ~ Natalie Babbitt, #NFDB
27:Like all magnificent things, it’s very simple. ~ Natalie Babbitt, #NFDB
28:how absurd human beings are and how magnificent. ~ Benjamin Zander, #NFDB
29:It may have been quixotic, but it was magnificent. ~ James M Barrie, #NFDB
30:The snort Miss Howard gave was truly magnificent. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
31:You are a magnificent and powerful person,” I said. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
32:bring in a magnificent income that would assure her ~ LaVyrle Spencer, #NFDB
33:Many a magnificent supervillain was motivated by revenge. ~ Sam J Miller, #NFDB
34:"To live here and now, starting today, a magnificent life." ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
35:Yes, freedom is magnificent. But freedom is hard work. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
36:A friend may be nature's most magnificent creation. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
37:Let my
death
be a long
and magnificent
life. ~ Atticus Poetry,#NFDB
38:Invisible Man. A Passage to India. The Magnificent Ambersons. ~ E Lockhart, #NFDB
39:It is magnificent to grow old, if one keeps young. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick, #NFDB
40:I think the most magnificent things are worth living for ~ Stephanie Garber, #NFDB
41:Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
42:I think woman is phenomenal, magnificent. I mean that sincerely. ~ Luke Goss, #NFDB
43:Limitless is your potential. Magnificent is your future. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
44:The magnificent strength of Ella Cahill took his breath away. ~ Dana Mentink, #NFDB
45:We are all one, we are love at our core, we are magnificent ~ Anita Moorjani, #NFDB
46:I lack the magnificent richness of color that animates nature. ~ Paul Cezanne, #NFDB
47:Life is a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
48:Life is to be lived as a magnificent adventure, or not at all. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
49:The most magnificent creature in the entire world, the tiger is. ~ Jack Hanna, #NFDB
50:Enjoy life, because life is phenomenal! It's a magnificent trip! ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
51:Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
52:There was a magnificent human shining brightly behind her shy ~ Atticus Poetry, #NFDB
53:The world is a magnificent place. What are you going to do with it? ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
54:You have a magnificent moustache. You must be very proud of it. ~ Marian Keyes, #NFDB
55:You were the most magnificent adventure I have ever known, Cooper. ~ Seth King, #NFDB
56:I am the reflection of my source which is magnificent in all ways. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
57:The belief in poetry is a magnificent fury, or it is nothing. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
58:There are a couple of ways to avoid death, one is to be magnificent. ~ Ian Dury, #NFDB
59:You will admit that if it was not life it was magnificent. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
60:natural birth is full of magnificent, life-changing wisdom. ~ Christiane Northrup, #NFDB
61:Anything that makes movie-going a magnificent experience, I'm all for. ~ Brad Bird, #NFDB
62:Hey, you’re not supposed to find our magnificent organs amusing. ~ Barbara Elsborg, #NFDB
63:I was almost one of The Magnificent Seven. I love horses and guns. ~ Omar Chaparro, #NFDB
64:Maimed but still magnificent... Europe's mightiest medieval cathedral. ~ R W Apple, #NFDB
65:There is something magnificent in having a country to love. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
66:Why send a letter when you can send something truly magnificent? ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
67:We all have our own magnificent prisons, even the queen, I’d venture. ~ Fiona Davis, #NFDB
68:The more wishes you make, the more magnificent Fantasia will become. ~ Tami Stronach, #NFDB
69:Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference. ~ Dizzy Gillespie, #NFDB
70:It has always been thus, that the mundane masks the magnificent in us. ~ Mark A Rayner, #NFDB
71:And Chris Benoit, as magnificent as he looks, is not medically cleared yet. ~ Ric Flair, #NFDB
72:You are not yet grown. But you, little half-blood, will be magnificent. ~ Pippa DaCosta, #NFDB
73:I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air. ~ Sholem Asch, #NFDB
74:Some of the most magnificent sanity sounds illogical at first. ~ Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli, #NFDB
75:The French find beauty in the magnificent and in the seemingly mundane. ~ Lauren Blakely, #NFDB
76:We only have two kinds of weather in California, magnificent and unusual. ~ James M Cain, #NFDB
77:Are you Magnificent Bane?"
"Sure," said Magnus. "Let's go with that. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
78:Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant. ~ Steve Lacy, #NFDB
79:Humanity looks to me like a magnificent beginning but not the final word. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
80:The only one who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
81:It turns out that there is something more magnificent than nature. It's love. ~ Ben Harper, #NFDB
82:Redemption is a magnificent thing ..the life of God in the soul of man ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
83:If everyone chose love, this world would be magnificent. Always choose love. ~ Betsy Landin, #NFDB
84:He turned and saw the others come out after him. The not-very-magnificent seven. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
85:Spanking is a one handed round of applause in appreciation of a magnificent Ass. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
86:Yes, magnifliant. Magnificent, brilliant, splendid, superb. I could go on. ~ Ally Broadfield, #NFDB
87:One can't always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
88:The wonder of the world and the pride of all mankind was Sarnath the magnificent. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
89:What a magnificent body, how I should like to see it on the dissecting table. ~ Ivan Turgenev, #NFDB
90:One cannot always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
91:Be grateful everyday for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
92:diversity, when leveraged to solve problems in new ways, is a magnificent thing. ~ Tiffany Dufu, #NFDB
93:She was like a large white flower bathed in light, magnificent in her isolation. ~ Fumiko Enchi, #NFDB
94:Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. ~ George S Patton, #NFDB
95:In old Quebec City, “magnificent” wasn’t measured in square feet, but in details. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
96:In your tragedies you will find your most magnificent opportunities for rebirth. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
97:The great creator from his work returned Magnificent, his six days' work, a world. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
98:She was magnificent. She wasn't so much a person as an event, a gigantic presence. ~ Michelle Tea, #NFDB
99:To succeed, work hard, never give up and above all cherish a magnificent obsession. ~ Walt Disney, #NFDB
100:War, which used to be cruel and magnificent has now become cruel and squalid. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
101:Within the magnificent cathedral of the Vermont forest, the joy of young love sang. ~ Dana Marton, #NFDB
102:Magnificent, somehow. To give in. Wreck yourself so completely. The beauty of it. ~ Eimear McBride, #NFDB
103:One day,” I told myself, “one brave and magnificent day, I will actually be cool.” I ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
104:The man took a tragedy and used it to give himself purpose. The man is magnificent. ~ Tessa Bailey, #NFDB
105:Time wasted rationalizing the mediocre could be time spent creating the magnificent. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
106:with lightning. she is a storm a magnificent force writing her life’s story in lightning ~ R H Sin, #NFDB
107:Nothing else can fill better colors in one's life like the magnificent nature does ~ Anamika Mishra, #NFDB
108:the whole world is caught in her glance and at last the universe is magnificent. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
109:Look at her. The sun soaks right int her and shines back out of her. She’s magnificent. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
110:Politics is not evil; politics is the human race’s most magnificent achievement. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
111:The moonlight had turned the gardens into a fairyland, magnificent and mysterious. ~ Jeanne Birdsall, #NFDB
112:Job 28 is a magnificent poem that engages the modern technology narrative head-on. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
113:Star Wars was magnificent, but you could tell Darth Vader's ships were glued together. ~ Gary Coleman, #NFDB
114:They were all in line, single file, like an armada from hell. It was a magnificent sight. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
115:I do not know what you were like as a wood-nymph, madam, but you are a magnificent tree. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
116:Our lives become trivial. And our capacity for magnificent causes and great worship dies. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
117:The Magnificent Seven was really kind of a miraculous event that took place in my life. ~ James Coburn, #NFDB
118:There's nothing so magnificent - for making others feel you - as to have no imagination. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
119:When the palace is magnificent, the fields are filled with weeds, and the granaries are empty. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
120:Be magnificent. Life’s short. Get out there. You can do it. Everyone can do it. Everyone. ~ Andy Serkis, #NFDB
121:First be a magnificent artist and then you can do whatever, but the art must be first. ~ Francisco Goya, #NFDB
122:Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared. 76 ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB
123:Shaw's works make me admire the magnificent tolerance and broadmindedness of the english. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
124:There's something so magnificent about you. And as you love yourself, you'll love others. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
125:This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
126:Architecture is the learned game; correct and magnificent of forms assembled in the light ~ Le Corbusier, #NFDB
127:In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. ~ J Sheridan Le Fanu, #NFDB
128:Television was one of those magnificent kind of events where everything fell into place. ~ Richard Lloyd, #NFDB
129:You are magnificent beyond measure, perfect in your imperfections, and wonderfully made. ~ Abiola Abrams, #NFDB
130:He smiled again and Elise marveled how one family could have produced such magnificent men. ~ Donna Hatch, #NFDB
131:I just wish,” she said, “that this magnificent, stupendous God of yours could give a fuck. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
132:There are magnificent beings on this earth, son, that are walking around posing as humans. ~ Fannie Flagg, #NFDB
133:What kind of God do you believe in? my answer is easy: I believe in a magnificent God ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
134:Why has God given me such magnificent talent? It is a curse as well as a great blessing. ~ Albrecht Durer, #NFDB
135:Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light. ~ Le Corbusier, #NFDB
136:The biggest obstacle to making Christ magnificent is the refusal to make yourself small. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
137:For a second, she thought her imagination had conjured him, a centaur, untamed and magnificent. ~ Stacy Finz, #NFDB
138:Growing up in Memphis, I have always admired St. Jude's for the magnificent work they do. ~ Ginnifer Goodwin, #NFDB
139:It's time to end the cruel slaughter of whales and leave these magnificent creatures alone. ~ Paul McCartney, #NFDB
140:People are inherently good. Our souls are magnificent and capable of extraordinary performance. ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
141:The sheet got hung on my bra strap, and for a magnificent moment, I was fucking Superwoman! ~ Lani Lynn Vale, #NFDB
142:the whole world is caught in her glance
and at last
the universe is
magnificent. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
143:All results no matter how magnificent are infinitesimal when compared to future possibility. ~ James Arthur Ray, #NFDB
144:An intense feeling carries with it its own universe, magnificent or wretched as the case may be. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
145:Every aspect of life is magnificent and wonderful. It's so important to keep fit and healthy. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
146:Your love story started off on the wrong foot, but it will be magnificent precisely because of that. ~ L J Shen, #NFDB
147:turned to Simon with a wink. “Why send a letter when you can send something truly magnificent? ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
148:I’m gonna take a minute here because you seriously need to understand how magnificent this guy is. ~ Jenn Cooksey, #NFDB
149:The sky was magnificent. I have always loved the sky and I do not take notice of it often enough. ~ Anne Youngson, #NFDB
150:a magnificent high tide arrives, the largest waves smashing against the bases of the ramparts, the ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
151:The more we can purge ourselves of the diseases we create the more we can become magnificent people ~ Judith Light, #NFDB
152:What you pay attention to grows. Pay attention to your loveliness, your magnificent self. Begin now. ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
153:You, of Canada, are building a magnificent record of achievement. My country rejoices in it. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
154:I pray you, magnificent Sir, do not trouble yourself to return to us, but await our coming to you. ~ Giordano Bruno, #NFDB
155:When you are leaving someone, leave like the sun leaves the earth with a magnificent elegance! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
156:The snow leopard is absolutely magnificent. It represents really what endangered species are all about. ~ Jack Hanna, #NFDB
157:Whatever our problems are, dreams can provide novel ideas and sometimes magnificent resolutions. ~ Patricia Garfield, #NFDB
158:And she’d discovered she wasn’t empty inside. She was magnificent. Even if nobody yet recognized it. ~ Courtney Milan, #NFDB
159:Everyone should have at least one magnificent obsession. It's a life jacket when the ship goes down ~ Melanie Jackson, #NFDB
160:He (the Shaman) is a self-reliant explorer of the endless mansions of a magnificent hidden universe. ~ Michael Harner, #NFDB
161:He was magnificent—a god. Not a god, a small voice of consciousness stated. He’s got to be an angel. ~ Laurann Dohner, #NFDB
162:The heavens are nobly eloquent of the Deity, and the most magnificent heralds of their Maker's praise. ~ James Hervey, #NFDB
163:Falling in love is not rational. It's madness. A beautiful, wonderful moment of magnificent insanity. ~ Michael Faudet, #NFDB
164:he set out for Berkeley County, Virginia, to tell his people of the magnificent country he had discovered. ~ Zane Grey, #NFDB
165:Rock and roll is a nuclear blast of reality in a mundane world where no-one is allowed to be magnificent. ~ Kim Fowley, #NFDB
166:The heaven I witnessed was so pure, love-filled, and magnificent that I did not want to return to earth. ~ Mary C Neal, #NFDB
167:There is something magnificent about encouraging someone to step forward into his own self-respect ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
168:The benches were magnificent. They could have been a hundred years old. They were made from solid mahogany, ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
169:I see in Nature a magnificent structure... that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
170:The heart is God's most magnificent creation, and the prize over which he fights the kingdom of darkness. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
171:Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
172:A French general, Pierre Bosquet, famously remarked, “It is magnificent, but it is not war: it is madness. ~ Brian M Fagan, #NFDB
173:I do not like the way people use the more and more magnificent fruits of technology to their filthy deeds. ~ Stanislaw Lem, #NFDB
174:If you pay sufficient attention, everything in life is magnificent, everything is a doorway to the Divine. ~ Jaggi Vasudev, #NFDB
175:I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
176:Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
177:And I had a big opportunity with Richard Brooks, The Professionals, which is really a magnificent movie. ~ Claudia Cardinale, #NFDB
178:But Gwyneth was determined that this dark angel, this remote but magnificent man she loved, would not die. ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
179:The preciousness of every moment is emphasized with every tick of the clock. Isn't it a magnificent day today? ~ Bel Kaufman, #NFDB
180:Here was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
181:I have a little brown cocoon of an idea that may possibly expand into a magnificent moth of fulfilment. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, #NFDB
182:The possibility of that version of you already exists on the frequency of “the most magnificent version of You. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
183:When you make feeling good a priority, that magnificent frequency will radiate and touch everyone close to you. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
184:Imitate the magnificent trees that speak no word of their rapture, but only breathe largely the luminous breeze. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
185:Perfection may be an island out of reach, but setting your sails toward it makes for a magnificent voyage. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
186:If you were really humble you would be great, because humility would never squander the magnificent gift of life. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
187:Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
188:The Rosary is a magnificent and universal prayer for the needs of the Church, the nations and the entire world. ~ Pope John XXIII, #NFDB
189:We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
190:We are lucky because we still have a magnificent temple called nature where we can find peace of mind in it! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
191:What a magnificent accomplishment to be able to stay alive as an innocent lamb in the land of guilty wolves! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
192:Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
193:A magnificent achievement that witnesses powerfully to the rich development, harmony, and piety of the Reformed faith. ~ Joel Beeke, #NFDB
194:being alone you decided, was a
magnificent miracle.
nothing else made any
sense at all.
—escape ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
195:As powerful as our legs are, as magnificent as our lungs and arms and muscles are, nothing matters more than the mind. ~ Scott Jurek, #NFDB
196:I'm magnificent! I'm five feet eleven inches and I weigh one hundred thirty-five pounds, and I look like a racehorse. ~ Julie Newmar, #NFDB
197:I think directors can become overly infatuated by gilt and gold, and the word "lavish" and everything being magnificent. ~ Tom Hooper, #NFDB
198:I think we’ve taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
199:Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
200:Their desire was silent yet magnificent, like a thousand daisies attuning their faces toward the path of the sun. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
201:The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
202:When you have been a possession,
then you really understand what freedom means
in all its magnificent terror. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
203:Any clock that can track this sideral schedule proves itself as perfect as God's magnificent clockwork.
Dava Sobel ~ Dava Sobel,#NFDB
204:Diana Vishneva is not only a magnificent dancer but a magnificent actress - no one works harder or understands more. ~ Robert Gottlieb, #NFDB
205:Dictatorship is like a giant beech-tree - very magnificent to look at in its prime, but nothing grows underneath it. ~ Stanley Baldwin, #NFDB
206:When passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is incomprehensible and even a little despicable. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
207:Your attitude of serving the Lord can transform even the most menial of tasks into a magnificent sacrifice of love. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
208:It's magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man's arising-that I understand.... And yet I am sorry to lose God! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
209:At the same time, there's something magnificent about volcanoes; they created the atmosphere that we need for breathing. ~ Werner Herzog, #NFDB
210:Profanity is the parlance of the fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to discourse? ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
211:Seeing it makes a magnificent abstract concept real, and reality tends to taint even the most wonderful ideas [...] - Caradoc ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
212:The Boov are having seven magnificent genders. There is boy, girl, boygirl, girlboy, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.” I ~ Adam Rex, #NFDB
213:The conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession. ~ Norman Cousins, #NFDB
214:I saw the Earth, yes. I saw the colors so magnificent, so vivid, so real. It was hope so large and round, green and blue. ~ Hafsah Laziaf, #NFDB
215:Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
216:the hills
like poets put on
purple thought against
the
magnificent clamor of
day
tortured
in gold ~ E E Cummings,#NFDB
217:There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
218:His heart full of a fierce love for this tough kid, this vulnerable boy, this magnificent sister-son given into his care. ~ Suanne Laqueur, #NFDB
219:Two glasses of steaming tea in magnificent antique Kolchugino podstakannik tea-glass holders sat on the table in front of ~ Jason Matthews, #NFDB
220:Life is always happening for us, not to us. It’s our job to find out where the benefit is. If we do, life is magnificent. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
221:There are three things we cry for in life: things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent. ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
222:there are three things we cry for in life: things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent. ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
223:Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
224:that your power of command with simple language was one of the magnificent things of our century. (from the poem: result) ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
225:The natural and untainted male mind respects and loves the woman and her magnificent scope of capability and creative gifts. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
226:There are three things we cry for in life - things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent. ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
227:When the reality looks magnificent, a real art of photography has only one choice: To capture this beauty magnificently! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
228:When you stop worrying about your problems and start praising God for His magnificent power you will experience His peace. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
229:It was a magnificent day; the skies were electric blue, and a crystal breeze carried the cool scent of autumn and the sea. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
230:There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch. ~ Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, #NFDB
231:This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
232:This solitary Tree! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
233:You do not come to the thee-ator and it will wither your soul." (Madam Leadora Seamstress for the Royal Magnificent Theater) ~ Kristen Britain, #NFDB
234:Be bold, generous, and proud, ye scions of the griffin! Ours is a magnificent Order and it’s weathered harsher storms than this! ~ Phil Brucato, #NFDB
235:I believe it is one's duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature. We need gaiety and happiness, hope and love. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
236:I did not have any magnificent jewels to give you, but I hoped you would understand that I would give you the world if I could. ~ Patricia Rice, #NFDB
237:Tiberius Nero Blackthorn. I think his parents may have gone a little overboard. It's like naming someone Magnificent Bastard. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
238:God did His most magnificent work while Adam was asleep. This episode contains and important insight: When man rests, God works. ~ Leonard Sweet, #NFDB
239:I find that after our greatest trials and fears have been faced, then come the most magnificent and glorious of blessings.” “Enjoy ~ Jenni James, #NFDB
240:Old gardeners never die; they just very slowly turn into the most magnificent compost. But what a marvellous, active brew it is! ~ Peter Cundall, #NFDB
241:Two bricklayers work side by side. The first lays bricks. The second builds magnificent cathedrals. Think small vs. think big. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
242:We asked for God's help; and now, in this shining outcome, in this magnificent triumph of good over evil, we should thank God. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
243:What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths. ~ Christiaan Huygens, #NFDB
244:Never to be cast away are the gifts of the gods, magnificent, which they give of their own will, no man could have them for wanting them. ~ Homer, #NFDB
245:Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
246:Soon the grizzly was joined by a brown bear, a sun bear, and a beaver suffering from an identity crisis of magnificent proportion ~ Cameron Dokey, #NFDB
247:Therefore there is only one form of freedom for Stirner, "my power," and only
one truth, "the magnificent egotism of the stars. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
248:Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting. ~ Jean Cocteau, #NFDB
249:Learning To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life. ~ Czeslaw Milosz, #NFDB
250:The connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
251:The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans. ~ Sherwood Smith, #NFDB
252:And then there is the magnificent Thierry Henry - someone who has blistering pace and is unbelievable when he is finishing at his best. ~ Andy Gray, #NFDB
253:Good morning.
You got a good head on your shoulders.
As for your shoulders?
F***ing magnificent.
GO get ’em today. ~ Lin Manuel Miranda,#NFDB
254:Yes?” “My heart keeps discovering new ways to love you,” he whispered, like it was a secret. A magnificent, beautiful, perfect secret. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
255:Day by day, we build our lives, and day by day, we can take steps toward making real the magnificent creations of our imaginations. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
256:[History is] the story of the magnificent rear-guard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity. ~ Robert Staughton Lynd, #NFDB
257:The thing about chaos, is that while it disturbs us, it too forces our hearts to roar in a way we secretly find magnificent ~ Christopher Poindexter, #NFDB
258:Who are you after you finish something this magnificent—in constructing it you have also journeyed through it, to the other side. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
259:To love another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
260:I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature. ~ Paul Cezanne, #NFDB
261:if [God] doesn't exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
262:I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It's the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
263:Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
264:The human being who is condemned to death
is, at least, magnificent before he disappears, and his magnificence is his justification. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
265:The secret passages of life are simply magnificent! You can continue walking without being noticed, far away from all the perils! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
266:Through the mere act of creating something—anything—you might inadvertently produce work that is magnificent, eternal, or important ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
267:Well, wouldn’t that be a nice fuck you from karma. Here, Dylan, feast your eyes on this magnificent penis that you can’t even handle. ~ Jessica Daniels, #NFDB
268:You can sleep in a forest and have a nice dream. But when you wake up, you will have a much better dream: The Magnificent Reality! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
269:that your power of command
with simple language was
one of the magnificent things of
our century.
(from the poem: result) ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
270:The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
271:What a wonderful time it is for each of us to do his or her small part in moving the work of the Lord on to its magnificent destiny. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
272:With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
273:With this magnificent God positioned among us, Jesus brings the assurance that our universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be. The ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
274:It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
275:Learning
To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life. ~ Czes aw Mi osz,#NFDB
276:The unmet need that can get met right now is the need to be whole, to be both your magnificent, divine self and your imperfect, human self. ~ Debbie Ford, #NFDB
277:You matter," she whispered to him. "You are important. And you are the single most magnificent man I have ever had the honor of meeting. ~ Courtney Milan, #NFDB
278:Because satan hates us, he's determined to rob us of the joy we'd have if we believed what God tells us about the magnificent world to come. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
279:Nothing is sadder than laughter; nothing more beautiful, more magnificent, more uplifting and enriching than the terror of deep despair. ~ Federico Fellini, #NFDB
280:The uniform enhanced his athletic body, and my thoughts drifted to how magnificent he would look with his uniform puddled around his feet. ~ Maria V Snyder, #NFDB
281:We are all perfect in our own, magnificent, fucked-up ways. Laugh at yourself. Love yourself and others. Rejoice in the cosmic ridiculousness. ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
282:We are committed and if we succeed we'll succeed magnificently, and if we fail it will be a magnificent failure. The magnificence is important. ~ Martin Fry, #NFDB
283:The great thing about life-the most magnificent thing about being these sentient human beings-is that we have been given the power of choice. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
284:To love another another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection , it is a magnificent task...tremendous and foolish and human. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
285:We must never let a newcomer know before he is ready how God springs His magnificent trap and teaches us that love means responding. ~ A A World Services Inc, #NFDB
286:You’d think something that magnificent would be about fireworks. But if this was it, it wasn’t. It was quiet, tranquil, comfortable. Beauty. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
287:It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
288:Baseball is beautiful....the supreme performing art. It combines in perfect harmony the magnificent features of ballet, drama, art, and ingenuity. ~ Bowie Kuhn, #NFDB
289:Home. This magnificent palace had been her home since she was eleven. She’d came to it as a farmer’s daughter, and now she’d leave it as a soldier. ~ Elise Kova, #NFDB
290:My anger thought you too ignoble for my love, and close examination finds you too magnificent, and only equals are joined together smoothly. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
291:Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss. ~ Sarah Addison Allen, #NFDB
292:Men decided that it was better to pay taxes than to fight among themselves; better to pay tribute to one magnificent robber than to bribe them all. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
293:Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. All that exists is a magnificent interweaving, vast and reciprocal. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
294:...but I didn't care, because the magnificent possibility of kissing Cassidy Thorpe had turned into an indisputable fact of my daily existence... ~ Robyn Schneider, #NFDB
295:A Magnificent Banquet, being
A Thanksgiving for the Safe Return
Of our Beloved Daughter,
Princess Esmeralda.
Bring your own plates. ~ Angie Sage,#NFDB
296:'It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,' cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
297:The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
298:We cannot resist the conviction that this world is for us only the porch of another and more magnificent temple of the Creator's majesty. ~ Frederick William Faber, #NFDB
299:showcase magnificent eyes: big and round and pale whiskey in color, set under arched black eyebrows and topped with an awning of long, dark lashes. ~ Faye Kellerman, #NFDB
300:The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
301:The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
302:Kansas City Lightning succeeds as few biographies of jazz musicians have. . . This book is a magnificent achievement; I could hardly put it down. ~ Henry Louis Gates, #NFDB
303:Tell me he’s got a cute ass in Wranglers,” Gloria pleaded. “I’ve got a weakness for cowboys.”
Abby grinned. “It’s not cute. His ass is magnificent. ~ Donna Grant,#NFDB
304:Darling! Had they darlinged each other when they were here? I imagined them, magnificent on horseback, tossing darlings to and fro. ~ Franny Billingsley, #NFDB
305:French architecture always manages to combine the most magnificent underlying themes of architecture; like Roman design, it looks to the community. ~ Stephen Gardiner, #NFDB
306:When I miss my mother these days, now that she is gone, I like to picture us in the car together, going for one more magnificent trip to Bertram Woods. ~ Susan Orlean, #NFDB
307:When it works, anticipation is far more fulfilling than surprise, because we are reminded that a sunrise is precisely as magnificent as it is inevitable. ~ John Green, #NFDB
308:Whether our lives are magnificent or wretched depends upon our ordering of daily details. We must organize the details into a composition that pleases ~ Ming Dao Deng, #NFDB
309:with social media we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high dramas. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. ~ Jon Ronson, #NFDB
310:Your brain activates a magnificent system to store memories as reference points for you to learn from... not to create a past for you to be stuck in. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
311:By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional poetry. ~ Max Beerbohm, #NFDB
312:...he heard a sound that only a magnificent old bell could produce, a sound that seemed to roar forth with all the latent power of a distant world. ~ Yasunari Kawabata, #NFDB
313:What a place. Glokta stifled a smile. It reminds me of myself, in a way. We both were magnificent once, and we both have our best days far behind us. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
314:Your raised arms are the fleshy petals of a magnificent lily bursting into flower. It deeply dawns on you that this new world about to bloom is you. Deep ~ Hope Jahren, #NFDB
315:Any time I have seen someone accomplishing something magnificent, they have been a monomaniac with a mission. A single-minded individual with a passion. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
316:Coming over from England, I was awe-struck by what Americans do at Halloween. I find it magnificent. In England, you get the occasional fancy dress party. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
317:How understandable that Holy Scripture should refer to the Infernal monarch as the "father of lies"- a magnificent example of character inversion. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey, #NFDB
318:No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
319:We are the witnesses to the miracle. We are put here by creation, by God....We're here to be the audience to the magnificent. It is our job to celebrate. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
320:I came to political consciousness with John F. Kennedy's magnificent 1961 Inaugural Address. It seemed the start of something fresh and exciting, and it was. ~ Joe Klein, #NFDB
321:It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
322:Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because it is life itself. ~ Randall Jarrell, #NFDB
323:But with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. ~ Jon Ronson, #NFDB
324:Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
325:If we just stay at the crest of the mycelial wave, it will take us into heretofore unknown territories that will be just magnificent in their implications. ~ Paul Stamets, #NFDB
326:I have read of women who have been strongly, grandly brave. Sometimes I have dreamed that I might be brave. The possibilities of this life are magnificent. ~ Mary MacLane, #NFDB
327:I find it magnificent how beau-tiful, loose ends find each other in the world if one only waits with de-cent patience, resilience, and quite blind strength. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
328:The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
329:The mouth is a magnificent tool to communicate intimacy – kissing, licking, sucking, nipping – it's screaming, I'm so fucking into you, without saying a word. ~ Kim Holden, #NFDB
330:Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding. ~ Lou Gerstner, #NFDB
331:Mrs. D hugged Cole’s middle, hard, and the music cut out just in time for her compliment to carry across the room. “I knew you would be a magnificent man. ~ Debra Anastasia, #NFDB
332:The Goddess does not rule the world; She is the world. Manifest in each of us, She can be known internally by every individual, in all her magnificent diversity. ~ Starhawk, #NFDB
333:Ablaze upon creation’s quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#NFDB
334:...a resistless, inanimate world of nature to be used and refashioned at will by man in his magnificent and courageous folly to wrest a purpose from eternity. ~ Frank Waters, #NFDB
335:I had exchanged a few words with a celebrity. I was about to feed myself at the expense of a city council I had not voted for. A magnificent evening. ~ Jean Philippe Blondel, #NFDB
336:I will have won Wimbledon this year in 2013, and I will stop with that. It was magnificent. You will certainly see me at tournaments again, but not playing. ~ Marion Bartoli, #NFDB
337:We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent that our bodies can't contain it. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
338:An impressively researched and documented collection of the finest thought produced by writers throughout the African Diaspora. A magnificent achievement. ~ Henry Louis Gates, #NFDB
339:Listen! If stars are lit It means there is someone who needs it, It means someone wants them to be, That someone deems those specks of spit Magnificent! ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky, #NFDB
340:She had power over the most magnificent forces on Earth, but she still didn’t feel like she had power over the most important thing of all—her own heart. ~ Josephine Angelini, #NFDB
341:The skies will be magnificent. Pollutants have made Jersey sunsets one of the wonders of the world. Point it out. Touch her shoulder and say, That's nice, right? ~ Junot D az, #NFDB
342:Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
343:Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
344:He's magnificent!" Maureen sighed, walking to the window and watching Brevan saunter toward the barn.
"He is not a horse, Maury," Genieva reminded. ~ Marcia Lynn McClure,#NFDB
345:When times are bad, people like to lose themselves in the sheer glamour of another period: beautiful wardrobes, magnificent meals served in elegant settings. ~ Shirley MacLaine, #NFDB
346:When we can stand in the solitary presence of something magnificent, the obligation of sharing the experience evaporates, and we are free to truly be a part of it. ~ Josh Gates, #NFDB
347:History was by definition one long chaotic, violent mess sometimes interrupted by magnificent eras of peace that remind everybody life occasionally wasn't awful. ~ Gene Doucette, #NFDB
348:Miss Sorrows is a wonderful teacher. She really is so good at this. I'll never be half as good as she is. That's what she keeps telling me. She's magnificent. - NJ ~ Derek Landy, #NFDB
349:The final magnificent spark of a firework is only the last seconds of the fall. Though it’s invisible to most, it’s the way up that creates all the impact. ~ Charlotte Eriksson, #NFDB
350:The only people who soul can truly magnify the Lord are...people who acknowledge their lowly estate and are overwhelmed by the condescension of the magnificent God. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
351:When trying to explain anything, I usually find that the Bible, that great collection of magnificent and varied poetry, has said it before in the best possible way. ~ Amy Lowell, #NFDB
352:You are magnificent. Thank you for waiting for me, for this. I love you. I didn't know what that meant until I met you. You were made to be my other half and I yours. ~ S E Hall, #NFDB
353:How can this magnificent modern world enter into war? How can these modern people who know so much, who’ve come so far, suddenly be on the attack against one another? ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
354:The rain pelts our bodies, running down his face, soaking his hair, and he is fucking magnificent. The most beautiful, raw, magnificent man to ever walk this earth. ~ Callie Hart, #NFDB
355:And I'm the tool," I muttered. Then I thought about it, sighed, and shook my head. "One day," I told myself, "one brave and magnificent day, I will actually be cool. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
356:Rilke wrote: 'These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased. ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
357:When a faith stubbornly maintained comes into contact with learning, the product of that encounter is always something magnificent, whether it be for good or ill. ~ Luther Blissett, #NFDB
358:CG: I AM BEING PLEASANT AND AGREEABLE, AND I WILL GENTLY LOWER A MAGNIFICENT, CORUSCATING COLUMN OF HOT FUCK YOU DOWN THE PROTEIN CHUTE OF ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE. ~ Andrew Hussie, #NFDB
359:Oh, the pretty penises. Not flaccid ones of course, because they’re just floppy, wrinkly, and gross. But the erect ones? Wow. Beautiful. Magnificent. Incredibly sexy. ~ Leisa Rayven, #NFDB
360:We are blessed with a magnificent and miraculous world ocean on this planet. But we are also stressing it in ways that we are not even close to bringing under control. ~ Carl Safina, #NFDB
361:When a woman falls in love with the magnificent possibilities within herself, the forces that would limit those possibilities hold less and less sway over her. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
362:There was Virginia Boote, the food and restaurant critic, who had once been a great beauty but was now a grand and magnificent ruin, and who delighted in her ruination. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
363:One of the most amazing revelations of God comes to us when we learn that it is in the everyday things of life that we realize the magnificent deity of Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
364:There are Mafia families that have bought magnificent houses on the North Shore, although not yet the great estates because they don't want that kind of high profile. ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
365:What is an Extraordinary Life? A life of meaning, a magnificent life, a life of joy, happiness, love, passion, success, and fulfillment. Life experienced on your terms. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
366:For all the pain, sorrow, and violence inflicted on this magnificent world by people of different faiths for whatever misguided reason, hope springs eternal. Hope is life. ~ Ay e Kulin, #NFDB
367:Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch
this declaration of the mastery
of God who, with magnificent irony,
granted me both the gift of books and the night. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
368:Magical?" "Non." "Magnificent?" "Don't be absurd." "Less bleak than anything else we have seen?" "Now truly you are speaking French," the ambassador said approvingly. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
369:Always life your life with your biography in mind. Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a magnificent reason, but at the very least you'll be living grandly. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
370:Be motivated like the falcon, hunt gloriously. Be magnificent as the leopard, fight to win. Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks. One is all talk, the other only color. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
371:He longs to give us a magnificent reward. He knows that suffering is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself, and to become ourselves divine. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
372:On both sides of the highway I could see the rows of little frame houses, all alike, as if there were only one architect in the city and he had a magnificent obsession. ~ Ross Macdonald, #NFDB
373:Many other dear ghosts were glinting from the past, winks of light playing along the rims of our wineglasses, reminding us of how reckless they’d been and how magnificent. ~ Paula McLain, #NFDB
374:The inside house of the soul is magnificent but fragile; any betrayals and lies embedded in its walls and foundation shift its construction in directions unimagined. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
375:There were worse things than being a motherless child. Without a past, Aster was boundless. She could metamorphose. She could be a shiny, magnificent version of herself. ~ Rivers Solomon, #NFDB
376:I know I should look away, I should walk out and quietly close the door behind me, but I can't. Has there ever been a more magnificent sight than a man pleasuring himself? ~ Carmen Jenner, #NFDB
377:The last centuries saw the most magnificent material progress in history, and the present century is set to produce the greatest progress in mental and spiritual power. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
378:What is magnificent about humans is when they decide to turn and stand. If they respond with non-violence on principle and hold their ground, they are really magnificent. ~ James Cromwell, #NFDB
379:Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light: light and shade reveal these forms. ~ Le Corbusier, #NFDB
380:Built in an elegant fusion of Italianate, French, and early Disney styles, this magnificent estate offers a thousand bathrooms for all of your executive Cinderella needs... ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
381:I wandered through Kino parlors and peered through the windows of the magnificent sprawling Grant’s Raw Bar filled with men in black coats scooping up piles of fresh oysters. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
382:Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
383:If you want your life to be a magnificent story, then begin by realizing that you are the author, and every day you have the opportunity to write a new page. —Mark Houlahan ~ Timber Hawkeye, #NFDB
384:I’m a million cameras, even when I’m sleeping, clicking, clicking, every second something is growing and changing. We are little arrogant flashes in a grand magnificent scheme. ~ Max Porter, #NFDB
385:I like your T-shirt. So much. It’s magnificent on you.” He’s mystified as he looks down at himself. “It’s nothing special. I . . . like yours too. It’s as big as a dress.” The ~ Sally Thorne, #NFDB
386:It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
387:Listen!
If stars are lit
It means there is someone who needs it,
It means someone wants them to be,
That someone deems those specks of spit
Magnificent! ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky,#NFDB
388:People generally achieve magnificent things when their backs are up against the wall and they are forced to tap into the wellspring of human potential that lies within them. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
389:The Universe favors the brave. When you resolve to lift your life to its highest level, the strength of your soul will guide you to a magical place with magnificent treasures. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
390:To live between the prospect of an unknown eternal sky and a dark, enveloping Earth must have been glorious— for how else could it give rise to such magnificent expression? ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
391:He longs to give us a magnificent reward. He knows that suffering is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself, and to become ourselves divine. ~ Saint Therese of Lisieux, #NFDB
392:On August 19, 1418, a competition was announced in Florence, where the city's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, had been under construction for more than a century ~ Ross King, #NFDB
393:Yet I cannot be magnificent unless there is something to choose from. Some part of Me must be less than magnificent for Me to choose the part of Me which is magnificent. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
394:You were probably educated in the conventional economic theories of your period which were magnificent and most ingenious, but--if you will pardon my saying so--all wrong. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
395:His once-magnificent white beard, which someone had unaccountably shaved off, was growing back sparse and wispy, leaving him with unsightly pink wattles to dangle beneath his neck. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
396:I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of a man is to live, not to exist.
Jack London ~ Jack London,#NFDB
397:I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
398:Present us with a silver cup for something when you're a filthy rich lawyer, I dare say? Yes. You'll be a lawyer. Magnificent memory. Sense of logic, no imagination and no brains. ~ Jane Gardam, #NFDB
399:Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
400:To a young man who has in himself the magnificent possibilities of life, it is not fitting that he should be permanently commanded. He should be a commander. JAMES A. GARFIELD ~ Candice Millard, #NFDB
401:It is safe to look within. As I move through the layers of other people's opinions and beliefs, I see within myself a magnificent being, wise and beautiful. I love what I see in me. ~ Louise Hay, #NFDB
402:Paris, viewed from the towers of Notre Dame in the cool dawn of a summer morning, is a delectable and a magnificent sight; and the Paris of that period must have been eminently so. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
403:Magnificent autumn! He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds; not like a hermit, clad in gray; but like a warrior with the stain of blood in his brazen mail. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
404:Mendham was a cadaverous man with a magnificent beard. He looked,indeed, as if he had run to beard as a mustard plant runs to seed. But when he spoke you found he had a voice as well. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
405:Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new. The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies and beautiful Beethoven symphonies, but never compose their own original scores. ~ Adam Grant, #NFDB
406:Surfing soothes me, it's always been a kind of Zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful, and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I'm on a wave. ~ Paul Walker, #NFDB
407:When watching a high mountain, wise man knows that no mountain is higher or colder or more unpredictable or foggier or more magnificent or more dangerous than the human mind! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
408:The white spruce forest along the banks is most inspiring, magnificent here. Down the terraced slopes and right to the water's edge on the alluvial soil it stands in ranks. ~ Ernest Thompson Seton, #NFDB
409:To be young, naive, hungover, and lonely in New York City is a rotten thing. To be young, naive, hungover, lonely, and playing bass in a rock band in New York City is magnificent. ~ Mishka Shubaly, #NFDB
410:Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude...its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
411:His voice promised that he would take care of her, and that a little later he would open up whole new worlds for her, unroll an endless succession of magnificent possibilities. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
412:I don't have the slightest desire to speak over my dead brother. It gets on my nerves to always be compared with him. My brother was a magnificent person and an outstanding actor. ~ Joaquin Phoenix, #NFDB
413:Teachers are a little like scientists in their way of breaking down the magnificent vastness of life into small particles that can be analyzed, and thereby robbing it of its emotion. ~ Pamela Moore, #NFDB
414:The look of shocked surprise on his face is magnificent. I want to commission a portrait artist to capture it in oils, so I can pass it down to future generations. It. Is. Priceless. ~ Sally Thorne, #NFDB
415:The magnificent title of the Functional School of Anthropology has been bestowed on myself, in a way on myself, and to a large extent out of my own sense of irresponsibility. ~ Bronislaw Malinowski, #NFDB
416:Though the reverential legends about him are often magnificent, they work as perhaps all legends do: they obscure more than they reveal, and he becomes more a symbol than a human being. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
417:Thus Wittgenstein’s magnificent statement: “If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”31 ~ Ervin Laszlo, #NFDB
418:Wild aurochs exceeded in size even the magnificent gaur—the largest remaining species of wild cattle. Males could way over 3,300 pounds (three times the size of a Spanish fighting bull); ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
419:As we gaze upon the wonders of creations, we look up towards the heights of a God who is merciful in His ways and magnificent in His deeds. The life of worship always points us upwards. ~ Matt Redman, #NFDB
420:She was more magnificent than any goddess. Addictive passion on two gorgeous,endless legs, between which he'd found a heaven far better than any mortal had dreamed or god had promised. ~ Olivia Gates, #NFDB
421:I don't want people to come and see our gig because of the magnificent things I'm doing with my hips, but it's their evening, you know. They have to have fun. I'm a little bit naive. ~ Andrew Eldritch, #NFDB
422:I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country... ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
423:We humans, though troubled and warlike, are also the dreams, thinkers, and explorers inhabiting one achingly beautiful planet, yearning for the sublime, and capable of the magnificent. ~ Carolyn Porco, #NFDB
424:500. There are paradoxes. If there were no night, we would be deprived of the
magnificent image of a starry sky. Thus light deprives us of "vision," and
darkness helps us "see. ~ Alija Izetbegovi,#NFDB
425:Love is the world's infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood. ~ Tony Kushner, #NFDB
426:My views about God come from my dad. Dad told me that he believed Nature, which to him included humankind, to be so beautiful, so magnificent, that there had to be something behind it all. ~ Al Franken, #NFDB
427:We have to choose life. Choose risk. Choose love. The only safe place for our hearts is to dive deeply into the magnificent, eternal, ridiculous, overwhelming love that God has for us. ~ Stasi Eldredge, #NFDB
428:BLINDSIGHT is fearless: a magnificent, darkly gleaming jewel of a book that hurdles the contradictions inherent in biochemistry, consciousness, and human hearts without breaking stride. ~ Elizabeth Bear, #NFDB
429:Do you watch Neighbors, Cyril?” “Well, I’ve seen it,” I admitted. “Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say I watch it.” “You should. It’s magnificent. Shakespearean in its characterization. ~ John Boyne, #NFDB
430:The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal. ~ John Dunning, #NFDB
431:Then he dipped his head, touched his mouth to mine and then lifted it away before he whispered, "Yeah, and I'm fucking glad you did. You were magnificent, sweetness. Fuckin' phenomenal. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
432:Already twenty magnificent skins ornamented the dining-room of Granite House, and if this continued, the jaguar race would soon be extinct in the island, the object aimed at by the hunters. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
433:I fell in love with the land and with the very old fashioned idea of leaving a physical legacy for my children. A stunning place, with a magnificent forest of trees, and a magnificent river. ~ Val Kilmer, #NFDB
434:Marco Rubio doesn't go to the United States Senate. I must say, if I were a United States senator, I would be so honored to be in that magnificent chamber voting for the people of Florida. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
435:nothing is as precious to us as the magnificent gift of life. Let the moon and the stars always remind you of this—that though we are tiny creatures in this universe, we are filled with life. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
436:And still the mad magnificent herald Spring assembles beauty from forgetfulness with the wild trump of April:witchery of sound and odour drives the wingless thing man forth in the bright air. ~ e e cummings, #NFDB
437:Be motivated like the falcon,
hunt gloriously.
Be magnificent as the leopard,
fight to win.
Spend less time with
nightingales and peacocks.
One is all talk,
the other only color. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
438:But my son... he’s so different now. We are all different, Sam. And we are all the same. Love who he is. Teach him who he is. Believe in who he is. And who is he? A magnificent being, as are you. ~ J R Rain, #NFDB
439:The trouble with you hunting blokes is lack of imagination,’ said Larry critically. ‘I supply magnificent ideas – all you have to do is to try them out. But no, you condemn them out of hand. ~ Gerald Durrell, #NFDB
440:But now those childish dreams dwindled to this: an aging woman, magnificent and solitary, whose tower door never opened, who would make her daughter a proper maiden but never count the cost. ~ Katherine Arden, #NFDB
441:Not so much wonderful as perfect," she replied. "Kind of flawless. More or less magnificent. Without blemish. Rather on the ideal side." She looked at the Prince. "Am I being helpful?"
"I ~ William Goldman,#NFDB
442:To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man — the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
443:And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy. ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
444:Kingsley looked magnificent, like a Regencyera fever dream. If Jane Austen had set eyes on Kingsley, she would never have written her genteel comedies of manner.
She would have written porn. ~ Tiffany Reisz,#NFDB
445:But [Syd] liked the simple things as much as the fancy stuff. In her view, it was all magnificent because she had an uncanny ability to enjoy her life in the moment, no matter what it brought. ~ Jennifer Probst, #NFDB
446:He thought the column was magnificent, everything it said about old age was the best he had ever read, and it made no sense to end it with a decision that seemed more like a civil death. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
447:Is he really so wonderful, this Westley of yours?"
"Not so much wonderful as perfect," she replied. "Kind of flawless. More or less magnificent. Without blemish. Rather on the ideal side. ~ William Goldman,#NFDB
448:Clarity comes when you unify all the faculties of the mind into a magnificent light of perception. That light is the concentrated force of the mind. It is by that brightness that truth is revealed. ~ Ming Dao Deng, #NFDB
449:No other people have a government more worthy of their respect and love or a land so magnificent in extent, so pleasant to look upon, and so full of generous suggestion to enterprise and labor. ~ Benjamin Harrison, #NFDB
450:Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
451:Music wasn't about learning how to love. It was about learning what to disown and when to disown it. Even the most magnificent piece would end up as collateral damage in the endless war over taste. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
452:I'm just not the glamour type. Glamour girls are born, not made. And the real ones can be glamorous even if they don't wear magnificent clothes. I'll bet Lana Turner would look glamorous in anything. ~ Teresa Wright, #NFDB
453:Misery, we repeat, had been good for him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has this magnificent property about it, that it turns the whole will towards effort, and the whole soul towards aspiration. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
454:[Patrick Leonard] is such a magnificent composer. I don't think there is anybody working today with those kind of skills that could translate one of my tunes into that really beautiful chamber music. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
455:He was wearing a very sharp dark suit, blinding-white shirt and royal-blue tie. It brought out the sheen in his black hair, which had finally been trimmed, and his magnificent blue eyes glittered. “Whoa, ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
456:I am a Divine, magnificent expression of life, and deserve the very best. I accept miracles. I accept healing. I accept wholeness. And most of all, I accept myself. I am precious, and I cherish who I am. ~ Louise Hay, #NFDB
457:The colorful sky stretched before us—magnificent—as if it was trying to make up for the ugliness of our lives, our constant struggles. And for just the briefest, most fleeting of moments, maybe it did. ~ Mia Sheridan, #NFDB
458:The mind and the soul must work together if you are to experience true bliss. Try not to spend too much time exclusively in your mind. It is a magnificent tool, but it has a limited perspective. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
459:John Frame's magnificent work on the Christian life fully endorses the authority of Scripture and practically addresses the need to consider the situations and people involved in ethical decisions. ~ Richard L Pratt Jr, #NFDB
460:Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? ... The simple answer runs: 'Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.' ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
461:Against snow, a tall Beautiful Being. Whistlings of death and circles of muffled music make this adored body rise, swell and tremble like a ghost; scarlet and black wounds open in the magnificent flesh. ~ Arthur Rimbaud, #NFDB
462:Always live your life with your biography in mind," Dad was fond of saying.
"Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason,
but at the very least you will be living grandly. ~ Marisha Pessl,#NFDB
463:Muhammad Ali - he was a magnificent fighter and he was an icon... Every head must bow, every knee must bend, every tongue must confess, thou art the greatest, the greatest of all time, Muhammad, Muhammad Ali. ~ Don King, #NFDB
464:A woman's greatest charm consists in a constant appeal to a man's generosity by a gracious declaration of helplessness which fills him with pride and awakens the most magnificent feelings in his heart. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
465:Creativity isn't far away, or outside of you. It's an inner movement, a heart-shift, a joy making its way out of your throat or hands or feet. So go for it. No one's watching. The payoff is magnificent. ~ Margo Jefferson, #NFDB
466:My motivation to keep hiking was rooted in the magnificent details of the Appalachian Mountains, and the more I poured myself out - the more energy I gave the trail - the more it gave me in return. ~ Jennifer Pharr Davis, #NFDB
467:Parents give birth; the Guru gives life. These life-givers are the soul of the magnificent building. The school building which the government can construct is like the body, but the teachers are the soul. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
468:RESUMES: Just recall the opening reel of The Magnificent Seven and you won’t have to bother with this part; you should crawl to us on hands and knees and beg us for the privilege of paying our salaries. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
469:There's a hidden history. You see, Malcolm X and [Alex ] Haley collaborated to produce a magnificent narrative about the life of Malcolm X, but the two men had very different motives in coming together. ~ Manning Marable, #NFDB
470:What can we say beyond Wow, in the presence of glorious art, in music so magnificent that it can't have originated solely on this side of things? Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
471:Worpswede, Worpswede, I cannot get you out of my mind... Your magnificent pine trees! I call them my men--thick, gnarled, powerful, and tall--yet with the most delicate nerves and fibers in them. ~ Paula Modersohn Becker, #NFDB
472:You have to have a lot of 'overage' so that your failures aren't the only thing you come home with. You've got to have a lot of things that were magnificent failures, but you want some magnificent successes. ~ Jay Maisel, #NFDB
473:If you go to a place of power, the beings are higher, magnificent beings of light. They are not from our world. They pass through it, the place where dimensions touch, where there are many worlds present. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
474:Most of my life, I’ve romanticized death. I used to love the idea of something being so tremendous that it was worth dying for. But I was wrong. I think the most magnificent things are worth living for. ~ Stephanie Garber, #NFDB
475:As you go through your workweek, reflect on the people that you work with and ask yourself whether you are showing up at your best with them and treating them as the magnificent people that they truly are. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
476:Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
477:The dining room in my old house was truly magnificent, but by far the worst room for conversation. I'd get up from the table, a very long table, and somebody would always say, Paul, I never got to talk to you. ~ Paul Lynde, #NFDB
478:When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
479:In the old days, when travelers would get lost, they would follow the stars and I love that idea. I wish that I could rely on something as simple and magnificent as a star for all of my aching questions. ~ Jennifer Elisabeth, #NFDB
480:Now, I was a planet tilted off its axis. A brighter sun had appeared in my system, pulling me away from the world I knew before. All else paled in comparison to the magnificent Morgon man standing before me. ~ Juliette Cross, #NFDB
481:Conscience can be painful but so can the cock-rot. A grown-up should suffer his afflictions privately and not allow them to become an inconvenience for friends and colleagues.’ - The Magnificent Nicomo Cosca ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
482:I believe that we must maintain pride in the knowledge that the actions we take, based on our own decisions and choices as individuals, link directly to the magnificent challenge of transforming human history. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
483:Christmas is more than trees and twinkling lights, more than toys and gifts and baubles of a hundred varieties. It is love. It is the love of the Son of God for all mankind. It is magnificent and beautiful. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
484:No longer will we allow the infrastructure of our magnificent country to crumble and decay. While protecting the environment, we will build gleaming new roads, bridges, railways, waterways, tunnels and highways. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
485:This is a collection of dexterous, loving, beautifully optimistic work that left me breathless and delighted.... Hannu Rajaniemi's magnificent science fiction - as is paradoxically appropriate - is pure magic. ~ Amal El Mohtar, #NFDB
486:Timeless awareness occurs to very few in this world, to step beyond the circle of fear. The body has created a magnificent arena of fear. We have developed ways of seeing life that exclude us from seeing life. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
487:A god who gave us everything we wanted would be the most malevolent god of all. With an infantile curiosity, we insist on tasting the cockroach on the floor while our father is preparing a magnificent feast for us. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
488:but I was pissed-off enough that I held my stance even as he walked toward me, his naked, and (even though he was fuzzy without my contacts in, it must be said) magnificent body illuminated by the streetlights. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
489:Film has changed vastly in the time that I've been an actor, and it's, I think, very much for the better. I think there are just magnificent films now, and they're blossoming in the way that the novel did years ago. ~ John Hurt, #NFDB
490:I begin with the young. We older ones are used up but my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at all these men and boys! What material! With you and I, we can make a new world. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
491:I cut the scene out, but there was a moment where Christoph Waltz plays the piano in 'Django [Unchained]' - Jamie [Foxx] is a magnificent piano-player but there's never a moment where Django plays the piano. ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
492:The previous year, Baba had surprised Hassan with a leather cowboy hat just like the one Clint Eastwood wore in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—which had unseated The Magnificent Seven as our favorite Western. ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
493:Wakhan Valley was a tiny finger of flat fertile ground separating some of the tallest mountains in the world—the magnificent and treacherous Hindu Kush to the south and the impenetrable Pamir Range to the north. ~ Toni Anderson, #NFDB
494:Despairing Dido, queen of ancient Carthage, slain by her own hand as her magnificent lover Aeneas lifts anchor and sails away forever: this is one of the most haunting and permanent images of the classical world. ~ Thomas Cahill, #NFDB
495:Everyone should be commended for allowing people to make disasters, to make failures - you've just got to be sure that it's a magnificent failure and that, by creating a magnificent failure, you plant the seed. ~ Malcolm Mclaren, #NFDB
496:Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds, while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. All that exists is a magnificent interweaving, vast and reciprocal. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
497:The universe, as far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine.... If we dramatize its life and conceive its spirit, we are filled with wonder, terror and amusement, so magnificent is the spirit. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
498:An almost seismic sense of expectation emanates from a college campus. That is the true elixir of youth: the grand, the glorious, the magnificent hopes and dreams because all things - all things - are yet possible. ~ Carolyn Hart, #NFDB
499:And just before you lose your final human faculties, you painfully ponder what magnificent extraterrestrial creature, enthralled with the idea of finding a simpler life, chose in the last round to become a human. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
500:Love is the world’s infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood. Tony Kushner, THE ILLUSION ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
501:Marilyn is a kind of ultimate. She is uniquely feminine. Everything she does is different, strange, and exciting, from the way she talks to the way she uses that magnificent torso. She makes a man proud to be a man. ~ Clark Gable, #NFDB
502:There are none among us who have not been, even for a moment, cruel to those whom we love most, as if unable, in that moment, to shoulder any longer the magnificent weight and burden, the responsibility, of that love. ~ Rick Bass, #NFDB
503:Astronomy, that micography of heaven, is the most magnificent of the sciences. ... Astronomy has its clear side and its luminous side; on its clear side it is tinctured with algebra, on its luminous side with poetry. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
504:Despite everything that has befallen us, do we not continue to hold the destiny of this shattered and magnificent nation, together with the future of all our children-girls and boys alike-in the palm of our hands? ~ Greg Mortenson, #NFDB
505:Now the spectacle was before him in its glory, and as he looked out on it he felt shy, old-fashioned, inadequate: a mere grey speck of a man compared with the ruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being.... ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
506:Happier of happy though I be, like them I cannot take possession of the sky, mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there, one of a mighty multitude whose way and motion is a harmony and dance magnificent. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
507:The sun now radiated all around me and the magnificent palace that lay before me glittered invitingly. Which reminded me of another one of Mother’s sayings: if something appears too good to be true, it probably is. ~ Jessie Harrell, #NFDB
508:I look out of the round cabin window and see dozens of lights in the sky, but it’s not twinkling stars, it’s light coming from endless tall, twirling buildings – they look magnificent, glowing bright over the black ocean ~ Farah Cook, #NFDB
509:The past is never completely lost, however extensive the devastation. Your sorrows are the bricks and mortar of a magnificent temple. What you are today and what you will be tomorrow are because of what you have been. ~ Gordon Wright, #NFDB
510:To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
511:with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. ~ Jon Ronson, #NFDB
512:After I broke my leg I had to go back and do one of the remakes of 'The Magnificent Seven' and ended up on a horse that pitched me off and broke my leg again... I rode horses pretty well. I just didn't like doing it. ~ William Lucking, #NFDB
513:If anyone or anything frightens you, shout.” “Shout what?” He made an aimless gesture. “‘Help,’ I suppose. Or ‘Fire’ or ‘Murder.’ In a pinch, ‘James’ would suffice.” She nodded. “‘Come to me, you magnificent stag,’ it is. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
514:Remember always, he said, that nothing is as precious to us as the magnificent gift of life. Let the moon and the stars always remind you of this-that though we are tiny creatures in this universe, we are filled with life. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
515:This is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives. This is the lonely, magnificent power of humanity. It is . . . the supreme epitome of the reaching out. ~ Loren Eiseley, #NFDB
516:We are all prisoners of our birthdays," I said, "Though we try to transcend them. We are creatures of our times, and sometimes our souls peek through the cracks and yearn for the sky. And then we are magnificent creatures. ~ Jo Graham, #NFDB
517:What kind of dog is that?" I would always give the same answer: "She's a brown dog." Similarly, when the question is raised, "What kind of God do you believe in?" my answer is easy: "I believe in a magnificent God. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
518:Human generosity is possible only because at the center of the solar system a magnificent stellar generosity pours forth free energy day and night without stop and without complaint and without the slightest hesitation. ~ Megan McKenna, #NFDB
519:Our land has grown a magnificent liberty tree and its fruit is the richest ideal of the human soul. But, we cannot go on forever merely eating the fruit of the liberty tree or it will die. We must begin to plant some seeds. ~ Leon Uris, #NFDB
520:We`re going to be opening up the old post office where we spent over $200 million, and built the most magnificent hotel, I think, anywhere in the country on Pennsylvania Avenue right between the White House and congress. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
521:In the West we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live as we choose. Liberty is codified in human rights, a magnificent Western creation but also, I believe, a universal good. ~ Ibn Warraq, #NFDB
522:Remember always,” he said, “that nothing is as precious to us as the magnificent gift of life. Let the moon and the stars always remind you of this—that though we are tiny creatures in this universe, we are filled with life. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
523:The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. ~ Che Guevara, #NFDB
524:There was nothing so dangerous to a king or an emperor as a book. Yes, a great library—a library as magnificent as this one—was a dangerous arsenal, one that kings and emperors feared more than the greatest army or magazine. ~ Ross King, #NFDB
525:But with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. ~ Jon Ronson, #NFDB
526:O what a flowery track lies spread before me, henceforth! What dust clouds shall spring up behind me as I speed on my reckless way! What carts I shall fling carelessly into the ditch in the wake of my magnificent onset! ~ Kenneth Grahame, #NFDB
527:But the Duke of Clermont was smiling and cheerful, and he’d thrown it out there as if it were merely one more fact to be recounted. The weather is lovely. The streets are paved with cobblestone. Your tits are magnificent. ~ Courtney Milan, #NFDB
528:Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
529:People of talent resemble a musical instrument more closely than they do a musician. Without outside help, they produce not a single sound, but given even the slightest touch, and a magnificent tune emanates from them. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
530:This is a magnificent Universe. The Universe is bringing all good things to me. The Universe is conspiring for me in all things. The Universe is supporting me in everything I do. The Universe meets all my needs immediately. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
531:Victory, when it is in accord with progress, merits the applause of the people; but a heroic defeat merits their tender compassion. The one is magnificent, the other sublime. For our own part, we prefer martyrdom to success. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
532:I’d like to quote the lyrics of Rodgers and Hammerstein—something that’s extremely easy to do when you’re in a library near 782.14 and all those magnificent Broadway show tunes—‘I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly!’ ~ Chris Grabenstein, #NFDB
533:I would want to affirm how rare and magnificent and messy it is to be alive, how there is really nothing between us and life, though so many things get in the way, and how our heart is the strongest muscle and resource we have. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
534:Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
535:When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but no one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
536:Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their ~ Booth Tarkington, #NFDB
537:...motherhood is not a house you live in but a warren of beautiful rooms, something like Topkapi … some well-trod but magnificent place you’re only allowed to sit in for a minute and snap a photo before you are ushered out. ~ Lydia Kiesling, #NFDB
538:Your ultimate life experience and legacy is being built moment by moment, day by day. Your story is being crafted by your every action, all leading somewhere, all leading to what one hopes will be a magnificent crescendo. ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
539:And then what? I mean . . . after everything else? After the exam? After graduation? What will happen to me?”
The hunchback smiled. “It shall be magnificent. Believe me. But at this stage I simply cannot explain it. ~ Marina Dyachenko,#NFDB
540:I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” - Jack London ~ Jack London, #NFDB
541:I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out. ~ Aime Cesaire, #NFDB
542:I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
543:Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
544:... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
545:When he first stepped out of the car and walked towards the door where I stood waiting, I saw a man I liked. In his writing he is flamboyant, virile, animal, magnificent. He's a man whom life makes drunk, I thought. He is like me. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
546:But it held a deeper meaning for me, the sense that reality itself was a stage set that could be dismantled at any moment, and that no matter how magnificent anything appeared, it could be swept aside into the debris of the past. ~ J G Ballard, #NFDB
547:Magnificent,’ muttered Glokta, stretching out his aching back and squinting up, the pure white stone almost painful to look at in the afternoon glare. ‘Seeing this, one could almost believe in God.’ If one didn’t know better. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
548:My dear Pepper,” said Ellery, “that is the curse of my composition. I’m always thinking. I’m pursued by what Byron in Childe Harold—you recall that magnificent first canto?—saw fit to call, ‘The blight of life—the demon Thought. ~ Ellery Queen, #NFDB
549:Arthur had never challenged a man to a duel, but in this moment he understood the magnificent reasonableness of the tradition. It was either that or slugging him outright this very second, which didn't seem nearly so gentlemanly. ~ Graham Moore, #NFDB
550:God has disclosed of himself in human words with such magnificent self accommodation to our limitations. Precisely so that we may be his holy people and reverence everything that he says, cherish it, value it, and thus live it out. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
551:I worked with great, brilliant directors. I've been so lucky. It's terrible to compare anyone, because you can't. But I can just tell you that this experience was just a truly magnificent experience for everyone involved. ~ Jennifer Jason Leigh, #NFDB
552:Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so viscious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived as noble and godlike. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
553:after all the years of waiting, the interested world could at least see the magnificent complexity of the undertaking, the detail, the filigree work, the sheer intricacies of exactitude that the editors were bent on compiling. ~ Simon Winchester, #NFDB
554:Christmas in Bethlehem. The earliest dream: a cold, clear night made bright by a magnificent star, the smell of anger, marshals and clever men falling to their knees in love of the lovely baby, the avatar of faultless love...!!! ~ Lucinda Franks, #NFDB
555:I did Star 80, which was a magnificent experience as well, but still, I was at the height of my career at the beginning. Then I had to jump down the ladder and climb back up again, which I didn't understand. That was very hard. ~ Mariel Hemingway, #NFDB
556:The devil stole into the Garden of Eden.
He carried with him the disease— amor deliria nervosa —
in the form of a seed. It grew and flowered into a
magnificent apple tree, which bore apples as bright as blood. ~ Lauren Oliver,#NFDB
557:The fact remains that he was less a pope than a Renaissance prince. Homosexual like his predecessor, he was a cultivated and polished patron of the arts, far more magnificent than his father, Lorenzo, had ever dared to be. A ~ John Julius Norwich, #NFDB
558:Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
559:I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark burn out in a brilliant blaze than it be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
560:The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
561:The knowledge and understanding of the world which science gives us and the magnificent opportunity which it extends to us to control and use the world for the extension of our pleasure in it has never been greater than it now is. ~ Polykarp Kusch, #NFDB
562:These men are not made of the same stuff as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their empire.”110 ~ Patrick J Buchanan, #NFDB
563:When I found acting, it was my saving grace - still is. That I get paid to do it is remarkable. That I get to meet people like Salma Hayek - one of the most beautiful women I know, with the most magnificent energy - is phenomenal. ~ Pierce Brosnan, #NFDB
564:All the things that seemed so exotic and exciting – cars, television, the fashions, the music, the buildings – were just surface. Under it all, people were still just people. Angry, decent, captious, stupid, sometimes magnificent. ~ Dave Hutchinson, #NFDB
565:I have sought to offer humanists a detailed analysis of a technology sufficiently magnificent and spiritual to convince them that the machines by which they are surrounded are cultural artifacts worthy of their attention and respect. ~ Bruno Latour, #NFDB
566:Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
567:Roy is my favorite security guy. He's a huge African-American gentleman who always has a beautiful smile on his face. He's the King of the Main Desk, and I'm always glad to arrive at work and bask in his magnificent good cheer. ~ Audrey Niffenegger, #NFDB
568:The essential lesson I've learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you're not here as a human being only. You're a spiritual being having a human experience. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
569:The light was odd, too. It poured from the streetlamp outside, through the rose window, which cut it into all sorts of magnificent colors and shapes. It was like peering into a kaleidoscope. Everything was shattered and beautiful. ~ Josiah Bancroft, #NFDB
570:Women of Manhattan, magnificent as they were, they forgot sometimes they weren’t immortal. They could throw themselves like confetti into a fun-filled Friday night, with no thought as to what crack they fell into by Saturday. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
571:As nature erodes the earth into magnificent forms, life through endless experience opens us further and further to the essence of what matters. Each time I've been opened further, the way I experience life and receive things has changed. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
572:By dipping us children in the Bible so often, they hoped, I think, to give our lives a serious tint, and to provide us with quaintly magnificent snatches of prayer to produce as charms while, say, being mugged for our cash or jewels. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
573:It was when a society became most distressed and antiquated that it would recreate an overwhelming fantasy of some Golden Age, a time when all was great and glorious, when people were more noble and causes more magnificent and honorable. ~ Greg Bear, #NFDB
574:India is a land of plenty inhibited by poverty; India has an enthralling, uplifting civilization that sparkles not only in our magnificent art, but also in the enormous creativity and humanity of our daily life in city and village. ~ Pranab Mukherjee, #NFDB
575:She should have looked ridiculous, standing there wet and bedraggled in her silly underwear, but she looked magnificent. Like some kind of mythical goddess rising from the mists of time.
Statuesque, utterly feminine. Breathtaking. ~ Sarah Mayberry,#NFDB
576:where he’d seen a most beautiful sunset that had brought tears to his eyes and left him humbled by the beauty of the Universe, the magnificent gift that is Presence on Earth, the vanity that is the pursuit of anything but Truth and Love. ~ Imbolo Mbue, #NFDB
577:For God’s sake, take the religion out of your life or all kind of absurdities will take the reason out of your life! Keep God, get rid of religion! God, Love and Science; the Magnificent Trinity! All you need is these three things! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
578:She swore her feelings for me were sincere, even though deep down she does love another man, a prisoner of the regime she’s struggling against. You probably think I should have put her in her place, but let me tell you, she was magnificent. ~ Marc Levy, #NFDB
579:The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self-defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle. ~ Mordechai Anielewicz, #NFDB
580:Bob Dylan has always sealed his decisions with the unexplainable. His motives for withholding the release of the magnificent 'Basement Tapes' will be as forever obscure as Brian Wilson's reasons for the destruction of the tapes for 'Smile.' ~ Jon Landau, #NFDB
581:Instead of looking at our challenges and limitations as something negative or bad, we can begin to look at them as blessings, magnificent gifts that can be used to ignite our imaginations and help us go further than we ever knew we could go. ~ Amy Purdy, #NFDB
582:Is he really so wonderful, this Westley of yours?” “Not so much wonderful as perfect,” she replied. “Kind of flawless. More or less magnificent. Without blemish. Rather on the ideal side.” She looked at the Prince. “Am I being helpful? ~ William Goldman, #NFDB
583:Nothing in the last few years has dazzled me more than Hilary Mantel's 'Wolf Hall,' which blew the top of my head straight off. I've read it three times, and I'm still trying to figure out how she put that magnificent thing together. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
584:Samskrit language, as has been universally recognized by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect, the most prominent and wonderfully sufficient literary instrument developed by the human mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
585:The world is always in a hurry, but I teach My children patience. Live, expecting a full and joyous life. And learn to trust My perfect timing so that you may discover that all the pain found in waiting has a magnificent and awesome purpose. ~ Eric Ludy, #NFDB
586:What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
587:Life was, in fact, cheap.
If life was such a glorious, magnificent, wonderful thing, then it wouldn't be so easy to take it away.
If life was a great gift, then he wouldn't be able to kill a fellow human being with one hand... ~ Keith R A DeCandido,#NFDB
588:under the velvety fabric, as if it were made of scratchy sackcloth. I want you to trust Me enough to realize your privileged position in My kingdom. Relax in the luxuriant folds of your magnificent robe. Keep your eyes on Me as you practice ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
589:You have no idea the power generated each time somebody is told a story. When a conscious, sentient mind willingly ignores what is real, what is fact, and instead chooses to invest in people and places that never existed...It's magnificent. ~ Derek Landy, #NFDB
590:Everyone came here to do something magnificent. What is important is that you live your life to your fullest potential. That's how you open your gifts and share them with the world. You should only be doing that thing that lights up your soul. ~ Kim Coles, #NFDB
591:I desire a violent, domineering, fearless, and ferocious upcoming generation. It must be able to bear pain. It must show no signs whatsoever of weakness or tenderness. The free and magnificent predator must once again glint from their eyes. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
592:There is a magnificent new militancy within the Negro community all across this nation. And I welcome this as a marvelous development. The Negro of America is saying he's determined to be free and he is militant enough to stand up. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
593:You have a gift that only you can give the world - that's the whole reason you're on the planet. Use your precious energy to build a magnificent life that really is attainable. The miracle of your existence calls for celebration every day. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
594:A man, good or bad, was magnificent. It was not possible that this thing that was nothing and would never change [death] could mean the end of everything that moved and changed within him - the good, the bad, the magnificent. Yet it did. ~ Richard Flanagan, #NFDB
595:I have a friend, physically magnificent, who combines within himself the intellect of a philosopher, the diplomacy of a statesman, the executive ability of the general of an army, the courtesy of a Chesterfield - and the emotions of a rabbit. ~ Myrtle Reed, #NFDB
596:In just the first letter of the OED you will find words as magnificent as agathokakological (composed of good and evil), as delicately shaded as addubitation (the suggestion of doubt), and as odd as antithalian (opposed to fun or festivity). I ~ Ammon Shea, #NFDB
597:She remembered thinking falling for him would be like falling in love with darkness, but now she imagined he was more like a starry night: the constellations were always there, constant, magnificent guides against the ever-present black. ~ Stephanie Garber, #NFDB
598:There are those among us who would have us say that the mysteries of the brain are completely solved and little needs to be added to its knowledge. It is as if these fortunate persons had been present when this magnificent organ was created. ~ Nicolas Steno, #NFDB
599:A magnificent natural view is a pink curtain. Open the curtain; you will then see the most horrible life struggles over there! Could it be that the beauty of the nature is a bribe given to us by God to forget the atrocities of the nature? ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
600:His voice was low. “Damn their bonnets. Damn their rules.” “What do you want?” Her hands were shaking. “Why are you doing this to me?” “Miss Lowell, you magnificent creature, I want you to paint your own canvas. I want you to unveil yourself. ~ Courtney Milan, #NFDB
601:I use the word drifted advisedly. I have read novels in which young people are described as bursting with energy—joie de vivre, the magnificent vitality of youth … Personally, all the young people I come across have the air of animal wraiths. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
602:A kiss for luck, demoiselle?"
It is a magnificent, lusty kiss and I feel nothing but deep regret that it may be his last.
Just before he pulls away, he whispers in my ear. "Duval said to give you that should I get a chance. It is from him. ~ R L LaFevers,#NFDB
603:And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can't see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent that our bodies can't contain it. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
604:And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can’t see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent that our bodies can’t contain it. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
605:She was as inept at causing pain as she was at giving pleasure. Strange lioness, indeed! She thought she possessed claws, but when she tried to bare them, nothing emerged from her magnificent velvet paws. Her scratches were of velvet! ~ Jules Barbey d Aurevilly, #NFDB
606:Not so much wonderful as perfect," she replied. "Kind of flawless. More or less magnificent. Without blemish. Rather on the ideal side." She looked at the Prince. "Am I being helpful?" "I think emotions are clouding your objectivity just a bit. ~ William Goldman, #NFDB
607:It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
608:Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of things which are splendid or valuable in themselves is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
609:Metaphorically, the body becomes a machine to be driven or a garbage dump to be avoided. At the same time, the magnificent Mother in whose womb we live is mindlessly poisoned and raped. Surely, our insane denial has to be perceived and acted upon. ~ Marion Woodman, #NFDB
610:The human spirit is itself the most wonderful fairy tale that can possibly be. What a magnificent world lies enclosed within our bosoms! No solar orbit hems it in, the inexhaustible wealth of the total visible creation is outweighed by its riches! ~ E T A Hoffmann, #NFDB
611:And I always think of life like a giant wave. You know, it rises and it crests and it flies, and it's just magnificent, and then it crashes. And for a lot of people, when it crashes, that's the end, and they go down the deep, dark hole of depression. ~ Jane Seymour, #NFDB
612:Everything looks so much brighter today. The sky is a magnificent cobalt blue, the clouds look like puffy white marshmallows, and I'm happy. not the fake, suck-it-up-and-put-a-smile-on-your-face-happy. Really happy. For the first time in a long time. ~ Beth Michele, #NFDB
613:He held up the ring and the light from the rising sun caught the stone and Froi thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. It was the ring that had given him a life he could never have imagined. It was all things magnificent about Lumatere. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
614:I wake up wating you. I fall asleep wanting you. I watch a magnificent sunrise and can think only of sharing it with you. I glimpse a piece of amver and see your eyes. Jillian, I've caught a disease, and the fever abates only when I'm near you. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
615:Standing on that platform, I said a silent prayer. I thanked God for giving me the strength and the opportunity to come back, to play basketball again, and to be part of that whole magnificent Olympic experience. It's a memory I will always cherish. ~ Magic Johnson, #NFDB
616:Interviewer: Did you hear t.A.T.u's version of 'How Soon Is Now'?
Morrissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know much about them.
Interviewer: They're the teenage Russian lesbians.
Morrissey: Well, aren't we all? ~ Morrissey,#NFDB
617:Tango is serious and takes discipline. It must be studied hard to be done well. It is elegant, formal, passionate and intimate. It is about power and vulnerability. It is both dance and metaphor. And to its captives becomes a magnificent obsession ~ Janny Scott, #NFDB
618:Wait and see," Claire said excitedly. "Your husband will not be able to resist you."
Grace hoped Claire was right.Since the night he had kissed her in the drawing room after their disastrous dinner party,he had done a magnificent job of exactly that. ~ Kat Martin,#NFDB
619:We must all be profoundly grateful for the magnificent achievements of our forbearers in this century. Yet perhaps in the daily press of events, in the clash of controversy, we don't see our own time for what it truly is - a new dawn for America. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
620:What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it. ~ William James, #NFDB
621:America is a magical place, and I think my job, or the job of a lot of us European filmmakers is to just hold up America to Americans and present it to you in a new way. All I wanted to do is in a funny way say, "Look at your country. It's magnificent." ~ Hans Zimmer, #NFDB
622:It could have been fantasy. While I love the idea of swimming with mermaids, climbing aboard a pirate ship, being the last beings on Earth—there is nothing better than my reality. I can’t think of a greater, more magnificent adventure. Than this one. ~ Krista Ritchie, #NFDB
623:Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
624:A magnificent cause can overcome a prickly personality, but your ability to enchant people increases if they like you, so you should aspire to both. You’ll know that you’re likeable when you can communicate freely, casually, and comfortably with people. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
625:As a highly qualified Turkish-trained concubine from the harem of Suleiman the Magnificent, Philippa Somerville settled into English court life as a kite among chickens, and as a kite among kites into the Spanish court of the new King-consort Philip. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
626:But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent uselessness of a woman's face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
627:I did know that. Ned Warnick, bein’ duly sworn by the Sheriff a this magnificent town I christen thee deputy and savior. With all the rights and responsibilities therewith. Now please go out and stop drunk people from killin’ themselves. Pretty please. ~ Victor Methos, #NFDB
628:I've had people say to me, 'Look at the sky, the fields, the ocean, the beautiful sunset. Isn't that proof positive of God?' Following that line of thought, look at the magnificent rainbows after a big rainstorm. Isn't that proof positive that God is gay? ~ Ray Romano, #NFDB
629:What the Founding Fathers created in the Constitution is the most magnificent government on the face of the Earth, and the reason is this: because it was intended to preserve the American society and the American spirit, not to transform it or destroy it. ~ Mark Levin, #NFDB
630:I find that I do not know what to believe, that I have not decided yet whether analysis simplifies and undramatizes our existence, or whether it is the most subtle, the most insidious, the most magnificent way of making dramas more terrible, more maddening. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
631:All those people I didn't even know, I couldn't pick them out of a lineup if I had to, but they had worked their whole lives to get the knowledge that ended up saving my life. It was because of them that I was in this magnificent wave of people and music. ~ Maria Semple, #NFDB
632:I was at the end of the studio system so when I walked into movies, I had a magnificent suite in which I had a living room and a kitchen and a complete makeup room. I had everything just for me. With the independents, you're kind of roughing it, literally. ~ Tippi Hedren, #NFDB
633:Orson Welles's second 'I-did-it' should show once and for all that film making, radio and the stage are three different guys better kept separated. 'The Magnificent Ambersons' is one of those versions of the richest family in town during the good old days. ~ Manny Farber, #NFDB
634:The great spider never worries itself chasing after its prey with all of its energy and strength. It only exerts its energy each morning to build its web in a magnificent way; relaxes in it and awaits its prey that will miss its path into the web ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
635:The next, magnificent step would of course have been to write , but the Stereometria records it as , and so Heron missed being the earliest known scholar to have derived the square root of a negative number in a mathematical analysis of a physical problem. ~ Paul J Nahin, #NFDB
636:to me sitting alone in Old Station, California, on a picnic table beneath the magnificent sky. I didn’t feel sad or happy. I didn’t feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I’d done wrong, in getting myself here, I’d done right. ~ Cheryl Strayed, #NFDB
637:Act as if you live in an abundant Universe (which you do) and have the ability to create whatever financial reality you desire (which you can), and that by doing this you’ll be sharing the most magnificent version of yourself with the world (which you will). ~ Jen Sincero, #NFDB
638:It's depressing to see blacks wanting to dive into the mainstream of American commercial life. They come from a magnificent African culture based on aesthetics, and they all want to become fort builders like the vicious people who originally enslaved them. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
639:Magnificent. Beautiful. Glorious.
Marius couldn’t believe such a woman still existed in all the kingdoms. The small taste of her blood on his tongue still flowed through his veins, white-hot and crippling him with the demand for… “More,” he whispered. ~ Juliette Cross,#NFDB
640:The river breeze washed over him. He saw the magnificent views of the city and the bridge connecting Algiers Point to New Orleans. He marveled at the crescent shape of New Orleans as the ferry traveled nearly parallel to the curve in the Mississippi River. ~ Hunter Murphy, #NFDB
641:Yet, when Republicans were finally able to push through tough policies on crime and welfare which they'd supported for decades, they were magnificent successes for the entire country, but especially for black people. Release us, and great things will happen! ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
642:You know the proverb, Mr. Hale, 'set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil' - well, some of these early manufacturers did ride to the devil in a magnificent style - crushing human bone and flesh beneath their horses' hoofs without remorse. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
643:It’s Fitzgerald’s thin-but-durable urge to affirm that finally makes Gatsby worthy of being our Great American Novel. Its soaring conclusion tells us that, even though Gatsby dies and the small and corrupt survive, his longing was nonetheless magnificent. ~ Maureen Corrigan, #NFDB
644:Oh. You have a magic boy. Why didn't you say so?” The priest scratched his forehead beneath the white silk blindfold that covered his eyes. “Magnificent. I'll plant him in the fucking ground and grow a vine to an enchanted land beyond the clouds. ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
645:Be kind to her when she comes back. Her love is not only for children but for humanity. She will be a good-hearted and magnificent zealot one day. As her mother is now.
Goodbye, Kate. And below he had signed as he rarely did, with his Christian name. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,#NFDB
646:Grandeur . . . consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
647:These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent-that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. ~ Alice Sebold, #NFDB
648:170. A magnificent temple towers to heaven by the Eternal Bridge.
Priests rival in its halls the sermons of rocks and streams.
I, for one, would gladly sacrifice my brows for my brethren,
But I fear I might aggravate the war, already rank as weeds. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#NFDB
649:But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
650:But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
651:They all shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had the strange cold breath of the ancient world : they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks - sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
652:Things like this don't happen all that often in one lifetime. This is the magnificent world of a picaresque novel. Just brace yourself and enjoy the smell of evil. We're shooting the rapids. And when we go over the falls, let's do it together in grand style! ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
653:Action without prayer thins out into something very exterior. A prayerless life can result in effective action and accomplish magnificent things, but if there is no developed interiority, the action never enters into the depth and intimacy of relationships. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
654:When a woman once asked Joe how he could come from such a magnificent home and such a good family and still become a gangster, Joe's answer was two-pronged: (a) he wasn't a gangster, he was an outlaw; (b) he came from a magnificent house not a magnificent home. ~ Dennis Lehane, #NFDB
655:Yet they are unmoved when told of the cruel blow that fortune has dealt them, happy to see out their days on this unknown and unspoiled atoll. They will tell you that the view from their windows is infinitely more magnificent than Manhattan's glittering skyline. ~ Giles Milton, #NFDB
656:The Southern whites are not yet living quite in the present age; many of their general ideas hark back to a former century, some of them to the Dark Ages. In the light of other days they are sometimes magnificent. Today they are often cruel and ludicrous. ~ James Weldon Johnson, #NFDB
657:I call myself a wordkeeper, or a keeper of words. I enjoy words and looking at them on all sides… Words are magnificent… They form rhythms of living in meaningful prose… It is the force of my desire, my wish to make myself understood, that powers these words. ~ Virginia Hamilton, #NFDB
658:Though I was satisfied that I was on the verge of perhaps a magnificent find, probably one of the missing tombs that I had been seeking for many years, I was much puzzled by the smallness of the opening in comparison with those of other royal tombs in the valley. ~ Howard Carter, #NFDB
659:England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. ~ Lydia M Child, #NFDB
660:How much does the iron in your blood and the calcium in your bones remember of the heart of the star in which they were born? And if they can forget that terrible, magnificent heat and light, what hope do I have of being more than an unremarkable footnote to you? ~ Seanan McGuire, #NFDB
661:In monasteries of old, the monk’s dharma, his purpose in life, was said to be this: to support the choir. In Latin, propter chorum. Literally, his life was lived “in support of the choir.” He was not a soloist. He was not a diva. He was part of a magnificent whole. ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
662:When innocent and
virtuous men liked to have gods as witnesses of their actions,
they lived with them in the same huts. But having soon become
evil, they grew weary of these inconvenient spectators and
relegated them to magnificent temples. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau,#NFDB
663:From tender youth we are told by father and teacher that betrayal is the most heinous offence imaginable. But what is betrayal? Betrayal means breaking ranks and breaking off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown. ~ Milan Kundera, #NFDB
664:If we were to take a mythic perspective into the travails of our intimate relationships, the trouble would get bigger but maybe more magnificent and, in some ways, easier to see. And when you can see something, you can negotiate with it and mythically, pay it libation. ~ Dr M. Shaw, #NFDB
665:My heart wasn’t racing, but there was this mellow, monotonous, morbidly magnificent, morose, macabre mumbling noise, the scarcely scintillating, screaming yet soundlessly simmering sound of savorless, screeching anxiety. I felt a hand on my shoulder and almost jumped. ~ M U Riyadad, #NFDB
666:My hips froze now, to make sure I didn’t buck him off because it was suddenly very important he keep doing exactly what he was doing — his finger moving inside me, touching me in places never touched before, and his magnificent tongue doing the most wicked things. ~ Candace Blevins, #NFDB
667:A woman was and is one of God's most magnificent creations. As a matter of fact, she was His grand finale. After He fashioned Eve, creation was complete and He took a rest! God has placed in our hearts a love for beauty and a desire to be beautiful - as He defines it. ~ Sharon Jaynes, #NFDB
668:But this is the idlest of dreams: for I did understand perfectly well at the time that the moment the breath left the body of the Magnificent Capitaz, the Man of the People freed at last from the toils of love and wealth, there was nothing more for me to do in Sulaco. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
669:King Nash is with them,” he said. “See him? The tall man, on the roan, near the standard-bearer. And that’s his brother beside him, the commander, Prince Brigan, with the longbow in his hand, on the black mare. In brown, see him? Dells, isn’t it a magnificent sight? ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
670:Little by little, I've reached the stage of using only a small number of forms and colors. It's not the first time that painting has been done with a very narrow range of colors. The frescoes of the tenth century are painted like this. For me, they are magnificent things. ~ Joan Miro, #NFDB
671:In Rome, they stared for hours at the magnificent Apollo and Daphne. Minna described the piece in a letter to a friend. “The Greeks construed Apollo's loss of Daphne,” she wrote, “as symbolizing that all mortals shall be denied the Heart's Desire, ever the unattainable. ~ Karen Abbott, #NFDB
672:It is certain that people do talk to themselves; there is no living being who has not done it. It may even be said that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when it goes from thought to conscience within a man, and when it returns from conscience to thought; ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
673:Picasso said “good artists copy but great artists steal.” Mark Twain said “all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.” No magnificent product of the imagination—whether a machine, painting, or philosophy—was created in ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
674:This is one of the blessings of the urban nature project: without the overtly magnificent to stop us in our tracks, we must seek out the more subversively magnificent. Our sense of what constitutes wildness is expanded, and our sense of wonder along with it. ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt, #NFDB
675:Estraven stood there in harness beside me looking at that magnificent and unspeakable desolation. 'I'm glad I have lived to see this,' he said.
I have felt as he did. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
676:Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood. ~ George S Patton, #NFDB
677:These [Arab] youth who have been inspired by universal values are idealistic enough to imagine a magnificent future and, at the same time, realistic enough to balance this kind of imagination and the process leading to it - not using violence, not trying to create chaos. ~ Wadah Khanfar, #NFDB
678:True browsing means that we discover shelves and subjects that we could not have anticipated when we started. And the books we read introduce us to other books, as if we are at a magnificent party of the mind, being ever welcomed by new friends to join in the conversation. ~ Ramona Koval, #NFDB
679:leather. He held it there for a second to let her suspense build, then he pulled back the lid to reveal a necklace that glowed like a spring morning. A magnificent golden sun pendant on a platinum rope. The ends of the rope fed through a large platinum moon clasp, and wrapped ~ Tim Tigner, #NFDB
680:All this is Brahman immortal, naught else; Brahman is in front of us, Brahman behind us, and to the south of us and to the north of us and below us and above us; it stretches everywhere. All this is Brahman alone, all this magnificent universe.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena And Other Upanishads,#NFDB
681:[about Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle during the filming of Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (1931)]: Oh, I thought he was magnificent in films. He was a wonderful dancer... a wonderful ballroom dancer, in his heyday. It was like floating in the arms of a huge donut... really delightful. ~ Louise Brooks, #NFDB
682:If you see Allah, Mighty and Magnificent, holding back this world from you, frequently trying you with adversity and tribulation, know that you hold a great status with Him. Know that He is dealing with you as He does with His Awliya’ and chosen elite, and is watching over you. ~ Al-Ghazali, #NFDB
683:It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we don't have enough personal power the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and it won't make a damn bit of difference. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
684:Um....I love your accent, and your cock is magnificent, and if you don't put it in me soon I will cry and it'll ruin my makeup and it'll be all your fault, so please fuck me now, right now, this second, or I swear to God I will forget I'm the submissive in this relationship. ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
685:I do not intend to give a tour of the magnificent Himalayas to my readers. But the amazing behaviour of a herd of wild elephant at Kumai tea garden was a challenge to my personal and professional capabilities. It was a kind of clash of personality between men and nature. ~ Maloy Krishna Dhar, #NFDB
686:There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
687:was magnificent. Her long, black hair hung down to her waist and her soft golden skirt caught on the grass as she walked, released and then caught again. She wore a purple tunic with a woven leather belt and a medallion that hung low on one hip. On her shoulder, she carried a ~ Marti Talbott, #NFDB
688:A map of the moon... should be in every geological lecture room; for no where can we have a more complete or more magnificent illustration of volcanic operations. Our sublimest volcanoes would rank among the smaller lunar eminences; and our Etnas are but spitting furnaces. ~ James Dwight Dana, #NFDB
689:The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read. The ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
690:Topographically the country is magnificent - and terrifying. Why terrifying? Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
691:He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry saber-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying “What a magnificent brute!” and “Here, pussy. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
692:I've been intrigued by 'Le Monde' ever since work took me to Paris once, and I noted that on a day when there was some huge worldwide story, the paper led its front page on some cabinet changes in Turkey. It implied a magnificent disdain for the quotidian folderol of mere news. ~ Simon Hoggart, #NFDB
693:See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist’s shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
694:Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. It's the only one. It's based on thousands of years of human experience. There is nothing narrow about the conservative philosophy. It's a liberating philosophy. It is a magnificent philosophy. It is a philosophy for the ages, for all times. ~ Mark Levin, #NFDB
695:There were serious environmental problems left over from the Industrial Age, and the deterioration of the global climate seemed to coincide with political leaders who grew increasingly ruthless. The worst of these was Marko III, known to his American subjects as The Magnificent. ~ Jack McDevitt, #NFDB
696:Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. It's the only one. It's based on thousands of years of human experience. There is nothing narrow about the conservative philosophy. It's a liberating philosophy. It is a magnificent philosophy. It is a philosophy for the ages, for all times. ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
697:Light is knowledge. Darkness is confusion. Light is strength, like being connected to a battery. Light is love, the reason we live. It is hope. No matter how magnificent or how bleak our situation, we can have better. Light is truth. There are no shadows where secrets can hide. I ~ Gena Showalter, #NFDB
698:Many think of management as cutting deals and laying people off and hiring people and buying and selling companies. That's not management, that's deal making. Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it's a magnificent profession. ~ Clayton Christensen, #NFDB
699:He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
700:It is part of an old and clandestine drama for which the human body serves only as a set of very allusive, often cryptic programme-notes -- it's as if the body we can measure is a scrap of this programme found outside in the street, near a magnificent stone theatre we cannot enter. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
701:There was only one thing about his own appearance which really pleased Hercule Poirot, and that was the profusion of his moustaches, and the way they responded to grooming and treatment and trimming. They were magnificent. He knew of nobody else who had any moustache half as good. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
702:But then that is what Englishmen are, adventurers to the backbone; and all our magnificent muster-roll of colonies, each of which will in time become a great nation, testify to the extraordinary value of the spirit of adventure which at first sight looks like a mild form of lunacy. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
703:She tried to avert her eyes from his bare chest. She should avert her eyes and not admire his magnificent, broad, powerful-looking chest, and focus only on his shoulder injury. She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. Shoulder, Avelina. Injury, Avelina. Breathe, Avelina. She ~ Melanie Dickerson, #NFDB
704:There he was, leaning with casual insolence against a magnificent mantle of carved Italian marble, a glass of brandy dangling from his fingertips. He was a dark angel, some brooding god of judgment, and as he turned his black, smoldering gaze upon her, Juliet felt her courage falter. ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
705:The food was so good that with each passing course, our conversation devolved further into fragmented celebrations of its deliciousness: “I want this dragon carrot risotto to become a person so I can take it to Las Vegas and marry it.” “Sweet-pea sorbet, you are so unexpectedly magnificent. ~ John Green, #NFDB
706:"And the other thing that's so interesting about being alive is that you're all in. No matter what you do you're all in; this is gonna kill you. So I think you might as well play the most magnificent game you can while you're waiting. Because, do you have anything better to do, really?" ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
707:Eight pins?” Regis whispered, marveling at the magnificent contraption— and at his own skill, for he suspected that there weren’t five burglars on the Sword Coast who could have picked this lock.
Well, not counting Calimpost, of course, where thievery was the city’s celebrated pastime. ~ R A Salvatore,#NFDB
708:Oh! Do not excite yourself. Shall I say that he interested me because he was trying to grow a mustache and as yet the result is poor." Poirot stroked his own magnificent mustache tenderly. "It is an art," he murmured, "the growing of the mustache! I have sympathy for all who attempt it. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
709:To a large degree, we are still bound to the modern scientific spirit, that characterizes reality merely by its material and mechanic aspects, without including life, consciousness and the intimate communion with that which poets, musicians and artists bring us in their magnificent works. ~ Leonardo Boff, #NFDB
710:I come from all places and to all places I go: I am art among the arts and mountain among mountains. I know the strange names of flowers and herbs and of fatal deceptions and magnificent griefs. In night's darkness I've seen raining down on my head pure flames, flashing rays of beauty divine. ~ Jose Marti, #NFDB
711:Mrs. Nixon and I share the sorrow of millions of Americans at the death of Louis Armstrong. One of the architects of an American art form, a free and individual spirit, and an artist of worldwide fame, his great talents and magnificent spirit added richness and pleasure to all our lives. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
712:"And the other thing that's so interesting about being alive is that you're all in. No matter what you do you're all in; this is gonna kill you. So I think you might as well play the most magnificent game you can while you're waiting. Because, do you have anything better to do, really?" ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
713:Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
714:If you want your life to be a magnificent story, then realize that you are its author. Every day you have the chance to write a new page in that story. I want to encourage you to fill those pages with responsibility to others and yourself. If you do, in the end you will not be disappointed. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
715:The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological. At such moments we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
716:We all experience 'soul moments' in life-when we see a magnificent sunrise, hear the call of the loon, see the wrinkles in our mother's hands, or smell the sweetness of a baby. During these moments, our body, as well as our brain, resonates as we experience the glory of being a human being. ~ Marion Woodman, #NFDB
717:These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
718:Holy Child of God, You are a Beautiful Creation of a Loving God. Let not the dreams of the world persuade You that you are unworthy of Love. You are Divine Love itself, and nothing can ever change the Real You: the One Perfect, Infinite, Magnificent, Eternal Love that You shall forever Be! ~ David Hoffmeister, #NFDB
719:There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind...There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
720:Toss his over," Zoya said. "Break his heart cruelly. I will gladly give our poor prince comfort, and I would make a magnificent queen."
I laughed. "You actually might, Zoya. If you could stop being horrible for a minute."
"With that kind of incentive, I can manage a minute. Possibly two. ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
721:What a blessing that God allows a life to come through your body, and then allows you to place that body in a body bag and take it out. I had to say that there's a magnificent something that God has for me to do, to give me that level of completion. That level of experience. It's unspeakable. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
722:Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate; and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
723:The gods and heroes of the old myths fade away and give place to people like ourselves. In Shakespeare we can still have heroes who can see ghosts and talk in magnificent poetry, but by the time we get to Beckett's Waiting for Godot they're speaking prose and have turned into ghosts themselves. ~ Northrop Frye, #NFDB
724:He had an air of magnificent melancholy sophistication, as if his proper place were elsewhere, somewhere infinitely more compelling even than Brakebills, and he'd been confined to his present setting by a grotesque divine oversight, which he tolerated with as much good humor as could be expected. ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
725:Life is not about control. It’s not about getting. It’s not about having. It’s not about knowing. It’s not even about being. Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known, commanded, or controlled. It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced. ~ Dee Hock, #NFDB
726:This is not what it is like to be you, I realized as a few of your magnificent clouds flew over the rooftop. It is just me thinking about being you. And before I headed back down the hill, I walked in a circle around your house, making an invisible line which you would have to cross before dark. ~ Billy Collins, #NFDB
727:A glorious Church is like a magnificent feast; there is all the variety that may be, but every one chooses out a dish or two that he likes, and lets the rest alone: how glorious soever the Church is, every one chooses out of it his own religion, by which he governs himself, and lets the rest alone. ~ John Selden, #NFDB
728:English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it. ~ Cristina Henriquez, #NFDB
729:Africa can stun you in an instant. It can throw floods and drought and disease at you, sometimes all at the same time. In the next moment, it will tease you with its magnificent beauty, so even if you don't forget, you can find a way to forgive. Ultimately, it keeps you coming back for more. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz, #NFDB
730:Betrayal. From tender youth we are told by father and teacher that betrayal is the most heinous offense imaginable. But what is betrayal? Betrayal means breaking ranks. Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
731:My friends, even if understanding is in fact an intellectual process, it is also a spiritual process, because the truths we arrive at through logic and mathematics, unless we feel them with our souls, will remain raw facts, and we will fall short of grasping how magnificent it is that we perceive them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
732:My God … how magnificent of a man do you have to be to go through what you went through, doing it alone, nobody to ease the way, the pain, no mother, no brother no sister, all by yourself enduring that and fight your way to becoming all that you are. It isn’t amazing. It’s a darned miracle. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
733:Their former masters had wrought something beautiful in the midst of their ruthlessness: a beast that sang, a machine that expressed its thoughts in poems. Jax had wished he were capable of sleeping like a human, for it would have been wonderful to experience a lullaby from this magnificent cousin. ~ Ian Tregillis, #NFDB
734:There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
735:Charles Spurgeon was bold in his insistence that every sermon lift up Jesus for all listeners to behold. He complained that he often heard sermons that were “very learned . . . fine and magnificent,” yet all about moral truth and ethical practice and inspiring concepts and “not a word about Christ. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
736:The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you're really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
737:I want to sleep with you, fall asleep and sleep. That magnificent folk word, how deep, how true, how unequivocal, how exactly what it says. Just – sleep. And nothing more. No, another thing: and know right into the deepest sleep that it is you. And more: how your heart sounds. And – kiss your heart. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva, #NFDB
738:We believe one magnificent highway of this kind [the Lincoln Highway], in actual existence, will stimulate as nothing else could the building of enduring highways everywhere that will not only be a credit to the American people but that will also mean much to American agriculture and American commerce. ~ Carl G Fisher, #NFDB
739:I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
740:I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
741:It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) KEEPING; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
742:At some point, Len was going to make a real pass at her, forcing her to make a real decision, and the game was so pathetic it made her want to weep. The hunter and the hunted, but it was like a bad nature show: He was a three-legged, runt coyote and she was a tired, limping bunny. It was not magnificent. ~ Gillian Flynn, #NFDB
743:Einstein's relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
744:The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all morality. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
745:Nobody knows but you what it is that’s sacred to you as far as what you want to manifest in your life. You need to do it by your own chosen standards. Your life does not need to look like anybody else’s life. It’s a commitment that you’re making to a magnificent life measured by your own chosen standards. ~ Gay Hendricks, #NFDB
746:No, the Sun is not like us. We are sustained, modified, and influenced by it. We are made of Sun stuff. But it is an alien entity. Touchingly, we are like symbiotic organisms that watch their magnificent long-lived host with appreciation and also concern - because its death must automatically mean their own. ~ Bob Berman, #NFDB
747:Yes, a great library — a library as magnificent as this one — was a dangerous arsenal, one that kings and emperors feared more than the greatest army or magazine. Not a single volume from the Spanish Rooms would survive, he swore, sniffling into his cup. No, no, not a single scrap would escape this holocaust! ~ Ross King, #NFDB
748:In a single generation, the Internet has given to virtually every person on the face of the earth the ability to communicate with fellow human beings on virtually any topic, at any time, and in every nook and cranny on the globe. This magnificent invention has done this without succumbing to government control. ~ Bob Barr, #NFDB
749:TODAY IS A magnificent black T-shirt day. Write today in your diaries. Tell your grandchildren stories about it. I tear my eyes away, but they slide back moments later. Underneath that T-shirt is a body that could fog an elderly librarian’s glasses. I think my underwear is curling off me like burning paper. ~ Sally Thorne, #NFDB
750:You wish this to end," the mercenary remarked to Dinin when they were alone.
"You have not met my brother," Dinin replied evenly, and his hand instinctively twitched near the hilt of his magnificent drow-made sword, as though the mere mention of Drizzt put him on the defensive. "Not in combat, at least. ~ R A Salvatore,#NFDB
751:Expanding the Toronto Island Airport will undermine the downtown's economy and liveability and intensify pollution and smog from Oshawa to Oakville. I urge Torontonians to close down this dangerous Trojan horse and get on with planning constructive and delightful ways of using our magnificent lakeside assets. ~ Jane Jacobs, #NFDB
752:I was so struck by the magnificent beauty of the sunset, I sat there, quiet. The silence allowed me to ask myself: What if I did get the chance at life all over again? What would I do differently? What would I keep and what would I leave??? My older self was welcoming my younger self into an early womanhood. ~ Drew Barrymore, #NFDB
753:Men trifle with their business and their politics but never trifle with their games. It brings truth home to them. They cannot pretend they have won when they have lost nor that they had a magnificent drive when they foozled it. The Englishman is at his best on the links and at his worst in the Cabinet. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
754:Goat cheese... produced a bizarre eating era when sensible people insisted that this miserable cheese produced by these miserable creatures reared on miserable hardscrabble earth was actually superior to the magnificent creamy cheeses of the noblest dairy animals bred in the richest green valleys of the earth. ~ Russell Baker, #NFDB
755:They tried hard to take comfort from the fact that the boys hadn’t died in vain: they had been part of a magnificent struggle for right. And there were moments where they could believe that and swallow down the angry, desperate screech that wanted to scrape its way out of their gullets like out of a mother bird. ~ M L Stedman, #NFDB
756:I found this really fantastic used record store in Japan, and I bought all these different records and different 45s, and one of the 45s was just, it had the theme, "Green Leaves of Summer," the theme to "The Alamo" on one side, and then on the flip side was a theme to, the theme to "The Magnificent Seven." ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
757:Only this morning, for instance, I took a wrong turning on the way to the bathroom and found myself in a beautifully proportioned room I have never seen before, containing a really rather magnificent collection of chamber pots. When I went back to investigate more closely, I discovered that the room had vanished. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
758:I Built Myself A House Of Glass
I built myself a house of glass:
It took my years to make it:
And I was proud. But now, alas!
Would God someone would break it.
But it looks too magnificent.
No neighbour casts a stone
From where he dwells, in tenement
Or palace of glass, alone.
~ Edward Thomas,#NFDB
759:His slut of a cousin, his cocksucking, suit-wearing, Montblanc-up-theass cousin Saxton the Magnificent, was standing next to the queen, looking like a combination of Cary Grant and some model in a goddamn cologne ad.
Not that Qhuinn was bitter.
Because the guy was sharing Blay’s bed.
Nah.
Nope. Not at all. ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
760:Life in the physical realm is glorious, and its purpose is to bring you happiness through the awareness of who you really are. So go into this magnificent world of your creation, and make your lifetime an extraordinary statement and experience of the most glorious idea that you have ever had about yourself. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
761:Oriental vases and French tapestries and paintings filled their huge mansion, as did the magnificent carpets for which their compound was famous. A vast feast of minted chicken, lamb kabobs, and sweet saffron rice that is served at weddings had been laid out on cloths on the floor of the dining room... ~ Sattareh Farman Farmaian, #NFDB
762:There are things than cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to loose their integrity in the frailty of realization. ~ Bruno Schulz, #NFDB
763:The whole world is, to me, very much "alive" - all the little growing things, even the rocks. I can't look at a swell bit of grass and earth, for instance, without feeling the essential life - the things going on - within them. The same goes for a mountain, or a bit of the ocean, or a magnificent piece of old wood. ~ Ansel Adams, #NFDB
764:You have yourself under magnificent control, but a woman passionately in love cannot keep a certain look out of her eyes."
"If it is there — let it stay," she said. "I would not keep it out of my eyes if I could, and, you are right, I could not if I would — if it is there. If it is — let it stay. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett,#NFDB
765:As Ariel recounted the events of her dream, two magnificent, batlike wings grew from the backs of her shoulders, stretched as if preparing to fly, then retreated back into their host. The sound heard when the wings disappear is the giggling of Alanna, who watched the event much the same way I did, in rapt wonder. ~ Don A Martinez, #NFDB
766:The magic here is not spectacular courage in one or two battles but the glamour of commitment to death at the peak of youth and beauty: the poignancy of the exhib-itionistic narcissism of youth determined once and for all on magnificent expenditure rather than slow wasting and remorseless physical deterioration. ~ Inga Clendinnen, #NFDB
767:And in that unlikely moment, as she held his dagger poised high, ready to strike, Royce Westmoreland thought she was the most magnificent creature he'd ever beheld; a wild, beautiful, enraged angel of retribution, her chest rising and falling with fury as she courageously confronted an enemy who towered over her. ~ Judith McNaught, #NFDB
768:In nature, the landscape looks magnificent. The trees, which seemed so similar before, take on their own personalities and paint the forests in a thousand different shades. One part of the cycle of life is coming to an end. Everything will rest for a while and come back to life in the spring, in the form of flowers. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
769:I've got a magnificent relationship with Leo (Messi) and Ney (Neymar). They drive the team, with Andres Iniesta as well - what a player. You know if you have a good relationship with them off the pitch it will be that way on the pitch too. They took it as a sign that I had come to help them, not to compete with them. ~ Luis Suarez, #NFDB
770:I am delighted that I have found a new reaction to demonstrate even to the blind the structure of the interstitial stroma of the cerebral cortex. I let the silver nitrate react with pieces of brain hardened in potassium dichromate. I have already obtained magnificent results and hope to do even better in the future. ~ Camillo Golgi, #NFDB
771:When did she plant the roses. In full magnificent bloom now, the red and the white. A fragrance to make you go, Aaah. I think how much they must have pleased her, year after year, and made her proud. And it's not the thought that she must miss them, but that she's no longer capable of missing them, that makes me sad. ~ Sigrid Nunez, #NFDB
772:The climate warmed. Wild grasses, flowers and trees took root in the land behind the huge rock. In time, their growing and dying made deep rich loam on which a magnificent forest grew. Into the forest came bear, deer, brightly colored birds, and the Pawtuxets, a tribe of the Wampanoag, The People of the Dawn. ~ Jean Craighead George, #NFDB
773:They looked at each other and laughed, then looked away, filled with darkness and secrecy. Then they kissed and remembered the magnificence of the night. It was so magnificent, such an inheritance of a universe of dark reality, that they were afraid to seem to remember. They hid away the remembrance and the knowledge. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
774:This is what we can promise the future: a legacy of care. That we will be good stewards and not take too much or give back too little, that we will recognize wild nature for what it is, in all its magnificent and complex history - an unfathomable wealth that should be consciously saved, not ruthlessly spent. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
775:And in the centre of the clearing, my dear Florence,’ she was saying, without apparently having broken her conversational stride, ‘we have . . . I say!’ ‘A dead body, my lady?’ I said. ‘I was going to say, “a magnificent English oak”,’ she said, somewhat distractedly, ‘but the body is definitely the more arresting sight. ~ T E Kinsey, #NFDB
776:And what magnificent instruments of observation we possess in our senses! This nose, for example, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with reverence and gratitude, is actually the most delicate instrument so far at our disposal: it is able to detect tiny chemical concentrations that even elude a spectroscope. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
777:He was a mote cycling in the wheels of a giant clock. Millions of people tended to this magnificent contraption, they lived and sweated and toiled in it, serving the mechanism of metropolis and making it bigger, better, story by glorious story and idea by unlikely idea. How small he was, tumbling between the teeth. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
778:If you could imagine dissonance assuming human form - and what else is man? - this dissonance would need, to be able to live, a magnificent illusion which would spread a veil of beauty over its own nature.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, ed. R. Geuss & R. Speirs, Cambridge, 2007, 163. (p.154) ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
779:Makwa, my bravest warrior.” His words were earnest and measured. “The great spirits call. It is time for you to go to them, to be honored for your loyalty and bravery. Mishe Moneto has gathered all your great fathers and they all await you with a magnificent feast. Go to them with your chin held high. Take your rightful place. ~ Brom, #NFDB
780:Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
781:(I must revert again to the perpetual theme: in the criticism of Melville & Whitman, and even Poe, Lawrence revealed a magnificent force, an understanding beyond all criticism heretofore known. The roughness & simplicity, the apparent laziness of it is disarming. Underneath tho’ a terrible power & penetration.) ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
782:...the Magnificent Seven consisted of one swimmer of color, a representative from each extreme of the educational spectrum, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a one-legged psychopath. When I envision us walking seven abreast through the halls of Cutter High, decked out in the sacred blue and gold, my heart swells. ~ Chris Crutcher, #NFDB
783:It was like rising slowly out of a pink cloud, or a magnificent dream which, try as you might, drains out of your mind as the daylight shuffles in, leaving a terrible sense of loss; nothing, you know instinctively, nothing you're going to experience for the rest of the day is going to be one half as good as that dream. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
784:So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky. ~ Russell Baker, #NFDB
785:A solemn embassy, armed with full powers and magnificent gifts, was hastily sent to deprecate the wrath of Attila; and his pride was gratified by the choice of Nomius and Anatolius, two ministers of consular or patrician rank, of whom the one was great treasurer, and the other was master-general of the armies of the East. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
786:Charles Dickens, visiting the United States five years earlier, had described Washington as “the City of Magnificent Intentions,”12 with “spacious avenues, that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere; streets, mile-long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants; public buildings that need but a public to be complete. ~ Ronald C White Jr, #NFDB
787:I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece" but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting! ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
788:I’ve become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It’s not “Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece” but “Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting! ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
789:He wouldn’t stand a chance. Not just because of her (magnificent) breasts and hotness—hey, no reason to act as if she didn’t know—but because he had no experience. She had been his first kiss; she knew it beyond any doubt. He’d been stiff at first, unsure. Hesitant. At no point had he known what to do with his hands. That ~ Gena Showalter, #NFDB
790:Sometimes I think the biggest challenge in talking about the church is telling ourselves the truth about it—acknowledging the scars, staring down the ugly bits, marveling at its resiliency, and believing that this flawed and magnificent body is enough, for now, to carry us through the world and into the arms of Christ. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
791:Among all My creatures, only humans can anticipate future events. This ability is a blessing, but it becomes a curse whenever it is misused. If you use your magnificent mind to worry about tomorrow, you cloak yourself in dark unbelief. However, when the hope of heaven fills your thoughts, the Light of My Presence envelops you. ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
792:He was half of something. A strong, beautiful, talented half of something that was, perhaps, even stronger, greater and more beautiful than he. He was, then, the magical half of something magnificent and unfathomable. She was a complete whole. A small, disoriented, not very strong or harmonius whole, but a whole all the same. ~ Milorad Pavi, #NFDB
793:Pure creativity is magnificent expressly because it is the opposite of everything else in life that's essential or inescapable (food, shelter, medicine, rule of law, social order, community and familial responsibility, sickness, loss, death, taxes, etc.). Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it's a gift. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
794:You don't have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he's just this magnificent human being. And a really good story because he was this kid who grew up essentially as an orphan, you know, had a tough life, and then he became the most successful baseball player ever. But he was also a really good guy. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
795:I've worked with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years, and we have this magnificent photographer, Tad Motoyama. He takes these wonderful, wonderful animal pictures. All through the years he's given me copies of these pictures. Well, I have all these gorgeous ones, so I said, 'Tad, I want to do a book with your picture on one side.' ~ Betty White, #NFDB
796:These magnificent species of Africa - elephants, rhino, lions, leopards, cheetah, the great apes (Africa has four of the world's five great apes) - this is a treasure for all humanity, and they are not for sale. They are not for trade. They need to be valued and preserved by humanity. We all need a global commitment to that. ~ Patrick Bergin, #NFDB
797:The most loving women are the women who will test you the most. She wants you to be your fullest, most magnificent self. She won’t settle for anything less. She knows it is true of you. She knows in your deepest heart you are free, you are Shiva. Anything less than that she will torment. And, as you know, she’s quite good at it. ~ David Deida, #NFDB
798:God loves America. When you consider what He went through to bring our forbearers to this magnificent land, and when you realize what He accomplished in bringing forth a new nation on this continent - a government founded on Christian principles...you have to realize that He had a dramatic vision and purpose for this nation. ~ D James Kennedy, #NFDB
799:Villains made no special guest appearances in our Once Upon A Time story games. They scared Laura and bored me, so instead we made up heroines with ghastly itchy skin but magnificent tresses of hair, and the occasional sleeping disorder. Those heroines had enough on their hands without having to worry about warding off true evil. ~ Rachel Cohn, #NFDB
800:In Hinduism, Shiva the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance - a magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the Universe. ~ Fritjof Capra, #NFDB
801:In that most magnificent place, the purest of all places-your heart, someone resides there who is your closest friend. There for you always. No cell phone required. No language required to communicate. All is there within you. Other parties have to end, but this one has the possibility of going on and on, for the rest of your life. ~ Prem Rawat, #NFDB
802:The devil stole into the Garden of Eden. He carried with him the disease - amor deliria nervosa - in the form of a seed. It grew and flowered into a magnificent apple tree, which bore apples as bright as blood.
-From Genesis: A Complete History of the World and the Known Universe, by Steven Horace, PhD, Harvard University ~ Lauren Oliver,#NFDB
803:The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
804:Unfurling herself like a large polar cat, she stood twice as tall as me. Her coat was a magnificent mother of pearl, while her tail gleamed turquoise with threads of gold bisecting each scale. Her teeth were large, capable of tearing a man in half, and her eyes glowed a deep bloody red. She was fury and wonder, and I adored her. ~ Jovee Winters, #NFDB
805:I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1822–1863), #NFDB
806:And now she was just Gabby, currently staying in a dreamy, magnificent castle in Scotland with a Fae prince who did all kinds of non-nasty, non-inhuman things like tearing up lists of names, and returning tadpoles to lakes, and saving people's lives.
Not to mention kissing with all the otherwordly splendor of a horny angel. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
807:Apart from the scenic majesty of the mountainous countryside, unspoiled by modern, conveniences, there is also the small but vibrant capital city of Quetchyl (pronounced “Clutch”), with its many squares and plazas, each with its magnificent statue of President Malagua, sometimes astride a horse and sometimes not astride a horse. ~ Donald E Westlake, #NFDB
808:He has forgotten how to hope. This hell of the present is his Kingdom at last. All problems recover their sharp edge. Abstract evidence retreats before the poetry of forms and colors. Spiritual conflicts become embodied and return to the abject and magnificent shelter of man’s heart. None of them is settled. But all are transfigured. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
809:By the way, I adore my bedroom, but do you think I could have the curtains washed? I believe they are red; and I should so like to make sure.'
Judith had sunk into a reverie.
'Curtains?' she asked, vacantly, lifting her magnificent head. 'Child, child, it is many years since such trifles broke across the web of my solitude'. ~ Stella Gibbons,#NFDB
810:How can we who have nothing but the immense magnificent tiny powerless spark of our own singular Self harness that energy, magnify it, make it into something that can stand beside these invisible giants, these artificial intelligences, weighty legal words on parchment and the glimmering ones and zeros of code in a processor somewhere? ~ Sam J Miller, #NFDB
811:Maybe there are two types of people in the world: those who favour humans over ideology, and those who favour ideology over humans. I favour humans over ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they’re creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas, where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. ~ Jon Ronson, #NFDB
812:We head out into space, ready for anything, which is to say, for solitude, arduous work, self-sacrifice, and death. Out of modesty we don’t say it aloud, but from time to time we think about how magnificent we are. In the meantime—in the meantime, we’re not trying to conquer the universe; all we want is to expand Earth to its limits. ~ Stanis aw Lem, #NFDB
813:Magnus, standing by the door, snapped his fingers impatiently. "Move it along, teenagers. The only person who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self." "Canoodle?" repeated Clary, never having heard the word before. "Magnificent?" repeated Jace, who was just being nasty. Magnus growled. The growl sounded like "Get out. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
814:There is a magnificent intensity in life that comes when we are not in control but are only reacting, living, surviving. I am not a religious man per se...but for me, to go to sea is to get a glimpse of the face of God. At sea I am reminded of my insignificance-of all men's insignificance. It is a wonderful feeling to be so humbled. ~ Steven Callahan, #NFDB
815:We are late, Alexandra,” said the dowager duchess as she stood in Alex’s drawing room idly examining a magnificent fourteenth-century sculpture reposing on a satinwood table. “And I don’t mind telling you, now that the time is upon us, I have a worse feeling about this now than I did earlier. And my instincts are never wrong. ~ Judith McNaught, #NFDB
816:The keys to liberation are universal and essentially simple: disengage from all the stories you've been telling yourself about life and who you are or should be as you negotiate your way through, and all at once you know yourself as divine, all-powerful, unstoppable and magnificent, as any divine, all-powerful, unstoppable being would. ~ John C Parkin, #NFDB
817:What is happening now is of a geological and biological order of magnitude. We are upsetting the entire earth system that, over some billions of years and through an endless sequence of groping, of trials and errors, has produced such a magnificent array of living forms, forms capable of seasonal self-renewal over vast periods of time. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
818:And the peace! The most magnificent peace. I lose myself in a place where time no longer exists and nothing is impossible. I can do anything I imagine. I can fight and win any war. Nothing frightens me, because I know I'm here for a reason; and I'm not alone. I have friends in high places. Friends here. Friends up there. Victory is mine. ~ Gena Showalter, #NFDB
819:When I went to do my big audition with actors for Mr. Blonde, the thing that was very interesting was the first person to actually do the audition with the song, and they kind of actually acted out the whole scene, they weren't so great. It wasn't that they were magnificent, but the song, it was the first -it was all - been in my head. ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
820:Magnus, standing by the door, snapped his fingers impatiently. "Move it along, teenagers. The only person who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self."
"Canoodle?" repeated Clary, never having heard the word before.
"Magnificent?" repeated Jace, who was just being nasty. Magnus growled. The growl sounded like "Get out. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
821:Our bodies are installation art that we curate publicly. Our bodies are the first message those around us receive. Our bodies are our physical bookmarks that hold space for us in the world. Our bodies are magnificent houses for everything else that we are. Our bodies are a part of us, just as our kindness, talents, and passion are a part of us. ~ Jes Baker, #NFDB
822:YOU ARE JUST
You are not just for the right or left,
but for what is right over the wrong.
You are not just rich or poor,
but always wealthy in the mind and heart.
You are not perfect, but flawed.
You are flawed, but you are just.
You may just be conscious human,
but you are also a magnificent
reflection of God. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
823:Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn't the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these moments of profound human presence, we are awakened to the divine presence and see that the kingdom of God is coming and yet is already here. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
824:Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn’t the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these moments of profound human presence, we are awakened to the divine presence and see that the kingdom of God is coming and yet is already here. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
825:That has been the great achievement of our age: to so thoroughly flood the planet with megabits that every image and fact has become a digitized disembodied nothingness. With magnificent determination, our species has advanced from Stone Age to Industrial Revolution to Digital Emptiness. We've become weightless, in the bad sense of the word. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
826:He did not understand all he had heard, but from his clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
827:Humor to me, Heaven help me, takes in many things. There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind. There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it. ~ Dorothy Parker, #NFDB
828:Magnificent Holy Father, We rejoice over the fact that You are never ashamed to be called our God, and we sincerely hope we are never ashamed to be called the bride of Christ. Open our eyes to the vision You had in mind when You called us to be “fishers of men,” and give us a heart to naturally draw others toward You. In Jesus’ name. Amen. ~ Shannon Ethridge, #NFDB
829:The advantage of believing in the Trinity is not that we get an A from God for knowing the right answer. The advantage of believing in the Trinity is that we then live as if the Trinity is real, as if the cosmos around us is actually beyond all else a community of unspeakably magnificent personal beings of boundless love, knowledge and power. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
830:All of modern physics is governed by that magnificent and thoroughly confusing discipline called quantum mechanics ... It has survived all tests and there is no reason to believe that there is any flaw in it. We all know how to use it and how to apply it to problems; and so we have learned to live with the fact that nobody can understand it. ~ Murray Gell Mann, #NFDB
831:I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
832:I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
833:Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It's like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it's hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you've gained all the experiences it had. ~ Andy Weir, #NFDB
834:Many workers in the petrochemical plants were conservative Republicans and avid hunters and fishers and felt caught in a terrible bind. They loved their magnificent wilderness. They remembered it as children. They knew it and respect it as sportsmen. But their jobs were in industries that polluted--often legally--this same wilderness. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild, #NFDB
835:Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and our abilities were used in a way that served people. We're compensated by grateful looks in other people's eyes, whatever material abundance supports us in performing joyfully and at high energy, and the magnificent feeling that we did our bit today to help save the world. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
836:I have seen oaks of many species in many kinds of exposure and soil, but those of Kentucky excel in grandeur all I had ever before beheld. They are broad and dense and bright green. In the leafy bowers and caves of their long branches dwell magnificent avenues of shade, and every tree seems to be blessed with a double portion of strong exulting life. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
837:What shall we do?’ said Twoflower. ‘Panic?’ said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry sabre-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying ‘What a magnificent brute!’ and ‘Here, pussy. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
838:Desires
Like beautiful bodies of the dead, who had not grown old
and they shut them with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet -that is how desires look that have passed
without fultillment; without one of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a moonlit morn.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,#NFDB
839:I am thinking of the dancing body's magnificent and ostentatious scorn. This is how we offer ourselves, enter heaven, enter speaking: we say with motion, in space, This is what life's done so far down here; this is all and what and everything it's managed - this body, these bodies, that body - so what do you think, Heaven? What do you fucking think? ~ Lorrie Moore, #NFDB
840:The old woman paid no attention to the camellia until that morning, when a fleck of pink caught her eye. The single saucer-size blossom was more magnificent than she could ever have imagined. More beautiful than any rose she'd ever seen, it swayed in the morning breeze with such an air of royalty, the old woman felt the urge to curtsey in its presence. ~ Sarah Jio, #NFDB
841:I see a wonderful future in a very uncertain world. If we will cling to our values, if we will build on our inheritance, if we will walk in obedience before the Lord, if we will simply live the gospel we will be blessed in a magnificent and wonderful way. We will be looked upon as a peculiar people who have found the key to a peculiar happiness. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
842:It took me some time to withstand his judgment and his pity, but I looked at him across the night and kept breathing deeply through the break in my heart. In daily ways, we are judged, discounted, and even pitied for glories that only we can affirm. In the end, life is too magnificent and difficult for us to give away our elemental place in the journey. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
843:To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man—the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You have only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become—this. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
844:She did not understand the beauty he found in her, through touch upon her living secret body, almost the ecstasy of beauty. For passion alone is awake to it. And when passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is incomprehensible and even a little despicable; warm, live beauty of contact, so much deeper than the beauty of vision. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
845:To Kiyomori each stall, each soul here seemed borne under by the crushing weight of the world; everyone here was a pitiful weed, trodden underfoot -- a conglomeration of human lives putting down roots in this slime, living and letting live in the struggle to survive; and he was stirred by the fearful and magnificent courage communicated by the scene. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa, #NFDB
846:The story quilt in the novel was inspired by the magnificent quilts of Harriet Powers, an enslaved woman from Georgia who used African appliqué technique to tell stories about biblical events and historical legends. Her two surviving quilts are archived at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
847:Her name was Petra Cotes. She had arrived in Macondo in the middle of the war with a chance husband who lived off raffles, and when the man died she kept the business. She was a clean young mulatto woman with yellow almond shaped eyes that gave her face the ferocity of a panther, but she had a generous heart and a magnificent vocation for love. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
848:It is not that I am not a fan of American exceptionalism. That is like saying I am not a fan of the moon being made out of green cheese - it does not exist. Powerful states have quite typically considered themselves to be exceptionally magnificent, and the United States is no exception to that. The basis for it is not very substantial to put it politely. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
849:My mentality, uncontrollable and wanton as always, whispered to me a scheme so magnificent and daring that I shrank from the very thought of what I was hearing. "Stop!" I cried imploringly to my god-like mind. "This is madness." But still I listened to the counsel of my brain. It was offering me the opportunity to Save the World Through Degeneracy. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
850:I've decided that has been the great achievement of our age: to so thoroughly flood the planet with megabits that every image and fact has become a digitized disembodied nothingness. With magnificent determination, our species has advanced from Stone Age to Industrial Revolution to Digital Emptiness. We've become weightless, in the bad sense of the word. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
851:Amid the moon and the stars, amid the clouds of the night, amid the hills which bordered on the sky with their magnificent silhouette of pointed cedars, amid the speckled patches of the moon, amid the temple buildings that emerged sparkling white out of the surrounding darkness - amid all this, I was intoxicated by the pellucid beauty of Uiko's treachery. ~ Yukio Mishima, #NFDB
852:It's that magnificent interlude in New York between winter and spring, when you feel the warmth stirring, and you remember that the dreadful naked trees will inevitably sprout tiny green buds, soon. Everyone rushes into the parks, the streets--and you even forget that, very soon , summer will come scorchingly, dropping from the sky like a blanket of steam... ~ John Rechy, #NFDB
853:The English,” says M. Grandidier, “have been fortunate in finding in this large and magnificent country a gentle, industrious, and civilized people, who for long have been accustomed to a yoke. But they must be careful; gentleness has its limits, and the yoke should not be allowed to bruise their necks, or they may one day rebel and cast it off.” Footnote ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
854:What does a man’s life amount to? What does the life of a thousand, a billion? What is an ant’s life worth? I see now that the answer is irrelevant. It’s the question that matters. Should the ant let itself die, crushed under the weight of its own insignificance? Or should it live, fight giants, and build magnificent cities underground? What do I choose? ~ Sylvain Neuvel, #NFDB
855:Already a system is being constructed that explains our perpetual solitude: if we remain alone among those who were supposed to be like us, it is because we cannot find any creature spontaneous enough. No one capable of equaling our primal states and enriching our existence with some magnificent and brutal enchantment.
I am alone in a covered gallery. ~ Ren Crevel,#NFDB
856:Don't be like the crowd that exists on Earth. They all have beautiful theories, beautiful dogmas, great philosophies, magnificent theologies, but all in their heads. They have not tasted anything, and they will die without actually knowing anything. Their whole lives will be simply a long desert where nothing grows, where nothing happens, where nothing is realized. ~ Osho, #NFDB
857:Fitz had listened to me speak a truth we'd taken great pains never to say out loud, plus a newer, magnificent, frightening one.
I can't do this alone, I told him.
He had looked at my belly, still flat. You aren't.
There was no denying Eric's magnetism, but that afternoon I realized that, united, Fitz and I were a force to be reckoned with as well. ~ Jodi Picoult,#NFDB
858:There is enchantment in wondering...in seeing a beautiful portrait every now and then rather than an overabundance of the overexposed; I wanted the figure before me to remain a magnificent mystery, like any alluring woman is as the rarity of a thing is what makes it valuable, even an enigma, and when something or someone is that, they become captivating. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
859:thinking you have no control over something, or when you find yourself hoping something will turn out well, remember that there’s no chance for the law of attraction – you will get what you’re thinking and feeling. Gratitude helps protect you from attracting what you don’t want – bad outcomes – and it ensures you get what you do want – Magnificent Outcomes! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
860:This is all we are at our best, he thought, tiny instances accumulating up into a greater whole. There is noting magnificent in this world, he thought, that is not born from an act so slight as to go wholly unnoticed. We must be especially attentive to see them, and to remember to perform them, he thought, yes, that is the crux: we must simply pay attention. ~ Toby Barlow, #NFDB
861:Whether they come from Brooks Brothers or a thrift store, the sweaters we wear have a magnificent ancestry. Their history spans the worlds of Irish fishermen, French knights, World War I soldiers, busty Hollywood 'sweater girls,' and the television saint Mr. Rogers. That history lives in each garment. By being aware of it, we can better appreciate what we have. ~ Tim Gunn, #NFDB
862:And I think, how happier my boyhood should have been, had somebody - Listen, boy, listen to my tale - thought to tell me the truth. Listen while I tell you, boy, these men loved and yet were noble. You too shall love, body and soul, as they; and there shall be a place for you, boy, noble and magnificent as any. Hold true to your love: these things shall be. ~ Jamie O Neill, #NFDB
863:In contrast, markets - oft mythologized as "natural" are the most unnatural things going. Libertarians will tell you "market laws are laws of nature", what baloney. Markets - and the other great modernist cornucopian tools - are magnificent wealth generating machines, built ad-hoc, through trial and error, constantly fine-tuned and refined, tinkered, adjusted. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
864:To the glistening Eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy, the Valiant. To the great Western Wood, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant Southern sun, Queen Susan, the Gentle; and to the clear Northern sky I give you King Peter, the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen. May your wisdom grace us 'til the stars rain down from the heavens. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
865:Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want. ~ Martha Grimes, #NFDB
866:The establishment of religious freedom was no less momentous an achievement than the clearing of the great forest or the winning of independence, for the twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man. ~ Clinton Rossiter, #NFDB
867:Don't stop now, darling."
She didn't, her finger wandering over the soft skin of her rounded stomach, into the curls that hid that magnificent place between her thighs. He watched, encouraging her with whispered guidance as she explored for herself, as she tested her own knowledge, her own skill, until he thought that he might die if he was not inside her. ~ Sarah MacLean,#NFDB
868:I tell you what, Mr. Fledgeby,' said Lammle, advancing on him. 'Since you presume to contradict me, I'll assert myself a little. Give me your nose!'
Fledgeby covered it with his hand instead, and said, retreating, 'I beg you won't!'
... 'Say no more, say no more!' Mr. Lammle repeated in a magnificent tone. 'Give me your'--Fledgeby started-- 'hand. ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
869:For several centuries Western civilization has had a drive for material accumulation, continual extensions of economic power, termed 'progress'...The longing for growth is not wrong. The nub of the problem is how to flip over, as in jujitsu, the magnificent growth energy of modern civilization into a nonacquisitive search for deeper knowledge of self and nature. ~ Gary Snyder, #NFDB
870:I don’t believe that God is concerned with whether or not we show our love by building magnificent edifices for worship, by attending services, or through practicing rules laid down by religious organizations. It seems to me that if God were to speak to us, the message would simply be to love each other and offer reverence rather than enmity toward all of life. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
871:I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
872:The freedom of the city"a phrase he had somewhere heardechoed in his mind. The freedom of the city! A magnificent saying, Electric signs, first burning wanly in the pink air, then brightened and grew strong. "Not light, but rather darkness visible," in that magic hour that just holds the balance between paling day and the spendthrift jewellery of evening. ~ Christopher Morley, #NFDB
873:Wasn't marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded? Wasn't it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laugher and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt? ~ Edna Ferber, #NFDB
874:Everything is upon a great scale upon this continent. The rivers are immense, the climate violent in heat and cold, the prospects magnificent, the thunder and lightning tremendous. The disorders incident to the country make every constitution tremble. Our own blunders here, our misconduct, our losses, our disgraces, our ruin, are on a great scale. —LORD CARLISLE, ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
875:[People] are looking at the politicians as being all talk, no action. They talk the big game, then they go to Washington, they look at the magnificent hallowed halls as you would say, or the beautiful vaulted ceilings and they say, "darling, I've arrived," to their loved one or their wife. They say "darling, I've arrived" and all of a sudden they become nothing. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
876:Wasn't marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded. Wasn't it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt. ~ Edna Ferber, #NFDB
877:What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars? ~ Christiaan Huygens, #NFDB
878:Even if I'd stayed [in the US to finish 'The Magnificent Ambersons'] I would've had to make compromises on the editing, but these would've been mine and not the fruit of confused and often semi-hysterical committees. If I had been there myself I would have found my own solutions and saved the pictures in a form which would have carried the stamp of my own effort. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
879:Karla says that depression only happens to people who don't know how to be sad.'
'Well she is wrong!' he declared...'There are many animals that can express their happiness, but only the human animal has the genius to express a magnificent sadness. And for me it is something special; a daily meditation. Sadness is my one and my only art.' - Didier ~ Gregory David Roberts,#NFDB
880:Enoch pulled the hood back from his head and said, “What was really magnificent about that entrance, Jack, was that, until the moment you rose up out of the pool all covered in phosphorus, you were invisible—you just seemed to materialize, weapon in hand, with that Dwarf-cap, shouting in a language no one understands. Have you considered a career in the theatre? ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
881:Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed. ~ Frederick Douglass, #NFDB
882:He was really kind of magnificent. Sometimes he'd get punched or interrupted or outshouted while he was saying his sentence. And, well, he'd just wait until the interruption was over. Then, rather than starting his sentence again, he just went on as if nothing had happened, picking up from the precise syllable where he had been forced to stop. It drove people nuts. ~ Helen Oyeyemi, #NFDB
883:Pink clouds of plum blossoms and their magnificent aroma languished in their wake, leaving a snow-drift of petals stuck to the windshield. They look like dead butterflies, she said, with a touch of sadness, and turned on the radio so she wouldn’t start crying, so she could run away from there, escape from that burst of happiness into the bewitched halo of the bolero. ~ Pedro Lemebel, #NFDB
884:Can't you see? To taint Kikyō's heart with spite, so that the Shikon jewel would absorb the blood of malice. Two who had trusted each other would now despise and kill one another. What purer evil could be found to taint the jewel? And the more profound the love had once been, the more powerful the resulting hatred, and the more evil the jewel. Magnificent."- Naraku ~ Rumiko Takahashi, #NFDB
885:Fact is Our Lord knew all about the power of money: He gave capitalism a tiny niche in His scheme of things, He gave it a chance, He even provided a first installment of funds. Can you beat that? It's so magnificent. God despises nothing. After all, if the deal had come off, Judas would probably have endowed sanatoriums, hospitals, public libraries or laboratories. ~ Georges Bernanos, #NFDB
886:Of agitating good roads there is no end, and perhaps this is as it should be, but I think you'll agree that it is high time to agitate less and build more. [Here is] a plan whereby the automobile industry of America can build a magnificent "Appian Way" from New York to San Francisco, having it completed by May 1, 1915 and present it to the people of the United States. ~ Carl G Fisher, #NFDB
887:In the evening we are taken to see Rain. I discover Joan Crawford. I think you told me you loved her. So do I. Her face haunts me. The dream-like exaggeration of features, the big mouth, the mouth. The story is ridiculous. The French are jeering. Absolutely jeering and there is almost a scene. The Americans are weeping. Joan Crawford as slut and as angel . . . magnificent. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
888:Prayer is an earnest and familiar talking with God, to whom we declare all our miseries, whose support and help we implore and desire in our adversities, and whom we laud and praise for our benefits received. So that prayer contains the exposition of our sorrows, the desire of God's defence, and the praising of His magnificent name, as the Psalms of David clearly do teach. ~ John Knox, #NFDB
889:To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy the Valiant. To the great western woods, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. And to the clear northern skies, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
890:Dear Lord, I pray You would help me to have strong faith to believe You will do great things in response to my prayers. Your Word tells of the magnificent and miraculous things You have done for people, and I know You are the same today and in the future as You were in the past. I believe You can do magnificent and miraculous things in response to my prayers as well. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
891:In Christ, we become new creatures. His life becomes ours. Take that word 'life' and turn it over and over and press it and try to measure it, and see what it will yield. Eternal life is a magnificent idea which comprises everything the heart can yearn after. Do not your hearts yearn for this life, this blessed and eternal life, which the Son of God so freely offers? ~ Mary Slessor, #NFDB
892:What has he gotten himself into with the Russians?” pressed Ailes. “Mostly,” said Bannon, “he went to Russia and he thought he was going to meet Putin. But Putin couldn’t give a shit about him. So he’s kept trying.” “He’s Donald,” said Ailes. “It’s a magnificent thing,” said Bannon, who had taken to regarding Trump as something like a natural wonder, beyond explanation. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
893:Worship is yet another paradox of the religious life: it is simultaneously the greatest duty and the greatest pleasure of faith. Worship is the act of truly loving God. Believe in this brilliant Being, this magnificent "higher power," who not only created us but nurtures us with care and intelligence beyond our imagination, and obviously we are called to worship Him. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
894:I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in their magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said, "Could you drop me off down the road please? Now that I've finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I'd like to see something of the world, you know?... I'll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I've found my own way. ~ Rachel Cohn, #NFDB
895:I am proud that for the first time in the history of Afghanistan, I am raising the flag of such a people, who are producing all material and immaterial equipment necessary for the life in this country and who make all efforts for prosperity and serendipity of the society. This glorious and magnificent red flag is the symbol of the greatness and pride of these people. ~ Nur Muhammad Taraki, #NFDB
896:I used to be a wanderess without roots – discontent and bereft of belonging and then he took me to The Last Best Place where I was touched and warmed through. Never before have I felt the breath-taking spirit of the frontier as distinctly as I do here and never before have I felt so at home where all things magnificent are made more so by inspired calm of earthy humility. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
897:I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time. ~ Jack London,#NFDB
898:Oh yes, I dated Orson Welles. We had many encounters on both coasts. I remember the first time he saw me in a boudoir, in a negligee, he said in that wondrous voice of his, ‘Magnificent Carcass.’ ‘MAGNIFICENT CARCASS?’ I thought to myself. Whatever, I didn't see that one coming. But that's really all I want to say about Orson. I don't want to go into how he gave me the Clap. ~ Maila Nurmi, #NFDB
899:O, mighty, divinely delimited wisdom of walls, boundaries! I is perhaps the most magnificent of all inventions. Man ceased to be a wild animal only when he build the first wall. Men ceased to be a wild man only when we built the Green Wall, only when, by means of that wall, we isolated our perfect machine world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds, and animals. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin, #NFDB
900:Truth is this: you deserve all good things life has to offer. You know that inherently, because you feel awful when you are experiencing the lack of good things. All good things are your birthright! You are the creator of you, and the law of attraction is your magnificent tool to create whatever you want in your life. Welcome to the magic of life, and the magnificence of You! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
901:A life had been ruined. What was it for: just some social media drama? I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. ~ Jon Ronson, #NFDB
902:Challenges are unique to every individual. What makes a challenge difficult or easy is the level of power inherent within it. Easy challenges do not require a great deal of effort, and therefore their yields are poor. Difficult challenges, on the other hand, require a great deal of effort, and in exercising the will in order to conquer them, they yield magnificent gifts of power. ~ Th un Mares, #NFDB
903:First you have to buy powder, pistol powder, not the damp, and not as coarse as for a cannon. Then you have to put the powder in first, and get some felt off a door. And then you have to put the bullet in afterwards, and not the bullet before the powder, or it won't go off. Do you hear, Keller? or else it won't go off. Ha-ha! Isn't that a magnificent reason, friend Keller? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
904:My dick’s pretty fucking phenomenal. You should see it. Grown women have been known to weep when they behold it.”
…
“I’m sure your dick is magnificent,” I said, groaning under my breath. “I’m sure women across the country have carved wooden replicas of it that they worship daily. It’s probably the most stunning cock to have ever gotten a boner. But I’m gonna pass this time. ~ Callie Hart,#NFDB
905:My head feels like it’s in an oven, this bra is too tight, and I don’t think I can spend another hour watching you stroke your chest as if it were the eighth wonder.” He slowly opened his coat, a look of mischief in his eyes. “Would you like to touch it yourself? You might discover how magnificent it is—like placing your hands on a Greek god or anointing them with holy water.” I ~ Dannika Dark, #NFDB
906:She flew in, all fiery flashing eyes and flushed cheeks, her bosom heaving beneath black wool.
She was magnificent.
"Tell them to let her go!" Séraphine ordered him imperiously. "Tell them to let her go right now."
She stood over him, her lips wet, her body shaking with her rage, and he wanted to take her and roll her beneath him and fuck her into the mattress. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,#NFDB
907:The longer i live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed into magnificent sense. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
908:Yes, all sex is good, but not all sex is created equally. I’m not just talking about hotel sex. Because I’ve just learned that sex with Natalie is in a class of its own. It’s beyond hotel sex. It’s more than the bee’s knees. It’s better than the cat’s meow. It’s heart-stoppingly magnificent. And I’m not the kind of guy who uses that word. But sex with her is indeed magnificent. ~ Lauren Blakely, #NFDB
909:But we need to search for and find, what we need to own and perfect into a magnificent, shining thing, is a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governments, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of slowing things down. In the present circumstances, I'd say the only thing worth globalizing is dissent. ~ Megan McKenna, #NFDB
910:The two men emerged from the narrow street into the open square in front of Notre-Dame Basilica, weaving around tourists taking photographs of themselves in front of the cathedral. When looked at years from now, they’d see the magnificent structure, and a whole lot of sweaty people in shorts and sundresses wilting in the scorching heat as the sun throbbed down on the cobblestones. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
911:Compare the scale and magnifcence of Versailles with St James's - the brick-built hovel in which the 18th-century kings of England lived. What was then the most powerful monarchy in the world housed its sovereigns in a converted leper hospital, yet, at the same time, parliament provided the magnificent palaces of Chelsea and Greenwich as hospitals for retired soldiers and sailors. ~ David Starkey, #NFDB
912:It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables—this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
913:It was as peaceful and beautiful a night as she could ever have imagined, and she understood what drew the Bedouins to this barren place and kept them there. When the sun rose, the distant rocks took on the most magnificent hues—the peachy gold and pale strawberry and pistachio green of ice cream—and Simone was quick to mount a camel and, with spurs and a riding crop, urge it on. ~ Robert Masello, #NFDB
914:Kissing Jack was like kissing a slumbering lion. He barely moved, but I could sense the raw power behind his restraint. And deeper still, lurked something wild and dangerous, something that could obliterate me if unleashed. But I wanted it, because it was magnificent, because it swirled over the loss and pain running through his veins, because it was the part of him that was alive. ~ Leylah Attar, #NFDB
915:Dear,’ he said, ‘I’m not complaining. We don’t live in a magnificent age, but I’ve done my best to make life magnificent as I see it – to live my ideal of the happy warrior. But you made that possible. You made me seek and fight for the tremendous things. Battle and sudden death – yes, but battle and sudden death in the name of peace and life and love. You know I love you, Pat . ~ Leslie Charteris, #NFDB
916:I felt I understood the secret grandeur of dying, all the knowledge held back from all humankind until the very end: no pain, no fear, magnificent detachment, lying in state upon the death barge and receding into the grand immensities like an emperor, gone, gone, observing all the distant scurryers on shore, freed from all the old human pettiness of love and fear and grief and death. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
917:The Romans always wanted bread and circuses-food and entertainement! As we destroy their city, I will offer them both. Behold, a sample!" Someething dropped from the ceiling and landed at Percy's feet: a loaf of sandwich bread in a white plastic wrapper with red and yellow dots. Percy picked it up. "Wonder bread?" "Magnificent, isn't it?" Ephialtes eyes danced with crazy excitement. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
918:It was as though the Gods had dropped something—a comb, a hairpin, a needle—and it had fallen down to earth; unimaginably huge and incomprehensibly magnificent, made of celestial materials by a divine craftsman, too big and too beautiful to have any place in our world, utterly incongruous, a numbing statement of the difference between Them and us— Excuse me. It was an impressive sight. ~ K J Parker, #NFDB
919:Everything is upon a great scale upon this continent. The rivers are immense, the climate violent in heat and cold, the prospects magnificent, the thunder and lightning tremendous. The disorders incident to the country make every constitution tremble. Our own blunders here, our misconduct, our losses, our disgraces, our ruin, are on a great scale. —LORD CARLISLE, TO GEORGE SELWYN, 1778 ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
920:She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
921:Jules was frozen with incredulity. In truth, he could not speak. He was touched by the display of honor in two country squires, and by the humbling - in truth hilarious - definitive evidence that some things were beyond his control. And life knew what was best for him better than he did, and had brought it to him, not with graceful precision, but with magnificent, ridiculous poetry. ~ Julie Anne Long, #NFDB
922:Within the miraculous brew of universal creativity , all you desire already exists. Spend five minutes each morning with your eyes closed, living in that dimension. Allow images to unfold without censor. Feel yourself living the most magnificent life -- a life of joy, creativity and love -- as you grow inwardly into the person you need to be in order to manifest it effortlessly. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
923:Truly color is vice! Of course, it can be, and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. Controlled by the strong hand and careful guidance of her Master drawing, color is a splendid Mistress, with a mate worthy of herself, her lover, but her Master likewise, the most magnificent Mistress possible, and the result is evident in all the glorious things that spring from their union. ~ James Whistler, #NFDB
924:city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration. The colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost magnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes, embosomed among aged trees. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
925:The important thing is to firmly fix our gaze on our own weaknesses, not run away from them, but to battle them head-on and establish a solid self that nothing can sway. Hardships forge and polish our lives, so that eventually they shine with brilliant fortune and benefit. If left in its raw, unpolished form, even the most magnificent gem will not sparkle. The same applies to our lives. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
926:The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
927:The willingness to indulge in ideological thinking - that is, in thinking that by definition is not one's own, which is blind to experience and to the contradictions that arise when broader fields of knowledge are consulted - is a capitulation no one should ever make. It is a betrayal of our magnificent minds and of all the splendid resources our culture has prepared for their use. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
928:Even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lighting or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
929:Of course, sweetie," his mom said. "We'll be here all day. You just come down whenever you want and we love you and you're so so special, Colin, and you can't possibly let this girl make you think otherwise because you are the most magnificent, brilliant boy-" And right then, the most special, magnificent, brilliant boy bolted into his bathroom and puked his guts out. An explosion, sort of. ~ John Green, #NFDB
930:The repose necessary to all beauty is repose, not of inanition, nor of luxury, nor of irresolution, but the repose of magnificent energy and being; in action, the calmness of trust and determination; in rest, the consciousness of duty accomplished and of victory won; and this repose and this felicity can take place as well in the midst of trial and tempest, as beside the waters of comfort. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
931:For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
932:Pretty is one word and she is many. Beautiful. Alluring. Appealing. Charming. Cute. Dazzling. Delicate. Delightful. Elegant. Exquisite. Fascinating. Fine. Gorgeous. Graceful. Lovely. Magnificent. Marvelous. Pleasing. Splendid. Stunning. Wonderful. Superb. Angelic. Bewitching. Classy. Divine. Excellent. Enticing. Foxy. Fair. Pulchritudinous. Radiant. Ravishing. Resplendent. Shapely. Beautiful. ~ K Webster, #NFDB
933:A sculpture of the magnificent shape of God. Oh, admittedly it was a shallow rendering of That Which Cannot Be Named; but art is not relative to perfection in any tangible sense. It is our coarse antennae trembling blindly as it traces the form of Origin, tastes the ephemeral glue welding us, yearning after the secret of ineluctable evolution, and wonders what this transformation will mean. ~ Laird Barron, #NFDB
934:It was magnificent,” he said, as he took his seat. “Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
935:Of all the jaw-droppingly beautiful women who've become genuine movie stars, none has had a longer film career (62 years), has been filmed in Technicolor more often (34 times), has had a more versatile group of leading men (from John Wayne to John Candy) or has spent more time held captive on a pirate ship than our TCM Star of the Month for July, the magnificent red-headed Maureen O'Hara. ~ Robert Osborne, #NFDB
936:Pakistanis are a pious, warm and hospitable people,’ wrote Richard Leiby, a Washington Post reporter who spent a year and a half there, lamenting that the news from Pakistan did not reflect that. He noted, however, that the bad news about Pakistan was not untrue. In his view, ‘Just like average Americans’, the simple Pakistani people ‘pay the price of their leaders’ magnificent mistakes’. ~ Husain Haqqani, #NFDB
937:The Romans always wanted bread and circuses-food and entertainement! As we destroy their city, I will offer them both. Behold, a sample!"
Someething dropped from the ceiling and landed at Percy's feet: a loaf of sandwich bread in a white plastic wrapper with red and yellow dots.
Percy picked it up. "Wonder bread?"
"Magnificent, isn't it?" Ephialtes eyes danced with crazy excitement. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
938:Furthermore, some of the best people in the country were connected with the Communist movement in some way, heroes and heroines one could admire. There was Paul Robeson, the fabulous singer-actor-athlete whose magnificent voice could fill Madison Square Garden, crying out against racial injustice, against fascism. And literary figures (weren’t Theodore Dreiser and W. E. B. DuBois Communists?), ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
939:He wore camel-colored breeches and dark brown Hessian riding boots, a snow-white shirt held together at the throat with a gold pin and a dark brown vest with little gold fleurs-de-lis embroidered on it. Kingsley looked magnificent, like a Regency-era fever dream. If Jane Austen had set eyes on Kingsley, she would never have written her genteel comedies of manner. She would have written porn. ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
940:We wish to continue in following up the legacy of the Second Vatican Council whose wise regulations have still to be led to their fulfilment, being careful that a push, generous perhaps, but unduly timed, does not detract from the content and meaning of the council, and on the other hand being careful and reined and timid efforts do not slow up the magnificent drive of renewal and of life. ~ Pope John Paul I, #NFDB
941:You see how all occidental art loses by the fact that the magnificent expressions of love have been denied it. With us, eroticism is poor, stupid and frigid. It is always presented in ambiguous attitudes of sin, while here it preserves all its vital scope, all its passionate poetry and the stupendous pulse of all nature. But you are only a european lover... a poor, timid, chilly little soul. ~ Octave Mirbeau, #NFDB
942:Now I am twenty-eight, and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent; but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
943:Still, for what Androma did to him, he should hate her, should want her dead.
But seeing her before him, melting into rage and riot, her glowing grey eyes reflecting the electricity that swam around her swords...
Godstars, she was magnificent, a creature that deserved to release her wrath on the world. It would be worth every drop of blood about to be shed to bring her to Cyprian's feet. ~ Sasha Alsberg,#NFDB
944:But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usury added. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
945:What do you seek, so pensive and silent? What do you need, Camerado? Dear son! do you think it is love? Listen, dear son—listen, America, daughter or son! It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess—and yet it satisfies—it is great; But there is something else very great—it makes the whole coincide; It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
946:You are well aware of your effect on women, and I'm sure it gratifies you no end to watch them sigh and salivate over your magnificent physique. I do not wish to spoil your fun, Dain, but I do ask you to consider my pride and refrain from embarrassing me in public."
Women...sighing and salivating...over his magnificent physique. Maybe the brutal bedding had destroyed a part of her brain. ~ Loretta Chase,#NFDB
947:Yes, he liked his face as he saw it there, his mouth quivering around the cigarette between his lips and the apparent ardor of his deep-set eyes. But a man’s beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent uselessness of a woman’s face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
948:But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times,
with savage usury added. ~ Jack London,#NFDB
949:This is what we can promise the future: a legacy of care. That we will be good stewards and not take too much or give back too little, that we will recognize wild nature for what it is, in all its magnificent and complex history - an unfathomable wealth that should be consciously saved, not ruthlessly spent. Privilege is what we inherit by our status as Homo sapiens living on this planet. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
950:Why are you looking at me like that?’ ‘I’m sorry, dear, looking at you like what?’ ‘As though you know something about me that I don’t.’ ‘Oh, you know it. You just refuse to believe it.’ ‘Believe what?’ ‘That you’re absolutely perfect,’ Rose smiled, ‘exactly as you are: single and struggling and so… sexy. If you only believed that, then your life would begin to unfold into something magnificent. ~ Menna van Praag, #NFDB
951:Glasgow is a magnificent city,” said McAlpin. “Why do we hardly ever notice that?”
“Because nobody imagines living here…think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn’t been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively. ~ Alasdair Gray,#NFDB
952:I've never heard of any one single artist being the subject in an ongoing series of radio programs for decades. Bearing this in mind, that's the kind of thing Frank Sinatra brings out in his audience, his followers. It's personally satisfying to me because his music by and large was the greatest quality of lyrics, melody, orchestration and, of course, his magnificent approach to telling a story. ~ Frank Sinatra Jr, #NFDB
953:Teddy wandered amongst the graves. Most of the people in them had died long before his time. Ursula was picking up conkers from the stand of magnificent horse chestnuts at the far end of the churchyard. They were enormous trees and Teddy wondered if their roots had intertwined with the bones of the dead, imagined them curling a path through ribcages and braceleting ankles and fettering wrists. When ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
954:Seafood is simply a socially acceptable form of bush meat. We condemn Africans for hunting monkeys and mammalian and bird species from the jungle yet the developed world thinks nothing of hauling in magnificent wild creatures like swordfish, tuna, halibut, shark, and salmon for our meals. The fact is that the global slaughter of marine wildlife is simply the largest massacre of wildlife on the planet. ~ Paul Watson, #NFDB
955:She held her sword like she was ready to use it on anyone who got close. Darquesse could see her own reflection in the blade. A pretty girl with a scar on her cheek, fifteen years old and dark-haired. Her pale face splattered with other people's blood. Her eyes, dark-ringed. Is this what they all saw, she wondered, or did the see something else? Something magnificent and terrible? Something monstrous? ~ Derek Landy, #NFDB
956:We have had people for so many generations dumbed down, literally dumbed down, who are now in positions of awesome and extreme power with influence over others, that we're paralyzed. And, if we're not paralyzed, we are backtracking and moving backwards. We are actually regressing, I should say, from magnificent progress that we as a nation and a culture and society have taken over hundreds of years. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
957:Could it be that God was an extra-terrestrial? What do we mean when we say that heaven is in the clouds? From Jesus Christ to Elvis Presley, every culture tells us of high-flying bird men who zoom around the world creating magnificent works of art and choosing willing followers to share in the eternal glory from beyond the stars. Can all these related phenomena merely be dismissed as coincidence? ~ Erich von Daniken, #NFDB
958:Could it be that God was an extra-terrestrial? What do we mean when we say that heaven is in the clouds? From Jesus Christ to Elvis Presley, every culture tells us of high-flying bird men who zoom around the world creating magnificent works of art and choosing willing followers to share in the eternal glory from beyond the stars. Can all these related phenomena merely be dismissed as coincidence? ~ Erich von D niken, #NFDB
959:You are so beautiful,” he breathed. Standing over her, rampant in the moonlight, he gazed down at her body. “You are as lovely and as perfect as I imagined you would be.”
Afraid to believe, afraid to trust, she dared a look at him and felt her heart wrench when she read his expression and understood that she truly was whole and beautiful in his eyes. She was a magnificent to him as he was to her. ~ Maggie Osborne,#NFDB
960:Our self-perception determines our behavior. If we think we’re small, limited, inadequate creatures, then we tend to behave that way, and the energy we radiate reflects those thoughts no matter what we do. If we think we’re magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that way. Once again, the energy around us reflects our state of awareness. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
961:The man that I named The Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things. ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
962:They want a woman who is a canvas, white and empty. Standing still, existing for no other purpose than to serve as a mute object onto which they can paint their own hopes and desires. They want their brides veiled. They want a demure, blank space they can fill with whatever they desire.”
“Miss Lowell, you magnificent creature, I want you to paint your own canvas. I want you to unveil yourself. ~ Courtney Milan,#NFDB
963:They recruited the most supple and athletic of the cops to train as mounted policemen, and a small kid could be mesmerized just watching one who’d been lazing majestically down the street stop to write a parking ticket and then lean way over in the saddle so as to place the ticket under the car’s windshield wiper, a physical gesture, if ever there was one, of magnificent condescension to the machine age. ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
964:Forgetting Arch, forgetting tailors and backstreets and cats, Quincy lost herself in the magnificent architecture built to house even more magnificent machines. The train Quincy loved: its perfection of movement and speed and sound; its possibility and potential; its ability to efficiently transport the masses. It was here that Quincy always found the gears of her own mind worked loose, set back in place. ~ Beth Brower, #NFDB
965:I was surrounded by the surgeons and residents and nurses who helped me stay alive when I was born blue and if it weren’t for them I would be dead now. All those people I didn’t even know, I couldn’t pick them out of a lineup if I had to, but they had worked their whole lives to get the knowledge that ended up saving my life. It was because of them that I was in this magnificent wave of people and music. ~ Maria Semple, #NFDB
966:A decayed body is not made the least more aesthetic by a brilliant mind, indeed the highest intellectual training could not be justified if its bearers were at the same time physically degenerate and crippled, weak-minded, wavering and cowardly individuals. What make the Greek ideal of beauty a model is the wonderful combination of the most magnificent physical beauty with brilliant mind and noblest soul. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
967:Her train came, and she wrestled her burden through the doors, trying not to think too much about what was in it, or the magnificent life that had been ended somewhere in Africa, though probably not recently. These tusks were massive, and Karou happened to know that elephant tusks rarely grew so big anymore—poachers had seen to that. By killing all the biggest bulls, they’d altered the elephant gene pool. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
968:There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
969:I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in thier magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said "could you drop me off down the road, please? Now that I've finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I'd like to see something of the world, you know? Maybe backpack across Europe or Asia? I'll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I've found my own way. ~ Rachel Cohn, #NFDB
970:We went all the way down the Himalayan chain for a day and a half. That was magnificent, except the Chinese told us they were going to shoot us down if we came out the far end. So I spent a lot of my time contacting former Prime Minister Tony Blair begging him to tell the Chinese we were coming in this direction by mistake and could he please say we have no nasty motives for flying into their territory. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
971:Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish... The trouble is you won't fight. You've given in, continually dwelling on sickness and death. But there's something just as inevitable as death, and that's life. Life, life, life. Think of all the power that's in the universe, moving the earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you if you only have courage and the will to use it. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
972:Obviously, to be in the fear of the Lord is not to be scared of the Lord, even though the Hebrew word has overtones of respect and awe. "Fear" in the Bible means to be overwhelmed, to be controlled by something. To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love. It means that, because of his bright holiness and magnificent love, you find him "fearfully beautiful. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
973:One day, I am going to write a travel guide containing only maps and addresses of hotels, and with the rest of the pages blank. That way, people will have to make their own initery, to discover themselves restaurants, monuments and all the magnificent things that every city has, but which are never mentioned because ' the history we have been taught' does not include them in the list of things you must see. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
974:She's magnificent," Radius said, smiling proudly as he vaulted the steps and followed Aphrodite. "I can think of a lot of m words that she could be. Magnificent isn't one of them," Stark grumbled. "Mental and mean pop into my head," I said. "Manure pops into mine," Stark said. "Manure?" "I think she's full of shot, but it's too many words and doesn't start with an m, so that's as close as I could get," he said. ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
975:The most enviable person in my estimation is a believer who is light of back (having little property), prays a great deal, makes good his worship of his Lord, Mighty and Magnificent, and makes do with little. The fingers of people do not point at him and he remains patient with this untill he meets Allah, Mighty and Magnificent; then, when death comes to him, his inheritance is paltry and his mourners are few. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
976:I'll never forget the first time Davram took me by the scruff of my neck and showed me he was the stronger of us. It was magnificent! If a woman is stronger than her husband, she comes to despise him. She has the choice of either tyrannizing him or else making herself less in order not to make him less. If the husband is strong enough, though, she can be as strong as she is, as strong as she can grow to be. ~ Robert Jordan, #NFDB
977:Pure creativity is magnificent expressly because it is the opposite of everything else in life that’s essential or inescapable (food, shelter, medicine, rule of law, social order, community and familial responsibility, sickness, loss, death, taxes, etc.). Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it’s a gift. It’s the frosting. Our creativity is a wild and unexpected bonus from the universe. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
978:Do you think we're making a mistake?" snapped the Bishop.
"Not at all," said Dom Cristao. "I think we've taken a step toward something truly magnificent. But humankind almost never forgives true greatness."
"Fortunately," said the Bishop, "humankind isn't the judge that matters. And now I intend to pray for this boy, since medical science has obviously reached the boundary of its competence. ~ Orson Scott Card,#NFDB
979:Do you know what the first poet said about our kind, young Ren? 'Cats are the great mystery, born in that space where shadow meets light ... that borderland of dreams and death, and death and life. No door is closed against us. No secret can defy us. We exist in every world, every universe, every possibility. We cannot be denied, not even by the dead.' We are magnificent, Ren Mormorian. We are fucking glorious. ~ Sana Takeda, #NFDB
980:Then there remains the most interesting subject—that, as it is, has only been touched on incidentally—of the magnificent system of military organisation in force in that country, which, in my opinion, is much superior to that inaugurated by Chaka in Zululand, inasmuch as it permits of even more rapid mobilisation, and does not necessitate the employment of the pernicious system of enforced celibacy. Lastly, ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
981:I knew Frank Herbert for more than thirty-eight years. He was a magnificent human being, a man of great honor and distinction, and the most interesting person at any gathering, drawing listeners around him like a magnet. To say he was an intellectual giant would be an understatement, since he seemed to contain all of the knowledge of the universe in his marvelous mind. He was my father, and I loved him deeply. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
982:It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it. I’ve become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It’s not “Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece” but “Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting! ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
983:One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
984:This book is about consciously allowing your natural connection to the Stream of Well-Being. It is about remembering who you really are so that you can get on with the creation of your life experience in the way you intended before you came forth into this physical body, and into this magnificent Leading-Edge experience . . . where you fully intended to express your freedom in endless, joyous, co-creative ways. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
985:No matter how little money we have, no matter what rung we occupy on anybody’s corporate ladder of success, in the end what everybody discovers is that what matters is other people. Human beings who give themselves to relational greatness—who have friends they laugh with, cry with, learn with, fight with, dance with, live and love and grow old and die with—these are the human beings who lead magnificent lives. ~ John Ortberg Jr, #NFDB
986:She, who had felt she saw so clearly that it hurt, had felt that the truth, crystalline, was, with Murray, granted her (though not through his help, or anything he did: but just by his presence; as though, indeed, he were but a part of her that had been lost, a magnificent platonic epiphany repeated, and daily repeated: this, surely, was love!), felt, now, that the weight of emotion lay like a veil, a fine mist. ~ Claire Messud, #NFDB
987:We used to be a source of fuel; we are increasingly becoming a sink. These supplies of foreign liquid fuel are no doubt vital to our industry, but our ever-increasing dependence upon them ought to arouse serious and timely reflection. The scientific utilisation, by liquefaction, pulverisation and other processes, or our vast and magnificent deposits of coal, constitutes a national object of prime importance. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
988:In living so closely with these queens, inevitably my ideas and prejudices have changed. I became more aware of the profound loneliness of their role; the fear, the danger and responsibility were daunting, yet they accepted this and even revelled in it. The physical suffering and discomfort of their everyday lives was overlaid with such magnificent show and animated with an enormous zest and appetite for life itself. ~ Jane Dunn, #NFDB
989:In the U.S., I think there is an ideology of not telling kids what to do. Nobody to tell you who to marry, not tell you what job to pick. You're your own person. You have the freedom to choose, including the freedom to fail in magnificent ways. And I think that's the big difference. In other countries there is basically a social norm about saving that is passed from generation to generation. In the U.S. there isn't. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
990:Men wouldn't ask any such thing. They'd already know what caught my eye. He whispered in a conspiratorial fashion. "It's your tits." "They're magnificent." He wasn't even looking at them, but Minnie's hand itched to cover herself - not to block out his sight, but to explore her own curves. To see if, perhaps, her bosom was magnificent, if it had been magnificent all these years, and she had simply never noticed. ~ Courtney Milan, #NFDB
991:National Life and Character”: “Flexible as Jews, they can thrive on the mountain plateaux of Thibet and under the sun of Singapore; more versatile even than Jews, they are excellent laborers, and not without merit as soldiers and sailors; while they have a capacity for trade which no other nation of the East possesses. They do not need even the accident of a man of genius to develop their magnificent future. ~ T Lothrop Stoddard, #NFDB
992:People are beautiful. All people, of all shapes and sizes. The fact that we are living, breathing organisms that happen to have opposable thumbs, allowing us to pick up our phones and be on it for the entire damn day, is nothing short of brilliant. What makes us even more magnificent as a species is that we are lucky enough to be uniquely different - and it's THAT individuality we must each harness and celebrate. ~ Connor Franta, #NFDB
993:Who are you after you finish something this magnificent—in constructing it you have also journeyed through it, to the other side. On one end there was who you were before you went underground, and on the other end a new person steps out into the light. The up-top world must be so ordinary compared to the miracle beneath, the miracle you made with your sweat and blood. The secret triumph you keep in your heart. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
994:She was no longer able to cope with all that her sister reminded her of. She'd been unable to forgive her for soaring alone over a boundary she herself could never bring herself to cross, unable to forgive that magnificent irresponsibility that had enabled Yeong-hye to shuck off social constraints and leave her behind, still a prisoner. And before Yeong-hye had broken those bars, she'd never even known they were there. ~ Han Kang, #NFDB
995:Gull Fletcher,” they asked, “did the Magnificent Jonathan say, ‘We are in truth the ideas of the Great Gull . . .’ or was it, ‘We are in fact the ideas of the Great Gull . . .’?” “Please. Call me Fletcher. Just Fletcher Seagull,” he would reply, appalled that they would use a term of reverence upon him. “And what difference does it make, which word he used? Both are correct, we are ideas of the Great Gull . . .” But ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
996:The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portuguese. the black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead. ~ Che Guevara, #NFDB
997:The magnificent thing about her [Amelia Earhart] is, in the eyes of the world, she simply never died. Her fear never witnessed, her failure never recorded, her shiny twin-engine Electra never recovered. Earhart's legacy of inspiration is amplified because her adventure is perpetual. We don't think of her as dead; we think of her as missing. She is forever flying, somewhere beyond Lae, over that limitless blue horizon. ~ Josh Gates, #NFDB
998:It was another of Nostromo's triumphs, the greatest, the most enviable, the most sinister of all. In that true cry of undying passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punta Mala to Azuera and away to the bright line of the horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining like a mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores dominated the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure and love. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
999:Noor was Sajida's secret. She knew the exact moment her child was conceived. Purple passed slowly, the lowest of clouds, over her eyes. Bathed in such magnificent color, Sajida lay perfectly still. Much later, she would try to relive the exact moment, as if she needed to understand how the fact of her child could have entered her body and mind at the same time. But Sajida would not summon the gentle shade ever again. ~ Sorayya Khan, #NFDB
1000:Frenchie spoke: 'Captain, you should have seen my lieutenant. He was magnificent.' It wasn't the word magnificent that meant so much. It was what he called me--not 'the lieutenant,' or 'Blue,' or 'Lieutenant North,' but 'my lieutenant.' To this day those words mean more to me than everything else said or written about my time in the Marines. The very brave young men of 2d Platoon, Company K weren't mine--I was theirs! ~ Oliver North, #NFDB
1001:He burst from the water. He was facing her now. The muscles bunched on his arms as he slicked his wet, shoulder-length hair back from his face. The mist swirled amber over the surface of the water, adorning his gleaming skin as if he were the tributary god of this ruined garden. Her pity evaporated, burned away by the sudden realization that she had it all wrong. He was… She swallowed. Good Lord. He was magnificent. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt, #NFDB
1002:Religion of every kind involves the promise that the misery and futility of existence can be overcome or even transfigured. One might suppose that the possession of such a magnificent formula, combined with the tremendous assurance of a benevolent God, would make a person happy. But such appears not to be the case.: unease and insecurity and rage seem to keep up with blissful certainty, and even to outpace it. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
1003:Science is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. . . . Science does not [and cannot] teach brotherly love.”19 Secular, scientific reason is a great good, but if taken as the sole basis for human life, it will be discovered that there are too many things we need that it is missing. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1004:Soil is not usually lost in slabs or heaps of magnificent tonnage. It is lost a little at a time over millions of acres by the careless acts of millions of people. It cannot be saved by heroic feats of gigantic technology, but only by millions of small acts and restraints, conditioned by small fidelities, skills, and desires. Soil loss is ultimately a cultural problem; it will be corrected only by cultural solutions. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1005:Good evening," he whispered, just a touch too close to her ear to be proper.
She turned toward him with a blush and he finally had the pleasure of seeing the color of her eyes. Jade green. Magnificent. Even if this woman proved to be an unattainable challenge, he'd certainly chosen well.
"G-Good evening," she stammered as she straightened up to smooth the front of the gown that matched those jade eyes perfectly. ~ Jenna Petersen,#NFDB
1006:I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began to think again instead of trying not to think - Good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings (Arles) has restored my morale, but even now some efforts are too much for me: my strength fails me. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
1007:We’re just a drop in the bucket, and that’s meaningless. But we say, ‘No, wait a minute. If you have a bucket, those raindrops fill it up very fast. Being a drop in the bucket is magnificent.’ The problem is we cannot see the bucket. Our work is helping people see that there is a bucket. There are all these people all over the world who are creating this bucket of hope. And so our drops are incredibly significant. ~ Frances Moore Lapp, #NFDB
1008:Dowered with great historic names which they almost despise, they do their best to drag the memory of their ancient lineage into dishonour by vulgar passions, low tastes, and a scorn as well as lack of true intelligence. Let us not talk of them. The English aristocracy was once a magnificent tree, but its broad boughs are fallen,--lopped off and turned into saleable timber,--and there is but a decaying stump of it left. ~ Marie Corelli, #NFDB
1009:Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then the line was drawn upward, higher and higher. It was as if a giant hand had stretched down from the sky and slowly lifted the curtain of night from the face of the earth. It was a magnificent sight, far greater in scale...than anything that I, with my limited human faculties, could fully comprehend. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1010:Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent. ~ Angela Carter, #NFDB
1011:On 17th July there came to us at Potsdam the eagerly-awaited news of the trial of the atomic bomb in the [New] Mexican desert. Success beyond all dreams crowded this sombre, magnificent venture of our American allies. The detailed reports ... could leave no doubt in the minds of the very few who were informed, that we were in the presence of a new factor in human affairs, and possessed of powers which were irresistible. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1012:She's magnificent," Radius said, smiling proudly as he vaulted the steps and followed Aphrodite.
"I can think of a lot of m words that she could be. Magnificent isn't one of them," Stark grumbled.
"Mental and mean pop into my head," I said.
"Manure pops into mine," Stark said.
"Manure?"
"I think she's full of shot, but it's too many words and doesn't start with an m, so that's as close as I could get," he said. ~ Kristin Cast,#NFDB
1013:Philippa drew a deep breath, and found relief in expelling it. ‘Do you think,’ she said carefully, ‘that someone is going to be goaded into doing something soon?’ There was a long pause. ‘I think,’ said Jerott at length, equally carefully, ‘that someone is going to the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and someone else is going to Flaw Valleys, England, to Mother.’ Which summed it up, Philippa supposed, with regret. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
1014:Their faces showed beautiful smiles boasting magnificent teeth. Their skin gleamed in the perfect lighting. Even their scarred flesh seemed to hold its own intricate designs, as crazy as it seemed. Luscious curves still decorated their hips and the swell between their legs. They were striking and endearing like a tribe of taunting sirens on top of a cliff in the middle of the sea. I gazed at them for longer than I should have… ~ Kenya Wright, #NFDB
1015:Dandyism is the last flicker of heroism in decadent ages.... Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. But alas! the rising tide of democracy, which spreads everywhere and reduces everything to the same level, is daily carrying away these last champions of human pride, and submerging, in the waters of oblivion, the last traces of these remarkable myrmidons. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
1016:To grant [consolation and joy] to those who mourn in Zion—to give them an ornament (a garland or diadem) of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment [expressive] of praise instead of a heavy, burdened, and failing spirit—that they may be called oaks of righteousness [lofty, strong, and magnificent, distinguished for uprightness, justice, and right standing with God], the planting of the Lord, that He ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1017:Even after the Allies emerged triumphant in 1945, these concerns were not forgotten: depression and fascism remained ever-present in men's minds. The urgent question was not how to celebrate a magnificent victory and get back to business as usual, but how on earth to ensure that the experience of the years 1914-1945 would never be repeated. More than anyone else, it was Maynard Keynes who devoted himself to addressing this challenge. ~ Tony Judt, #NFDB
1018:On the other hand, the art of an artist who never paints the head of Christ, never once paints an open tomb, may be magnificent Christian art. For some artists there is a place for religious themes, but an artist does not need to be conscience stricken if he does not paint in this area. Some Christian artists will never use religious themes. This is a freedom the artist has in Christ under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
1019:You are not just white, but a rainbow of colors. You are not just black, but golden. You are not just a nationality, but a citizen of the world. You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1020:Jejeune bent to look out the window again. There was not a single body of land between here and the North Pole. In winter, the storms off the North Sea would be punishing, but in the spring, Sand Martins would patrol these cliffs with dazzling feats of aerial acrobatics. The runnels at the cliff’s edge would blaze with the magnificent deep red marsh orchids. It would be a beautiful, spectacular place to spend your days.
p. 267 ~ Steve Burrows,#NFDB
1021:Our German language has a word which in a magnificent way denotes conduct based on this spirit: doing one's duty [Pflichterfüllung]-which means serving the community instead of contenting oneself. We have a word for the basic disposition which underlies conduct of this kind in contrast to egoism and selfishness-idealism. By 'idealism' we mean only the ability of the individual to sacrifice himself for the whole, for his fellow men. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1022:The two big mistakes were the belief in a sky god - that there's a man in the sky with 10 things he doesn't want you to do and you'll burn for a long time if you do them - and private property, which I think is at the core of our failure as a species. That's the source of my indignations, my dissatisfactions, however it comes out on the stage. I feel betrayed by the people I'm part of, these creatures, these magnificent creatures. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
1023:Some Promised Land. The honey was there, but the milk we brought in with our goats. To people in California, God gives a magnificent coastline, a movie industry, and Beverly Hills. To us He gives sand. To Cannes He gives a plush film festival. We get the PLO. Our winters are rainy, our summers hot. To people who didn't know how to wind a wristwatch He gives underground oceans of oil. To us He gives hernia, piles, and anti-Semitism. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
1024:I had rather enjoy my own mind than the fortune of another man. What is the poor pride arising from a magnificent house, a numerous equipage, a splendid table, and from all the other advantages or appearances of fortune, compared to the warm, solid content, the swelling satisfaction, the thrilling transports, and the exulting triumphs, which a good mind enjoys, in the contemplation of a generous, virtuous, noble, benevolent action? ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
1025:John Hubbard, exploring iterated functions and the infinite fractal wildness of the Mandelbrot set, considered chaos a poor name for his work, because it implied randomness. To him, the overriding message was that simple processes in nature could produce magnificent edifices of complexity without randomness. In nonlinearity and feedback lay all the necessary tools for encoding and then unfolding structures as rich as the human brain. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
1026:Martin Luther King's 1963 'I have a dream' speech was a thrilling milestone in the civil rights movement, so enduring that we tend to attribute its searing power to a kind of magic. But Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on its significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes--the thought and preparation, vision and revision--whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history. ~ Patricia J Williams, #NFDB
1027:And you know what? If there is a God, and it's that same God who's so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him what a wonderful, magnificent being he is? If this all-powerful, all-knowing creature for some reason just can't get by without my worship? Then let him give me some proof. Or at least get over himself if I decide to go out and get some. ~ Robin Wasserman, #NFDB
1028:Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship, praise him under the open skies; Praise him for his acts of power, praise him for his magnificent greatness; Praise with a blast on the trumpet, praise by strumming soft strings; Praise him with castanets and dance, praise him with banjo and flute; Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum, praise him with fiddles and mandolin. Let every living, breathing creature praise GOD! ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1029:There is such magnificent vagueness in the expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such a glorious indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own and only reward! What we get—well, we won’t talk of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of reality—in no other is the beginning all illusion—the disenchantment more swift—the subjugation more complete. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1030:You are not just white, but a rainbow of colors. You are not just black, but golden. You are not just a nationality,
but a citizen of the world. You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1031:in whatever wink of consciousness that remained to me I felt I understood the secret grandeur of dying, all the knowledge held back from all humankind until the very end: no pain, no fear, magnificent detachment, lying in state upon the death barge and receding into the grand immensities like an emperor, gone, gone, observing all the distant scurryers on shore, freed from all the old human pettiness of love and fear and grief and death. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
1032:I rely heavily on Thomas Sowell's magnificent book, Black Rednecks, White Liberals. He points out that blacks in the North perform better, academically, than whites in the South where they did not have much of an emphasis on learning. But please note that I'm not the one making that argument in that section about Michael Moore. And by the way, I'm not a man. White men have done a lot. It's silly to write a book titled, Stupid White Men. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
1033:Perry. I want to see your back."
Another surprise, but he nodded and turned away. Dropped his head forward and took the moment to try and calm his breath. He jerked when she traced the shape of the wings on his skin, a groan sliding out of him. Perry silently cursed himself. He couldn't have sounded more savage if he'd tried.
"Sorry," she whispered...
"He's magnificent. Like you," she added softly.
That was what did it. ~ Veronica Rossi,#NFDB
1034:We teach our child many things I don’t believe in, and almost nothing I do believe in. We teach punctuality, particularly if the enforcement of it disturbs the peace. My father taught me, by example, that the greatest defeat in life was to miss a train. Only after many years did I learn that an escaping train carries away with it nothing vital to my health. Railroad trains are such magnificent objects we commonly mistake them for Destiny. ~ E B White, #NFDB
1035:Before turning down the lamp, Lara paused to take one last glance at her husband. He was like some magnificent slumbering beast, all his alertness and vitality temporarily banked, his claws sheathed. But on the morrow he would be back in his usual form, mocking, argumentative, charming... and he would resume his efforts to seduce her.
What unnerved her was the realization that in some small way she was actually looking forward to it. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1036:If we put the emphasis upon the right things, if we live the life that is worth while and then fail, we will survive all disasters, we will out-live all misfortune. We should be so well balanced and symmetrical, that nothing which could ever happen could throw us off our center, so that no matter what misfortune should overtake us, there would still be a whole magnificent man or woman left after being stripped of everything else. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1037:The 7 Timeless Virtues of Enlightened Living Virtue Symbol 1 Master Your Mind The Magnificent Garden 2 Follow Your Purpose The Towering Lighthouse 3 Practice Kaizen The Sumo Wrestler 4 Live with Discipline The Pink Wire Cable 5 Respect Your Time The Gold Stopwatch 6 Selflessly Serve Others The Fragrant Roses 7 Embrace the Present The Path of Diamonds ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1038:You'll find that great artists don't love, live, fuck or even die like ordinary people. Because they always have their art. It nourishes them more than any connection to people. Whatever human tragedy befalls them, they're never too gutted, because they need only to pour the tragedy into their vat, stir in the other lurid ingredients, blast it over a fire. What emerges will be even more magnificent than if the tragedy had never occurred. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
1039:This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Step around the poisonous vipers that slither at your feet, attempting to throw you off your course. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incantations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Slip away. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home. ~ Mirabai Starr, #NFDB
1040:Dexter the Magnificent, who doth bestride the world like a Colossus, many lovely corpses at his feet, brought to you in live color just in time for the evening news. Oh, Mama, who is that large and handsome man with the bloody saw? Why, that's Dexter Morgan, dear, the horrible man they arrested a little while ago. But Mama, why is he smiling? He likes his work, dear. Let that be a lesson to you--always find a worthy job that keeps you happy. ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
1041:..... if we were talking to you on your first day of physical life experience, we would say to you, "Welcome to Planet Earth. There is nothing that you cannot be, or do, or have. You are a magnificent creator. And you are here by your powerful and deliberate wanting to be here. Go forth, giving thought to what you are wanting, attracting life experience to help you decide what you want and once you have decided, giving thought only unto that" ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1042:But even italics fail to do justice to this magnificent outburst, the last stand of William James for the spirit of man. What can one say about the philosophical bravado, the cosmic effrontery, the sheer panache of this ailing philosopher with one foot in the grave talking down the second law of thermodynamics? It is a scene fit to set alongside the death of Socrates. The matchless incandescant spirit of the man! ~ Robert D Richardson Jr, #NFDB
1043:You are still such a magnificent creature, Poca.” He spoke with a funny maybe-Hungarian, maybe-Arabic accent, like something he made up for a comedy sketch. Anton was unshaven, the stubble on his face glistening in a not-pleasant way. He wore sunglasses even though it was cave-dark in here. “This is Anton,” Esperanza said. “He says Lex is in bottle service.” “Oh,” Myron said, having no idea what bottle service was. “This way,” Anton said. They ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1044:He interrupted me by taking two strides to close the distance between us and before I could say anything his arms wrapped around my back, enveloping me, and he pressed his lips to mine. My eyes closed; the touch was magnificent, warm and sweet, and he pulled away just as I felt the first stirrings of my power start to work. I took a breath and opened my eyes, and his were staring back at me, brown and big and with his smile reflected in them. ~ Robert J Crane, #NFDB
1045:A tall and shirtless Gabriel looked down at her. He was clad only in his underwear, which made him look slightly sexy and slightly ridiculous.
His fists were clenched, and Julia saw the tendons standing out in his magnificent arms.
"Don't you remember what happened last night, Gabriel?"
"No, thankfully I don't. And get up! You're on your knees more than the average whore." He spoke through clenched teeth, glaring at her servile form. ~ Sylvain Reynard,#NFDB
1046:Morning Sea Let me stop right here. Let me, too, have a look at nature:
the morning sea and the cloudless sky,
both a luminous blue, the yellow shore, all of it
beautiful, and in such magnificent light. Let me stop right here. Let me pretend this is actually
what I’m seeing (I really did see it, when I first stopped)
and not, here too, more of those fantasies of mine,
more of those memories, those voluptuous illusions. ~ Constantinos P Cavafy,#NFDB
1047:The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things. [from her Newberry Award acceptance speech] ~ Lois Lowry, #NFDB
1048:During this same period a magnificent stone cross, now preserved at the Ruthwell Church in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, and originally standing some eighteen feet tall, was produced by a master artist, who included, along the margins on two faces of the cross, runic inscriptions which form an early Northern version of one of the finest poems in Old English, “The Dream of the Rood,” in which the cross of the Crucifixion speaks, telling its marvelous story. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
1049:Then there were those girls who became midwives: girls who could not get enough of the tiniest of babies - girls who would grow into women who absolutely reveled in the magnificent process of birth...The difference between a woman who becomes an OB and the women who becomes and midwife has less to do with education, philosophy or upbringing than with the depth of her appreciation for the miracle of labor and for life in its moment of emergence. ~ Chris Bohjalian, #NFDB
1050:Our bodies are installation art that we curate publicly. Our bodies are the first message those around us receive. Our bodies are our physical bookmarks that hold space for us in the world. Our bodies are magnificent houses for everything else that we are. Our bodies are a part of us, just as our kindness, talents, and passion are a part of us. Yes, we are so much more than our outer shells, but our outer shells are an integral part of our being, too. ~ Jes Baker, #NFDB
1051:The way we do small things determines the way that we do everything. If we execute our minor tasks well, we will also excel at our larger efforts. Mastery then becomes our way of being. But more than this—each tiny effort builds on the next, so that brick by brick, magnificent things can be created, great confidence grows and uncommon dreams are realized. The truly wise recognize that small daily improvements always lead to exceptional results over time. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1052:The world can be hard, full of trickery,
Full of deceit,
Full of injustice,
Full of pain.
But there is an emptiness waiting, my friend--a great glowing emptiness,
Soft and fragrant with the essence of peace,
The essence of serenity.
You are almost there, my friend.
The magnificent emptiness is the eternal harbor for your soul.
Take my hand, friend.
Take my hand and take a step, just one more step,
And you are there. ~ Michael Palmer,#NFDB
1053:Tenochtitlán, the once-magnificent, fell to Cortés. It lay, a heap of ruins, a charnel-house containing thousands of unburied corpses. Its overthrow was a masterpiece of military genius, valor, and enterprise. Everyone knew that it would take its place among immortal deeds of arms and felt proud to have had a share in it. Too bad that the once-glittering Valley with its palaces, gardens, cities, and temples had been laid waste, but such was war. ~ Samuel Shellabarger, #NFDB
1054:The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things.
[from her Newberry Award acceptance speech] ~ Lois Lowry,#NFDB
1055:Why not follow the Way thyself, and so accompany the boy?"
Mahbub stared stupefied at the magnificent insolence of the demand, which across the Border he would have paid with more than a blow. Then the humor of it touched his worldly soul.
"Softly -- softly -- one foot at a time, as the lame gelding went over the Umballa jumps. I may come to Paradise later -- I have workings that way -- great motions -- and I owe them to thy simplicity. ~ Rudyard Kipling,#NFDB
1056:With the poet it was exactly the same as with the hero, and all strong, handsome, high-spirited, non-commonplace figures and enterprises: in the past they were magnificent, every school book was filled with their praises; in the present, in real life, people hated them, and presumably teachers were especially selected and trained to prevent as far as possible the rise of magnificent, free human beings and the accomplishment of great and splendid deeds. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1057:I’ve always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
1058:Trust me, I never underestimate my charm or any of my other magnificent attributes. They work great on women. Alas, men tend to see me as an unwelcome rival. You, he might listen to. You're good at talking people into things."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because I'm perched in the rafters of a cannery, at risk from a man-slaying magical creature, and spending time with a drunk, a gangster, and an assassin at . . . what time is it? ~ Lindsay Buroker,#NFDB
1059:you will never be able to hit a target that you cannot see. People spend their whole lives dreaming of becoming happier, living with more vitality and having an abundance of passion. Yet they do not see the importance of taking even ten minutes a month to write out their goals and to think deeply about the meaning of their lives, their Dharma. Goal-setting will make your life magnificent. Your world will become richer, more delightful and more magical. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1060:Your tests don’t have to define you. Your compatibility doesn’t have to be a ceiling over which your relationship can never rise. Your past hurts don’t have to constitute the first steps in a journey toward divorce court. We worship, serve, and are empowered by a supernatural God who can lift us above our scientific limitations and create something special out of something very ordinary. These tests don’t account for the power of a magnificent obsession. ~ Gary L Thomas, #NFDB
1061:Rourk didn’t even know her name, but he knew he’d never seen anyone so magnificent in his life. Her wavy hair glistened in the sunlight. She had a delicate, round face with large, blue-green eyes and full lips. With her cheeks flushed from the cold fall air, she reminded him of a porcelain doll. He knew that her looks deceived; her bold, daring eyes gave her away. She constantly observed her surroundings. Rourk smiled to himself; soon they would be together. ~ Julia Crane, #NFDB
1062:I am beginning with the young. We older ones are used up. Yes, we are old already. We are rotten to the marrow. We have no unrestrained instincts left. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them, I can make a new world. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1063:Our life is like a land journey, too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; but, on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view—and your eyes are full of happy tears—and you want to sing—and wish you had wings! And then—you can’t stay there, but must continue your journey—you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten ~ Lloyd C Douglas, #NFDB
1064:So why create the poisonous plants at all?” Mack queried, handing back the twig.
(Sarayu answers) “Your question presumes that poison is bad; that such creations have no purpose. Many of these so-called bad plants, like this one, contain incredible properties for healing or are necessary for some of the most magnificent wonders when combined with something else. Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing. ~ William Paul Young,#NFDB
1065:Truly a rare opportunity was given to Marcus Aurelius of showing what the mind can do in despite of circumstances. Most peaceful of warriors, a magnificent monarch whose ideal was quiet happiness in home life, bent to obscurity yet born to greatness, the loving father of children who died young or turned out hateful, his life was one paradox. That nothing might lack, it was in camp before the face of the enemy that he passed away and went to his own place. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1066:Love is ease, love is comfort, love is support and respect. Love is not punishing or controlling. Love lets you grow and breathe. Love's passion is only good passion -- swirling-leaves-on-a-fall-day passion, a-sky-full-of-magnificent-stars passion -- not angst and anxiety. Love is not hurt and harm. Love is never unsafe. Love is sleeping like puzzle pieces. It's your own garden you protect; it's a field of wildflowers you move about in both freely and together. ~ Deb Caletti, #NFDB
1067:One by one, she undid the metal buttons. The last one proved difficult, but with a determined tug, it released. His stomach muscles contracted as she reached inside to gently pull out his erection. She had at first thought to remove his trousers, but the sight of him sprawled decadently in the chair, legs spread, the placket open and draping his upper thigh, magnificent c*ck standing at attention . . . No, the trousers would stay exactly where they were. ~ Evangeline Collins, #NFDB
1068:Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo. ~ William Jennings Bryan, #NFDB
1069:St. Thomas adopts a division of the nine choirs into three groups, according to their intellectual perfection and consequent nearness in being to God—Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Other writers suggest different arrangements; and there is a mass of magnificent theological speculation as to the difference of function between one choir and another. But the Church has defined nothing upon this matter. ~ Frank Sheed, #NFDB
1070:These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent-that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life. ~ Alice Sebold, #NFDB
1071:I am not superstitious, but the first time I saw this medal, bearing the venerated likeness of John Calvin, I kissed it, imagining that no one saw the action. I was very greatly surprised when I received this magnificent present, which shall be passed round for your inspection. On the one side is John Calvin with his visage worn by disease and deep thought, and on the other side is a verse fully applicable to him: 'He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.' ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1072:On the terrace of the Pepiniere, the 150 pupils of the Institut Chemique talk chemistry as they leave the auditoria and the laboratory. The echoes of the magnificent public garden of the city of Nancy make the words reverberate; coupling, condensation, grignardization. Moreover, their clothes stay impregnated with strong and characteristic odours; we follow the initiates of Hermes by their scent. In such an environment, how is it possible not to be productive? ~ Victor Grignard, #NFDB
1073:I love you, but I don’t know how to help you. I still don’t! I’m an emotional delinquent and I say wrong things all the time, but I want to be better for you. I promise that. It doesn’t matter to me that you’re ill and it doesn’t matter if I have to give up everything, because you’re worth it. You’re worth it all because you are magnificent, you are. Magnificent and gorgeous and brilliant and kind and good and I just . . . love you, Percy. I love you so damn much. ~ Mackenzi Lee, #NFDB
1074:The reality of death has come upon us and a consciousness of the power of God has broken our complacency like a bullet in the side. A sense of the dramatic, of the tragic, of the infinite, has descended upon us, filling us with grief, but even above grief, wonder. Our plans were so beautifully laid out, ready to be carried to action, but with magnificent certainty God laid them aside and said, "You have forgotten - Mine?"
A meditation on her fathers death. ~ Flannery O Connor,#NFDB
1075:Father," said Zadig, "what's all this I see? You seem in no way like other men: you steal a golden basin studded with precious stones from a lord who receives you magnificently, and you give it to another who treats you with indignity."
"My son," replied the old man, " that magnificent man, who revieves strangers only out of vanity and to have his riches admired, will become wiser; the miser will learn to exercise hospitality. Be astonished at nothing, and follow me. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1076:I took a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom and found myself in a beautifully proportioned room I had never seen before, containing a really rather magnificent collection of chamberpots. When I went back to investigate more closely, I discovered that the room had vanished. But I must keep an eye out for it. Possibly it is only accessible at five thirty in the morning. Or it may only appear at the quarter moon - or when the seeker has an exceptionally full bladder. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1077:He’s short, fat and, objectively speaking, not the most obvious choice of pin-up boy. But he’s smart, strong and he can probably do whatever’s necessary for a life of love. I think he’s the most beautiful man I will ever kiss,’ said Samy. ‘It’s strange that magnificent, good-hearted people like him don’t receive more love. Do their looks disguise their character so well that nobody notices how open their soul, their being and their principles are to love and kindness? ~ Nina George, #NFDB
1078:Put on thy beautiful garments, O daughters of Zion. Live up to the great and magnificent inheritance which the Lord God, your Father in Heaven, has provided for you. Rise above the dust of the world. Know that you are daughters of God, children with a divine birthright. Walk in the sun with your heads high, knowing that you are loved and honored, that you are a part of his kingdom, and that there is for you a great work to be done which cannot be left to others. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
1079:The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
1080:Every time I asked a question, that magnificent teacher, instead of giving the answer, showed me how to find it. She taught me to organise my thoughts, to do research, to read and listen, to seek alternatives, to resolve old problems with new solutions, to argue logically. Above all, she taught me not to believe anything blindly, to doubt, and to question even what seemed irrefutably true, such as man's superiority over woman, or one race or social class over another. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
1081:Alex von Tunzelmann’s clever start to her book Indian Summer made my point most tellingly: ‘In the beginning, there were two nations. One was a vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swath of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semifeudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England. ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
1082:Alex von Tunzelmann’s clever start to her book Indian Summer made my point most tellingly: In the beginning, there were two nations. One was a vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swath of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semi-feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England. ~ Shashi Tharoor, #NFDB
1083:I have enjoyed the trees and scenery of Kentucky exceedingly. How shall I ever tell of the miles and miles of beauty that have been flowing into me in such measure? These lofty curving ranks of lobing, swelling hills, these concealed valleys of fathomless verdure, and these lordly trees with the nursing sunlight glancing in their leaves upon the outlines of the magnificent masses of shade embosomed among their wide branches-these are cut into my memory to go with me forever. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
1084:Richard opened the door, then stood back. “After you, my lady.” Jessica walked into the room and gasped. She turned around and around, trying to take in the entire view. He had painted the bedroom walls. Talk about an unobstructed ocean view. It was more magnificent than she ever could have imagined. She laughed and threw herself at him. “You’re amazing,” she said breathlessly. “It’s beautiful!” “Nay,” he said, shutting the door and bolting it. “You are the beautiful one. ~ Lynn Kurland, #NFDB
1085:Sometimes I feel alone. Some days are long and hard. But when I look out into this world, I am struck by the impossible beauty of it all. Those billions of magnificent accidents that led us to where we are today, that led us to paper planes and nautilus shells and the tiny, crooked smiles of children. When I think about the small perfections of the world, I have faith that my time will come. I have faith that someday, a warm light will flood over me and I will find peace. ~ Avery Monsen, #NFDB
1086:The Luseferous VII, magnificent though it undoubtedly was, represented an unignorable and probably unmissable target. Their best strategy might be to use the great ship as the bait in a trap, their own forces seemingly disposed so that it looked like they were determined to defend it to the last, but in fact treating it as a disposable asset. Lure in as much of the Mercatorial fleet as possible and then destroy everything, including, unfortunately, the Luseferous VII itself. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1087:You are not white,
but a rainbow of colors.
You are not black,
but golden.
You are not just a nationality,
but a citizen of the world.
You are not just for the right or left,
but for what is right over the wrong.
You are not just rich or poor,
but always wealthy in the mind and heart.
You are not perfect, but flawed.
You are flawed, but you are just.
You may just be conscious human,
but you are also a magnificent
reflection of God. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1088:No, it wasn’t okay,” Crowfeather meowed, then added quickly before Featherpaw had time to look disappointed, “It was magnificent. Well done!” Featherpaw blinked up at him happily. “It’s your catch really,” she purred. “You’re such a great mentor!” Crowfeather felt a tingle of satisfaction in his paws, reflecting that even though he hadn’t been the best father when his kits were growing up, he was at least a good mentor now. Maybe that can make up for my other failings. . . . ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
1089:Wherefore, when we wander and go astray, we are justly shut out from every species of excuse, because all things point to the right path. But while man must bear the guilt of corrupting the seed of divine knowledge so wondrously deposited in his mind, and preventing it from bearing good and genuine fruit, it is still most true that we are not sufficiently instructed by that bare and simple, but magnificent testimony which the creatures bear to the glory of their Creator. For ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1090:Every wild thing is in tune with its surroundings, awake to its fate and in absolute harmony with the planet. Their attention is focused totally outwards. Humans, on the other hand, tend to focus introspectively on their own lives too often, brooding and magnifying problems that the animal kingdom would not waste a millisecond of energy upon. To most people, the magnificent order of the natural world where life and death actually mean something has become unrecognizable. ~ Lawrence Anthony, #NFDB
1091:She's Magnificent," Darius said, smiling proudly as he vaulted the steps and followed Aphrodite.
"I can think of a lot of m words that she could be. Magnificent isn't one of them," Stark grumbled.
"Mental and mean pop into my head," I said.
"Manure pops into mine," Stark said.
"Manure?"
"I think she's full of shit, but it's to many words and doesn't start with an m, so that's as close as I could get," he said. ~ P C Cast,#NFDB
1092:Sometimes I feel alone. Some days are long and hard. But when I look out into the world, I am struck by the impossible beauty of it all. Those billions of magnificent accidents that led us to where we are today, that led us to paper planes and nautilus shells and the tiny, crooked smiles of children. When I think about all the small perfections of the world, I have faith that my time will come. I have faith that someday, a warm light will flood over me and I will find peace. ~ Avery Monsen, #NFDB
1093:. . man he made and for him built Magnificent this world, and earth his seat, Him lord pronounced; and, Oh indignity! Subjected to his service angel-wings, And flaming ministers to watch and tend Their earthly charge: Of these the vigilance I dread; and, to elude, thus wrapped in mist Of midnight vapor glide obscure, and pry In every bush and brake, where hap may find The serpent sleeping; in whose mazy folds To hide me, and the dark intent I bring. —PARADISE LOST, JOHN MILTON ~ Sandra Byrd, #NFDB
1094:It had grown darker now; it was full night already, with the swiftness of the mountainous latitudes. The square of sky over the patio was soft and dark as indigo velour, with magnificent stars like many-legged silver spiders festooned on its underside. Below them the white roses gleamed phosphorescently in the starlight, with a magnesium-like glow. There was a tiny splash from the depths of the well as a pebble or grain of dislodged earth fell in. ("The Moon Of Montezuma") ~ Cornell Woolrich, #NFDB
1095:Make Small Daily Progress The way we do small things determines the way that we do everything. If we execute our minor tasks well, we will also excel at our larger efforts. Mastery then becomes our way of being. But more than this—each tiny effort builds on the next, so that brick by brick, magnificent things can be created, great confidence grows and uncommon dreams are realized. The truly wise recognize that small daily improvements always lead to exceptional results over time. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1096:Raz was one of those vanguard human beings of indeterminate ethnicity, the magnificent mutts that I hope we are all destined to become given another millennium of intermixing. His skin was a rich pecan color from his dad, who was part African American and part native Hawaiian. His hair, straight and glossy black, and the almond shape of his eyes came from his Japanese grandmother. But their color was the cool blue he'd inherited from his mum, a Swedish windsurfing champion. ~ Geraldine Brooks, #NFDB
1097:There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed. -Agrarian Justice ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1098:Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed,-chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man's life only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old trees-tens of centuries old-that have been destroyed. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
1099:Besides, it seems to me, since my pleasure is more or less a foregone conclusion, the main object of the exercise ought to be your pleasure. A rather elusive creature, I've heard. Fascinating sort of quarry.' 'Wait a minute. You're hunting down my orgasms?' His laughter burst out like a rifle salute. 'Kate. You damned magnificent creature.' He rolled onto his back, bringing me with him. 'Yes, my darling. That's exactly what I'd like to do, on and on until the end of my life. ~ Beatriz Williams, #NFDB
1100:If I was asked what is the greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her finest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Samskrit language and literature and all that it contains. This is a magnificent inheritance and so long as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long will the basic genius of India continue. If our race forgot the Buddha, the Upanishads and the great epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata), India would cease to be India . ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
1101:Never had he beheld such a magnificent brown skin, so entrancing a figure, such dainty, transparent fingers. He stood gazing in wonder at her work-basket as if it was something extraordinary. What was her name? Where did she live and what sort of life did she lead? What was her past? He wanted to know what furniture she had in her bedroom, the dresses she wore, the people she knew; even his physical desire for her gave way to a deeper yearning, a boundless, aching curiosity. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1102:Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1103:The true test of a warrior is how your 'stance' holds up after any 'circumstance'. Meaning, even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lightning or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1104:When I go out by the gateway, taking the road I drove along that first time I picked up Lotte for the ball, how very different it all is! It is all over, all of it! There is not a hint of the world that once was, not one bulse-beat of those past emotions. I feel like a ghost returning to the burnt-out ruins of the castle he built in his prime as a prince, which he adorned with magnificent splendours and then, on his deathbed, but full of hope, left to his beloved son ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
1105:Our life is like a land journey, too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; but, on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view--and feel exalted--and your eyes are full of happy tears--and you want to sing--and wish you had wings! And then--you can't stay there, but must continue your journey--you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten. ~ Lloyd C Douglas, #NFDB
1106:Life is not mean, it is grand; if it is mean to any, he or she makes it so. God made it glorious. It is paved with diamonds; its banks he fringed with flowers. He overarched it with stars. Around it He spread the glory of the physical universe-suns, moon, worlds, constellations, systems-all that is magnificent in motion, sublime in magnitude, and grand in order and obedience. God would not have attended life with this broad march of grandeur if it did not mean something. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1107:The confusion of spirit and body is quite understandable in a culture where spirit is concretized in magnificent skyscrapers, where cathedrals have become museums for tourists, where woman-flesh-devil are associated, and nature is raped for any deplorable excuse. Dieting with fierce will-power is the masculine route; dieting with love of her own nature is the feminine. Her only real hope is to care for her own body and experience it as the vessel through which her Self may be born. ~ Marion Woodman, #NFDB
1108:Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language! ~ Pablo Neruda, #NFDB
1109:You’re like a lighthouse shining beside the sea of humanity, motionless: all you can see is your own reflection in the water. You’re alone, so you think it’s a vast, magnificent panorama. You haven’t sounded the depths. You simply believe in the beauty of God’s creation. But I have spent all this time in the water, diving deep into the howling ocean of life, deeper than anyone. While you were admiring the surface, I saw the shipwrecks, the drowned bodies, the monsters of the deep ~ Alfred de Musset, #NFDB
1110:If all those magnificent cathedrals with their valuable lands in Boston, Philadelphia and New York were taxed as they should be, the taxes of women who hold property would be proportionately lightened....I cannot see any good reason why wealthy churches and a certain amount of property of the clergy should be exempt from taxation, while every poor widow in the land, struggling to feed, clothe, and educate a family of children, must be taxed on the narrow lot and humble home. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
1111:I have a long list of “Secrets of Adulthood,” the lessons I’ve learned as I’ve grown up, such as: “It’s the task that’s never started that’s more tiresome,” “The days are long, but the years are short,” and “Always leave plenty of room in the suitcase.” One of my most helpful Secrets is, “What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while.” Day by day, we build our lives, and day by day, we can take steps toward making real the magnificent creations of our imaginations. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
1112:If I were a German today, I would be proud, proud but also worried. I would be proud of the magnificent achievement of rebuilding my country, entrenching democracy and assuming the undoubtedly preponderant position in Europe. But a united Germany can't and won't subordinate its national interests in economic or in foreign policy to those of the Community indefinitely. Germany's new pre-eminence is a fact - and its power is a problem - as much for Germans as for the rest of Europe. ~ Margaret Thatcher, #NFDB
1113:No, no, this can be no publick Road that's certain : I am loft, quite loft indeed. Of what Advantage is it now to be a King ? Night mews . me no Refpe£l: I cannot lee better, nor walk fo well, as another Man. What is a King ? Is he npt wifer than another Man ? Not without his Counfellors I plainly find. Is he not more powerful ? I oft have been tol£ fo, indeed, but what now can my Power command? Is he not greater and more magnificent ? When feated on his Throne, and furrounded with Nobles ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1114:While the family and servants gathered reverently to view the magnificent creation, Kathleen took West’s arm and tugged him out of the room. “Something is going on here,” she said. “I want to know the real reason why the earl has invited Mr. Winterborne.”
They stopped in the space beneath the grand staircase, behind the tree.
“Can’t he show hospitality to a friend without an ulterior motive?” West parried.
She shook her head. “Everything your brother does has an ulterior motive. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1115:Over the past year, I have realized something about myself. I suffer from a form of claustrophobia: I hate being at home by myself. I am a people person. My life has been a magnificent indulgence. I’ve been able to do what I love and share it. Who would want to quit? I suppose that I never completely gave up my childhood idea of being a minister. Only the medium and the message changed. I have still endeavored to touch people’s souls, to raise their spirits and put smiles on their faces. ~ Dick Van Dyke, #NFDB
1116:Smoke fills the room, gray and sylphlike, lovely in its deadly grace. It trails into the fire and forms what appear to be wings—black and magnificent. A man’s silhouette fills out the image, two arms reaching for me.
Morpheus, or a mirage?
My mind trips back to our dance across the starlit sky in Wonderland, how amazing it felt to be so free. What would it feel like to dance with him in the middle of a blazing inferno, surrounded by an endless power that breathes and grows at our will? ~ A G Howard,#NFDB
1117:This is stupendous, Maggie,” he said. “Exquisite!”
He caught me looking at him.
“You and Caleb taught me about words.”
I nodded. Grandfather couldn’t read when he had come back to the farm. All the years of his life he couldn’t read. Until Caleb taught him.
“This cake is magnificent,” said Grandfather. “Tasty, lovely, glorious, stunning! Could I have another piece?”
“Don’t forget we have more haying to do,” said Matthew.
“This cake can only help,” said Grandfather. ~ Patricia MacLachlan,#NFDB
1118:Look at these magnificent women, I thought, created in such misogynistic and hierarchical societies, yet they are the subversive centers around which the plot is shaped. Everything is supposed to revolve around the male hero. But it is the active presence of these women that changes events and diverts the man's life from its traditional course, that shocks him into changing his very mode of existence. In the classical Iranian narrative, active women dominate the scene; they make things happen. ~ Azar Nafisi, #NFDB
1119:The whole group represented a powerful picture: Ivan Nikiforovich standing in the middle of the room in all his unadorned beauty! The woman, her mouth gaping and with a most senseless and fearful look on her face! Ivan Ivanovich with one arm raised aloft, the way Roman tribunes are portrayed! This was an extraordinary moment! a magnificent spectacle! And yet there was only one spectator: this was the boy in the boundless frock coat, who stood quite calmly and cleaned his nose with his finger. ~ Nikolai Gogol, #NFDB
1120:It is characteristic of fundamental discoveries, of great achievements of the intellect, that they retain an undiminished power upon the imagination of the thinker. The memorable experiment of Faraday with a disc rotating between two poles of a magnet, which has borne such magnificent fruit, has long passed into every-day experience; yet there are certain features about this embryo of the present dynamos and motors which even today appear to us striking, and are worthy of the most careful study. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
1121:Pino bowed uncertainly and started to back away, which seemed to amuse Cardinal Schuster all the more. He said, “I thought you were interested in the lights?” Pino stopped. “Yes?” “They’re my idea,” Schuster said. “The blackout begins tonight. Only the Duomo will be lit from now on. I pray that the bomber pilots will see it and be so awed by its beauty that they choose to spare it. This magnificent church took almost five hundred years to build. It would be a tragedy to see it gone in a night. ~ Mark T Sullivan, #NFDB
1122:Sublime tobacco! which from east to west, Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest; Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides His hours, and rivals opium and his brides; Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand, Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand: Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe, When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe; Like other charmers wooing the caress, More dazzlingly when daring in full dress; Yet thy true lovers more admire by far Thy naked beauties Give me a cigar! ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
1123:Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work. ~ Max Beckmann, #NFDB
1124:Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and the shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else? Could she see past all of that to something else, something quivering and real, something poised to be transformed, turned out, made? See that she could make us, stick her hands in our glitter-gritted insides and build us into magnificent teen gladiators? ~ Megan Abbott, #NFDB
1125:Immediately across the bridge he encountered the other two. On his left, the Grand Palais, and on his right, the Petit Palais. If the great fair of 1889 had bequeathed Paris the Eiffel Tower, the next fair at the turn of the century had left these two magnificent pavilions: a facing pair of exhibition halls that started as handsome stone museums and, as they rose, turned into soaring Art Nouveau glass houses. They were like opera houses made of glass, he thought, and flanking the short avenue ~ Edward Rutherfurd, #NFDB
1126:...I say long live the bountiful personality. Long live the people who make people mad. Long live the ones who won't listen to sense. Long live the people who are forever getting warned, "one of these times, you're going to go too far!" Long live the fiery, the unguilty, the unhumble, the dazzling, the cheerful and the brave. Even if they don't live long, even if they look obnoxious or even stupid in a certain light, they're still wonderful and magnificent to me, and they're free free free. ~ Lisa Crystal Carver, #NFDB
1127:It is a place that 'grows upon you' every day. There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1128:How will we sing when Miami goes underwater, when the raft of garbage in the ocean gets as big as Texas, when the only remaining polar bear draws his last breath, when fracking, when Keystone, when Pruitt? I don’t know. And I imagine, sometimes, often, we will get it wrong. But I’m not celebrating the earth because I am an optimist—though I am an optimist. I am celebrating because this magnificent rock we live on demands celebration. I am celebrating because how in the face of this earth could I not? ~ Pam Houston, #NFDB
1129:I ate and waited, begging forgiveness. She deserved the most magnificent sepulcher, priceless marble of exquisite harmony. In its place she was to be entombed in my torturer’s workroom, with the floor scrubbed and the devices half disguised under garlands of flowers. The night air was cool, but I was sweating. I waited for her to come, feeling the drops roll down my bare chest and staring at the ground because I was afraid I would see her in the faces of the others before I felt her presence in myself. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1130:Nature proceeds by blunders; that is its way. It is also ours. So if we have blundered by regarding consciousness as a blunder, why make a fuss over it? Our self-removal from this planet would still be a magnificent move, a feat so luminous it would bedim the sun. What do we have to lose? No evil would attend our departure from this world, and the many evils we have known would go extinct along with us. So why put off what would be the most laudable masterstroke of our existence, and the only one? ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
1131:Once in a while, she said, the patients put on a theatrical show here, and beneath the stage a magnificent grand piano awaited the next production or display of the musical talents of an inmate. I congratulated her on this impressive piece of furniture and she smiled with pleasure. A moment later she was called away, and idly lifting the lid over the keyboard I was faced with the fact that the piano possessed no keys. It was a discovery which at that moment seemed of extreme symbolical significance. ~ Norman Lewis, #NFDB
1132:Some say that you should not want money at all because the desire for money is materialistic and not Spiritual. But we want you to remember that you are here in this very physical world where Spirit has materialized. You cannot separate yourself from the aspect of yourself that is Spiritual, and while you are here in these bodies you cannot separate yourselves from that which is physical or material. All of the magnificent things of a physical nature that are surrounding you are Spiritual in nature. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1133:I keep saying death doesn’t arrive with a Save the Date notice but now I’m wondering if that’s not true. If we really listen and observe closely maybe death does arrive “on schedule.” Tracy is certainly doing her own magnificent, accepting, generous part to welcome it. To have this kind of time to plan… it’s just so much the opposite of what everyone exclaims when they first receive such news—“ There is no time left!” Not true. There is plenty if we take it with acceptance, and don’t act in denial. ~ Frederick Marx, #NFDB
1134:The woman with no aptitude for lying watched the Neapolitan walk away. “He’s short, fat and, objectively speaking, not the most obvious choice of pinup boy. But he’s smart, strong and he can probably do whatever’s necessary for a life of love. I think he’s the most beautiful man I will ever kiss,” said Samy. “It’s strange that magnificent, good-hearted people like him don’t receive more love. Do their looks disguise their character so well that nobody notices how open their soul, their being and their ~ Nina George, #NFDB
1135:Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician. ~ Le Corbusier, #NFDB
1136:Watch,” he rasped, fluttering his mouth along her neck.
“Watch what?”
“Us. In the mirror.”
Julia opened her eyes and saw the mirror mounted on the wall on the other side of the room. Somehow, it was perfectly positioned to reflect her husband’s magnificent and naked back and the dark-haired woman who was hidden by his body. (...) She’d never seen what they looked like together. His body long and lean, hers smaller and softer. Their skin had different tones—he was darker while she was fair. ~ Sylvain Reynard,#NFDB
1137:Fourth letter : Make small daily progress
The way we do small things determines the way we do everything. If we execute our minor task well, we will also excel at our larger efforts. Mastery then becomes our way of being. But more than this - each tiny efforts builds on the next, so that brick by brick, magnificent things can be created, great confidence grows and uncommon dreams are realized. The truely wise recognize that small daily improvements always lead to exceptional results over time. ~ Robin S Sharma,#NFDB
1138:In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It’s like this—I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” I would always give the same answer: “She’s a brown dog.” Similarly, when the question is raised, “What kind of God do you believe in?” my answer is easy: “I believe in a magnificent God. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1139:Only this morning, for instance, I took a wrong turning on the way to the bathroom and found myself in a beautifully proportioned room I have never seen before, containing a really rather magnificent collection of chamber pots. When I went back to investigate more closely, I discovered that the room had vanished. But I must keep an eye out for it. Possibly it is only accessible at five-thirty in the morning. Or it may only appear at the quarter moon — or when the seeker has an exceptionally full bladder. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1140:In the end, what i have come to believe about God is simple. It's like this - I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, "What kind of dog is that?" I would always give the same answer: "She's a brown dog." Similarly, when the question is raised, "What kind of God do you believe in?" my answer is easy: "I believe in a magnificent God. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1141:his is the last poem of any number of poems
tonight, there’s
one drink of wine left
and both of those guys
they are asleep across the top of my feet.
I can feel the gentle weight of them
the touch of fur
I am aware of their breathing:
good things happen often, remember that
as the Bombs trundle out in their magnificent
dumbness
these
at my feet
know more,
are
more,
and instants of the moments explode
larger
and a lucky past
can never be
killed. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
1142:Space exploration must be undertaken not only out of simple human curiosity but also to further the survival of the species. The twentieth century has seen the unprecedented development and proliferation of magnificent technologies. Many of them, through design, ignorance, or misuse, are capable of destroying life as well as enhancing it. Space exploration alone holds the promise of eventual escape from a dying planet, provided we wisely manage our resources in the meantime and actually survive that long. ~ Edgar Mitchell, #NFDB
1143:But let it not be said that we did nothing. Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
1144:I deal with writer’s block by lowering my expectations. I think the trouble starts when you sit down to write and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent—and when you don’t, panic sets in. The solution is never to sit down and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent. I write a little bit, almost every day, and if it results in two or three or (on a good day) four good paragraphs, I consider myself a lucky man. Never try to be the hare. All hail the tortoise. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
1145:The human drama is reaching its denouement. The great unveiling is approaching, a time when the power structures of the world begin to crumble and people of the heart sing out a new truth. Many voices are joining the chorus, many feet are walking the path, many minds are dreaming possibilities for a magnificent future. For beneath the crises that are looming at every level of civilization, the global heart is awakening, beating out the rhythm of a new and glorious dance, calling us to a better way of living. ~ Anodea Judith, #NFDB
1146:He loved his wife and daughter. It was perhaps a stalwart affection rather than a magnificent obsession, but nonetheless he didn't doubt that if called upon to do so he would sacrifice his own life in a heartbeat for them. And he also knew that there would be no more hankering for something else, something beyond, for the hot slices of colour or the intensity of war or romance. That was all behind him, he had a different kind of duty now, not to himself, not to his country, but to this small knot of a family. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
1147:Khatun (queen) is one of the most authoritative and magnificent words in the Mongolian language. It conveys regality, stateliness, and great strength. If something resists breaking no matter how much pressure is applied, it is described as khatun. The word can form part of a boy’s or girl’s names, signifying power and firmness combined with beauty and grace. Because of the admitted qualities of khatun, men have often borne names such as Khatun Temur, literally ‘Queen Iron’, and Khatun Baatar, 'Queen Hero’. ~ Jack Weatherford, #NFDB
1148:The legend used in the Lesser rites is that of the abduction of the goddess Persephone, the daughter of Ceres, by Pluto, the lord of the underworld, or Hades. While Persephone is picking flowers in a beautiful meadow, the earth suddenly opens and the gloomy lord of death, riding in a magnificent chariot, emerges from its somber depths and, grasping her in his arms, carries the screaming and struggling goddess to his subterranean palace, where he forces her to become his queen. ~ Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of all Ages, #NFDB
1149:He also believed that it was a deliberate scheme of their mentors to encourage those who were in power, or who would one day assume power, to witness the wonders that they were not being shown, so that they would never be tempted to get above themselves, so that they would always know that no matter how magnificent they appeared to themselves or those around them and regardless of what they achieved, it was all within the context of this greater, more powerful, sophisticated and ultimately far superior reality. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
1150:Jesus Christ was the only one capable of performing the magnificent Atonement because He was the only perfect man and the Only Begotten Son of God the Father. He received His commission for this essential work from His Father before the world was established. His perfect mortal life devoid of sin, the shedding of His blood, His suffering in the garden and upon the cross, His voluntary death, and the Resurrection of His body from the tomb made possible a full Atonement for people of every generation and time. ~ Cecil O Samuelson, #NFDB
1151:Through our science we have created magnificent spacecrafts and telescopes to explore the night and the light and the half light. We have made visible things that are invisible to the unaided eye. We have brought the dreamy heavens down to Earth, held them in the mind's eye. Our explorations have produced a vast archive of remarkable astronomical images... The riches are too many for choices, the revelations beautiful and dreadful. Who can look at these images and not be transformed? The heavens declare God's glory. ~ Chet Raymo, #NFDB
1152:I am thinking not only of my own body here, that unbeguilable, broken basket, that stiff meringue. I am not, Patrick, thinking only of myself, my lost troupe, my empty bed. I am thinking of the dancing body’s magnificent and ostentatious scorn. This is how we offer ourselves, enter heaven, enter speaking: we say with motion, in space, This is what life’s done so far down here; this is all and what and everything it’s managed—this body, these bodies, that body—so what do you think, Heaven? What do you fucking think? ~ Lorrie Moore, #NFDB
1153:Tansi began to tell her, "Two Asante men went out into the forest one day. They were weavers by trade, and they had gone out to hunt for meat. When they got to the forest to collect their traps, they were met by Anansi, the mischievous spider. He was spinning a magnificent web. They watched him, studied him, and soon realised that a spider's web is a unique and beautiful thing, and that a spider's technique is flawless. They went home and decided to weave cloth the way Anansi weaves his web. From that, kente was born. ~ Yaa Gyasi, #NFDB
1154:This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1155:I matched my heated tone with one of pure ice. "I believe I did attempt to relate to you the facts of my calls and you interrupted me with a rather magnificent display of temper much as you are doing now. If you do not have all the facts of the case perhaps you have no one but yourself to blame."
Brisbane opened his mouth and shut it with a snap. His mouth remained closed but I could hear him muttering under his breath.
"What are you saying?"
"I am counting. To one hundred. In Cantonese. ~ Deanna Raybourn,#NFDB
1156:Our manna trees are a copy of the magnificent plants created by Light in Paradise—but a poor copy indeed. Light’s creation was topped by thousands of gracious, lacy things that swayed in the breeze and made whispering noises while they enjoyed constant communion with the Almighty. They drank of His energy and used it in such a manner as to mix the water they drank with bits of soil and with the air that men and animals breathed out. And they transformed these things into food and pure air for man and animal alike. ~ Robert J Sawyer, #NFDB
1157:what transported me into raptures were the sweeping cloaks, the wraps, the shawls, the veils, all those yielding, magnificent, unused materials that were soft and caressing, or so sheer that I could hardly keep hold of them, or so light that they flew by me like a wind, or simply heavy with all their own weight. It was in them I saw, for the first time, truly free and infinitely variable possibilities: to be a slave girl and sold off, or to be Joan of Arc, or an old king, sorcerer; all these I now held in my hand ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
1158:There was tactical significance: stop the railroads. An excellent maneuver, no doubt, but the technique was horrible. The planes started kicking high-explosives and incendiaries through their bomb-bays at the city limits, and for all the pattern their hits presented, they must have been briefed by a Ouija board. Tabulate the loss against the gain. Over one hundred thousand non-combatants and a magnificent city destroyed by bombs dropped wide of the stated objectives: the railroads were knocked out for roughly two days. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1159:There is a form of poetic and esthetic and moral genius necessary to make philosophical issues truly incandesce for students, and even though I indeed had some world-class professors myself when I went through the curriculum, I rarely saw such gnosic or concretist/poetic passion among them. I am not speaking of broad histrionics or melodramatic delivery, but rather a moral investment of concern, of loving delight and pathos in exposing one's consciousness to the full horrific and magnificent implications of the materials. ~ Kenny Smith, #NFDB
1160:All that is good in our history is gathered in libraries. At this moment, Plato is down there at the library waiting for us. So is Aristotle. Spinoza is there and so is Kats. Shelly and Byron adn Sam Johnson are there waiting to tell us their magnificent stories. All you have to do is walk in the library door and the great company open their arms to you. They are so happy to see you that they come out with you into the street and to your home. And they do what hardly any friend will-- they are silent when you wish to think. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1161:The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” he murmured lovingly, and even uttered reverently the one word, “Maître!” “Sherlock Holmes?” I asked. “Ah, non, non, not Sherlock Holmes! It is the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that I salute. These tales of Sherlock Holmes are in reality farfetched, full of fallacies and most artificially contrived. But the art of the writing—ah, that is entirely different. The pleasure of the language, the creation above all of that magnificent character, Dr. Watson. Ah, that was indeed a triumph. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
1162:When I compare life to a dream I do not mean to denigrate it as some sort of meaningless fantasy. Life is too wonderful to be called an "illusion" unless we whisper the word in amazement, as we might when witnessing the most astonishing magic trick. What could be more magnificent than this glorious universe, in all its multifarious extravagance? Its awesome vastness and delicate detail. Its impersonal precision and intimate intensity. Its harsh necessities and lush sensuality. This dream of life is truly marvelous. ~ Timothy Freke, #NFDB
1163:I was pretty sure it was the response he drew from most women—the chance gaze, followed by a pause; the appreciation of something magnificent, no matter how fleeting. I would have to be six feet under not to react to him. It wasn’t just about the way he looked. He had something more. Solidity. Substance. The kind of thing the moon does to the tides, making the waves rise to attention. Jack could give you goosebumps simply by circling past you. I shuddered to think what it would be like if he deliberately decided to slay you. ~ Leylah Attar, #NFDB
1164:In the meantime, he said, he would have to take Jennie down to the pound. Hugo was magnificent. Very cool and patient. He. explained to the man who Jennie was, what she was, and why it was impossible to even think of putting her in the pound. He dropped hints about Jennie’s strength and how she could escape from any cage made for an animal. He frightened the poor man half to death. He said, well, under the circumstances it would be acceptable if Jennie were kept at home, fully restrained at all times, until the court date. ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
1165:I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable—and therefore understood. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1166:Our search for the human takes us too far, too 'deep', we seek it in the clouds or in mysteries, whereas it is waiting for us, besieging us on all sides. We will not find it in myths — although human facts carry with them a long and magnificent procession of legends, tales and songs, poems and dances. All we need do is simply to open our eyes, to leave the dark world of metaphysics and the false depths of the 'inner life' behind, and we will discover the immense human wealth that the humblest facts of everyday life contain. ~ Henri Lefebvre, #NFDB
1167:As she drove the familiar route to the school, she considered her magnificent new age. Forty. She could still feel "forty" the way it felt when she was fifteen. Such a colorless age. Marooned in the middle of your life. Nothing would matter all that much when you were forty. You wouldn't have real feelings when you were forty, because you'd be safely cushioned by your frumpy forty-ness.
Forty-year-old woman found dead. Oh dear.
Twenty-year-old woman found dead. Tragedy! Sadness! Find that murderer! ~ Liane Moriarty,#NFDB
1168:I believe that you're great, that there's something magnificent about you. Regardless of what has happened to you in your life, regardless of how young or how old you think you might be, the moment you begin to think properly, this something that is within you, this power within you that's greater than the world, it will begin to emerge. It will take over your life. It will feed you, it will clothe you, it will guide you, protect you, direct you, sustain your very existence. If you let it! Now that is what I know, for sure. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
1169:Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world? ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
1170:Because I lived in one of these trees at one point, for a long, long, long time. I think I just decided I wanted to be a big tree, and to experience being a giant tree. But I grew up as a baby tree, so the big trees all around were my parents, and aunts and uncles, where we were all family. I started out as a little nut that grew into a seedling, and grew and grew and grew. And we would absorb the healing energy of the magnificent sun. And it would send out leaves, and it would feed the planet. And we were just so happy there. ~ Dolores Cannon, #NFDB
1171:Palant went to close the door, but she couldn’t resist one last look. It was shocking, horrific, and magnificent. For so long she had studied these creatures, their body parts and belongings, trying to understand them through dead flesh, clotted blood, and disassociated tech and clothing. Now she was looking right at one. A living, alien creature, with mysterious thoughts, histories, and philosophies, and an outlook on the universe that she did not understand. However long she studied and theorised, she would never understand. ~ Tim Lebbon, #NFDB
1172:Staring at her face, she began to fancy her outer layer had begun to melt away while she wasn't paying attention, and something -- some new skeleton -- was emerging from beneath the softness of her accustomed self. With a deep, visceral ache, she wished her true form might prove to be a sleek and shining one, like a stiletto blade slicing free of an ungainly sheath. Like a bird of prey losing its hatchling fluff to hunt in cold, magnificent skies. That she might become something glittering, something startling, something dangerous. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1173:The sun's champagne streamed from one body into another. And there was a couple on the green silk of the grass, covered by a raspberry umbrella. Only their feet and a little bit of lace could be seen. In the magnificent universe beneath the raspberry umbrella, with closed eyes, they drank in the sparkling madness. 'Extra! Extra! Zeppelins over the North Sea at 3 o'clock.' But under the umbrella, in the raspberry universe, they were immortal. What did it matter that in another far-away universe people would be killing each other? ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin, #NFDB
1174:The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet. ~ Phyllis McGinley, #NFDB
1175:The magnificent diamond locket which hung about Tarzan's neck, had been a source of much wonderment to Jane. She pointed to it now, and Tarzan removed it and handed the pretty bauble to her.
She saw that it was the work of a skilled artisan and that the diamonds were of great brilliancy and superbly set, but the cutting of them denoted that they were of a former day. She noticed too that the locket opened, and, pressing the hidden clasp, she saw the two halves spring apart to reveal in either section an ivory miniature. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs,#NFDB
1176:Having India Baptiste on her knees, choking on your dick, is something any man would envy. Yet no man but me will ever know what that feels like from this moment on. The thought shakes my composure for a second. I never planned on keeping her, but watching this fire-breathing dragon of a beauty walk toward me with murder on her mind while she’s still willing to go to her knees changes everything. She’s fucking magnificent. If she can suck dick half as well as she can make me hard just by breathing, I may have found my newest addiction. ~ Meghan March, #NFDB
1177:The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess ... It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
1178:In other words, Navajo country. It was, Carleton said, “a princely realm…a magnificent mineral country. Providence has indeed blessed us, for the gold lies here at our feet to be had by the mere picking of it up.” Where Carleton obtained his evidence for these claims was not clear—he seems to have simply wished it into being. The more salient point was this: There might be gold in Navajo country. To ensure the safety of geological exploration, and the inevitable onrush of miners once a strike was made, the Diné would have to be removed. ~ Hampton Sides, #NFDB
1179:Daniel had one more question. He hated asking it, but her answer would be exceedingly important to him. The knot in his throat had returned, but he tried to speak around it. “Do you pity me, Story?” For the second time that night, she surprised him. “No. I pity the sixteen-year-old boy. Of course I do. How could I not?” Story rose from the windowsill and placed her hands on his chest. She waited until he met her eyes to continue. “But I don’t pity the man. The man took a tragedy and used it to give himself purpose. The man is magnificent. ~ Tessa Bailey, #NFDB
1180:God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is a God so holy, powerful, and present that when He revealed Himself to Ezekiel in the Old Testament and John in the New, both dropped like dead men. He is the magnificent One, full of splendor, beautiful beyond comprehension—the I Am That I Am throughout every generation. Whoever He was, He is. Who He was to them, He is to you. Start taking Him up on His Godness. When you have no idea what to believe Him for in a given situation, just believe Him to be huge. Come, holy God, and be Thyself. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1181:In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1182:Our assaults on the ecosystem are so powerful, so numerous, so finely interconnected, that although the damage they do is clear, it is very difficult to discover how it was done. By which weapon? In whose hand? Are we driving the ecosphere to destruction simply by our growing numbers? By our greedy accumulation of wealth? Or are the machines which we have built to gain this wealth-the magnificent technology that now feeds us out of neat packages, that clothes us in man-made fibers, that surrounds us with new chemical creations-at fault? ~ Barry Commoner, #NFDB
1183:It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, "Well, that is California all over. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1184:When I come to a new city is I combine: I say, well, it's like Barcelona and Edinburgh, though I can't imagine what that would be. But Toronto, the last few times I've been here, what always comes up is Chicago and West Berlin. It's a big, sprawling city beside a lake, of a certain age and a certain architectural complexity. But the high-end retail core looks more like West Germany than the Magnificent Mile. Yonge Street is like K-Damm. There's an excess of surface marble and bronze: it's Germanic and as pretentious as pretentious can be. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
1185:We left the Bentley and Tim at a garage, and Alan and I travelled back to Brussels to hire a much less magnificent vehicle. When we picked Tim up the next morning, he told us that he’d spent the night in his room with a ‘bird’. Intrigued, we questioned him closely, and learned that he had been woken in the middle of the night by a strange, rather alarming noise and that when he had put the light on he had discovered a turkey vomiting on the mantelpiece. He’d thought of complaining but found that his phrase book did not cover this contingency. ~ John Cleese, #NFDB
1186:I believe that you're great, that there's something magnificent about you. Regardless of what has happened to you in your life, regardless of how young or how old you think you might be, the moment you begin to think properly, there's something that is within you, there's power within you, that's greater than the world. It will begin to emerge. It will take over your life. It will feed you. It will clothe you. It will guide you, protect you, direct you, sustain your very existence, if you let it. Now, that is what I know for sure. ~ Michael Bernard Beckwith, #NFDB
1187:Lord God, if I feel hated by the world, You have told me to keep in mind that it hated You first. You said that if I belonged to the world, it would love me as its own. As it is, I do not belong to the world, but You, awesome and magnificent God, have chosen me out of the world. That is why the world hates me. Help me to remember the words You spoke to me: “No servant is greater than his master.” If they persecuted You, they will persecute me also. If they obeyed Your teaching, they will obey the teaching of Your disciples also. (John 15:18–20) ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1188:Her eyes widened as she took in what must be thousands of titles. She stepped farther into the room finding the bookcases rose up at least two stories. Like a bee to honey, she was drawn to the remarkable library. There was a ladder that glided along a set of rails to reach the top shelves. And a spiral staircase for the second floor of shelves with yet another ladder. t was truly remarkable.
She didn't know whether she had walked onto the set of My Fair Lady or the library of Beauty and the Beast. She'd never seen anything so magnificent. ~ Jennifer Faye,#NFDB
1189:Which snowflake is the most magnificent? Is it possible that they are all magnificent—and that, celebrating their magnificence together they create an awesome display? Then they melt into each other, and into the Oneness. Yet they never go away. They never disappear. They never cease to be. Simply, they change form. And not just once, but several times: from solid to liquid, from liquid to vapor, from the seen to the unseen, to rise again, and then again to return in new displays of breathtaking beauty and wonder. This is Life, nourishing Life. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1190:You've got the right - you've got a wonderful person with Sheila Bair, most of the viewers have never heard of Sheila Bair. [She] has taken eight percent of the deposits in the United States and seamlessly moved those over to sound institutions which in turn have gotten more capital, ended up, it's been a magnificent job.She'll never get a golden parachute or any severance pay or anything. She's done a great job. We've got some great public servants. We have I think the right people in there to get the job done, and then they need more tools. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
1191:When Nureyev appeared in San Francisco not long ago there were quite a few ballet fans who flew all the way from New York to see him. The mystics would point out how fruitless it is to go to see important people when our first priority is to see ourselves. We think we know Tom, Dick and Harry, but we really know everyone, including ourselves, only on the surface level. If we could see our real Self coming down the street, we would wonder who this beautiful, radiant, magnificent creature could be. We would not be able to take our eyes off him. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
1192:What a shame that Christianity had come here!If the white man had not intruded where he was not wanted, where he did not belong, even now protected by the mountains and the river,the village would have remained a last stronghold of a culture which was almost gone.Mark tried to say that no village,no culture can remain static. I have often thought that if this lively and magnificent land belongs to anyone,it's to the birds and the fish.They were here long before the first Indian and when the last man is gone from the Earth,it will be theirs again. ~ Margaret Craven, #NFDB
1193:Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it.
Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond - James Bond - you best spent your free time finger painting or playing shuffeboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed potato way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it began - with a wheeze. ~ Marisha Pessl,#NFDB
1194:I would say that among my many huge emotional miscalculations was my taking a film career for granted. It is the most awesome privilege to be able to use one's imagination and wit, physicality and musicality, conscious brain and unconscious instinct in the service of a work that has a chance to move and excite and amuse and delight people all over the world, including long after we're dead. What a noble calling! And I felt it was just there for me as a kind of given, some sort of inherited birthright-when in reality it's the most magnificent luxury. ~ Robert Downey Jr, #NFDB
1195:I want my records to be the most magnificent and glorious-sounding records, but also want them to be the most intense and fragile. And I want that all in the same ten-second bit of music. And it just takes a while to get there, and I don't write the songs and then go and record them, I write in the studio. So it takes a while to kind of piece them together and know that that's what I want it to be like. And I constantly throw the bits up in the air and see how they land, and eventually they kind of keep landing in the same place and that's where it stays. ~ Jason Pierce, #NFDB
1196:That scene that I have with Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black is one of my favorite scenes that I've ever done. He's very modest. He's a real hardworking actor. I think he was going through something difficult at that time, and he never brought his personal stuff - not once! - on the set. He was a real pro. I remember doing that scene, and as I was acting, I thought, "I understand why this guy's a movie star." Because there was just something that he did when the cameras rolled. There was some kind of energy that was really magnificent, a real aura about him. ~ Jeffrey Tambor, #NFDB
1197:Two Metro lines, two trains, two carriages, two people walking in parallel streets, two lives, couples criss-crossing without seeing each other, potential encounters, meetings which shall never take place. The imagination rewrites history. It modifies the local directory and the roll-call of those who frequent a town, a street, a house, a woman. It transfixes reflections in the mirror for all eternity. It hangs entire portrait galleries from the wall of our future memory on which magnificent strangers use a sharp knife to engrave their initials and a date. ~ Robert Desnos, #NFDB
1198:As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the deep sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then comes the reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with red. Still nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate stripes and showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral banks. Through and over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles and thunders a magnificent surf. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1199:Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks — the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc. — Nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
1200:Alexandria’s buildings reflected the breadth of its intellectual life. Here were the magnificent library and the Mouseion – in effect a great academy, unequalled throughout the empire, with its four faculties of medicine, literature, astronomy and mathematics; the obtaining of dining rights here was a fiercely contested honour. Among the presidents of the Mouseion had been Julia Balbilla’s grandfather, Claudius Balbillus. The library contained half a million books and at its zenith it was said that it held a copy of every available manuscript in the world. ~ Elizabeth Speller, #NFDB
1201:Does that mean that religious texts are worthless as guides to ethics? Of course not. They are magnificent sources of insight into human nature, and into the possibilities of ethical codes. Just as we should not be surprised to discover that ancient folk medicine has a great deal to teach modern hightech medicine, we should not be surprised if we find that these great religious texts hold versions of the very best ethical systems any human culture will ever devise. But, like folk medicine, we should test it all carefully, and take nothing whatever on faith. ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
1202:The boat lurched.He fell against her, and she fell back, onto the divan.
For onwe glorious moment she lay under him, her magnificent bosom crushed against his chest. His heart leapt into a gallop and his privy councilor leapt to attention. He lifted his head and looked down at her. She looked up at him, eyes wide and dark as an evergreen forest. He felt her breath on his skin, and heard it, soft and hurried. Her lips parted. He lowered his head.
She shoved a fist against his chest, and "Get off!" she snapped. "Get off, you great lummox! Someone's coming! ~ Loretta Chase,#NFDB
1203:The secret of village togetherness and happiness had always been the generosity of its people, but the secret to that generosity was village inefficiency and decay. The House of the World, like our village huts and our human bodies, no matter how magnificent, is not built to last very long. Because of this, all life must be regularly renewed... If a house is built too well, so efficiently that it is permanent and refuses to fall apart, then people have no reason to come together. Though the house stays together, the people fall apart, and nothing gets renewed ~ Martin Prechtel, #NFDB
1204:I took a moment to study the wards. They were a smooth patchwork of enchantment, probably the result of several lesser talents working together. Somebody like me can put up a ward that is like a huge iron wall. This was more like a curtain of tightly interwoven steel rings. For most purposes, both would serve fairly well -- but with the right tool, the latter kind of wall is easily dealt with.
"And I'm the tool," I muttered. Then I thought about it, sighed, and shook my head. "One day," I told myself, "one brave and magnificent day, I will actually be cool. ~ Jim Butcher,#NFDB
1205:Nils's gardens no longer bore any relationship to the needs of the house. Each spring he plowed and planted acres of vegetables and flowers. The coming up of the asparagus shoots was the signal for a hopeless race between the vegetables and Mrs. Garrison's table. Nils, embittered by the waste that he himself was the author of, came each evening to the kitchen door to tell the cook that unless they are more peas, more strawberries, more beans, more lettuce, more cabbages, the magnificent vegetables that he had watered with his sweat would rot.
- The Common Day ~ John Cheever,#NFDB
1206:You are not white,
but a rainbow of colors.
You are not black,
but golden.
You are not just a nationality,
but a citizen of the world.
You are not just for the right or left,
but for what is right over the wrong.
You are not just rich or poor,
but always wealthy in the mind and heart.
You are not perfect, but flawed.
You are flawed, but you are just.
You may just be a conscious human,
but you are also a magnificent
reflection of God.
THE CONSCIOUS HUMAN by Suzy Kassem
Copyright 1993-1994 - A SPRING FOR WISDOM ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1207:After two years' absence she finally returned to chilly Europe, a trifle weary, a trifle sad, disgusted by our banal entertainments, our shrunken landscapes, our impoverished lovemaking. Her soul had remained over there, among the gigantic, poisonous flowers. She missed the mystery of old temples and the ardor of a sky blazing with fever, sensuality and death. The better to relive all these magnificent, raging memories, she became a recluse, spending entire days lying about on tiger skins, playing with those pretty Nepalese knives 'which dissipate one's dreams'. ~ Octave Mirbeau, #NFDB
1208:He was a noisy robust little man with a gleam of real talent concealed in the messy obscurity of his verse. But because he did his best to shock people with his monstrous mass of otiose words (he was the inventor of the “submental grunt” as he called it), his main output seems now so nugatory, so false, so old-fashioned (super-modern things have a queer knack of dating much faster than others) that his true value is only remembered by a few scholars who admire the magnificent translations of English poems made by him at the very outset of his literary career,— ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1209:It is best to lay our plans widely in youth, for then land is cheap, and it is but too easy to contract our views afterward. Youths so laid out, with broad avenues and parks, that they may make handsome and liberal old men! Show me a youth whose mind is like some Washington city of magnificent distances, prepared for the most remotely successful and glorious life after all, when those spaces shall be built over and the idea of the founder be realized. I trust that every New England boy will begin by laying out a Keene Street through his head, eight rods wide. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1210:Advice to explorers everywhere: if you would like to recieve due credit for your discoveries, keep a detailed account of your journeys as Columbus did. On Septemeber 28, 1492, after four weeks at sea, he writes: Dear diary...I means journal. Yes, dear journal. That's what I meant to say. Whew. Anyway, we have yet to discover America, and the crew has become increasingly rebellious. I have decided to turn back if we have not spotted it by Columbus Day. Will write again later if not killed by crew. P.S. Last night's buffet was fabulous, the ice sculptures magnificent. ~ Cuthbert Soup, #NFDB
1211:I'm thinking of writing a children's story about a leaf on a tree who arrogantly insists he's a self-made, independent leaf. Then one day a fierce wind blows him off his branch and to the ground below. As his life slowly ebbs away, he looks up at the magnificent old tree that had been his home and realizes that he had never been on his own. His entire life he had been part of something bigger and more beautiful than anything he could have imagined. In a blinding flash, he awakens from the delusion of self. Then an arrogant, self-centered kid rakes him up and bags him. ~ Chuck Lorre, #NFDB
1212:Out of the autopoiesis and evolution of mental, especially neural, structures emerges the magnificent wealth of human creativity. On the one hand it creates with technology a world of equilibrium structures, on the other with art and social institutions and organizations as well as in science and in the great religions and ideologies autopoietic/evolving systems of a symbolic as well as a real kind. It enters into new forms of symbiosis with other forms of life, in particular in agriculture and in the management of ecological resources. ~ Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe, #NFDB
1213:Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
1214:A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it’s true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere. But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can’t manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve really improved on it. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1215:A muffled voice startled them both.
"When are you going to kiss her?"
They pulled away. In the ballroom windows, noses and hands pressed against the glass, were the girls. They stood among the prickly rosebushes, beaming wicked little grins. Delphinium and Eve whispered and giggled to each other; Bramble wore a magnificent grin on her face and a spark of light in her yellow-green eyes.
Another figure stood among them. This one had his arms folded across his chest, stiff and firm and formal...
...Yet he did not look displeased. ~ Heather Dixon Wallwork,#NFDB
1216:The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Musselmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom-but the yell that went up to the Heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt to describe. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
1217:We are whirling through endless space with an inconceivable speed, all around us everything is spinning, everything is moving, everywhere is energy. There mart be some way of availing ourselves of this energy more directly. Then; with the light obtained from the medium, with the power derived from it, with every form of energy obtained without effort, from the store forever inexhaustible, humanity will advance with giant strides. The mere contemplation of these magnificent possibilities expand our minds, strengthens our hopes and and fills our hearts with supreme delight. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
1218:He could see in his face a love so obviously displayed that she must already know everything there was to know about it. He was so close to her then that they owned every molecule of air in the tiny room and the air grew heavy with their desire and worked to move them together. It was with the smallest step forward that his face was in her hair and then her arms were around his back and they were holding each other. It seemed so simple to get to this place, such a magnificent relief, that he couldn't imagine why he had not been holding her every minute since they first met. ~ Ann Patchett, #NFDB
1219:Eventually, the marquess raised his head and looked down at her, his iridescent eyes burning with a love so fierce it pierced right through to her heart. "That surprise I have for you," he murmured, and stretching, reached for the lunch basket. Still clinging to him, she turned her head on the blanket and watched as he withdrew a small, silk-wrapped bundle. And as the wrappings fell away, he held up a magnificent ring, a ruby framed in diamonds which winked in the sun and shot prisms of fire into her eyes. "For you," he said simply. "The future Marchioness of Morninghall. ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
1220:In any case, the royal remains of the last Goth to rule Hispania were never found-only his magnificent white stallion, still saddled and dead in a ditch. A batch of heads, severed from the necks of ranking Visigoths, was collected and wrapped in camphor-soaked cloth to send along with bejeweled hilts and gold rings to Damascus as tributary proof of the scale of the Believer's victory. Once again in history, a civilization's fate was determined by an encounter in which the objective factors of location, numbers, and equipment were decidedly not favorable to the winners. ~ David Levering Lewis, #NFDB
1221:Steve Jobs said creativity is “just connecting things.” Salvador Dali said “those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” Picasso said “good artists copy but great artists steal.” Mark Twain said “all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.” No magnificent product of the imagination—whether a machine, painting, or philosophy—was created in a complete vacuum. The invention of the telegraph took the efforts of a thousand, but the last man, who added that final inspired touch, got the credit. When you start viewing ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
1222:THE CONSCIOUS HUMAN
You are not just white,
but a rainbow of colors.
You are not just black,
but golden.
You are not just a nationality,
but a citizen of the world.
You are not just for the right or left,
but for what is right over the wrong.
You are not just rich or poor,
but always wealthy in the mind and heart.
You are not perfect, but flawed.
You are flawed, but you are just.
You may just be conscious human,
but you are also a magnificent
reflection of God.
Suzy Kassem
“The Conscious Human” Poetry by Suzy Kassem ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1223:It is more magnificent than what I thought heaven might be, and yet it is all of its wonder, as well.”
...
"Iris, we are shut off from it in this life because if any knew its magnificence, life itself would end, for all who are living would seek death. But as the egg must be in the nest for the bird to fly from it, so the living must live and die when nature intends so that the shell may be broken at the point when the living have wings to fly. It is as if in life we are blind, and in death we see. In life we think in error, but in death we know and love and understand. ~ Douglas Clegg,#NFDB
1224:mathematician Steven Strogatz puts it . . . In every case, these feats of synchrony occur spontaneously, almost as if nature has an eerie yearning for order. And that raises a profound mystery: Scientists have long been baffled by the existence of spontaneous order in the universe. The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite, that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder, greater entropy. Yet all around us we see magnificent structures that have somehow managed to assemble themselves. This enigma bedevils all of science today.2 ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, #NFDB
1225:La DolceVita. The movie opens with a panorama of Rome’s magnificent skyline, the grand dome of St. Peter’s in the center. A helicopter carrying a large object appears in the distance. The camera zooms in; the object is a statue of Christ being hauled away from a downtown square. The camera then focuses on a group of young sunbathers who, distracted from their pleasure by the whirring blades, laugh mockingly. Why shouldn’t Jesus take the bus like everyone else? The helicopter flies on to discard its outdated cargo on a trash pile, and the youngsters return to their sun worship. ~ Charles W Colson, #NFDB
1226:Robert, have you seen those great black ants which are born with wings? They fly a day or two, then drop their wings and fall upon the ground to crawl for all their lives. I wonder when your son will drop his wings. Is it not strange, Robert, how, among men, this crawling is revered--how children tear at their wings, so they may indulge in this magnificent crawling?" "What makes boys grow to men?" Robert asked. "What circumstances rots out their wing roots?" "Why a great many never have wings, and some tear them off for themselves; some are sudden things and others very tedious. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1227:This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder. ~ Honor de Balzac, #NFDB
1228:I early formed the habit of buying books, and, thank God, I have never lost it. Authors living and dead — dead, for the most part — afford me my greatest enjoyment, and it is my pleasure to buy more books than I can read. Who was it who said, "I hold the buying of more books than one can peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul's reaching towards infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish"? Whoever it was, I agree with him (...) ~ A. Edward Newton, "What About the Bookshop?", in: A Magnificent Farce and Other Diversions of a Book-Collector (1921), p. 78., #NFDB
1229:The main duty of the historian of mathematics, as well as his fondest privilege, is to explain the humanity of mathematics, to illustrate its greatness, beauty and dignity, and to describe how the incessant efforts and accumulated genius of many generations have built up that magnificent monument, the object of our most legitimate pride as men, and of our wonder, humility and thankfulness, as individuals. The study of the history of mathematics will not make better mathematicians but gentler ones, it will enrich their minds, mellow their hearts, and bring out their finer qualities. ~ George Sarton, #NFDB
1230:All night the angelic made me gasp for breadth and dream of drowning in sand or earth or mud. I got up, my chest still racked, but glad to be finished with the phantasms which magnify a reality difficult enough in itself. Coffee so bitter it was undrinkable. A big roar. Two big roars. No relief. The mornings only consolation was of a faecal nature. Unexpectedly and impeccably i produced a magnificent turd, so long it had to curve at the ends to fit into the bowl. I contemplated fondly the fine chubby little babe of living clay i'd just brought forth, and my zest for life returned. ~ Michel Tournier, #NFDB
1231:This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensuing to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of with start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
1232:Perhaps you should put me down?” suggested Nina.
Reality crashed in on Matthias—the guards’ knowing looks, Zoya and Genya in the doorway, and the fact that in the course of kissing Nina Zenik with a year’s worth of pent-up desire, he had lifted her clear off her feet.
A tide of embarrassment flooded through him. What Fjerdan did such a thing? Gently, he released his hold on her magnificent thighs and let her slide to the ground.
“Shameless ,” Nina whispered, and he felt his cheeks go red.
Zoya rolled her eyes. “We’re making a deal with a pair of love-struck teenagers. ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
1233:At the centre of all these noble races we cannot fail to see the blond beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast avidly prowling round for spoil and victory; this hidden centre needs release from time to time, the beast must out again, must return to the wild: - Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings - in this requirement they are all alike. It was the noble races which left the concept of 'barbarian' in their traces wherever they went; even their highest culture betrays the fact that they were conscious of this and indeed proud of it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1234:It will be a year and a half ago soon since we found ourselves at last after many wanderings and numerous calamities in this magnificent capital, adorned with innumerable monuments. Here I obtained a
situation.... I obtained it and I lost it again. Do you understand? This time it was through my own fault I lost it: for my weakness had come out.... We have now part of a room at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel’s; and what we live upon and what we pay our rent with, I could not say.
There are a lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt and disorder, a perfect Bedlam... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,#NFDB
1235:Then — it had to happen eventually — Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
1236:The phenomena of nature, which strike on the senses and are understood by the mind, form not only a magnificent spectacle, but also a most coherent, entertaining, and instructive Discourse; and to effect this, they are conducted, adjusted, and ranged by the greatest wisdom. This Language or Discourse is studied with different attention, and interpreted with different degrees of skill. But so far as men have studied and remarked its rules, and can interpret right, so far they may be said to be knowing in nature. A beast is like a man who hears a strange tongue but understands nothing. ~ George Berkeley, #NFDB
1237:In a way, it’s odd that the greatest sympathy for evolutionism is found among scholars who study the distant past. For events of this century, and especially of the last few decades, suggest that the arrow of history identified by some social scientists of the nineteenth century is roughly on target. Lewis Morgan’s essential point was right: the endless impetus of cultural evolution has pushed society through several thresholds over the past 20,000 years. And now it is pushing society through another one. A magnificent new social structure—our future home—is being built before our eyes. ~ Robert Wright, #NFDB
1238:Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic , you experience it from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie. ~ James Berardinelli, #NFDB
1239:Aunt Dove stepped behind her and looked at her reflection in the cheval glass. “You haven’t been to India, pet, but in the Nilgiri Hills, there’s a flower called a kurinji flower. It doesn’t bloom often. In fact, you can go a dozen years or more without seeing a single blossom. But then, just when you’ve given up hope of ever seeing one, they burst into flower, whole mountainsides at the same time, carpeted in the most astonishing shades of purple. It’s as if God himself shook out a rug of petals and spread it at your feet. It’s unexpected and magnificent, and very much worth the wait. ~ Deanna Raybourn, #NFDB
1240:You aren't a bit romantic, are you?" he asked, amused.
She sat back and stared at him. She was beginning to think that Neal required a keeper. He seemed to have the craziest ideas. "Romance? Isn't that love stuff?" She asked finally.
"It's more than just love. It's color, and-and fire. You don't want things magnificent and filled with-with grandeur," he said, trying to make her understand. "You know, drama. Importance. Transcendent Passion."
"I just want to be a knight," Kel retorted, putting her used tableware on her tray. "Eat your vegetables. They're good for you. ~ Tamora Pierce,#NFDB
1241:Cinderella was such a dork. She left behind her glass slipper at the ball and then went right back to her step-monster's house. It seems to me she should have worn the glass slipper always, to make herself easier to find. I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in their magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said, "Could you drop me off down the road please? Now that I've finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I'd like to see something of the world, you know?... I'll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I've found my own way. ~ Rachel Cohn, #NFDB
1242:The costs of an ignorance of science are nor just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures, and a unilateral disarmament in national competitiveness. There is a moral cost as well. It is an astonishing fact about our species that we understand so much about the history of the universe. the forces that make it tick, the stuff it's made of; the origin of living things, and the machinery of life. A failure to nurture this knowledge shows a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements humanity is capable of; like allowing a great work of art to molder in a warehouse. ~ Steven Pinker, #NFDB
1243:Ah, hell.
His peripheral vision was working far too well tonight.
His slut of a cousin, his cocksucking, suit-wearing, Montblanc-up-the-ass cousin Saxton the Magnificent, was standing next to the queen, looking like a combination of Cary Grant and some model in a goddamn cologne ad.
Not that Qhuinn was bitter.
Because the guy was sharing Blay's bed.
Nah.
Nope. Not at all.
The Cocksucker-
With a wince, he thought maybe he should switch that insult to something a little farther away from what the two of them ...
God, he couldn't even go there. Not if he wanted to breathe. ~ J R Ward,#NFDB
1244:What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
1245:You’re wrong. You’re intelligent, strong-willed, have a quick wit, and you’re compassionate. You’re also beautiful, courageous, and I’ve never been so drawn to another woman in my life. I’ve wanted to protect and keep you since the moment you stepped off that jet and negotiated with me to beat on Decker’s men.” He grinned, still fond of that memory. “Most women would have cried after what they’d endured but you wanted to see both of them bleed. What’s more, you meant it. Not once did you flinch away or beg me to halt hurting them. You’re magnificent, Jill. I immediately began to fall in love. ~ Laurann Dohner, #NFDB
1246:She said being human is being a young child on Christmas Day who receives an absolutely magnificent castle. And there is a perfect photograph of this castle on the box and you want more than anything to play with the castle and the knights and the princesses because it looks like such a perfectly human world, but the only problem is that the castle isn’t built. It’s in tiny intricate pieces, and although there’s a book of instructions you don’t understand it. And nor can your parents or Aunt Sylvie. So you are just left, crying at the ideal castle on the box which no one would ever be able to build ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
1247:8. Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, #NFDB
1248:There is a saying of my adoptive ancestors. Though he performs a miracle, or two miracles, if he refuses the third miracle, it is not as profit to him. I shall dine at the Court of France tonight, and in the course of that evening, acquire the royal consent for O'LiamRoe and myself to stay as long as we please. For, to be perfectly frank," said Lymond, gently reflective, "to be perfectly frank, I can't wait to sink my teeth into the most magnificent, the most scholarly and the most dissolute Court in Europe, which so lightly slid out The O'LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, on his kneecaps and whiskers. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
1249:A = A is a simplification, one so radical that it sometimes utterly distorts reality. It skins reality alive. Is A = A useful? Does logic come in handy? Is math a magnificent symbolic system with which to comprehend what's around us? And is math based on A = A? Yes. Absolutely. But math and logic are just that - very, very simplified representations. Symbolic systems with massive powers. But symbolic systems that sometimes do enormous injustice to the richness of that which they attempt to represent. Symbol systems that sometimes do enormous injustice to science's greatest mystery, cosmic creativity. ~ Howard Bloom, #NFDB
1250:Oh I would never dream of assuming I know all Hogwarts' secrets, Igor," said Dumbledore amicably.n"Only this morning, for instance, I took a wrong turning on the way to the bathroom and found myself in a beautifully proportioned room I have never seen before, containing a really rather magnificent collection of chamber pots. When I went back to investigate more closely, I discovered that the room had vanished. But I must keep an eye out for it. Possibly it is only accessible at five-thirty in the morning. Or it may only appear at the quarter moon — or when the seeker has an exceptionally full bladder. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1251:The Greek Mysteries included in their doctrines a magnificent concept of the relationship existing between music and form. The elements of architecture, for example, were considered as comparable to musical modes and notes, or as having a musical counterpart. Consequently when a building was erected in which a number of these elements were combined, the structure was then likened to a musical chord, which was harmonic only when it fully satisfied the mathematical requirements of harmonic intervals. The realization of this analogy between sound and form led Goethe to declare that "architecture is crystallized music.", #NFDB
1252:It is magnificent. At the moment of impact, the king's eyes are open, his body braced for the atteint; he takes the blow perfectly, its force absorbed by a body securely armoured, moving in the right direction, moving at the right speed. His colour does not alter. His voice does not shake.
"Healthy?" he says. "Then I thank God for his favour to us. As I thank you, my lords, for this comfortable intelligence."
He thinks, Henry has been rehearsing. I suppose we all have.
The king walks away towards his own rooms. Says over his shoulder, "Call her Elizabeth. Cancel the jousts. ~ Hilary Mantel,#NFDB
1253:Which snowflake is the most magnificent? Is it possible that they are all magnificent—and that, celebrating their magnificence together they create an awesome display? Then they melt into each other, and into the Oneness. Yet they never go away. They never disappear. They never cease to be. Simply, they change form. And not just once, but several times: from solid to liquid, from liquid to vapor, from the seen to the unseen, to rise again, and then again to return in new displays of breathtaking beauty and wonder. This is Life, nourishing Life. This is you. The metaphor is complete. The metaphor is real. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1254:For reasons I could not fathom, I did something I knew it was pure insanity, pure torment to do. I believed. For one magnificent second, connected to Nick Sebring, I believed. I believed in a better world. I believed I could feel complete. I believed I could have someone by my side. I believed I could feel safe. I believed I could be happy. I believed I could be loved. I believed in a dawn coming where I would open my eyes and have all of this only for it to lead to another day dawning where I’d have it and then another day… And another… And another… And another… Until I no longer existed on this world. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
1255:Nevertheless, it strikes me more and more that America’s reputation for materialism is unfounded—that is, if a materialist is a person who thoroughly enjoys the physical world and loves material things. In this sense, we are superb materialists when it comes to the construction of jet aircraft, but when we decorate the inside of these magnificent monsters for the comfort of passengers it is nothing but frippery. High-heeled, narrow-hipped, doll-type girls serving imitation, warmed-over meals. For our pleasures are not material pleasures but symbols of pleasure—attractively packaged but inferior in content. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1256:The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist’s shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1257:Patrick's handsome face descended toward mine. He stopped when he was just a whisper away. "You have a beautiful mouth."
God, he was magnificent. Such harsh, sensual beauty. The luck of genetics and vampirism and gym time? Who knew?
He watched me watching him and I knew he was probably in my head, listening in on my thoughts, my confusion. He grinned, just a little, and I knew that rotten, ugly, fat troll was reading my mind.
He laughed, unrepentant, and his breath plumed my lips. How the hell did he do that? How could he pretend to breathe? Or better yet, why did he pretend to breathe? ~ Michele Bardsley,#NFDB
1258:Give me four days so that my planes can fly, so that my fighter bombers can bomb and strafe, so that my reconnaissance may pick out targets for my magnificent artillery. Give me four days of sunshine to dry this blasted mud, so that my tanks roll, so that ammunition and rations may be taken to my hungry, ill-equipped infantry. I need these four days to send von Rundstedt and his godless army to their Valhalla. I am sick of this unnecessary butchering of American youth, and in exchange for four days of fighting weather, I will deliver You enough Krauts to keep Your bookkeepers months behind in their work. “Amen. ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
1259:And then she started climbing/ The girl is in the seventh grade, and she's climbing a tree--way, way up in the tree. And why does she do it? So she can yell down at us that the bus is five! four! three blocks away! Blow-by-blow traffic watch from a tree--what every kid in junior high feels like hearing first thing in the morning. She tried to get me to come up there with her, too. "Bryce, come on! You won't believe the colors! It's absolutely magnificent! Bryce, you've got to come up here!" Yeah, I could just hear it: "Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree..." Was I ever going to leave the second grade behind? ~ Wendelin Van Draanen, #NFDB
1260:We're pupils of the religions—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish . . . Well, the Christian religions. Those who directed French education down through the centuries were the Jesuits. They taught us how to make sentences translated from the Latin, well balanced, with a verb, a subject, a complement, a rhythm. In short—here a speech, there a preach, everywhere a sermon! They say of an author, “He knits a nice sentence!” Me, I say, “It's unreadable.” They say, “What magnificent theatrical language!” I look, I listen. It's flat, it's nothing, it's nil. Me, I've slipped the spoken word into print. In one sole shot. ~ Louis Ferdinand C line, #NFDB
1261:God has given us a gift, Kate. He has made us the overseers to this magnificent planet.” He opened his arms and gestured toward the woods. “Every tree, bird, flower, and field . . . God made them for us.” She listened intently, hearing the passion in his voice. “But with such a grand gift comes great responsibility,” he continued, punctuating his words by pointing his finger in the air. “We must take great care of this gift and respect it in His name. The same goes for people. We need to take care of each other.” He dropped the stick on the ground. “I don’t think the rest of the world has figured that out yet, Kate. ~ Sarah Price, #NFDB
1262:Earthly authority displays itself in giving orders, in magnificent apparel, in hordes of servitors, in sycophantic addresses; the authority of Jesus disposes of is, by contrast, spiritual, and expresses itself in serving, not being served, in seeking to be the least instead of the greatest, the last instead of the first, in finding wisdom in the innocence of children and truth in the foolishness of men rather than in those who pass for being sagacious and experienced in the world’s ways. When we want to adulate men, we say they are godlike; but when God became Man, it was in the lineaments of the least of men. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge, #NFDB
1263:The true test of a warrior is how your 'stance' holds up after any 'circumstance'. Meaning, how you stand up after the rain, a tornado, or blizzard (the unpredictable weather of life) is the ultimate test of the strength of your spirit. Even through the stormiest weather, a warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lightning or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up to stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail ― time and time again. ~ Suzy Kassem, #NFDB
1264:Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis’s comments on them, and burned them. ~ A S Byatt, #NFDB
1265:On the second or third day, sometime in the early evening, I walked from the splashing fountains and giant lions of Trafalgar Square, past the famous door of 10 Downing Street, and then, suddenly, when I turned the corner, I was face-to-face with Big Ben. I found myself just standing there, gazing up into the rare blue sky at this magnificent clock tower that gleamed in the sunlight. I couldn’t look away. Because all at once everything in my crazy heart and mind seemed to fall into place. Right in front of me was all the glory and sparkle that I knew my London life was going to be once I figured out how to grab on to it. ~ Jerramy Fine, #NFDB
1266:While in any other great city the vagabond child is a lost man, while nearly everywhere the child left to itself is, in some sort, sacrificed and abandoned to a kind of fatal immersion in the public vices which devour in him honesty and conscience, the street boy of Paris, we insist on this point, however defaced and injured on the surface, is almost intact on the interior. It is a magnificent thing to put on record, and one which shines forth in the splendid probity of our popular revolutions, that a certain incorruptibility results from the idea which exists in the air of Paris, as salt exists in the water of the ocean. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1267:The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have, is to so live, and so improve himself in heart and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. That is my idea. There is no success in life without love and marriage. You had better be the emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the empress of yours, than to be king of the world. The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has been a success. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
1268:Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
1269:At least I have the comfort of believing Alina is in heaven. That maybe someday I'll gaze into a child's eyes and see a piece of my sister's should in there, because the fact is I do believe we go on. Then again, maybe I'll never see a trace of her, but I still feel her. I don't know how to explain it. It's as if she's only a slight shift of reality away from me sometimes, in what I think of as the slipstream, and if I could only slip sideways, too, I could join her. And one day I think I will slip sideways and get to see her again, if only as ships passing on our way to new destinations in the same vas, magnificent sea. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
1270:I’ve never had occasion to use one magnificent tip from a well-known author, but I pass it on anyway: “Keep an eye on the trade press. When an editor moves on, immediately send your precious MS to his or her office, with a covering letter addressed to said departed editor. Say, in the tones of one engaged in a cooperative effort, something like this: ‘Dear X, I was very pleased to receive your encouraging letter indicating your interest in my book, and I have made all the changes you asked for.…’ Of course they won’t find the letter. Publishers can never find anything. But at least someone might panic enough to read the MS. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1271:But how is it conceivable that Allah, the highest being of all, would enter into this world? This world is filthy and sinful, no place for the One who deserves all glory and all praise. And how could I even begin to suggest that God, the magnificent and splendid Creator, would enter into this world through the birth canal of a girl? Audhu billah,3 that’s disgusting! To have to eat, to grow fatigued, and to sweat and spill blood, and to be finally nailed to a cross. I cannot believe this. God deserves infinitely more. His majesty is far greater than this. “But what if His majesty is not as important to Him as His children are? ~ Nabeel Qureshi, #NFDB
1272:Together the magicks swirled and danced around us, invisible but tangible, like an breeze. This wasn't defensive or offensive magic. It wasn't used to gather information, for strategy or diplomacy, or to fight a war against supernatural enemy.
It simply was.
It was fundamental, inexorable. It was nothing and everything, infinity and oblivion, from the magnificent furnace of a star to the electrons that hummed in an atom. It was life and death and everything in between, the urge to fight and grow and swim and fly. It was a cascade of water across boulders, the slow-moving advance of mountain glaciers, the march of time. ~ Chloe Neill,#NFDB
1273:Have a look if you like," she heard him say casually. "Unlike you, I'm not shy."
Clutching the sheets higher against her neck, Helen risked a timid glance at him... and then she couldn't look away.
Rhys was a magnificent sight, dressed only in trousers with braces hanging loosely along his lean hips. The flesh of his torso looked remarkably solid, as if it had been stitched to his bones with steel thread. Seeming comfortable in his half-naked state, he sat on the edge of the bed and began to remove his shoes. His back was layered with muscle upon muscle, the contours so defined that sun-colored skin gleamed as if polished. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1274:History is proof that the humans have never esteemed the magnitude of religion. Unfortunately, humans will fight with each other in the name of religion and argue their entire lifetime that their religion is superior. They always forget one basic fact; the reason for their existence is not to fight for their religion but for the prevalence of every human, who is conceived by the almighty. We were not born to fight, kill or massacre. The whole point of being born as a human is to cherish everything beautiful and magnificent around us, to invent and to discover, to help and to donate, and to spread a smile across every human face. ~ Alcatraz Dey, #NFDB
1275:And Peter became a tall and deep-chested man and a great warrior, and he was called King Peter the Magnificent. And Susan grew into a tall and gracious woman with black hair that fell almost to her feet and the kings of the countries beyond the sea began to send ambassadors asking for her hand in marriage. And she was called Queen Susan the Gentle. Edmund was a graver and quieter man than Peter, and great in council and judgment. he was called King Edmund the Just. But as for Lucy, she was always gay and golden-haired, and all princes in those parts desired her to be their Queen, and her own people called her Queen Lucy the Valiant. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1276:Magnus had animated one of his magnificent Chinese fans, and it flapped ineffectively at him, barely stirring the breeze. It was, if he was completely honest with himself (and he did not want to be), a bit too hot for this new striped blue-and-rose-colored coat, made of taffeta and satin, and the silk faille waistcoat embroidered with a scene of birds and cherubs. The wing collar, and the wig, and the silk breeches, the wonderful new gloves in the most delicate lemon yellow . . . it was all a bit warm.
Still. If one could look this fabulous, one had an obligation to. One should wear everything, or one should wear nothing at all. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
1277:The question that naturally occurs is “What would it be like if a star exploded nearby?” Our nearest stellar neighbor, as we have seen, is Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light-years away. I had imagined that if there were an explosion there we would have 4.3 years to watch the light of this magnificent event spreading across the sky, as if tipped from a giant can. What would it be like if we had four years and four months to watch an inescapable doom advancing toward us, knowing that when it finally arrived it would blow the skin right off our bones? Would people still go to work? Would farmers plant crops? Would anyone deliver them to the stores? ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1278:What I see in nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of ‘humility.’ This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. . . . My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. . . . I want to know how God created this world. I want to know his thoughts, the rest are details. ~ Albert Einstein, as quoted by Timothy Ferris, in his article “The Other Einstein”, Awake! magazine, (22 January 1992), #NFDB
1279:Woah,' I said, blocking the doorway. 'You can't come in here. This is the girls' room.'
Even as it came out of my mouth, I knew it sounded dumb. Dumb, I thought and maybe even wrong.
You...are a boy, aren't you?' I asked. 'I mean, don't take that the wrong way or anything -'
J.Lo is a boy, yes.' I let that go.
So...you Boov have boys and girls...just like us?'
Of course,' said J.Lo. 'Do not be ridicumlous.'
I smiled a wan little smile. 'Sorry.'
The Boov have seven magnificent genders. There is boy, girl, girlboy, boygirl, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.'
I had absolutely no response to this. ~ Adam Rex,#NFDB
1280:A magnificent fireworks began: magnesium flares blindingly white, yellow, and then red, like dying stars; straight bright red streaks of machine-gun fire; elegant and clear lines of bullets traced like fugitive neon light; and scarlet, sinister rugged patches from antiaircraft artillery. Then the noise: after the solemn, promising silence of the flares came the mad disorderly reaction of the inhabitants of the earth to the regular, obstinate sounds of the invisible motors in the sky.
The airplanes replied to the nervous coughing of the machine guns with great battering blows that shook the earth. It was a celebration in honor of death. ~ Albert Memmi,#NFDB
1281:I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. ~ Carl Sagan,#NFDB
1282:Human artistic expression is blessedly, refreshingly nonessential. That's exactly why I love it so much. [...] The fact that I get to spend my life making objectively useless things means [...] I am not exclusively chained to the grind of mere survival. It means we still have space left in our civilization for the luxuries of imagination and beauty and emotion - and even total frivilousness.
Pure creativity is magnificent expressly because it is the opposite of everything else in life that's essential or inescapable (food, shelter, medicine [...]). Pure creativity is something better than necessity; it's a gift. It's the frosting. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,#NFDB
1283:In a moment he would call Tana and they would pour into themselves a gay and delicate poison which would restore them momentarily to the pleasurable excitement of childhood, when every face in a crowd had carried its suggestion of splendid and significant transactions taking place somewhere to some magnificent and illimitable purpose...Life was no more than this summer afternoon; a faint wind stirring the lace collar of Gloria's dress, the slow baking drowsiness of the veranda...Intolerably unmoved they all seemed, removed from any romantic imminency of action. Even Gloria's beauty needed wild emotions, needed poignancy, needed death... ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1284:What more consolation can there be! A God-believing Hindu may expect to be reborn a king; a Muslim or a Christian might dream of the luxuries he hopes to enjoy in paradise as a reward for his sufferings and sacrifices. What hope should I entertain? I know that will be the end when the rope is tightened round my neck and the rafters move from under my feet. To use more precise religious terminology, that will be the moment of utter annihilation. My soul will come to nothing. If I take the courage to take the matter in the light of ‘Reward’, I see that a short life of struggle with no such magnificent end shall itself be my ‘Reward.’ That is all. ~ Bhagat Singh, #NFDB
1285:Where mathematics was a magnificent imaginary building, the world of story as represented by Dickens was like a deep, magical forest for Tengo. When mathematics stretched infinitely upward toward the heavens, the forest spread out beneath his gaze in silence, its dark, sturdy roots stretching deep into the earth. In the forest there were no maps, no numbered doorways.... Tengo began deliberately to put some distance between himself and the world of mathematics, and instead the forest of story began to exert a stronger pull on his heart... Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1286:Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from his thought to his conscience and returns from his conscience to his thought. This is the only sense of the words, so often used in this chapter, “he said,” “he exclaimed”; we say to ourselves, we speak to ourselves, we exclaim within ourselves, without breaking the external silence. There is great tumult within; everything within us speaks, except the tongue. The realities of the soul, though not visible and palpable, are nonetheless realities. (pg. 226) ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1287:I miss the flowers; more than anything else I miss the flowers,’ she mused. And sought after them even in the paintings which we brought from the shops and the galleries, magnificent canvases such as I'd never seen in New Orleans-from the classically executed lifelike bouquets, tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-dimensional tablecloth, to a new and disturbing style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like to those states when I'm nearest my delirium and flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps. Paris flowed into these rooms. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
1288:Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in faces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1289:Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1290:We have these magnificent minds and hands and ideas and visions, and they beg us to pay attention, give them permission, give them life. I sincerely believe we are created by a Creator to be creative. This is part of His image we bear, this bringing forth of beauty, life, newness. This bears out in one thousand different ways: we write, sculpt, paint, speak, dance, craft, film, design, photograph, draw, bring order, beautify, garden, innovate, produce, cook, invent, fashion, sing, compose, imagine. It looks like art, it looks like music, it looks like community, it looks like splendor. That thing in you that wants to make something beautiful? It is holy. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
1291:After all, as Mr Mackenzie said, it was odd that three men, each of whom possessed many of those things that are supposed to make life worth living -- health, sufficient means, and position, etc. -- should from their own pleasure start out upon a wild-goose chase, from which the chances were they never would return. But then that is what Englishmen are, adventurers to the backbone; and all our magnificent muster-roll of colonies, each of which will in time become a great nation, testify to the extraordinary value of the spirit of adventure which at first sight looks like a mild form of lunacy. 'Adventurer' -- he that goes out to meet whatever may come. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
1292:Mam drove the same way she walked, freestyle, also known as bumpily. She didn’t really go in for right- and left-hand lanes, which was fine this side of Faha where the road is cart-wide and Mohawked with a raised rib of grass and when two cars meet there is no hope of passing, someone has to throw back a left arm and reverse to the nearest gap or gate, which Faha folks do brilliantly, flooring the accelerator and racing in soft zigzag to where they have just been, defeating time and space both and making a nonsense of past and present, here and there. As any student of Irish history ancient and recent will know, we are a nation of magnificent reversers. ~ Niall Williams, #NFDB
1293:Obviously, to be in the fear of the Lord is not to be scared of the Lord, even though the Hebrew word has overtones of respect and awe. “Fear” in the Bible means to be overwhelmed, to be controlled by something. To fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love. It means that, because of his bright holiness and magnificent love, you find him “fearfully beautiful.” That is why the more we experience God’s grace and forgiveness, the more we experience a trembling awe and wonder before the greatness of all that he is and has done for us. Fearing him means bowing before him out of amazement at his glory and beauty. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1294:Ah, you pitiful, pitiful creatures! Beautiful family! Nobler far than stupid men..." he cried softly to himself. What was he doing here with his arrow? Cornering these creatures? Armor--an armor to brag about! Save his dignity before that armor-maker because of a promise? Foolish...foolish! If the old man jeered at him, why should it matter anymore; a common suit of armor would do as well! Armor did not make a man, nor did it signify valor.
"Dumb creatures that you are, how magnificent! Sorrow, love--parental love incarnate! Were I that fox--what if Tokiko and Shigemori were trapped like this? Even the beast can rise above itself--could I as much? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa,#NFDB
1295:I had chosen the fifteenth day of July, the day that Roman Knights go out crowned with olive wreaths to honor the Twins in a magnificent horseback procession:from the Temple of Mars they ride through the main streets of the City, circling back to the Temple of the Twins, where they offer sacrifices. The ceremony is a commemoration of the battle of Lake Regillus which was fought on that day over three hundred years ago. Castor and Pollux came riding in person to the help of a Roman army that was making a desperate stand on the lake-shore against a superior force of Latins; and ever since then they have been adopted as the particular patrons of the knights. ~ Robert Graves, #NFDB
1296:What was this universe? What was this grand, eternal pageant to which he had yearned from his childhood up, and in which he could never take part? Every morning the same magnificent sun; every morning the same rainbow in the waterfall; every evening the same glow on the snow-mountains. Every little fly that buzzed in the sun's rays was a singer in the universal chorus, "knew its place, and was happy in it." Every blade of grass grew and was happy. Everything knew its path and loved it, went forth with a song and returned with a song; only he knew nothing, understood nothing, neither men nor words, nor any of nature's voices; he was a stranger and an outcast. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1297:At the bar on the Favoritenstrasse, Julius the policeman talked to us about dignity, evolution, the great Darwin and the great Nietzsche. I translated so that my good friend Ulises could understand what he was saying, although I didn’t understand any of it. The prayer of the bones, said Julius. The yearning for health. The virtue of danger. The tenacity of the forgotten. Bravo, said my good friend Ulises. Bravo, said everyone else. The limits of memory. The wisdom of plants. The eye of parasites. The agility of the earth. The merit of the soldier. The cunning of the giant. The hole of the will. Magnificent, said my good friend Ulises in German. Extraordinary. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
1298:The thunderbirds, like dinosaurs, were now creatures of the past: lost long ago, with the coming of disease and famine brought by hairy strangers. Except, in today’s world dinosaurs were celebrated by palaeontologists and thunderbirds by cultural anthropologists. But John still remembered them, those magnificent creatures. (...) They, like the man on the motorcycle, had been born in an age when gods, monsters, humans and animals ate at the same table. Now man ate alone, while animals begged for scraps. The others were unable to survive in the new times and had disappeared into the folds of time. Who knew gods and monsters could and did fall victim to evolution? ~ Drew Hayden Taylor, #NFDB
1299:Sophie's ability to create things in the kitchen was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was a skill that came naturally, an innate knowledge that only she possessed, with an end result that was nothing short of magnificent. In the span of half a day, the blue kitchen counter would be covered with whole vanilla cakes, the edges moist and slightly crumbling, bowls of fudge frosting accented with a splash of espresso, zucchini bread studded with pineapple and carrots and walnuts, even peanut brittle made with a combination of brown sugar and toffee. She created everything from scratch; each recipe an original, tried again and again until the proportions were perfect. ~ Cecilia Galante, #NFDB
1300:When I came back from lunch and found out you'd been reassigned to Nick, I went up to be certain that you were doing all right. Mary told me that you'd just gone into Nick's office, so I opened the door and looked in to see if you needed rescuing. There you were-smiling angelically at him while you gave him messages from other women and turned down his offer of an 'affair.'"
Resting his head against the back of his chair, Jim closed his eyes and laughed. "Oh Lauren, you were magnificent! I was just about to leave when you pushed him too far and told him you'd call him when your daughter was of age, so that he could, er, initiate her,as I gather he initiated you? ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
1301:Meanwhile, we on this dying Earth can relax and rejoice for our loved ones who are in the presence of Christ. As the apostle Paul tells us, though we naturally grieve at losing loved ones, we are not “to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Our parting is not the end of our relationship, only an interruption. We have not “lost” them, because we know where they are. They are experiencing the joy of Christ’s presence in a place so wonderful that Christ called it Paradise. And one day, we’re told, in a magnificent reunion, they and we “will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:17-18). ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1302:To be beautiful, handsome, means that you possess a power which makes all smile upon and welcome you; that everybody is impressed in your favor and inclined to be of your opinion; that you have only to pass through a street or to show yourself at a balcony to make friends and to win mistresses from among those who look upon you. What a splendid, what a magnificent gift is that which spares you the need to be amiable in order to be loved, which relieves you of the need of being clever and ready to serve, which you must be if ugly, and enables you to dispense with the innumerable moral qualities which you must possess in order to make up for the lack of personal beauty. ~ Th ophile Gautier, #NFDB
1303: The Hidden Plan
However long Night's hour, I will not dream
That the small ego and the person's mask
Are all that God reveals in our life-scheme,
The last result of Nature's cosmic task.
A greater Presence in her bosom works;
Long it prepares its far epiphany:
Even in the stone and beast the godhead lurks,
A bright Persona of eternity.
It shall burst out from the limit traced by Mind
And make a witness of the prescient heart;
It shall reveal even in this inert blind
Nature, long veiled in each inconscient part,
Fulfilling the occult magnificent plan,
The world-wide and immortal spirit in man.
~ Sri Aurobindo, - The Hidden Plan
,#NFDB
1304:Of course, differences existed between military service under Henry IV, Louis XIII, or Louis XIV, but one always served on horseback. Today these magnificent creatures were doomed. They had disappeared from the fields and streets, from the villages and towns, and for years they had not been seen in combat. Everywhere they had been replaced by automatons. Corresponding to this change was a change in men: they became more mechanical, more calculable, and often you hardly felt that you were among human beings. Only at rare moments did I still hear a sound from the past – the sound of bugles at sunrise and the neighing of horses, which made our hearts tremble. All that has gone. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
1305:Up until the mid twentieth century the mountain gorilla was considered a myth. Oddly enough, a legend not unlike bigfoot or the loch ness monster. The chance of actually seeing/experiencing this elusive shadow was as likely as finding ones soulmate. Rare. Precious. Even once discovered they seemed unapproachable. The only way to get close to this magnificent creature was to become empathetic. Abandon all pretense and preconceptions. To bare an open throat. To collapse into the arms of vulnerability. All but extinct, these beings/moments are threatened by the black hearted. The cold and oblivious. The empty eyed profit seekers that overlook these rare precious moments. ~ Maynard James Keenan, #NFDB
1306: Despair on the Staircase
Mute stands she, lonely on the topmost stair,
An image of magnificent despair;
The grandeur of a sorrowful surmise
Wakes in the largeness of her glorious eyes.
In her beauty's dumb significant pose I find
The tragedy of her mysterious mind.
Yet is she stately, grandiose, full of grace.
A musing mask is her immobile face.
Her tail is up like an unconquered flag;
Its dignity knows not the right to wag.
An animal creature wonderfully human,
A charm and miracle of fur-footed Brahman,
Whether she is spirit, woman or a cat,
Is now the problem I am wondering at.
~ Sri Aurobindo, - Despair on the Staircase
,#NFDB
1307:True beauty, the kind that doesn't fade or wash off, takes time. It takes incredible endurance. It is the slow drip that creates the stalactite, the shaking of the Earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that breaks up the rocks and smooths the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would have otherwise never existed.
And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can't see. We believe there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent, our bodies can't contain it. ~ Amy Harmon,#NFDB
1308:English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it. Profesora Shields explained that in English there was no usted, no tu. There was only one word—you. It applied to all people. No one more distant or more familiar. You. They. Me. I. Us. We. There were no words that changed from feminine to masculine and back again depending on the speaker. A person was from New York. Not a woman from New York, not a man from New York. Simply a person. ~ Cristina Henriquez, #NFDB
1309:GENERAL BOOKS ABOUT LANGUAGE Highly readable, witty, and provocative is Roger Brown’s Words and Things. Also readable, magnificent, though sometimes too dogmatic, is Eric H. Lenneberg’s Biological Foundations of Language. The deepest and most beautiful explorations of all are to be found in L. S. Vygotsky’s Thought and Language, originally published in Russian, posthumously, in 1934, and later translated by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vahar. Vygotsky has been described—not unjustly—as “the Mozart of psychology.” A personal favorite of mine is Joseph Church’s Language and the Discovery of Reality: A Developmental Psychology of Cognition, a book one goes back to again and again. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
1310:True beauty, the kind that doesn't fade or wash off, takes time. It takes incredible endurance. It is the slow drip that creates the stalactite, the shaking of the Earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that breaks up the rocks and soothes the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would have otherwise never existed.
And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can't see. We believe there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent, our bodies can't contain it. ~ Amy Harmon,#NFDB
1311:Do you also believe that what gives our lives their meaning is the passion that suddenly invades us heart, soul, and body, and burns in us forever, no matter what else happens in our lives? And that if we have experienced this much, then perhaps we haven’t lived in vain? Is passion so deep and terrible and magnificent and inhuman? Is it indeed about desiring any one person, or is it about desiring desire itself? That is the question. Or perhaps, is it indeed about desiring a particular person, a single, mysterious other, once and for always, no matter whether that person is good or bad, and the intensity of our feelings bears no relation to that individual’s qualities or behavior? ~ S ndor M rai, #NFDB
1312:Magnificent"
When will this inner night – the universe – end
And I – my soul – have my day?
When will I wake up from being awake?
I don’t know. The sun shines on high
And cannot be looked at.
The stars coldly blink
And cannot be counted.
The heart beats aloofly
And cannot be heard.
When will this drama without theater
– Or this theater without drama – end
So that I can go home?
Where? How? When?
O cat staring at me with eyes of life, Who lurks in your depths?
It’s Him! It’s him!
Like Joshua he’ll order the sun to stop, and I’ll wake up,
And it will be day.
Smile, my soul, in your slumber!
Smile, my soul: it will be day! ~ Fernando Pessoa,#NFDB
1313:Blessing must arise from within your own mind. It is not something that comes from outside. When the positive qualities of your mind increase and the negativities decrease, that is what blessing means. The Tibetan word for blessing … means transforming into magnificent potential. Therefore, blessing refers to the development of virtuous qualities you did not previously have and the improvement of those good qualities you have already developed. It also means decreasing the defilements of the mind that obstruct the generation of wholesome qualities. So actual blessing is received when the minds virtuous attributes gain strength and its defective characteristics weaken or deteriorate. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1314:Evil Hall had been transformed into a magnificent ballroom, glittering with green tinsel, black balloons, thousands of green-flamed candles, and a spinning chandelier streaking wall murals with emerald bursts of light. Around a towering ice sculpture of two entwined snakes, Hort and Dot stumbled through a waltz, Anadil wrapped her arms around Vex, Brone tried not to step on Mona's green feet, and Hester and Ravan swayed and whispered as more villainous couples waltzed around them. Ravan's bunk mates picked up the music on reed violins as more pairs flooded onto the floor, clumsy, bashful, but aglow with happiness, dancing beneath a spangled banner:
THE 1ST ANNUAL VILLAINS "NO BALL ~ Soman Chainani,#NFDB
1315:You’re pretty full of yourself. You’re marveling at the tragic spectacle of Caleb Trask—Caleb the
magnificent, the unique. Caleb whose suffering should have its Homer. Did you ever think of yourself
as a snot-nose kid—mean sometimes, incredibly generous sometimes? Dirty in your habits, and
curiously pure in your mind. Maybe you have a little more energy than most, just energy, but outside
of that you’re very like all the other snot-nose kids. Are you trying to attract dignity and tragedy to
yourself because your mother was a whore? And if anything should have happened to your brother,
will you be able to sneak for yourself the eminence of being a murderer, snot-nose? ~ John Steinbeck,#NFDB
1316:At least,' I said, 'she has the virtue of sincerity.'
'Some virtue! They've all got it. They show off quite shamelessly for everybody—except themselves, of course—to see. In our trade, we say a succulent abscess or a magnificent case of eczema; similarly, they proudly exhibit their sick organs under all manner of garbs. A man who makes a plate or a shirt or a loaf of bread or anything our great great ancestors called a work of art, has no need to try to be sincere; all he can do is practice his craft to the best of his ability. But once he starts making useless things, how can he not be sincere? I'm using the word in the somewhat weird sense that you yourself seem to understand it.) ~ Ren Daumal,#NFDB
1317:In her dreams the Hawk would be waiting for her by the sea's edge; her kilt-clad, magnificent Scottish laird. He would smile and his eyes would crinkle, then turn dark with
smoldering passion.
She would take his hand and lay it gently on her swelling abdomen, and his face would blaze with happiness and
pride. Then he would take her gently, there on the cliff's edge, in tempo with the pounding of the ocean. He would
make fierce and possessive love to her and she would hold on to him as tightly as she could. But before dawn, he would melt right through her fingers. And she would wake up, her cheeks wet with tears and her hands clutching nothing but a bit of quilt or pillow. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
1318:I assigned myself the role of Lot’s wife, because her behavior seemed the most human, the most sinful, and therefore closest to mine. Consumed by curiosity, I was drawn to the magnificent, horrible sight of fire and disaster as houses collapsed and towers folded like dominoes amidst human wailing that rose to the sky. My curiosity, brought to an explosive point by the divine warning, was suddenly transformed into my sole trait, overwhelming reason and the feeling of fear, turning me into a weakling of a woman, unable to resist my inquisitiveness, and I would turn around abruptly with my whole body as if rotated by the centrifugal force of my curiosity, which had passed through me like a sword. ~ Danilo Ki, #NFDB
1319:Deprived of the divine will, the world is equally deprived of unity and finality. That is why it is impossible to pass judgment on the world. Any attempt to apply a standard of values to the world leads finally to a slander on life. Judgments are based on what is, with reference to what should be—the kingdom of heaven, eternal concepts, or moral imperatives. But what should be does not exist; and this world cannot be judged in the name of nothing. “The advantages of our times: nothing is true, everything is permitted.” These magnificent or ironic formulas which are echoed by thousands of others, at least suffice to demonstrate that Nietzsche accepts the entire burden of nihilism and rebellion ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1320:The universe and the events in it are thus perfect examples to imitate. However, no matter how perfect the example is, everyone will draw and interpret objects according to their abilities. Charles Lako, commenting on aesthetics once said, that the magnificent scene at sunset would remind a farmer of the rather unaesthetic thought of dinner; the physicist, not of beauty or ugliness, but of the rightness or wrongness of the analysis of a matter. Thus, for Lalo, the sunset is beautiful only for those who are aware of beauty. Therefore, only those who see with God and hear with God can appreciate the beauty that spreads throughout existence as their senses are tuned to the spiritual realms. ~ M Fethullah G len, #NFDB
1321:True beauty, the kind that doesn't fade or wash off, takes time. It takes pressure. It takes incredible endurance. It is the slow drip the makes the stalactite, the shaking of the Earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that breaks up the rocks and smooths the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would otherwise never exist. And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can't see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent that our bodies can't contain it. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
1322:people’s commissar, he was once as close to Stalin as Goering was to Hitler. He helped direct the collectivization program of the 1920s and early 1930s, a brutal campaign that annihilated the peasantry and left the villages of Ukraine strewn with an endless field of human husks. As the leader of the Moscow Party organization, Kaganovich built the city subway system and, briefly, had it named for himself. He was responsible as well for the destruction of dozens of churches and synagogues. He dynamited Christ the Savior, a magnificent cathedral in one of the oldest quarters of Moscow. It was said at the time that Stalin could see the cathedral belltower from his window and wanted it eliminated. ~ David Remnick, #NFDB
1323:True beauty, the kind that doesn’t fade or wash off, takes time. It takes pressure. It takes incredible endurance. It is the slow drip that makes the stalactite, the shaking of the earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that break up the rocks and smooths the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would otherwise never exist.
And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we cant see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent that our bodies cant contain it. ~ Amy Harmon,#NFDB
1324:True beauty, the kind that doesn't fade or wash off, takes time. It takes pressure. It takes incredible endurance. It is the slow drip that makes the stalactite, the shaking of the Earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that breaks up the rocks and smooths the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would otherwise never exist. “And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can't see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent that our bodies can't contain it. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
1325:El Shaddai continued looking at Babylon’s magnificent architecture and achievements. He mused out loud, “This is only the beginning of what they will do. They will stop at nothing to achieve the impossible.” Abram blurted out, “My Lord.” El Shaddai looked down at Abram. He put his hand on Abram’s head with loving care and smiled. Abram melted inside. It was the Lord. He could not describe the look of the face that on the surface was rather common looking. But in his eyes, he saw the heavens and the earth. El Shaddai turned his face back to Babylon and continued walking. Abram got up to follow him, but Mikael held him back. He looked at him with a mere shaking of his head “no.” Abram stood still. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1326:True beauty, the kind that doesn't fade or wash off, takes time. It takes pressure. It takes incredible endurance. It is the slow drip that makes the stalactite, the shaking of the Earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that breaks up the rocks and smooths the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would otherwise never exist.
And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can't see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent that our bodies can't contain it ~ Amy Harmon,#NFDB
1327:Resolved to search the nooks and crannies that lined the cave, Alice pivoted- and crashed right into a man's bare, muscled chest.
Right at her eye level, his loose white shirt hung open, revealing a deep V of velvety skin. At this close range, she could see every sculpted ridge of his stomach, every hard plane of his magnificent chest; could practically taste the salty, vibrant sheen of sweat that glowed on his skin. Her heart leaped into her throat with instant recognition; her wits scattered like chickens with a fox in the henhouse.
'Oh, no,' she thought, choking on her gasp.
Slowly lifting her gaze, Alice tilted her head back and looked into the silvery, mocking eyes of Lucien Knight. ~ Gaelen Foley,#NFDB
1328:I also went to Kyoto. I had found no occasion to visit the city in over twenty years, and was struck to find that the graceful, vital metropolis I remembered was nearly extinct, disappearing like an unloved garden given over to vapid, industrious weeds. Where was the fulgent peak of Higashi Honganji Temple, sweeping upward among the surrounding tiled roofs like the upturned chin of a princess among her retainers? That magnificent view, which had once greeted travelers to the city, was now blotted out by the new train station, an abomination that sprawled along a half-mile length of tracks like a massive turd that had plummeted from space and embedded itself there, too gargantuan to be carted away. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1329:I grew up then, into this life of jazz, and fell immediately into the state of almost audible confusion. Life stood over me like an immoral schoolmistress, editing my thoughts. It seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature, that by the divine and magnificent accident has brought us to where we could fly in her face. We produce a Christ who can raise up the leper and presently, it's the salt of the Earth. If any one can find lesson in that, let him stand forth. Am I crazy trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge towards truth? Trying to separate the knowable from the unknowable? ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1330:It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My Lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
1331:Prior to the Christian Era seven hundred thousand of the most valuable books, written upon parchment, papyrus, vellum, and wax, and also tablets of stone, terra cotta, and wood, were gathered from all parts of the ancient world and housed in Alexandria, in buildings specially prepared for the purpose. This magnificent repository of knowledge was destroyed by a series of three fires. The parts that escaped the conflagration lighted by Cæsar to destroy the fleet in the harbor were destroyed about A.D. 389 by the Christians in obedience to the edict of Theodosius, who had ordered the destruction of the Serapeum, a building sacred to Serapis in which the volumes were kept. ~ Manly P Hall, Secret Teachings of all Ages, #NFDB
1332:many shipwrecks and engineering disasters were blamed on faulty tables. These mathematical tables were calculated by hand, and the mistakes were simply the result of human error. This caused Babbage to exclaim, “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam!” This marked the beginning of an extraordinary endeavor to build a machine capable of faultlessly calculating the tables to a high degree of accuracy. In 1823 Babbage designed “Difference Engine No. 1,” a magnificent calculator consisting of 25,000 precision parts, to be built with government funding. Although Babbage was a brilliant innovator, he was not a great implementer. After ten years of toil, he abandoned “Difference Engine No. ~ Simon Singh, #NFDB
1333:When the main engines cut off, I felt I was no longer chasing space. I had arrived. I had made it to that spacious habitation, the phrase that came to mind when I first looked down from space and saw our home, the Earth. A reporter asked me after the Atlantis mission what was it like to be up there. I initially spoke about floating and seeing things that weren’t attached to anything in the shuttle floating around us. The talk quickly turned to that magnificent view of Earth. I saw the planet for the first time without borders. I thought about all the places on Earth where there’s unrest and war, and here we were flying above all that, working together as one team to help advance our civilization. That ~ Leland Melvin, #NFDB
1334:They were excessively pleased with the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. They thought the façades of the houses very magnificent – they could not praise them highly enough. But the sad decay, which buildings, bridges and church all displayed, seemed to charm them even more. They were Englishmen and, to them, the decline of other nations was the most natural thing in the world. They belonged to a race blessed with so sensitive an appreciation of its own talents (and so doubtful an opinion of any body else's) that they would not have been at all surprized to learn that the Venetians themselves had been entirely ignorant of the merits of their own city – until Englishmen had come to tell them it was delightful. ~ Susanna Clarke, #NFDB
1335:Ethnically Herod was an Idumean (an Edomite); his ancestors had been forcibly converted to Judaism, and he built for Jerusalem’s God the ancient world’s largest and most magnificent temple. Politically astute, however, Herod also built temples honoring the divine emperor Augustus and made lavish contributions to Gentile cities in or near his territory. Among his other reported politically savvy acts was the execution of members of the old Sanhedrin who opposed him; he replaced those council members instead with his own political supporters. He did not usually tolerate dissent. When some young disciples of religious teachers took down the golden eagle that Herod had erected on the temple, he had them executed. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1336:THE TREE OF LIFE
The sun is rising,
And the ether dance at the first sight of his light,
As he ascends like a phoenix from the ashes of morality,
His luminous rays form the magnificent tree of life.
He springs up from the east,
Spreading his long arms like branches,
Over the horizons of milky meadows and open seas,
Extending his wings to embrace all living things.
He walks on water and grazes through fields,
Pouring his butter like honey to feed the Earth.
Towering over all of creation,
He who is the lamp of the universe,
The power source of all life.
And in his truth and light,
Everything becomes aroused
Like a flower,
And everything is given
Sight. ~ Suzy Kassem,#NFDB
1337:Indian Creek, in its whole length, flows through a magnificent forest. There dwells on its shore a tribe of Indians, a remnant of the Chickasaws or Chickopees, if I remember rightly. They live in simple huts, ten or twelve feet square, constructed of pine poles and covered with bark. They subsist principally on the flesh of the deer, the coon, and opossum, all of which are plenty in these woods. Sometimes they exchange venison for a little corn and whisky with the planters on the bayous. Their usual dress is buckskin breeches and calico hunting shirts of fantastic colors, buttoned from belt to chin. They wear brass rings on their wrists, and in their ears and noses. The dress of the squaws is very similar. ~ Solomon Northup, #NFDB
1338:You may not be beautiful in the traditional sense, but that doesn't mean you aren't lovely all the same. Uniquely lovely, with an inner radiance that far transcends what passes for pretty these days. Take your eyes, for example."
"My eyes?"
"Hmmm. Have you ever noticed how they change color with your moods?"
She shook her head.
"Well, they do. When you're happy, they're a pure pristine blue, like twin brushstrokes of sky. And when you're displeased or lost in serious thought, they shift to grey. Silvery, sensual grey, the sort that ripples like dawn mist over a lake. I can think of no other woman with eyes like yours. Magnificent, soul-deep eyes in which a man could drown if he weren't careful. ~ Tracy Anne Warren,#NFDB
1339:Aurora's Sunday brunch buffet is world-class, desserts or no desserts. Your mouth starts to water the moment you enter and spot the seafood bar on your right- lobsters the color of blood oranges reclining on hillocks of shaved ice, oysters split open, their salty innards on show. Around the corner is an area devoted to cheese, huge rounds of fragrant, fresh Parmesan and a soft cheese with a gray-white rind, oozing and pungent. Behind the cheeses is a magnificent honeycomb hung on a metal frame and dripping down a silver gutter into a small bowl. The entire place smells like heaven- copper pots of hot, fresh bread being carried to tables, aged ham sliced from the bone, the chocolatier dipping soft pralines. ~ Hannah Tunnicliffe, #NFDB
1340:In The Evening
It wouldn't have lasted long anyway
years of experience make that clear.
But Fate did put an end to it a bit abruptly.
It was soon over, that wonderful life.
Yet how strong the scents were,
what a magnificent bed we lay in,
what pleasures we gave our bodies.
An echo from my days of indulgence,
an echo from those days came back to me,
something from the fire of the young life we shared:
I picked up a letter again,
read it over and over till the light faded.
Then, sad, I went out on to the balcony,
went out to change my thoughts at least by seeing
something of this city I love,
a little movement in the streets, in the shops.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,#NFDB
1341:Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1342:The "Garcilaso" mentioned by Markham is the chronicler Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, a heritage that gave him unique access to genuine Inca traditions, particularly since he was born and brought up in Cuzco and spoke Quechua, the language of the Incas, as his mother tongue. Had the megalithic elements of Sacsayhuaman been recent work, done in the century before Garcilaso's birth, there should have been fresh and clear memories, even eye-witness accounts, of so magnificent an achievement. But Garcilaso reports nothing of the sort and instead can only offer magic as an explanation for what he describes as 'an ever greater enigma than the seven wonders of the world. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
1343:Miss Climpson," said Lord Peter, "is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity, Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of power units being given off into space every minute. Thousands of old maids, simply bursting with useful energy, forced by our stupid social system into hydros and hotels and communities and hostels and posts as companions, where their magnificent gossip-powers and units of inquisitiveness are allowed to dissipate themselves or even become harmful to the community, while the ratepayers' money is spent on getting work for which these women are providentially fitted, inefficiently carried out by ill-equipped policemen like you. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
1344:She'd dreamed of him. Her imagination, unfettered in her sleep, had featured him. He'd been gloriously naked and her hands had explored the whole of him, delighted to discover that the handsome man was even more magnificent without clothes.
Drumvagen might be set into the Scottish wilderness, but what furnished her with a great deal of knowledge she otherwise might not have had. She listened to the maids discussing their love lives with a frankness they never would have had they known she was eavesdropping. Then, there was the sight of the handsome Scots lads bathing in the sea.
The books she read from Mairi's library had strengthened her imagination, adding details otherwise missing from her personal experience. ~ Karen Ranney,#NFDB
1345:Thanks to an ingenious constitution, their geographical isolation from potential rivals, and a magnificent endowment of natural resources, the Americans managed to build an extraordinarily powerful state, a fact that became obvious during World War II. They accomplished this, however, by severely restricting their government’s capacity to control everyday life, whether through the dissemination of ideas, the organization of the economy, or the conduct of politics. Despite the legacy of slavery, the near extermination of native Americans, and persistent racial, sexual, and social discrimination, the citizens of the United States could plausibly claim, in 1945, to live in the freest society on the face of the earth. ~ John Lewis Gaddis, #NFDB
1346:Beauty made you love, love made you beautiful....
She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence, of keeping out and off. She didn't want to grow sentimental. Difficult not to, here; the marvelous night stole in through all one's chinks, and brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not, enormous feelings--feelings one couldn't manage, great things about death and time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent and bleak, at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving longing. She felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and defenceless. Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this thing of chiffon she tried to protect herself from the eternities. ~ Elizabeth von Arnim,#NFDB
1347:But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for — life, good for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace; — then, and so sanctifying wealth into 'commonwealth,' all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts; and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
1348:The oak was, of course, a great stealer of the surrounding pasture—its only value to provide shade for the livestock—but it was a magnificent tree. It had been there at least as long as Luxtons had owned the land. To have removed it would have been unthinkable (as well as a forbidding practical task). It simply went with the farm. No one taking in that view for the first time could have failed to see that the tree was the immovable, natural companion of the farmhouse, or, to put it another way, that so long as the tree stood, so must the farmhouse. And no mere idle visitor—especially if they came from a city and saw that tree on a summer’s day—could have avoided the simpler thought that it was a perfect spot for a picnic. ~ Graham Swift, #NFDB
1349:The Everglades
Green and blue and white, it is a flag
for Florida stitched by hungry ibises.
It is a paradise of flocks, a cornucopia
of wind and grass and dark, slow waters.
Turtles bask in the last tatters of afternoon,
frogs perfect their symphony at dusk—
in its solitude we remember ourselves,
dimly, as creatures of mud and starlight.
Clouds and savannahs and horizons,
its emptiness is an antidote, its ink
illuminates the manuscript of the heart.
It is not ours though it is ours
to destroy or preserve, this the kingdom
of otter, kingfisher, alligator, heron.
If the sacred is a river within us, let it flow
like this, serene and magnificent, forever.
~ Campbell McGrath,#NFDB
1350:Artham felt lighter and stronger, and for the first time in nine years, his mind was clear and sure. The words to a hundred of his own poems scrolled across his memory; he saw faces of old friends, battles he had fought, and even the most terrible moments of his life - and yet he remained himself. The wild animal inside that he had struggled so long to kill pulsed with power, but it was no longer his master. He rode the pain like a knight rides a horse. ...
Artham's eyes watered from the wind and from the speed and from the magnificent beauty of the land arrayed below him. Water streaked from the corners of his eyes ... and , in the vicious cold froze into silvery jewels.
He would have to write a poem about this. ~ Andrew Peterson,#NFDB
1351:It is demonstrable,” said he, “that things cannot be otherwise than
as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must
necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose
is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are
visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones
were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My Lord has a
magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be
the best lodged. Swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork
all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not
express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
1352:We have too much technological
progress, life is too hectic, and our society has only one goal: to invent
still more technological marvels to make life even easier and better.
The craving for every new scientific discovery breeds a hunger for
greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the
soul, kills compassion, understanding, nobility. It leaves no time for
caring what happens to other people, least of all criminals. Even the
officials in Venezuela's remote areas are better for they're also
concerned with public peace. It gives them many headaches, but they
seem to believe that bringing about a man's salvation is worth the
effort. I find that magnificent. ~ Henri Charri re,#NFDB
1353:Beckett finally allowed himself to turn to her, to see what they saw. He had to smile. She was sheer sex and sin. The boots were old favorites with high, steel heels. And as predicted, her pants were orgasmically tight. She had a corset on, goddamn it, and her tits were so distracting it was obscene. Across her chest hung rounds of ammo like she’d just won the beauty pageant of death, and a leather jacket topped the whole fucking thing off. Well, that and the impressive automatic weapon slung over her shoulder. She pulled her favorite knife from where it was strapped to her thigh next to another. She twirled her hair into a bun and slid the knife into it, meeting his gaze when it was set. Eve was magnificent. Every damn time. ~ Debra Anastasia, #NFDB
1354:How can you say anything other than Ratatouille is Pixar's best movie? Your a chef, for Christ's sake," Sue said.
Lou smiled at Sue's accusatory tone. She needed this distraction.
Harley rolled his eyes and said, "You're letting your biases show, Sue. Up uses music better- like a character. The opening fifteen minutes is some of the best filmmaking- ever. And who doesn't love a good squirrel joke?"
"But Ratatouille brings it all back to food." Sue waved a carrot in the air to emphasize her point. "They made you want to eat food cooked by a rat! I'd eat the food; it looked magnificent. That rat cooked what he loved; what tasted good. Like I've been telling Lou, we should cook food from the heart, not just the cookbook. ~ Amy E Reichert,#NFDB
1355:While an ever-increasing number of people consider themselves agnostic, the great majority of these people live as if they are atheists, bereft of all the magnificent life-enhancing benefits a God-centered life provides. These individuals are agnostics intellectually, but atheists behaviorally. Such people need to make a choice: Will I live as if there is a God or as if there is no God? You can be an agnostic intellectually, but you cannot live as an agnostic; you live as either a believer or as an atheist. You live either as if life is random chance or as if it is infused with ultimate meaning. Moses chose to look carefully and see a miracle in that burning bush. If we look carefully, we, too, will see a miracle—in everything. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
1356:Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence.
Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last.
But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.
It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. ~ Joseph Conrad,#NFDB
1357:Sonnet Lxxxiii. The Sea View
THE upland shepherd, as reclined he lies
On the soft turf that clothes the mountain brow,
Marks the bright sea-line mingling with the skies;
Or from his course celestial, sinking slow,
The summer-sun in purple radiance low,
Blaze on the western waters; the wide scene
Magnificent, and tranquil, seems to spread
Even o'er the rustic's breast a joy serene,
When, like dark plague-spots by the demons shed,
Charged deep with death, upon the waves, far seen,
Move the war-freighted ships; and fierce and red,
Flash their destructive fires--The mangled dead
And dying victims then pollute the flood.
Ah, thus man spoils Heaven's glorious works with blood!
~ Charlotte Smith,#NFDB
1358:The woman, who belonged to the courtesan class, was celebrated for an embonpoint unusual for her age, which had earned for her the sobriquet of "Boule de Suif" (Tallow Ball). Short and round, fat as a pig, with puffy fingers constricted at the joints, looking like rows of short sausages; with a shiny, tightly-stretched skin and an enormous bust filling out the bodice of her dress, she was yet attractive and much sought after, owing to her fresh and pleasing appearance. Her face was like a crimson apple, a peony-bud just bursting into bloom; she had two magnificent dark eyes, fringed with thick, heavy lashes, which cast a shadow into their depths; her mouth was small, ripe, kissable, and was furnished with the tiniest of white teeth. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
1359:Then together we prepared a magnificent tonno alla Siracusa, fresh from the sea.
I showed l'Inglese how to slice little incisions in the fragrant flesh of the fish and fill them with a mixture of crushed garlic, cloves, and coriander. I loved the way he wielded a knife with the flamboyant gestures of his beautiful hands. Everything this man did with his hands had me fascinated.
Once the fish was well stuffed with the garlic mixture, we added it to the pan containing the onions we had already softened. Tomatoes, white wine vinegar, and oregano were added next, and while the dish cooked it fill the air with a sumptuous aroma of garlic, herbs, and wine. This heady cocktail stimulated the passions of the hungry and impatient cooks. ~ Lily Prior,#NFDB
1360:The surpluses will have to be expended somehow, and trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built. There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art. When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have time to spare for other things. They will become worshippers of beauty. They will become art-lovers. And under their direction and generously rewarded, will toil the artists. The result will be great art; for no longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists pander to the bourgeois taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old time. And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1361:Benjamin and I sat in the middle of one of the large canoes with our grandmother in the stern, directing us past shoals and through rapids and into magnificent stretches of water. One day the clouds hung low and light rain freckled the slate-grey water that peeled across our bow. The pellets of rain were warm and Benjamin and I caught them on our tongues as our grandmother laughed behind us. Our canoes skimmed along and as I watched the shoreline it seemed the land itself was in motion. The rocks lay lodged like hymns in the breast of it, and the trees bent upward in praise like crooked fingers. It was glorious. Ben felt it too. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and I held his look a long time, drinking in the face of my brother. ~ Richard Wagamese, #NFDB
1362:Lestat: You're very anxious to be out of these rooms, aren't you? Why don't we simply get into bed together? I don't understand.
David: You're serious?
Lestat: Of course
David: You do realize, that this is an absolutely magnificent body, don't you? I mean you aren't insensible to the fact that you've been deposited in a...a most impressive piece of young male flesh.
Lestat: I looked it over well before the switch, remember? Why is it you don't want to..
David: You've been with a woman, haven't you?
Lestat: I wish you hadn't read my mind. It's rude. Besides, what does that matter to you?
David: A woman you loved.
Lestat: I have always loved both men and women.
David: That's a slightly different use of the word 'love. ~ Anne Rice,#NFDB
1363:There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxi cation so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation. ~ Mirabai Starr, #NFDB
1364:As time went on, I subscribed more and more to Toynbee’s idea that civilizations die not by murder but by suicide. And then one day everything changed for me. It was March thirtieth, 2013, I’ll never forget—Easter weekend. At the time I was living in Brussels, and every once in a while I’d go have a drink at the bar of the Métropole. I’d always loved Art Nouveau. There are magnificent examples in Prague and Vienna, and there are interesting buildings in Paris and London, too, but for me—right or wrong—the high point of Art Nouveau decor was the Hotel Métropole de Bruxelles, in particular the bar. The morning of March thirtieth, I happened to walk by and saw a sign that said the bar of the Métropole was closing for good, that very night. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
1365:The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D—— in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air,—the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1366:A funeral march isn't exactly cheerful, Erik's voice resumed, whereas a wedding march . . . It's magnificent! You must make up your mind and know what you want! As for me, I can't go on living like this, underground, in a hole, like a mole! Don Juan Triumphant is finished, and now I want to live like everyone else. I want to have a wife like everyone else and go out walking with her on Sundays. . . You'll be the happiest of women. And we'll sing for ourselves alone, we'll sing till we're ready to die from pleasure. . . . You're crying! You're afraid of me! But I'm really not a bad man. Love me and you'll see! To be good, all I ever needed was to be loved. If you loved me, I'd be as gentle as a lamb and you could do whatever you pleased with me. ~ Gaston Leroux, #NFDB
1367:I gave his a squeeze and relaxed beside him, wondering if this was how it felt.
If this was how it felt to get what you wanted for a lifetime.
Have it stretched out beside you.
The promise of it there all night so you'd wake up to it in the morning.
The promise of it going to work the next day with you knowing it was coming back.
A promise that would stay a promise-beautiful, forever there, beckoning, even as minute by minute it was being fulfilled, leaving you taking your last breath on earth knowing you lived a life filled with beauty.
If it was, it was weirdly serene.
You'd think something that magnificent would be about fireworks.
But if this was it, it wasn't.
It was quiet, tranquil, comfortable.
Beauty. ~ Kristen Ashley,#NFDB
1368:It is part," Rollo writes home to the elder Dr. Groast in Lancashire, in elaborate revenge for childhood tales of Jenny Greenteeth waiting out in the fens to drown him, "part of an old and clandestine drama for which the human body serves only as a set of very allusive, often cryptic programme-notes- it's as if the body we can measure is a scrap of this programme found outside in the street, near a magnificent stone theatre we cannot enter. The convolutions of language denied us! the great Stage, even darker than Mr Tyrone Guthrie's accustomed murk… Gilt and mirroring, red velvet, tier on tier of box seats all in shadows too, as somewhere down in that deep proscenium, deeper than geometries we know of, the voices utter secrets we are never told… ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
1369:Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats. Talking outside the glass when someone else blunders helps to change the subject. But fools don’t interest us, either. They’re never creative, their talent is all secondhand, so they don’t submit manuscripts to publishers. Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent. It’s a dying breed, the embodiment of all the bourgeois virtues. What they really need is a Verdurin salon or even a chez Guer-mantes. Do you students still read such things? ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
1370:It was possibly the worst of Mr Colley Cibber’s notoriously awful odes, the one, three years old, hymning King George’s personal valour on a German battlefield. Yes, here came the rhymes of ‘Seligenstadt’ with ‘defeat’, and ‘Dettingen’ with ‘joyful strain’. Here came the martial blasts from the Poet Laureate’s personal wind machine. Septimus was all wince. ‘Oh God,’ he murmured, through unmoving lips and closed teeth. ‘Oh God. Oh God.’ James De Lancey was feeling the need to clear his throat, rumblingly, every few seconds. The stares of the Assemblymen seemed fixed, if not on the spectacle in general, then in particular on the way the pose bunched and elevated, beneath the rising hem of the tabard, the muscles of Mrs Tomlinson’s magnificent arse. ~ Francis Spufford, #NFDB
1371:The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and eight nights. It was something infernally
magnificent. They revived the abominations of the feasts of Belshazzar and Cleopatra. Great God!
what an age this is in which we live! The guests were served by swarthy slaves speaking an unknown tongue, who to my mind had every appearance of veritable demons; the livery of the meanest among them might have served as a gala-costume for an emperor. There have always been current some very
strange stories concerning this Clarimonde, and all her lovers have come to a miserable or a violent end. It has been said that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe that she was Beelzebub in person. ~ Th ophile Gautier,#NFDB
1372:His Son and his Book and his world are the revelation of his glory. He has made the knowledge of himself possible. The function of mystery in the awakening of God-glorifying joy is like the unexplored mountain ranges you can barely see from the magnificent cliffs where you worship. You have seen much--if only a fraction. You have climbed. You know these mountains. God has made himself known in the mountain ranges of the Bible in such a way that all the discoveries of eternity will be the revelation of the God you already know truly in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the joy you have in what you know of God is intensified by the expectation that there is so much more to see. The mystery of what you don't know gets its God-glorifying power from what you do know. God ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1373:In Limbe, Liomi and Timba would have many things they would not have had in America, but they would lose far too many things. They would lose the opportunity to grow up in a magnificent land of uninhibited dreamers. They would lose the chance to be awed and inspired by amazing things happening in the country, incredible inventions and accomplishments by men and women who look like them. They would be deprived of freedoms, rights, and privileges that Cameroon could not give its children. They would lose unquantifiable benefits by leaving New York City, because while there existed great towns and cities all over the world, there was a certain kind of pleasure, a certain type of adventurous and audacious childhood, that only New York City could offer a child. ~ Imbolo Mbue, #NFDB
1374:Well, surely, you will agree that a great improvement could be made simply by cutting down those trees that crowd about the house so much and darken every room? They grow just as they please – just where the acorn or seed fell, I suppose.” “What?” asked Strange, whose eyes had wandered back to his book during the latter part of the conversation. “The trees,” said Henry. “Which trees?” “Those,” said Henry, pointing out of the window to a whole host of ancient and magnificent oaks, ashes and beech trees. “As far as neighbours go, those trees are quite exemplary. They mind their own affairs and have never troubled me. I rather think that I will return the compliment.” “But they are blocking the light.” “So are you, Henry, but I have not yet taken an axe to you. ~ Susanna Clarke, #NFDB
1375:Phil Klay’s collection of 21st century war tales resonates in Redeployment (Penguin Press, March). For more commercial debuts, there is Naomi Wood in a cross between The Paris Wife and The Women with Mrs. Hemingway (Penguin, June), while Australian Samantha Hayes tackles turbo-charged domestic suspense in Until You’re Mine (Crown, April), and Shane Kuhn looks at the homicidal side of office work in The Intern’s Handbook (S&S, April). Finally, debut novels from well-known personalities include one by Ruth Reichl, the memoirist and former Gourmet editor-in-chief, moving to fiction for the first time with Delicious! (Random House, May). Musician and former soap opera star Rick Springfield also tries his hand at fiction with Magnificent Vibration (Touchstone, May). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1376:We are all damaged now,’ said Arvida, watching the approach. ‘All but you.’ Yesugei sat back against the curve of the hull. ‘No living thing is undamaged.’ ‘Yet you still smile. You still believe.’ ‘So do the rest. They need to remember, that is all. For now, all they see is slow defeat. They forget they have been... magnificent. They fight alone when all others are lost or manning walls far away. They come at enemy out of the glare of the sun. They have made him halt, turn back, come after us. They have forsaken the world they loved, have let it pass into ruin, all for this.’ Yesugei thought of Qin Xa then, from whom there had never been a murmur of unbelief. ‘They will remember, before the end. Other Legions have failed this test – they let their souls change. ~ Chris Wraight, #NFDB
1377:There is something magnificent in the performance and the inexorability of ceremony. However tired, however long the journey, he walks with dignity and, when all is said and done, majesty. So it will be here, entering by the Gate of the Sun between the trumpets and the troops, the prefect at his side, the guard and the priests accompanying him: he will enter his city, coming like a bridegroom to an unfamiliar bride. He will see her with the certainty of possession, she him with wonder, curiosity and fear. So Hadrian will walk up the dizzying white steps to the temple, slowly but without pausing for breath, always standing forward of his retinue so that the crowds may see him – not so far forward that they may reach him, but near enough that they feel they could. ~ Elizabeth Speller, #NFDB
1378:Forgetting the awesome and glorious One who made it all and holds it all together by the sheer power of his magnificent will, will always insert me into the center. This means that no story will be more important to me than my story. I will ask no bigger question than the question of how I am doing. I will have no bigger concern than my satisfaction and comfort. I will ask life to serve me, to submit to my interests, and to deliver whatever I demand. This viewpoint will guarantee me a life of huge disappointment. And not only that, it is also an insane way to live. I am not the center of all things. The world will not do my sovereign bidding. God will not offer his awesome throne to me. Awe of self, worship of self, underlies every form of self-destructive living. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1379:The plane touches down on very rough ground: its wheelbarrow wheels bounce and one set of wings rises alarmingly while the other dips. Now the Masai and the plane are converging. It's a magnificent shot: the Masai run, run, run, run; because of the optics it is dreamlike. The little plane bounces, shudders, slews and finally makes lasting contact with the ground. At exactly the right moment, as the plane comes to a halt, the Masai warriors, in a highly agitated state, reach the plane, and the camera closes on the pilot, whose face as he removes his leather flying helmet and goggles, appears just above the bobbing red ochre composition of plaited hair and fat-shone bodies. It is Mel Gibson, with a grave expression, which can't quite suppress his unruly Aussieness. ~ Justin Cartwright, #NFDB
1380:One day when the Raiders were in Oakland, a reporter visited their locker room to talk to Ken Stabler. Stabler really wasn’t known as an intellectual, but he was a good quarterback. This newspaperman read him some English prose: “I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than that it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy, impermanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” After reading this to the quarterback, the reporter asked, “What does this mean to you?” Stabler immediately replied, “Throw deep.” Go after it. Go out to win in life. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1381:Then — it had to happen eventually — Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear. Ronan finished with, “For the love of … Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.” Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73. ~ Maggie Stiefvater, #NFDB
1382:You are at the start of a magnificent journey and know not where it will take you, but you feel compelled and more trusting to ride with this wave nonetheless. Physical travel, a break from work or a total resignation to discover oneself are part of the inner journey here, as you seek to discover your soul in a series of new and unknown contexts. Who am I and what am I here to do is the guiding force here, as you start to search for the happiness that lies at the end of all things. You can sense it, not knowing what it is, but your soul beckons you forward, and a whole multitude of glorious synchronicities, guides, books, people and angels seen and unseen come flooding into your life to kick start this new and exciting adventure into pastures fertile with promise. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha, #NFDB
1383:He was halfway to the house, thinking to set the cabbage inside the kitchen door,when a brown blur thundered past him.
Joanna Robbins tore out of the barn astride a magnificent chestnut quarter horse. She leaned forward in the saddle,hat flopping against her back, hair streaming out behind her in a wild curly mass as she urged her mount to a full-out gallop. Unable to do anything but stare, Crockett stood dumbstruck as she raced past.
She was the most amazing horsewoman he'd ever seen. Joanna Robbins. The shy creature who claimed painting and reading were her favorite pastimes had just bolted across the yard like a seasoned jockey atop Thoroughbred. She might have inherited her mother's grace and manners, but the woman rode like her outlaw father.Maybe better. ~ Karen Witemeyer,#NFDB
1384:The woman, one of those usually known as a good-time girl, was famous for the premature portliness which had earned her the nickname Boule de Suif. Small, round as a barrel, fat as butter and with fingers tightly jointed like strings of small sausages, her glowing skin and the enormous bosom which strained under the constraints of her dress — as well as her freshness, which was a delight to the eye — made her hugely desirable and much sought after. She had a rosy apple of a face, a peony bud about to burst into bloom. Out of it looked two magnificent dark eyes shaded by thick black lashes. Further down was a charming little mouth complete with invitingly moist lips and tiny, gleaming pearly-white teeth. She was said to possess a variety of other inestimable qualities. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
1385:I added a few stinging words of sarcasm, intended to neutralize the pleasure which she seemed to find in being photographed, so that if I was obliged to see my grandmother’s magnificent hat, I succeeded at least in driving from her face that joyful expression which ought to have made me glad; but alas, it too often happens, while the people we love best are still alive, that such expressions appear to us as the exasperating manifestation of some unworthy freak of fancy rather than as the precious form of the happiness which we should dearly like to procure for them. My ill-humour arose more particularly from the fact that, during the last week, my grandmother had appeared to be avoiding me, and I had not been able to have her to myself for a moment, either by night or day. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1386:These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1387:These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1388:Alan Beaumont stepped through the automatic door of his office building and down the broad steps to the pavement. The sky above DC was a monochrome of grey cloud. A light rain fell, but a few drops of water were not going to bother him. Damp clothes? Whatever. Messed-up hair? He had no hair to ruin. That was long gone. Nothing had helped retain those once-magnificent curls. Not pills. Not potions. Nada. He used a thumb and middle finger to snap open his Zippo lighter and lit the cigarette perched between his lips. Smoking was perhaps the only real pleasure he had. He watched the downtown traffic and the pedestrians pass by, all miserable. Good. He didn’t like anyone to be happy but himself. It wasn’t pure selfishness. Joy was a zero sum game. There just wasn’t enough to go around. ~ Tom Wood, #NFDB
1389:And I remember when I met him, it was so clear that he was the only one for me. We both knew it, right away. And as the years went on, things got more difficult – we were faced with more challenges. I begged him to stay. Try to remember what we had at the beginning.
He was charismatic, magnetic, electric and everybody knew it. When he walked in every woman’s head turned, everyone stood up to talk to him. He was like this hybrid, this mix of a man who couldn’t contain himself. I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him. And in that way, I understood him and I loved him.
I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.
And I still love him. I love him. ~ Lana Del Rey,#NFDB
1390:I favour humans over ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they're creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas, where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. We can lead good, ethical lives, but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all - even though we know that's not how we should define our fellow humans. What's true about our fellow humans is that we are clever and stupid. We are grey areas.
And so ... when you see an unfair or an ambiguous shaming unfold, speak up on behalf of the shamed person. A babble of opposing voices - that's democracy.
The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. Let's not turn it into a world where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless. ~ Jon Ronson,#NFDB
1391:As I watched my family sip champagne, I thought about how their lives trailed backward and forward from my death and then, I saw, as Samuel took the daring step of kissing Lindsey in a room full of family, became borne aloft away from it.
These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections- sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent- that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.
My father looked at the daughter who was standing there in front of him. The shadow daughter was gone. ~ Alice Sebold,#NFDB
1392:History repeats itself, in part because the genome repeats itself. And the genome repeats itself, in part because history does. The impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires that drive human history are, at least in part, encoded in the human genome. And human history has, in turn, selected genomes that carry these impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires. This self-fulfilling circle of logic is responsible for some of the most magnificent and evocative qualities in our species, but also some of the most reprehensible. It is far too much to ask ourselves to escape the orbit of this logic, but recognizing its inherent circularity, and being skeptical of its overreach, might protect the week from the will of the strong, and the 'mutant' from being annihilated by the 'normal'. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
1393:hotel where their relationship had finally been consummated. The Hôtel du Cap was one of the most beautiful, exclusive, and illustrious hotels in Europe, with prices to match. The main building had marble halls, high ceilings, and magnificent rooms and suites, most of them looking out at the sea shimmering like glass. There was an impressive outdoor staircase leading down to the even more exclusive Eden Roc, with gardens on either side of the wide path and closer to the water. It was the vacation spot for aristocrats, royalty, the immensely rich, and in recent years jet-setters, Russian tycoons, and movie stars, many of whom preferred to stay at the less formal lower building, with smaller but still elegantly appointed suites, and even better views of the sea from their balconies. There ~ Danielle Steel, #NFDB
1394:Now in sober truth there is a magnificent idea in these monsters of the Apocalypse. It is, I suppose, the idea that beings really more beautiful or more universal than we are might appear to us frightful and even confused. Especially they might seem to have senses at once more multiplex and more staring; an idea very imaginatively seized in the multitude of eyes. I like those monsters beneath the throne very much. But I like them beneath the throne. It is when one of them goes wandering in deserts and finds a throne for himself that evil faiths begin, and there is (literally) the devil to pay--to pay in dancing girls or human sacrifice. As long as those misshapen elemental powers are around the throne, remember that the thing that they worship is the likeness of the appearance of a man. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1395:Getting organized can bring us all to the next level in our lives. It’s the human condition to fall prey to old habits. We must consciously look at areas of our lives that need cleaning up, and then methodically and proactively do so. And then keep doing it. Every so often, the universe has a way of doing this for us. We unexpectedly lose a friend, a beloved pet, a business deal, or an entire global economy collapses. The best way to improve upon the brains that nature gave us is to learn to adjust agreeably to new circumstances. My own experience is that when I’ve lost something I thought was irreplaceable, it’s usually replaced with something much better. The key to change is having faith that when we get rid of the old, something or someone even more magnificent will take its place. ~ Daniel J Levitin, #NFDB
1396:Isaiah was not only the most remarkable of the prophets, he was by far the greatest writer in the Old Testament. He was evidently a magnificent preacher, but it is likely he set his words down in writing. They certainly achieved written form very early and remained among the most popular of all the holy writings: among the texts found at Qumran after the Second World War was a leather scroll, 23 feet long, giving the whole of Isaiah in fifty columns of Hebrew, the best preserved and longest ancient manuscript of the Bible we possess.216 The early Jews loved his sparkling prose with its brilliant images, many of which have since passed into the literature of all civilized nations. But more important than the language was the thought: Isaiah was pushing humanity towards new moral discoveries. ~ Paul Johnson, #NFDB
1397:But Eugene was untroubled by any thought of a goal. He was mad with such ecstasy as he had never known. He was a centaur, moon-eyed and wild of mane, torn apart with hunger for the golden world. He became at times almost incapable of coherent speech. While talking with people, he would whinny suddenly into their startled faces, and leap away, his face contorted with an idiot joy. He would hurl himself squealing through the streets and along the paths, touched with the ecstasy of a thousand unspoken desires. The world lay before him for his picking – full of opulent cities, golden vintages, glorious triumphs, and lovely women, full of a thousand unmet and magnificent possibilities. Nothing was dull or tarnished. The strange enchanted coasts were unvisited. He was young and he could never die. ~ Thomas Wolfe, #NFDB
1398:twig. “If you had not told me this was safe to touch, would it have poisoned me?” “Of course! But if I direct you to touch, that is different. For any created being, autonomy is lunacy. Freedom involves trust and obedience inside a relationship of love. So, if you are not hearing my voice, it would be wise to take the time to understand the nature of the plant.” “So why create poisonous plants at all?” Mack queried, handing back the twig. “Your question presumes that poison is bad, that such creations have no purpose. Many of these so-called bad plants, like this one, contain incredible properties for healing or are necessary for some of the most magnificent wonders when combined with something else. Humans have a great capacity for declaring something good or evil, without truly knowing. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
1399:You are aware that what they do, they do for the world, and the results are, of course, magnificent. But when you . . . read Douglas Adams. . . you feel you are, perhaps, the only person in the world who really gets them. Just about everybody else admires them, of course, but no one really connects with them in the way you do . . . It’s like falling in love. When an especially peachy Adams’ turn of phrase or epithet enters the eye and penetrates the brain, you want to tap the shoulder of the nearest stranger and share it. The stranger might laugh and seem to enjoy the writing, but you hug to yourself the thought that they didn’t quite understand its force and quality the way you do, just as your friends, thank heavens, don’t also fall in love with the person you are going on and on about to them. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1400:What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansion! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path? ~ Nikolai Gogol, #NFDB
1401:Well, in that case, your mighty eminence of unbiased objectivity and impartiality,” said the Accuser sarcastically, “I ask for seven days to finish discovery, since I was surprised by the unreasonable volume of documents that deluged my council. These tablets of unending toledoth are time consuming.” He was referring to the clay tablets that contained the genealogies of the heavens and the earth as well as those of Adam’s descendants. The gall of this rascal amazed Enoch. He could turn everything into an accusation, even against Yahweh Elohim. The Accuser continued, “And you really have to admit that this endless list of animal names is quite tedious and would fatigue any staff, much less my own of less than two hundred Watchers.” After a deliberate delay, he added, “Your magnificent majesty most high. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1402:He settled himself with assurance behind the wheel and I climbed in beside him. As he turned the car away from the cathedral, and so out on to Rue Voltaire, he continued to enthuse in schoolboy fashion, murmuring, "Magnificent, excellent!" under his breath, obviously enjoying every moment of what soon turned out to be, from my own rather cautious standard, a hair-raising ride. When we had jumped one set of lights, and sent an old man, leaping for his life, and forced a large Buick driven by an infuriated American into the side of the street, he proceeded to circle the town in order, so he explained to try the car's pace. "You know," he said, "it amuses me enormously to use other people's possessions. It is one of life's great pleasures." I closed my eyes as we took another corner like a bob-sleigh. ~ Daphne du Maurier, #NFDB
1403:All three dolphins were magnificent, absolute marvels of the ocean, and by all rights they should have been out in the Pacific, doing what 55 million years of evolution had designed them to do in the most important ecosystem on earth, instead of in here, leaping to the beat of cheesy pop songs.
As I watched, sweat trickled down the back of my neck but something else was rising: anger. The show was soul-crushingly stupid. It was plainly and inanely stupid- all of this was stupid, everything that went on at the cove, the entire arrogant, selfish relationship we had with these animals and with all of nature, as though every bit of life existed only for our purposes. We behaved as though we were gods, deciding the fate of everything, but we weren't. We were just dumb. I felt a wave of despair wash over me. ~ Susan Casey,#NFDB
1404:The creature you find in Speak, Memory is rare enough to be zoo-worthy. He’s not just smarter but somehow more effete than most of us without seeming put on. Resenting him for it would be like resenting a gazelle for her grace. He doesn’t sound prissy painting himself as a cultivated synesthete who can hear colors and see music, nor vain talking as a polyglot who translates his own work back and forth into many languages. He’s just your standard virtuoso aristocrat from a gilded age. Which is the miracle of his talent. He has shaped the book to highlight his own magnificent way of viewing the world, a viewpoint that so eats your head that you never really leave his very oddly bejeweled skull, and you value things in the book’s context as he does, never missing what you otherwise adore in another kind of writer. ~ Mary Karr, #NFDB
1405:He saw his enemies stealthily darting from rock to tree, and tree to bush, creeping through the brush, and slipping closer and closer every moment. On three sides were his hated foes and on the remaining side—the abyss. Without a moment's hesitation the intrepid Major spurred his horse at the precipice. Never shall I forget that thrilling moment. The three hundred savages were silent as they realized the Major's intention. Those in the fort watched with staring eyes. A few bounds and the noble steed reared high on his hind legs. Outlined by the clear blue sky the magnificent animal stood for one brief instant, his black mane flying in the wind, his head thrown up and his front hoofs pawing the air like Marcus Curtius' mailed steed of old, and then down with a crash, a cloud of dust, and the crackling of pine limbs. ~ Zane Grey, #NFDB
1406:My debt to those who came before me is profound. The translation is based upon five modern editions of Beowulf —those of F. Klaeber, C. L. Wrenn, E. V. K. Dobbie, A. J. Wyatt as revised by R. W. Chambers, and the standard German edition by three successive editors referred to as the Heyne–Schücking–von Schaubert edition. And now I have the new Mitchell-Robinson edition as well. My thinking over the years has been influenced by scores of essays, monographs, and books. Old English scholarship during the past century has been magnificent, and I would be lost without it. One request: If readers will pause from time to time and read a few lines aloud, slowly and emphatically and with slight pauses between half-lines, they may find a faint echo of what a recitation probably sounded like, though the harp is forever silenced. ~ Unknown, #NFDB
1407:We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks. ~ Richard Wagamese, #NFDB
1408:As I was walking with a friend through a beautiful nature reserve near Malibu in California, we came upon the ruins of what had been once a country house, destroyed by a fire several decades ago. As we approached the property, long overgrown with trees and all kinds of magnificent plants, there was a sign by the side of the trail put there by the park authorities. It read: danger. all structures are unstable. I said to my friend, “That’s a profound sutra [sacred scripture].” And we stood there in awe. Once you realize and accept that all structures (forms) are unstable, even the seemingly solid material ones, peace arises within you. This is because the recognition of the impermanence of all forms awakens you to the dimension of the formless within yourself, that which is beyond death. Jesus called it “eternal life. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1409:Many Hollywood stars have committed versions of the long suicide. Biographies of Clift posit that he drank because he couldn’t be his true self, because homosexuality was the shame he had to shelter within. But if you look at his own words, his testimonies about what acting did to him, you’ll see the culprit. His perpetual question to himself, as he once scribbled in his journal, was, “How to remain thin-skinned, vulnerable, and still alive?” For Clift, the task proved impossible. Clift once said, “The closer we come to the negative, to death, the more we blossom.” He took himself to that precipice, but he fell straight in. And so he remains frozen in the popular imagination, circa From Here to Eternity—those high cheekbones, that set jaw, the firm stare: a magnificent, proud, tragically broken thing to behold. ~ Anne Helen Petersen, #NFDB
1410:Riley?”
“Go away.” He’d heard Brenna enter, had decided to ignore her.
But Brenna had never been easily dissuaded. “Drew said you’re not sleeping well- that you were up most of last night.”
He went through a vicious series of moves and ended a foot from her, breath calm, eyes furious. “Drew has a big fucking mouth.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” She grinned, but there was worry in those magnificent eyes she’d turned from a scar to a badge of courage. “Riley, is this… I…”
Scowling, he closed the distance between them to cup her cheek. “It’s not about you.” Her hurt haunted him, but he wasn’t going to put that weight on her back. That was his cross to bear. “I’m not sleeping well because I want sex.”
Her mouth dropped open. Then she went bright red. “Too. Much. Information! ~ Nalini Singh,#NFDB
1411:From: mavenger@gmail.com
To: jworthington90@yahoo.com
Subject: You, Me, Becca Arrington's House, Your Penis,
Etc.
Dear Mr. Worthington,
1.$200 in cash should be provided to each of the 12 people whose bikes your collegues destroyed via Chevy Tahoe. This shouldn't be a problem, given your magnificent wealth.
2.This graffiti situation in the girls' bathroom has to stop.
3.Water guns? With pee? Really? Grow up.
4.You should treat your fellow students with respect, particularly those less socially fortunate than you.
5.You should probably instruct members of your clan to behave in similarly considerate ways.
"I realize that it will be very difficult to accomplish some of these task. But then again, It will also be very difficult not to share the attached photograph with the world. ~ John Green,#NFDB
1412:I sat on a somewhat higher sand dune and watched the eastern sky. Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then the line was drawn upward, higher and higher. It was as if a giant hand had stretched down from the sky and slowly lifted the curtain of night from the face of the earth. It was a magnificent sight, far greater in scale, [...] than anything that I, with my limited human faculties, could comprehend. As I sat and watched, the feeling overtook me that my very life was slowly dwindling into nothingness. There was no trace here of anything as insignificant as human undertakings. This same event had been occurring hundreds of millions - hundreds of billions - of times, from an age long before there had been anything resembling life on earth. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1413:None of us really cheer for glory, prizes, tourneys. None of us, maybe, know why we do it at all, except it is like a rampart against the routine and groaning afflictions of the school day. You wear that jacket, like so much armor, game days, the flipping skirts. Who could touch you? Nobody could. My question is this: The New Coach. Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else? Could she see past all of that to something else, something quivering and real, something poised to be transformed, turned out, made? See that she could make us, stick her hands in our glitter-gritted insides and build us into magnificent teen gladiators? ~ Megan Abbott, #NFDB
1414:This moment of lucidity does not last long. But it serves as the punishment for your sins, a Promethean entrails-pecking moment, crouching half-horse half-man, with the knowledge that you cannot appreciate the destination without knowing the starting point; you cannot revel in the simplicity unless you remember the alternatives.
And that's not the worst of your revelation. You realize that the next time you return here, with your thick horse brain, you won't have the capacity to ask to become a human again. You won't understand what a human is. Your choice to slide down the intelligence ladder is irreversible. And just before you lose your final human faculties, you painfully ponder what magnificent extraterrestrial creature, enthralled with the idea of finding a simpler life, chose in the last round to become a human. ~ David Eagleman,#NFDB
1415:He’d never been on a train before, although he’d flown many times. It was one thing to be admired by the tourists at the show, those families wearing the straw cowboy hats with colored bands reading Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, or Montana, but it was another thing to be stared at by people on the train. When one well-dressed man came up to Lyle and handed him a five-euro note and said something in French about “exploitation by the Americans” and “cultural imperialism” and something nasty about the past president, Lyle nodded solemnly and took the money. After the man left, Lyle winked at Jimmy and grinned. “George Booosh,” Lyle mocked. “He’s still money.” They emerged from the train at the station on Rue de Rivoli, the Tuileries Garden on their left and beyond them the Seine, behind them the Louvre. Ornate canyon walls of magnificent ~ C J Box, #NFDB
1416:My legs haven’t disabled me, if anything they’ve enabled me. They’ve forced me to rely on my imagination and to believe in the possibilities … So the thought that I would like to challenge you with today is that maybe instead of looking at our challenges and our limitations as something negative or bad, we can begin to look at them as blessings, magnificent gifts that can be used to ignite our imaginations and help us go further than we ever knew we could go. It’s nearly impossible to resist the urge to stand up and cheer for Purdy because, as we now know, our brains are wired to respond to such a story. Purdy believes that storytellers who have experienced struggle feel more deeply because they’ve experienced the depth of life and its highest peaks. “My biggest struggles have led to my biggest accomplishments,”7 Purdy says. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
1417:The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final appeal; justice and right mean conformity to custom; the argument of custom no one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with power, thinks of resisting. And we see the result. Those nations must once have had originality; they did not start out of the ground populous, lettered, and versed in many of the arts of life; they made themselves all this, and were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the world. What are they now? The subjects or dependants of tribes whose forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs had magnificent palaces and gorgeous temples, but over whom custom exercised only a divided rule with liberty and progress. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1418:Quickly, I slid into the rifts between stars. I imagined the space as a sphere bedizened with little astral ornaments, and soon those heavy celestial bodies became small as candies held in one’s palms. The thread easily looped them together.
I grinned, turning to Amar. Between us was a sphere thick with stars and around us twined soft shadows like cats weaving between ankles.
“Magnificent,” he said.
His gaze was full of awe, but I saw something else in his eyes. Longing. Then, he reached into the sphere, drawing out the string with the three stars. He twisted them between his hands, fashioning a constellation no larger than a sparrow. Amar stepped forward, sliding the stars above my ear. It cast a glow that turned his face silvery and beautiful.
“There, my queen,” he said. “A constellation to wear in your hair. ~ Roshani Chokshi,#NFDB
1419:The requiem mass is not at all gay," Erik's voice resumed, "whereas the wedding mass- you can take my word for it- is magnificent! You must take a resolution and know your own mind! I can't go on living like this, like a mole in a burrow! Don Juan Triumphant is finished; and now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets. You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased. ~ Gaston Leroux, #NFDB
1420:I thought that I must always search for the remarkable combinations, add unknowns, mix things that were clearly marked with things beyond marking. I would leave the simulated test and enter into forbidden territory. I would look for that moment when I would begin to pour alone and in wonder. I would always try to seize that moment and to accept its challenge. I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing faith and a belief in astonishment. And if by accident, I could make a volcano in a single test tube, then what could I do with all the strange magnificent elements of the world with its infinity of unknowns, with the swarm of man, with civilization, with language? ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB
1421:One day a friend came by the job site and asked them separately what they were doing. The first said, “Aw, we’re just laying brick. We’ve been doing this for thirty years. It’s so boring. One brick on top of the other.” Then the friend asked the second bricklayer. He just lit up. “Why, we’re building a magnificent skyscraper,” he said. “This structure is going to stand tall for generations to come. I’m just so excited that I could be a part of it.” Each bricklayer’s happiness or lack of it was based on their perspective. You can be laying a brick or you can be building a beautiful skyscraper. The choice is up to you. You can go to work each day and just punch in on the clock and dread being there and do as little as possible. Or you can show up with enthusiasm and give it your best, knowing that you’re making the world a better place. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1422:From time to time I try to imagine this world of which he spoke--a culture in whose mythology words might be that precious, in which words were conceived as vessels for communications from the heart; a society in which words are holy, and the challenge of life is based upon the quest for gentle words, holy words, gentle truths, holy truths.
I try to imagine for myself a world in which the words one gives one's children are the shell into which they shall grow, so one chooses one's words carefully, like precious gifts, like magnificent gifts, like magnificent inheritances, for they convey an excess of what we have imagined, they bear gifts beyond imagination, they reveal and revisit the wealth of history.
How carefully, how slowly, and how lovingly we might step into our expectations of each other in such a world. ~ Patricia J Williams,#NFDB
1423:This is what we can promise the future: a legacy of care. That we will be good stewards and not take too much or give back too little, that we will recognize wild nature for what it is, in all its magnificent and complex history - an unfathomable wealth that should be consciously saved, not ruthlessly spent. Privilege is what we inherit by our status as Homo sapiens living on this planet. This is the privilege of imagination. What we choose to do with our privilege as a species is up to each of us.
Humility is born in wildness. We are not protecting grizzlies from extinction; they are protecting us from the extinction of experience as we engage with a world beyond ourselves. The very presence of a grizzly returns us to an ecology of awe. We tremble at what appears to be a dream yet stands before us on two legs and roars. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,#NFDB
1424:For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own.
This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa,#NFDB
1425:The girl stood in the center of the large four-poster bed. She wore a nightgown and robe that Cordelia had generously, and unknowingly, donated. Anything of Emily’s would have been far too short and too small. Her honey-colored hair fell over her shoulders in messy waves and her similarly colored eyes were almost black with wildness, her pupils unnaturally dilated.
Fear. He felt it roll off her in great waves. It shimmered around her in a rich red aura Griff knew he alone could see, as it was viewable only on the Aetheric plane. She was afraid of them and, like a trapped animal, her answer to fear was to fight rather than flee. Interesting.
She was certainly a sight to behold. Normally she was probably quite pretty, but right now she was…she was…
She was bloody magnificent. That’s what she was. Except for the blood, of course. ~ Kady Cross,#NFDB
1426:In contrast to this hellish but magnificent sight, the turbid water brewed a microscopic tale. Here, organic molecules were born from lightning flashes and cosmic rays, and they collided, fused, broke apart again—a long-lasting game played with building blocks for five hundred million years. Finally, a chain of organic molecules, trembling, split into two strands. The strands attracted other molecules around them until two identical copies of the original were made, and these split apart again and replicated themselves.… In this game of building blocks, the probability of producing such a self-replicating chain of organic molecules was so minuscule that it was as if a tornado had picked up a pile of metallic trash and deposited it as a fully-assembled Mercedes-Benz. But it happened, and so, a breathtaking history of 3.5 billion years had begun. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
1427:In the procession of pieces, which Ikegawa changes based on his read of each guest, you find crunch and chew, fat and cartilage, soft, timid tenderness and bursts of outrageous savory intensity. He starts me with the breast, barely touched by the flame, pink in the center, green on top from a smear of wasabi, a single bite buries a lifetime of salmonella hysteria. A quick-cooked skewer of liver balances the soft, melting fattiness of foie with a gentle mineral bite. The tsukune, a string of one-bite orbs made from finely chopped thigh meat, arrives blistered on the outside, studded with pieces of cartilage that give the meatballs a magnificent chew. Chochin, the grilled uterus, comes with a proto-egg attached to the skewer like a rising sun. The combination of snappy meat and molten yolk is the stuff taste memories are made of. ~ Matt Goulding, #NFDB
1428:Then she saw him. Standing up front, at a place where a fireplace would eventually be erected. Chris stood in front of him; John’s hands were on his shoulders. Jack and Mike stood beside him. Even from her distance she could see the light brighten his eyes. He was a pillar of a man, probably six-six in his boots. Today, for the first time ever, he wore a linen shirt with a button-down collar and she suspected his jeans were new, but she doubted he’d ever owned a tie. Before she could even make the walk to meet him at their makeshift altar he broke away from his groomsmen and strode toward her, reaching out a hand to take her the rest of the way. He didn’t move slowly anymore, not where she was concerned. This man had saved her life, changed her life. To his very core, he was all goodness. He was so strong, so authentic. He was so magnificent. * ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
1429:the Royal Institution that he amplified the exquisite notes he had taken during the quartet of talks, made numerous illustrations, compiled an index, and bound it all together into a lovely little book. This he sent along to his new idol, Sir Humphry Davy. Later Faraday would write, “My desire to escape from trade, which I thought vicious and selfish, and to enter into the services of Science … induced me at last to take the bold and simple step of writing to Sir H. Davy.”20 Sir Humphry, having risen to magnificent heights from his own humble beginnings, had been sufficiently impressed by the ambition, intelligence, and ardor of this twenty-two-year-old blacksmith’s son (and his jewel of a book) to hire Michael Faraday as his assistant. The job paid £100 a year, along with two upstairs rooms at the institution and a supply of coal and candles. ~ Jill Jonnes, #NFDB
1430:Thus it was up to God, to Him alone
in His own ways - by one or both, I say -
to give man back his whole life and perfection.
But since a deed done is more prized the more
it manifests within itself the mark
of the loving heart and goodness of the doer,
the Everlasting Love, whose seal is plain
on all the wax of the world was pleased to move
in all His ways to raise you up again.
There was not, nor will be, from the first day
to the last night, an act so glorious
and so magnificent, on either way.
For God, in giving Himself that man might be
able to raise himself, gave even more
than if he had forgiven him in mercy.
All other means would have been short, I say,
of perfect justice, but that God's own Son
humbled Himself to take on mortal clay.
-Paradiso, Canto VII ~ Dante Alighieri,#NFDB
1431:In Memory of M. B.
Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.
Now you’re gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain. ~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
1432:Shocked? I consider Bob one of the constellations of our time — of our country — America — a bright, magnificent constellation. Besides, all the constellations—not alone of this but of any time—shock the average intelligence for a while. In one respect that helps to prove it a constellation. Think of Voltaire, Paine, Hicks, not to say anything of modern men whom we could mention.
{Whitman's thoughts on his close friend, the great Robert Ingersoll} ~ Walt Whitman,#NFDB
1433:The tunnel pulled at her. How many hands had it required to make this place? And the tunnels beyond, wherever and how far they led? She thought of the picking, how it raced down the furrows at harvest, the African bodies working as one, as fast as their strength permitted. The vast fields burst with hundreds of thousands of white bolls, strung like stars in the sky on the clearest of clear nights. When the slaves finished, they had stripped the fields of their color. It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables - this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
1434:Ian saw the tears shimmering in her magnificent eyes and one of them traced unheeded down her smooth cheek.
With a raw ache in his voice he said, "If you would take one step forward, darling, you could cry in my arms. And while you do, I'll tell you how sorry I am for everything I've done - " Unable to wait, Ian caught her, pulling her tightly against him. "And when I'm finished," he whispered hoarsely as she wrapped her arms around him and wept brokenly, "you can help me find a way to forgive myself."
Tortured by her tears, he clasped her tighter and rubbed his jaw against her temple, his voice a ravaged whisper: "I'm sorry," he told her. He cupped her face between his palms, tipping it up and gazing into her eyes, his thumbs moving over her wet cheeks. "I'm sorry." Slowly, he bent his head, covering her mouth with his. "I'm so damned sorry. ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
1435:Paul Ricoeur has wonderful counsel for people like us. Go ahead, he says, maintain and practice your hermaneutics of suspicion. It is important to do this. Not only important, it is necessary. There are a lot of lies out there; learn to discern the truth and throw out the junk. But then reenter the book, the world, with what he calls 'a second naivete'.' Look at the world with childlike wonder, ready to be startled into surprised delight by the profuse abundance of truth and beauty and goodness that is spilling out of the skies at every moment. Cultivate a hermaneutic of adoration - see how large, how splendid, how magnificent life is.
And then practice this hermaneutic of adoration in the reading of Holy Scripture. Plan on spending the rest of our lives exploring and enjoying the world both vast and intricate that is revealed by this text. ~ Eugene H Peterson,#NFDB
1436:planet could feel the force of the star pulling it in and was only too happy to let the star lead on; finally it had found a new home. And soon enough, it could feel, sometimes even see, its new family members; the small, frozen rocks far from their mother star; the gas giants, the ones with the magnificent rings; the moons dancing happily around their parents. So full of life, perfectly coordinated, such a wonderful family! Yes, this was where Lifebringer would settle, finally, after so long. Then a small red planet appeared, and the rogue immediately realized its dreams of a new home had come to an end. There would be no peace, only destruction, a second cataclysm. For the red one had moved into its path, and none of them would survive such an impact. There was nothing more to do, no way to avoid the impact. An instant of regret, then nothing. ~ Andreas Christensen, #NFDB
1437:Most of this is my contribution to Havenhurst,” she told him proudly.
The sight that Ian beheld when he looked up made his grin fade as tenderness and awe shook through him. Spread out before him in colorful splendor were the most magnificent flower gardens Ian had ever beheld. The other heirs of Havenhurst might have added stone and mortar to the house, but Elizabeth had given it breathtaking beauty.
“When I was young,” she confided softly, looking out at the sloping gardens and the hills beyond, “I used to think this was the most beautiful place on earth.” Feeling a little foolish over her confidences, Elizabeth glanced up at him with an embarrassed smile. “What is the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?”
Dragging his gaze from the beauty of the gardens, Ian looked down at the beauty beside him. “Any place,” he said huskily, “where you are. ~ Judith McNaught,#NFDB
1438:Hamburg coffee auction: 1000's of sacks of coffee being sold, of different names & places of origin. They talked of price, analyzed merits of packaging and transport, praised the climate of some years & varying abundance of rainfall in some regions of world but not a single word was said of the men and women from whose hands these coffee beans had originated. no mention of the Tanzanian farmer who had discerned from the leaves the right moment to separate beans from branch. Not a single voice spoke of the Guatemalan peasant woman who, carrying a child on her back, climbed to the realm of the clouds to bring down the fruits that would brighten up the mornings in Europe.
Sebastiao Salgado does: restores the epic human sacrifice, the omnipresent dignity of work in the magnificent solemnity of his venture--recounting history of the world in images. ~ Luis Sep lveda,#NFDB
1439:Talya was so taken by the magnificent creature that for a moment he forgot where he was. But then he remembered, and he looked up to see Saba on both knees, his arms spread wide and his face lifted to the sky, weeping softly. How wonderful was Saba! And beyond Saba, Kahil, seated tall on his stallion, staring at him with black eyes, frozen in shock. Lost. How beautiful was this poor man, so wounded to hurt so many! Still not a soul moved. Talya looked past Kahil to the warriors, who seemed not to know what to do, and beyond them to the platform where the queen and the king stood, staring dumbly. Shaquilath has lost her daughter, Talya thought, and his heart broke with hers. The king has great kindness that’s been covered up by fear and greed. How or why these things came to Talya, he didn’t know, because he wasn’t as much knowing them as experiencing them. And ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
1440:The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist’s shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy. You become a giver. Ask yourself often: “What can I give here; how can I be of service to this person, this situation?” You don’t need to own anything to feel abundant, although if you feel abundant consistently things will almost certainly come to you. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
1441:Here Is My Gift
Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.
Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.
~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
1442:After seeing the various fantastic sights, a visitor to Panorama Island would have had to gasp in amazement at this unsurpassable view. He would have had the impression that the entire island was a rose floating on the vast ocean and that the giant scarlet flower of an opium dream was conversing on an equal footing with the sun in the sky, just the two of them. What kind of strange beauty had that incomparable simplicity and grandeur created? Some travelers might have recalled the world of myth that their distant ancestors had seen. . . .
How can the author describe the madness and debauchery, the pleasures of revelry and drunkenness, the numberless games of life and death that were played day and night on that magnificent stage? You readers might find something that resembled it, in part, in your most fantastic, bloodiest, and most beautiful nightmares. ~ Edogawa Rampo,#NFDB
1443:In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1444:In Memory Of M.B.
Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.
Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I
, I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.
~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
1445:SOME WOMEN HAVE SAID that Mrs. Pym was never young, that even in her initial stages she was probably an elderly baby. Obviously, such women should drink milk out of saucers; still, it is a fact that Mrs. Pym was somehow stolid, enormously capable, and frequently harsh, even in the early 1920’s when she must have been around thirty. She affected the same ugly tweeds, the same enchantingly insane hats, and the same air of magnificent omnipotence as she does today. But her hair was brown then, with only the faintest touch of her current greyness. Her speech was as biting, and her contempt for authority and inefficiency as ready as on that notable day when she crashed the shocked portals of New Scotland Yard, the first woman ever to hold rank in Central C.I.D., where, in these present jittery times of nuclear fission and H-bombs, she is Mrs. Assistant-Commissioner Pym. ~ Otto Penzler, #NFDB
1446:The hill between the manor and forest displayed layers of Lady Croft's prized gardens. Paved pathways wove through a formal Italian garden, rose garden, water garden, lily pond, and a tulip garden built around Roman ruins.
Maggie stood beside a statue of the goddess Hemera and a row of yew bushes that had been neatly pruned into a wall to form the perimeter of the Croft family maze. Walter sat nearby on a picnic blanket as she scanned the hillside above the maze to see if she could find Libby's copper-streaked hair among the immaculate gardens and all the people dressed in their finest for this entree into Ladenbrooke's gardens.
The Croft family opened the front gate to the public once each summer. Hundreds of people from around the Cotswolds came to peruse Lady Croft's magnificent displays- the golden heather, purple dahlias, peach lilies floating on the pond. ~ Melanie Dobson,#NFDB
1447:It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners – all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. [...] But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. [...] It is the biggest aggregation of human life – the most complete compendium of the world. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1448:The word psyche means two things in Greek, his aunt said. Two very different but interesting things. Butterfly and soul. But when you stop and think about it carefully, butterfly and soul aren’t so different, after all, are they? A butterfly starts out as a caterpillar, an ugly sort of earthbound, wormy nothing, and then one day the caterpillar builds a cocoon, and after a certain amount of time the cocoon opens and out comes the butterfly, the most beautiful creature in the world. That’s what happens to souls as well, Archie. They struggle in the depths of darkness and ignorance, they suffer through trials and misfortunes, and bit by bit they become purified by those sufferings, strengthened by the hard things that happen to them, and one day, if the soul in question is a worthy soul, it will break out of its cocoon and soar through the air like a magnificent butterfly. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
1449:century. The most visible legacy of the wealth and splendor generated by the medieval spice trade still dazzles the eye today in Venice, whose grand palazzi and magnificent public architecture were built largely on profits from pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and cloves. A hundred pounds of nutmeg, purchased in medieval Alexandria for ten ducats, might easily go for thirty or fifty ducats on the wharves of Venice. Even after payments for shipping, insurance, and customs duties at both ends, profits well in excess of 100 percent were routine; a typical Venetian galley carried one to three hundred tons between Egypt and Italy and earned vast fortunes for the imaginative and the lucky. During the medieval period, a corpulent Croesus was called a “pepper sack,” not a thoroughgoing insult, since the price of a bag of pepper was usually higher than that of a human being. ~ William J Bernstein, #NFDB
1450:She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1451:Mary was surrounded in her childhood by powerful women: the French Queen Catherine de Medici; the King’s lover, advisor and friend, Diane de Poitiers; Mary’s grandmother, Antoinette de Guise and finally her own mother, the Dowager Queen of Scotland. In direct contrast, Elizabeth’s earliest experiences were of the transience and impotence of women. Her mother had no real existence for her, her life snuffed out when she was no longer useful to the King. Stepmothers came and went, powerless in the grip of fate or the terrifying whim of her autocratic father. Even Catherine Parr, who inspired in the young Elizabeth a certain affection and admiration, was prematurely erased from life by the scourge of puerperal fever. The only constant image of power in Elizabeth’s growing years was the once magnificent, but increasingly mangy and irascible old lion of England, her father, the King. ~ Jane Dunn, #NFDB
1452:This paying attention is the foundational act of empathy, of listening, of seeing, of imagining experiences other than one's own, of getting out of the boundaries of one's own experience. There's a currently popular argument that books help us feel empathy, but if they do so they do it by helping us imagine that we are people we are not. Or to go deeper within ourselves, to be more aware of what it means to be heartbroken, or ill, or six, or ninety-six, or completely lost. Not just versions of our self rendered awesome and eternally justified and always right, living in a world in which other people only exist to help reinforce our magnificence, though those kinds of books and movies exist in abundance to cater to the male imagination. Which is a reminder that literature and art can also help us fail at empathy if it sequesters us in the Big Old Fortress of Magnificent Me. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1453:While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen, who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, an archbishop's cross, a magnificent crosier,—all the pontifical vestments which had been stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame d'Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written, "From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu."
"Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?" said the Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, "To him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop."
"Monseigneur," murmured the cure, throwing back his head with a smile. "God—-or the Devil."
The Bishop looked steadily at the cure, and repeated with authority, "God! ~ Victor Hugo,#NFDB
1454:[83:6.7] Monogamy is the yardstick which measures the advance of social civilization as distinguished from purely biologic evolution. Monogamy is not necessarily biologic or natural, but it is indispensable to the immediate maintenance and further development of social civilization. It contributes to a delicacy of sentiment, a refinement of moral character, and a spiritual growth which are utterly impossible in polygamy. A woman never can become an ideal mother when she is all the while compelled to engage in rivalry for her husband's affections. [83:6.8] Pair marriage favors and fosters that intimate understanding and effective co-operation which is best for parental happiness, child welfare, and social efficiency. Marriage, which began in crude coercion, is gradually evolving into a magnificent institution of self-culture, self-control, self-expression, and self-perpetuation. ~ Urantia Foundation, #NFDB
1455:In his paradise in Lima he had spent a joyous night with a young girl who was covered with fine, straight down over every millimeter of her Bedouin skin. At dawn, while he was shaving, he looked at her lying naked in the bed, adrift in the peaceful sleep of a satisfied woman, and he could not resist the temptation of possessing her forever with a sacramental act. He covered her from head to foot with shaving lather, and with a pleasure like that of love he shaved her clean with his razor, sometimes using his right hand and sometimes his left as he shaved every part of her body, even the eyebrows that grew together, and left her doubly naked inside her magnificent newborn's body. She asked, her soul in shreds, if he really loved her, and he answered with the same ritual phrase he had strewn without pity in so many hearts throughout his life: "More than anyone else in this world. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
1456:Behind all this bad behaviour was an insecurity magnificent in scope, metaphysical in nature. Space was big, and the boys from Earth were awed despite themselves by the things they found there: but worse, their science was a mess. Every race they met on their way through the Core had a star drive based on a different theory. All those theories worked, even when they ruled out one another's basic assumptions. You could travel between the stars, it began to seem, by assuming anything [. . . .]
It was affronting to discover that. So when they fetched up on the edge of the Tract, looked it in the eye, and began to despatch their doomed entradas, the Earthlings were hoping to find, among other things, some answers. They wondered why the universe, which seemed so harsh on top, was underneath so pliable. Anything worked. Wherever you looked, you found. They were hoping to find out why. ~ M John Harrison,#NFDB
1457:Picture, for example, in 1077, the humbled Henry IV, supreme head of the Holy Roman Empire and heir to Charlemagne (whom Pope Leo III had crowned emperor in 800), crossing the Alps and forced to wait, in penitence, barefoot in a haircloth shirt in the snow outside the castle at Canossa to make his peace with Gregory VII! Claiming to be "King of kings," Gregory, because of a quarrel with Henry, had declared: "On the part of God omnipotent, I forbid Henry to govern the kingdoms of Italy and Germany. I absolve all subjects from every oath they have taken and I excommunicate every person who shall serve him as king." Henry had no defense against that superweapon of the popes. Thus was established that magnificent "whore" portrayed by John in Revelation 17—headquartered in a city located upon seven hills (verse 9) and which "reigneth over the kings of the earth" (verse 18). One eighteenth-century ~ Dave Hunt, #NFDB
1458:Accepting a religion may be more like enjoying a poem, or following the football. It might be a matter of immersion in a set of practices. Perhaps the practices have only an emotional point, or a social point. Perhaps religious rituals only serve necessary psychological and social ends. The rituals of birth, coming of age, or funerals do this. It is silly to ask whether a marriage ceremony is true or false. People do not go to a funeral service to hear something true, but to mourn, or to begin to stop mourning, or to meditate on departed life. It can be as inappropriate to ask whether what is said is true as to ask whether Keats’s ode to a Grecian urn is true. The poem is successful or not in quite a different dimension, and so is Chartres cathedral, or a statue of the Buddha. They may be magnificent, and moving, and awe-inspiring, but not because they make statements that are true or false. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
1459:If only you would go to the university," he said. "Only enlightened and holy people are interesting, it's only they who are wanted. The more of such people there are, the sooner the Kingdom of God will come on earth. Of your town then not one stone will be left, everything will he blown up from the foundations, everything will be changed as though by magic. And then there will be immense, magnificent houses here, wonderful gardens, marvellous fountains, remarkable people.... But that's not what matters most. What matters most is that the crowd, in our sense of the word, in the sense in which it exists now -- that evil will not exist then, because every man will believe and every man will know what he is living for and no one will seek moral support in the crowd. Dear Nadya, darling girl, go away! Show them all that you are sick of this stagnant, grey, sinful life. Prove it to yourself at least! ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1460:I couldn’t see the end of the corridor, so I stared at the entrance. The ship was a magnificent piece of living technology. Third Fish was a Miri 12, a type of ship closely related to a shrimp. Miri 12s were stable calm creatures with natural exoskeletons that could withstand the harshness of space. They were genetically enhanced to grow three breathing chambers within their bodies. Scientists planted rapidly growing plants within these three enormous rooms that not only produced oxygen from the CO2 directed in from other parts of the ship, but also absorbed benzene, formaldehyde, and trichloroethylene. This was some of the most amazing technology I’d ever read about. Once settled on the ship, I was determined to convince someone to let me see one of these amazing rooms. But at the moment, I wasn’t thinking about the technology of the ship. I was on the threshold now, between home and my future. ~ Nnedi Okorafor, #NFDB
1461:The computer is usually seen as a solely beneficial invention, which liberates human fantasy and facilitates efficient design work. I wish to express my serious concern in this respect, at least considering the current role of the computer in education and the design process. Computer imaging tends to flatten our magnificent, multi-sensory, simultaneous and synchronic capacities of imagination by turning the design process into a passive visual manipulation, a retinal journey. The computer creates a distance between the maker and the object, whereas drawing by hand as well as working with models put the designer in a haptic contact with the object, or space. In our imagination, the object is simultaneously held in the hand and inside the head, and the imagined and projected physical image is modelled by our embodied imagination. We are inside and outside of the conceived object at the same time. ~ Juhani Pallasmaa, #NFDB
1462:Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head―that is, these nerves are there in the brain... (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering... that is, you see, I took at something with my eyes and begin quivering, those little tails... and when they quiver, then an image appears... it doesn't appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes... and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment―devil take the moment!―but an image; that is, an object, or an action, damn it! That's why I see and then think, because of those tails, not because I've got a soul, and that I am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It's magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man's arising―that I understand... And yet I am sorry to lose God! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1463:I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path. ... This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
1464:From time to time I try to imagine this world of which he spoke--a culture in whose mythology words might be that precious, in which words were conceived as vessels for communications from the heart; a society in which words are holy, and the challenge of life is based upon the quest for gentle words, holy words, gentle truths, holy truths.
I try to imagine for myself a world in which the words one gives one's children are the shell into which they shall grow, so one chooses one's children are the shell into which they shall grow, so one chooses one's words carefully, like precious gifts, like magnificent gifts, like magnificent inheritances, for they convey an excess of what we have imagined, they bear gifts beyond imagination, they reveal and revisit the wealth of history.
How carefully, how slowly, and how lovingly we might step into our expectations of each other in such a world. ~ Patricia J Williams,#NFDB
1465:This had been a very productive morning, he thought. He had not accomplished so much in weeks. Looking at the Big Chief tablets that made a rug of Indian headdresses around the bed, Ignatius thought smugly that on their yellowed pages and wide-ruled lines were the seeds of a magnificent study in comparative history. Very disordered, of course. But one day he would assume the task of editing these fragments of his mentality into a jigsaw puzzle of a very grand design; the completed puzzle would show to literate men the disaster course that history had been taking for the past four centuries. In the five years that he had dedicated to this work, he had produced an average of only six paragraphs monthly. He could not even remember what he had written in some of the tablets, and he realized that several were filled principally with doodling. However, Ignatius thought calmly, Rome was not built in a day. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
1466:Jes,” Wylan said, “did you mean what you told my father? Will you stay with me? Will you help?”
Jesper leaned back on the pianoforte, resting on his elbows. “Let’s see. Live in a luxurious merch mansion, get waited on by servants, spend a little extra time with a budding demolitions expert who plays a mean flute? I guess I can manage it.” Jesper’s eyes traveled from the top of Wylan’s red-gold curls to the tips of his toes and back again. “But I do charge a pretty steep fee.”
Wylan flushed a magnificent shade of pink. “Well, hopefully the medik will be here to fix my ribs soon,” he said as he headed back into the parlor.
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” said Wylan, glancing briefly over his shoulder, his cheeks now red as cherries. “I’d like to make a down payment.”
Jesper released a bark of laughter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this good. And no one was even shooting at him. ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
1467:At the vernal equinox, the sun had grown to be a beautiful youth. His golden hair hung in ringlets on his shoulders and his light, as Schiller said, extended to all parts of infinity. At the summer solstice, the sun became a strong man, heavily bearded, who, in the prime of maturity, symbolized the fact that Nature at this period of the year is strongest and most fecund. At the autumnal equinox, the sun was pictured as an aged man, shuffling along with bended back and whitened locks into the oblivion of winter darkness. Thus, twelve months were assigned to the sun as the length of its life. During this period it circled the twelve signs of the zodiac in a magnificent triumphal march. When fall came, it entered, like Samson, into the house of Delilah (Virgo), where its rays were cut off and it lost its strength. In Masonry, the cruel winter months are symbolized by three murderers who sought to destroy the God of Light and Truth, #NFDB
1468:principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1469:As you pass from outer to inner narthex [in Istanbul’s Church of St. Savior], the doorway is crowned with a magnificent mosaic of Christ Pantokrator…. As in all such Eastern icons, frescoes, or mosaics of Christ, his right hand is raised in an authoritative teaching gesture, with his fingers separated into a twosome and a threesome to command Christian faith in the two natures of Christ and the three persons of the Trinity. As usual, he holds a book in his left hand. But he is not reading the book—it is not even open, but securely closed and tightly clasped. Christ does not read the Bible, the New Testament, or the Gospel. He is the norm of the Bible, the criterion of the New Testament, the incarnation of the Gospel. That is how we Christians decide between a violent and nonviolent God in the Bible, New Testament, or Gospel. The person, not the book, and the life, not the text, are decisive and constitutive for us.* ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
1470:This is where the Christian Story stands out dramatically from all the rest.5 The Story answers the question “Why?” It tells us why man is different, why humans are special, why you and I are wonderful in a way that can never change. It tells us that in all the world, God created only one creature who was, in a unique and important and almost indescribable way, like himself, bearing his own likeness, having a soul imprinted with his very image. If you have ever asked yourself the question “Who am I?” you now have your answer. The Story says you are a creature, but you are not just a creature. You are not a little god, but you are not nothing. You are made like God in a magnificent way that can never be taken from you. No matter how young or old or small or disfigured or destitute or dependent, you are still a beautiful creature. You bear the mark of God. He has made you like himself, and that changes everything. Two ~ Gregory Koukl, #NFDB
1471:She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1472:Unfortunately, America has trouble repairing its magnificent trails, so that collapsed bridges and washed-out sections are sometimes left unrepaired. We were rich enough to construct many of these trails during the Great Depression, yet we’re apparently too poor in the 21st century even to sustain them. The attraction of wilderness has something to do with continuity. I may now have a GPS device that I couldn’t have imagined when I first hiked, but essential patterns on the trail are unchanging: the exhaustion, the mosquitoes, the blisters, and also the exhilaration at reaching a mountain pass, the lustrous reds and blues of alpine wildflowers, the deliciousness of a snow cone made on a sweltering day from a permanent snowfield and Kool-Aid mix. The trails are a reminder of our insignificance. We come and go, but nature is forever. It puts us in our place, underscoring that we are not lords of the universe but components of it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1473:To give you an idea of the size of the Earth, I will tell you that before the invention of electricity it was necessary to maintain, over the whole of six continents, a veritable army of 462, 511 lamplighters for the street lamps. Seen from a slight distance that would make a splendid spectacle. the movements of this army would be regulated like those of the ballet in the opera. First would come the turn of the lamplighters of New Zealand and Australia. Having set their lamps alight, these would go off to sleep. Next, the lamplighters of China and Siberia would enter for their steps in the dance, and then they too would be waved back into the wings. After that would come the turn of the lamplighters of Russia and the Indies; then those of Africa and Europe; then those of South America; then those of North America. And never would they make a mistake in the order of their entry upon the stage. It would be magnificent. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
1474:In Sparta
He didn't know, King Kleomenis, he didn't dare—
he just did not know how to tell his mother
a thing like this: that Ptolemy demanded,
to guarantee their treaty, that she too go to Egypt
and be held there as a hostage—
a very humiliating, indecorous thing.
And he would be about to speak yet always hesitate,
would start to tell her yet always stop.
But the magnificent woman understood him
(she had already heard some rumors about it)
and she encouraged him to come out with it clearly.
And she laughed, saying of course she would go,
indeed was happy that in her old age
she could be useful to Sparta still.
As for the humiliation—that didn't touch her at all.
Of course an upstart like the Lagid
couldn't possibly comprehend the Spartan spirit;
so his demand could not in fact humiliate
a Royal Lady like herself:
mother of a Spartan king.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,#NFDB
1475:Religions are metaphorical systems that give us bigger containers in which to hold our lives. A spiritual life allows us to move beyond the ego into something more universal. Religious experience carries us outside of clock time into eternal time. We open ourselves into something more complete and beautiful. This bigger vista is perhaps the most magnificent aspect of a religious experience.
There is a sense in which Karl Marx was correct when he said that religion is the opiate of the people. However, he was wrong to scoff at this. Religion can give us skills for climbing up on onto a ledge above our suffering and looking down at it with a kind and open mind. This helps us calm down and connect to all of the world's sufferers. Since the beginning of human time, we have yearned for peace in the face of death, loss, anger and fear. In fact, it is often trauma that turns us toward the sacred, and it is the sacred that saves us. ~ Mary Pipher,#NFDB
1476:He [Christ] is Isaac, the beloved Son of the Father who was offered as a sacrifice, but nevertheless did not succumb to the power of death. He is Jacob the watchful shepherd, who has such great care for the sheep which he guards. He is the good and compassionate brother Joseph, who in his glory was not ashamed to acknowledge his brothers, however lowly and abject their condition. He is the great sacrificer and bishop Melchizedek who has offered an eternal sacrifice once for all. He is the sovereign lawgiver Moses, writing his law on the tables of our hearts by his Spirit. He is the faithful captain and guide Joshua, to lead us to the Promised Land. He is the victorious and noble king David, bringing by his hand all rebellious power to subjection. He is the magnificent and triumphant king Solomon governing his kingdom in peace and prosperity. He is the strong and powerful Samson who by his death has overwhelmed all his enemies.5 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1477:Neither the Pilgrims nor the Indians new what they had begun. The Pilgrims called the celebration a Harvest Feast. The Indians thought of it as a Green Corn Dance. It was both and more than both. It was the first Thanksgiving.
In the years that followed, President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation, and President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November a holiday of “thanksgiving and praise.” Today it is still a harvest festival and Green Corn Dance. Families feast with friends, give thanks and play games.
Plymouth Rock did not fare as well. It has been cut in half, moved twice, dropped, split and trimmed to fit its present-day portico. It is a mere memento of its once magnificent self.
Yet to Americans, Plymouth Rock is a symbol. It is larger than the mountains, wider than the prairies and stronger than all our rivers.
It is the rock on which our nation began. ~ Jean Craighead George,#NFDB
1478:It occurred to me. . .that aberrance is a wholly human construct. There were no such things as monsters outside the human mind. We are vain and arrogant, evolution's highest achievement and most dismal failure, prisoners of our self-awareness and the illusion that we stand in the center, that there is us and then there is everything else but us. But we do not stand apart from or above or in the middle of anything. There is nothing apart, nothing above, and the middle is everywhere - and nowhere. We are no more beautiful and essential or magnificent than an earthworm. In fact - and dare we go there, you and I? - you could say the worm is more beautiful, because it is innocent and we are not. The worm has no motive but to survive long enough to make baby worms. There is no betrayal, no cruelty, no envy, no lust, and no hatred in the worm's heart, and so who are the monsters and which species shall we call aberrant? ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
1479:The two men stared at each other. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him,” Myron said. “Then you really don’t know me.” A horse whinnied. Win turned and looked at the magnificent animal. Something strange came across his face, a look of loss. “What did she do to you, Win?” Win kept staring. They both knew whom Myron was talking about. “What did she do to make you hate so much?” “Don’t engage in too much hyperbole, Myron. I am not that simple. My mother is not solely responsible for shaping me. A man is not made up of one incident, and I am a far cry from crazy, as you suggested earlier. Like any other human being, I choose my battles. I battle quite a bit—more than most—and usually on the right side. I battled for Billy Waters and Tyrone Duffy. But I do not wish to battle for the Coldrens. That is my choice. You, as my closest friend, should respect that. You should not try to prod or guilt me into a battle I do not wish to fight.” Myron ~ Harlan Coben, #NFDB
1480:Debout Sur Mon Orgueil Je Veux Montrer Au Soir
Spanish
Debout sur mon orgueil je veux montrer au soir
L'envers de mon manteau endeuillé de tes charmes,
Son mouchoir infini, son mouchoir noir et noir,
Trait à trait, doucement, boira toutes mes larmes.
Il donne des lys blancs à mes roses de flamme
Et des bandeaux de calme à mon front délirant...
Que le soir sera bon.. Il aura pour moi l'âme
Claire et le corps profond d'un magnifique amant.
English
Forsaking my pride, I want to show the night
The inside of my cloak, plunged in mourning for your charms.
Its infinite handkerchiefs, its handkerchiefs black and black,
Piece by piece, tenderly, will drink all my tears.
The night lays lilies upon my burning roses
And cool cloths upon my feverish brow...
How good the evening will be! It will have, for me,
The luminous soul, the profound body, of a magnificent lover.
~ Delmira Agustini,#NFDB
1481:Bro, we're living in the Kali Yuga, a Dark Age of petite bourgeoisie ideology, a petite bourgeoisie ideology whose resources and ruses are infinite and which ubiquitously permeates the world -- high culture, low culture, bienpensant media, prestige literature, pop music, commerce, sports, academia, you name it. The only reasonable response to this situation is to maintain an implacable antipathy toward everything. Denounce everyone. Make war against yourself. Guillotine all groveling intellectuals. That said, I think it's important to maintain a cheery disposition. This will hasten the restoration of Paradise. I've memorized this line from Andre Breton's magnificent homage to Antonin Artaud -- "I salute Antonin Artaud for his passionate, heroic negation of everything that causes us to be dead while alive." Given the state of things, that's what we need to be doing, all the time -- negating everything that causes us to be dead while alive. ~ Mark Leyner, #NFDB
1482:Habermas writes: “The ideals of freedom . . . of conscience, human rights and democracy [are] the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. . . . To this day there is no alternative to it.”17 None of this denies that science and reason are sources of enormous and irreplaceable good for human society. The point is rather that science alone cannot serve as a guide for human society.18 This was well summarized in a speech that was written for but never delivered at the Scopes “monkey trial”: “Science is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. . . . Science does not [and cannot] teach brotherly love.”19 Secular, scientific reason is a great good, but if taken as the sole basis for human life, it will be discovered that there are too many things we need that it is missing. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1483:I think Homer outwits most writers who have written on the War, by not taking sides. The Trojan war is not and you cannot make it be the War of Good vs. Evil. It’s just a war, a wasteful, useless, needless, stupid, protracted, cruel mess full of individual acts of courage, cowardice, nobility, betrayal, limb-hacking-off, and disembowelment. Homer was a Greek and might have been partial to the Greek side, but he had a sense of justice or balance that seems characteristically Greek—maybe his people learned a good deal of it from him? His impartiality is far from dispassionate; the story is a torrent of passionate actions, generous, despicable, magnificent, trivial. But it is unprejudiced. It isn’t Satan vs. Angels. It isn’t Holy Warriors vs. Infidels. It isn’t hobbits vs. orcs. It’s just people vs. people. Of course you can take sides, and almost everybody does. I try not to, but it’s no use, I just like the Trojans better than the Greeks. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1484:Because it is the triumph of a lack of planning –both for good and bad. It's chaos –and whether you say that with a gasp of despair or glee or both is up to you. Whereas Paris (certainly in the centre) is the success of a single overarching monomaniacal topographic vision, London is a chaotic patchwork of history, architecture, style, as disorganised as any dream, and like any dream possessing an underlying logic, but one that we can't quite make sense of, though we know it's there. A shoved-together city cobbled from centuries of distinct aesthetics disrespectfully clotted in a magnificent triumph of architectural philistinism. A city of jingoist sculptures, concrete caryatids, ugly ugly ugly financial bombast, reconfiguration. A city full of parks and gardens, which have always been magic places, one of the greenest cities in the world, though it's a very dirty shade of green –and what sort of grimy dryads does London throw up? You tell me. ~ China Mi ville, #NFDB
1485:Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief- that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never...intended. So they said to one another: "Let's join together and make a great book that will last forever that will mock the credulity of man...We'll include all the most preposterous old wives' tales now current. We'll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, yet so weakly human that he'll become a byword for laughter the world over- and we'll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he'll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there'll be no more nonsense in the world. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1486:I will give you an illustration. The sun—a great, shining, and magnificent light—cannot be contemplated and looked at directly with the naked eye. An artificial glass, a million times smaller and dimmer than the sun, is needed to look at the great king of lights to be enraptured by its fiery rays. In a similar way the Holy Bible is a shining light and the Philokalia is the necessary glass. “Now if you will listen, I will read how you can learn ceaseless interior prayer.” The elder opened the Philokalia to the account of St. Simeon the New Theologian and began reading: “‘Sit alone and in silence; bow your head and close your eyes; relax your breathing and with your imagination look into your heart; direct your thoughts from your head into your heart. And while inhaling say, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” either softly with your lips or in your mind. Endeavor to fight distractions but be patient and peaceful and repeat this process frequently. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1487:You're too handsome to wear a beard," she informed him. "I might allow it someday if you need to conceal a sagging chin, but for now, it has to go."
"At the moment," West said with his eyes still closed, "nothing I have is sagging."
Phoebe glanced downward reflexively. From her vantage point between his splayed legs, she had a perfect view of his lap, where the ridge of a rather magnificent erection strained the fabric of his trousers. Her mouth went dry, and she wavered between uneasiness and intense curiosity.
"That looks uncomfortable," she said.
"I can bear it."
"I meant for me."
The cheeks beneath her fingertips tautened as West tried- unsuccessfully- to hold back a grin. "If it makes you nervous, don't worry. It will disappear as soon as you pick up that damned razor." He paused before adding huskily, "But... it wouldn't be. Uncomfortable, I mean. If we were going to... I would make sure you were ready. I would never hurt you. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1488:But these ideas were no more than abstractions because, despite his intellectual rejection of conventional morality, his emotional allegiance to the code of conduct it prescribed was unswerving. Self-disgust was legitimate, but detesting his mother was unthinkable. He could not pay heed to the painful messages of his childhood memories without destroying the hopes that had helped him to survive as a child. Time and again, Rimbaud tells us that he had no one to rely on except himself. This was surely the fruit of his experience with a mother who had nothing to offer him but her own derangement and hypocrisy, rather than true love. His entire life was a magnificent but vain attempt to save himself from destruction at the hands of his mother, with all the means at his disposal. Young people who have gone through much the same kind of childhood as Rimbaud are often fascinated by his poetry because they can vaguely sense the presence of a kindred spirit in it. Rimbaud ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
1489:I was strong in English, and thankful for it. I knew the great Dr. Johnson from his friend Mr. Boswell. There is a friend for you. To sit down and rack the brain to remember every word, and then the glad toil to write it all down. I am thankful to Mr. Boswell for many a peaceful hour, indeed. There is a marvel, hundreds of years after the spirit has gone to new life, that men will bless a name that once had flesh, and laughed, and had good food, and loved to hear good talk. But the great Dr. Johnson was one in a century, and I count myself honoured to have tasted the wine of his speech, even though put to my mouth through the goodness of his friend. For that Englishman is not to be read with the eyes alone, but read out, as with the Word, with a good voice, and a rolling of the tongue, so that the rich taste of magnificent English may come to the ears and go to the head, like the perfumes of the Magi, or like the best of beer, home brewed and long in the cask. ~ Richard Llewellyn, #NFDB
1490:Would it be an indiscretion to ask to see those precious pills?" continued Beauchamp, hoping to take him at a disadvantage.
"No, Monsieur," returned the count; and he drew from his pocket a marvelous bonbonniere, formed out of a single emerald, and closed by a golden lid, which unscrewed and gave passage to a small of greenish color, and about the size of a pea."
..."this is a magnificent emerald, and the largest I have ever seen," said Chateu-Renaud...
"I had three similar ones," returned Monte Cristo; "I gave one to the Grand Signior, who mounted it in his saber; another to our holy father the pope, who had it set in his tiara, opposite to nearly as large, though not so fine a one, given by Emperor Napolen to his predecessor Pius VII. I kept the third for myself, and I had it hollowed out, which reduced its value, but rendered it more commodious for the purpose I intended it for."
Every one looked at Monte Cristo with astonishment... ~ Alexandre Dumas,#NFDB
1491:But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment, could win Catherine from thinking that some very different object must occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours, after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely. There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs. Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the conclusion which necessarily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it was at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other children, at the time—all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment. Its origin—jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty—was yet to be unravelled. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1492:Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. ‘Look at him!’ Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, ‘That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he’s done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on!’ Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. ‘That’s not fat,’ he declared, punching himself in the stomach, ‘that’s good healthy meat!’ He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks. ~ Christopher Isherwood, #NFDB
1493:Cosca smiled up at the dragon, hands on hips. ‘It certainly is a remarkable curiosity. A magnificent relic. But against what is already boiling across the plains? The legion of the dumb? The merchants and farmers and makers of trifles and filers of papers? The infinite tide of greedy little people?’ He waved his hat towards the dragon. ‘Such things as this are worthless as a cow against a swarm of ants. There will be no place in the world to come for the magical, the mysterious, the strange. They will come to your sacred places and build . . . tailors’ shops. And dry-goods emporia. And lawyers’ offices. They will make of them bland copies of everywhere else.’ The old mercenary scratched thoughtfully at his rashy neck. ‘You can wish it were not so. I wish it were not so. But it is so. I tire of lost causes. The time of men like me is passing. The time of men like you?’ He wiped a little blood from under his fingernails. ‘So long passed it might as well have never been. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
1494:And then the finale, its four modest notes. Do, re, fa, mi: half a jumbled scale. Too simple to be called invented. But the thing spills out into the world like one of those African antelopes that fall from the womb, still wet with afterbirth but already running. Young Peter props up on his elbows, ambushed by a memory from the future. The shuffled half scale gathers mass; it sucks up other melodies into its gravity. Tunes and countertunes split off and replicate, chasing each other in a cosmic game of tag. At two minutes, a trapdoor opens beneath the boy. The first floor of the house dissolves above a gaping hole. Boy, stereo, speaker boxes, the love seat he sits on: all hang in place, floating on the gusher of sonority pouring into the room. […] All he wants to do forever is to take the magnificent timepiece apart and put its meshed gears back together again. To recover that feeling of being clear, present, here, various and vibrant, as huge and noble as an outer planet. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
1495:Human Origami It’s hard to come in second. . . . While painful at the time, I can see now, many years later when I look in the rearview mirror of my life, evidence of God’s tremendous love and unfolding adventure for me. I’ve received many letters . . . in my life that started out “Dear Bob.” Some were letters so thick they had to be folded several times to fit in the envelope. They left me feeling as folded when I read their words with shattering disappointment. Still, whatever follows my “Dear Bobs” is often another reminder that God’s grace comes in all shapes, sizes, and circumstances as God continues to unfold something magnificent in me. And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don’t think it looks like a series of folded-over mistakes and do-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead, I think we’ll conclude in the end that maybe we’re all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better. BOB GOFF Love Does ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1496:The Lovers of Yvonne (1902) The Tavern Knight (1904) Bardelys the Magnificent (1906) The Trampling of the Lilies (1906) Love-at-Arms (1907) The Shame of Molly (1908) St. Martin’s Summer (1909) Anthony Wilding (1910) The Life of Cesare Borgia of Grance (1911) nonfiction The Lion’s Skin (1911) The Justice of the Duke (1912) The Strolling Saint (1913) Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition (1913) nonfiction The Gates of Doom (1914) The Banner of the Bull: Three Episodes in the Career of Cesare Borgia (1915) The Sea-Hawk (1915) The Snare (1915) The Historical Nights’ Entertainment (three volumes; 1917-39) collection Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution (1921) Captain Blood: His Odyssey (1922) Fortune’s Fool (1923) Mistress Wilding (1924) The Carolinian (1925) Bellarion the Fortunate (1926) The Nuptials of Corbal (1927) The Hounds of God (1928) The Romantic Prince (1929) The Reaping (1929) The Minion (1930) Captain Blood Returns (1931) Scaramouche, the King-Maker (1931) ~ Rafael Sabatini, #NFDB
1497:And so, when I had found, one day, in a book by Bergotte, some joke about an old family servant, to which his solemn and magnificent style added a great deal of irony, but which was in principle what I had often said to my grandmother about Françoise, and when, another time, I had discovered that he thought not unworthy of reflection in one of those mirrors of absolute Truth which were his writings, a remark similar to one which I had had occasion to make on our friend M. Legrandin (and, moreover, my remarks on Françoise and M. Legrandin were among those which I would most resolutely have sacrificed for Bergotte’s sake, in the belief that he would find them quite without interest); then it was suddenly revealed to me that my own humble existence and the Realms of Truth were less widely separated than I had supposed, that at certain points they were actually in contact; and in my new-found confidence and joy I wept upon his printed page, as in the arms of a long-lost father. From ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1498:From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building.
And just as it had been tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza roof to take leave of the beautiful city extending as far as the eyes could see, so now I went to the roof of that last and most magnificent of towers.
Then I understood. Everything was explained. I had discovered the crowning error of the city. Its Pandora's box.
Full of vaunting pride, the New Yorker had climbed here, and seen with dismay what he had never suspected. That the city was not the endless sucession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits, fading out into the country on all sides into an expanse of green and blue. That alone was limitless.
And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining ediface that he had reared in his mind came crashing down.
That was the gift of Alfred Smith to the citizens of New York. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,#NFDB
1499:A Light in the Moon"
A light in the moon the only light is on Sunday. What was the sensible decision. The sensible decision was that notwithstanding many declarations and more music, not even notwithstanding the choice and a torch and a collection, notwithstanding the celebrating hat and a vacation and even more noise than cutting, notwithstanding Europe and Asia and being overbearing, not even notwithstanding an elephant and a strict occasion, not even withstanding more cultivation and some seasoning, not even with drowning and with the ocean being encircling, not even with more likeness and any cloud, not even with terrific sacrifice of pedestrianism and a special resolution, not even more likely to be pleasing. The care with which the rain is wrong and the green is wrong and the white is wrong, the care with which there is a chair and plenty of breathing. The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain. ~ Gertrude Stein,#NFDB
1500:Yes, perfection. it rests its full weight upon the core of the poor aunt's being, like a corpse sealed inside a glacier-a magnificent glacier made of ice like stainless steel. Only ten thousand years of sunshine could melt such a glacier. But no poor aunt can live for thousand years, of course, and so she will have to live with her perfection, die with her perfection, and be buried with her perfection.
Perfection and the aunt beneath the ground.
Ten thousand years goes by. Then, perhaps, the glacier melt in darkness and perfection thrust its way out of the grave to reveal it self on the earth's surface. Everything on earth is completely change by then, but if by any chance the ceremony known as "wedding" still exists, the perfection left behind by the poor aunt might be invited to one, there to eat an entire dinner with impeccable table manners and be called upon to deliver heartfelt words of congratulation.
But never mind. These events would not take place until the year 11,980. ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
180 Integral Yoga
41 Poetry
22 Fiction
17 Christianity
15 Occultism
12 Philosophy
6 Psychology
5 Yoga
5 Science
2 Mythology
2 Integral Theory
1 Philsophy
1 Mysticism
1 Education
1 Alchemy
141 The Mother
102 Satprem
52 Sri Aurobindo
15 Nolini Kanta Gupta
15 H P Lovecraft
9 William Wordsworth
8 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
7 Percy Bysshe Shelley
7 James George Frazer
6 Aleister Crowley
5 Saint Augustine of Hippo
5 Robert Browning
5 Plato
4 Plotinus
4 Nirodbaran
4 Carl Jung
4 A B Purani
3 Swami Krishnananda
3 Sri Ramakrishna
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 Walt Whitman
2 Sri Ramana Maharshi
2 Ovid
2 Jordan Peterson
2 John Keats
2 George Van Vrekhem
2 Edgar Allan Poe
15 Lovecraft - Poems
14 Agenda Vol 02
13 Savitri
13 Agenda Vol 11
11 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
11 Agenda Vol 08
10 Agenda Vol 04
9 Wordsworth - Poems
9 Questions And Answers 1953
9 Agenda Vol 06
7 The Golden Bough
7 Shelley - Poems
7 Agenda Vol 10
7 Agenda Vol 05
7 Agenda Vol 03
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
6 Collected Poems
5 The Secret Doctrine
5 Questions And Answers 1956
5 City of God
5 Browning - Poems
5 Agenda Vol 07
5 Agenda Vol 01
4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
4 Prayers And Meditations
4 Magick Without Tears
4 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
4 Essays On The Gita
4 Agenda Vol 09
3 Words Of Long Ago
3 The Study and Practice of Yoga
3 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
3 Questions And Answers 1954
3 Liber ABA
3 Letters On Yoga IV
3 Let Me Explain
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
3 Agenda Vol 12
2 Whitman - Poems
2 Twilight of the Idols
2 The Synthesis Of Yoga
2 The Practice of Psycho therapy
2 The Phenomenon of Man
2 The Human Cycle
2 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
2 The Future of Man
2 Symposium
2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
2 Preparing for the Miraculous
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
2 On the Way to Supermanhood
2 On Education
2 Metamorphoses
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Letters On Poetry And Art
2 Keats - Poems
2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
2 Agenda Vol 13
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
3,000 years ago the Greeks made further magnificent contributions to geometry,
algebra, and calculation. Then about 2,000 years ago the Roman Empire all but
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
Keshab's sincerity was enough for Sri Ramakrishna. Henceforth the two saw each other frequently, either at Dakshineswar or at the temple of the Brahmo Samaj. Whenever the Master was in the temple at the time of divine service, Keshab would request him to speak to the congregation. And Keshab would visit the saint, in his turn, with offerings of flowers and fruits.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
literally filled with admiration. It is magnificent - the birds are
so beautiful and so very alive; I found their little heads with the
--
and in silver on the sari they will be magnificent. Where did you
do the ironing? It is good that you are learning.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a priori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be more scientific, let us use the word, more matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its ivory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things human and terrestrial; made immanent in the mundane and the ephemeral, as they are commonly called. This is not an impossibility. Sri Aurobindo seems to have done the thing. In him we find the three terms of human consciousness arriving at an absolute fusion and his poetry is a wonderful example of that fusion. The three terms are the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical and the physical or sensational. The intellectual, or more generally, the mental, is the intermediary, the Paraclete, as he himself will call it later on in a poem9 magnificently exemplifying the point we are trying to make out the agent who negotiates, bridges and harmonises the two other firmaments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
Indeed it would be wrong to associate any cold ascetic nudity to the spiritual body of Sri Aurobindo. His poetry is philosophic, abstract, no doubt, but every philosophy has its practice, every abstract thing its concrete application,even as the soul has its body; and the fusion, not mere union, of the two is very characteristic in him. The deepest and unseizable flights of thought he knows how to clo the with a Kalidasian richness of imagery, or a Keatsean gusto of sensuousness:
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A dense magnificent coloured self-wrapped life
Draped in the leaves' vivid emerald monotone
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Things sweet and bitter, magnificent and mean,
Things terrible and beautiful and divine.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The gospel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery, although that too is indispensable, and it is something more than moral courage. In the speeches referred to, the subject-matter (as well as the manner to a large extent) is philosophical, metaphysical, even abstract in outlook and treatment: they are not a call to arms, like the French National Anthem, for example; they are not merely an ethical exhortation, a moral lesson either. They speak of the inner spirit, the divine in man, the supreme realities that lie beyond. And yet the words are permeated through and through with a vibration life-giving and heroic-not so much in the explicit and apparent meaning as in the style and manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, for example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth,nec plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme:
Yasyaite himavanto mahitv
01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The angels weave the symphony that is creation. They represent the various notes and rhythmsin their higher and purer degrees that make up the grand harmony of the spheres. It is magnificent, this music that moves the cosmos, and wonderful the glory of God manifest therein. But is it absolutely perfect? Is there nowhere any flaw in it? There is a doubting voice that enters a dissenting note. That is Satan, the Antagonist, the Evil One. Man is the weakest link in the chain of the apparently all-perfect harmony. And Satan boldly proposes to snap it if God only let him do so. He can prove to God that the true nature of his creation is not cosmos but chaos not a harmony in peace and light, but a confusion, a Walpurgis Night. God acquiesces in the play of this apparent breach and proves in the end that it is part of a wider scheme, a vaster harmony. Evil is rounded off by Grace.
The total eradication of Evil from the world and human nature and the remoulding of a terrestrial life in the substance and pattern of the Highest Good that is beyond all dualities is a conception which it was not for Goe the to envisage. In the order of reality or existence, first there is the consciousness of division, of trenchant separation in which Good is equated with not-evil and evil with not-good. This is the outlook of individualised consciousness. Next, as the consciousness grows and envelops the whole existence, good and evil are both embraced and are found to form a secret and magic harmony. That is the universal or cosmic consciousness. And Goethe's genius seems to be an outflowering of something of this status of consciousness. But there is still a higher status, the status of transcendence in which evil is not simply embraced but dissolved and even transmuted into a supreme reality of which it is an aberration, a reflection or projection, a lower formulation. That is the mystery of a spiritual realisation to which Goe the aspired perhaps, but had not the necessary initiation to enter into.
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is it not strange that one should look to the East for the light? There is a light indeed that dwells in the setting suns, but that is the inferior light, the light that moves level with the earth, pins us down to the normal and ordinary life and consciousness: it" leads into the Night, into Nihil, pralaya. It is the light of the morning sun that man looks up to in his forward march, the sun that rises in the East whom the Vedic Rishi invoked in these magnificent lines:
Lo, the supreme light of all lights is come, a vast and varied consciousness is born in us. . . .
0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I was VERY HAPPY with the vision, for there was a great POWER, though it was rather terrible. But it was magnificent. When I saw that, I This vision was given to me because I had concentrated with a will to find the solution, a true solution, an enduring and permanent solution that is, I had this spontaneous gratitude which goes out to the Grace when it brings some effective help. Only, what followed was interrupted by someone who came to call me and that cut it short, but it will return.
But now I KNOWbefore I did not know. The other morning I saw, and I was told very clearly that it was a karma1 to be worked out; so then I told you, but at the time I didnt know what it was.
0 1959-10-06 - Sri Aurobindos abode, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And Sri Aurobindo was there, with a majesty, a magnificent beauty. He had all his beautiful hair as before. It was all so concrete, so substantialhe was even being served some kind of food. I remained there for one hour (I had looked at my watch before and I looked at it afterwards). I spoke to Sri Aurobindo, for I had some important questions to ask him about the way certain things are to be realized. He said nothing. He listened to me quietly and looked at me as if all my words were useless: he understood everything at once. And he answered me with a gesture and two expressions on his face, an unexpected gesture that did not at all correspond to any thought of mine; for example, he picked up three combs that were lying near the mirror (combs similar to those I use here, but larger) and he put them in his hair. He planted one comb in the middle of his head and the two others on each side, as if to gather all his hair over his temples. He was literally COIFFED with these three combs, which gave him a kind of crown. And I immediately understood that by this he meant that he was adopting my conception: You see, I embrace your conception of things, and I coif myself with it; it is my will. Anyway, I remained there for one hour.
And when I awoke, I didnt have this feeling of returning from afar and of having to re-enter my body, as I usually do. No, it was simply as though I were in this other world, then I took a step backwards and found myself here again. It took me a good half an hour to understand that this world here existed as much as the other and that I was no longer on the other side but here, in the world of falsehood. I had forgotten everythingpeople, things, what I had to do; everything had gone, as if it had no reality at all.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Yesterday, I suddenly saw a huge living head of blue lightthis blue light which is the force, the powerful force in material Nature (this is the light the tantrics use). The head was made entirely of this light, and it wore a sort of tiaraa big head, so big (Mother indicates the length of her forearm); its eyes werent closed, but rather lowered, like this. The immobility of eternity, absolutely the repose, the immobility of eternity. A magnificent head, quite similar to the way the gods here are represented, but even better; something between certain heads of the Buddha and (these heads most probably come to the artists). Everything else was lost in a kind of cloud.
I felt that this kind of yes, immobility came from there: everything stops, absolutely everything stops. Silence, immobility truly, you enter into eternity.I told him it wasnt time!
--
Im going to tell you what I sawits very interesting. First, emanating from here (Mother indicates the chest), a florescence of every color like a peacocks tail spread wide; but it was made of light, and it was very, very delicate, very fine, like this (gesture). Then it rose up and formed what truly seemed like a luminous peacock, up above, and it remained like that. Then, from here (the chest), what looked like a sword of white light climbed straight up. It went up very high and formed a kind of expanse, a very vast expanse, which was like a callthis lasted the longest. And then, in response, a veritable rain, like (no, it was much finer than drops) a golden lightwhite and goldenwith various shades, at times more towards white, at times more golden, at times with a tinge of pink. And all this was descending, descending into you. And here (the chest), it changed into this same deep blue light, with a powdering of green light inside itemerald green. And at that moment, when it reached here (the level of the heart), a number of little divinities of living golda deep, living goldcame, like this, and then looked at you. And just as they looked at you, there was the image of the Mother right at the very center of younot as she is commonly portrayed but as she is in the Indian consciousness Very serene and pure and luminous. And then that changed into a temple, and inside the temple there seemed to be an image of Sri Aurobindo and an image of me but living images in a powdering of light. Then it grew into a magnificent edifice and settled in with an extraordinary power. And it remained motionless.
That is the representation of your japa.
0 1960-10-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Oh, now I remember! It was PINK during the second phase, just afterwards, after Egypt! Oh, it was like like at the end of a sunrise when it gets very clear and luminous. A magnificent color. And it kept coming down and down, in a flood that part was new. Its something I see very rarely. It was not there at all the last time we meditated together. And it came filled with such a joy! Oh! It was absolutely ecstatic. It lasted quite a long time. And from there I went into this trance where I saw (laughing) that man congratulating you! I heard him say (his voice is what roused me from my trance, and then I saw him), Congratulations, its a great success! (Mother laughs)
Its good. Well have these little meditations from time to time. For me, its pleasant, for I have neither to restrict nor contain nor veil myself. Its nice.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But its explained very well in Savitri! All these things have their laws and their conventions (and truly speaking, a really FORMIDABLE power is needed to change anything of their rights, for they have rightswhat they call laws) Sri Aurobindo explains this very well when Savitri, following Satyavan into death, argues with the god of Death.3 Its the Law, and who has the right to change the Law? he says. And then comes this wonderful passage at the end where she replies, My God can change it. And my God is a God of Love. Oh, how magnificent!
And by force of repeating this to him, he yields She replies in this way to EVERYTHING.
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a woman here with me who was born among these people. She had been adopted by Thomas (the French musician who composed the comic-opera, Mignon). They had come to India and found this little girl who at the time was very young; she was only thirteen, quite pretty and nice. So they took her back to France with them as a nanny and treated her as one of their own children. She was cared for, educated, given everything, treated absolutely like one of the family; she remained there for twenty years. Moreover, she was gifted with clairvoyance and could tell fortunes by reading palms, which she did remarkably well. She even worked for a while in a caf, the Moulin-Rouge or a similar place, as a Hindu Fortune Teller! What a maharani she was, with her magnificent jewelsand beautiful, as well. In short, she had completely left all her old habits behind.
Then she returned to India and I took her in with me. I continued to treat her almost as a friend and I helped her to develop her gifts. Mon petit,10 how dirty she started to get, lying, stealing, and absolutely needlesslyshe had money, she was well treated, she had everything she needed, she ate what we didthere was absolutely no reason! When I finally asked her, But why, why!? (she was no longer young at this point), she replied, When I came back here, it took hold of me again; its stronger than I am. That was a revelation for me! Those old habits had been impervious to education.
0 1961-02-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I tell you this because just now as we were speaking about the book and you were saying it would come all at once in a single flow, I saw a kind of globe, like a suna sun shedding a twinkling dust of incandescent light (the sun was moving forward and this dust came twinkling in front of it), like this (gesture). It came towards you, then made a circle around you as if to say, Here is the formation. It was magnificent! There was a creative warmth in it, a warmth like the sunsa power of Truth. And here again, I was given the same impression: that what Sri Aurobindo has come to bring is not a teaching, not even a revelation, but a FORMIDABLE action coming direct from the Supreme.
It is something pouring over the world.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the next afternoon, I closed my eyes while I was bathing and what did I see but an enormous, magnificent cobra! It gazed at me, almost smiling, and stuck out its tongue! Good, I said, then everything is all right! (laughing) I have only to hold on.
So, thats all I have to say.
0 1961-03-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body is waging a magnificent battle, oh, a magnificent battle! And its faring quite well.
Its a rather difficult business and could last a long time: I dont want it to stay dormant and then resurface with the next attack of this or that. So I am proceeding slowly and cautiously, which means it takes time: I concentrate and work on it for one hour after lunch every day. (I used to do my translation then, but since Im at least two or three years ahead of the Bulletin, it doesnt matter, I wont be delaying the work! I have almost finished The Yoga of Divine Love; now theres only The Yoga of Self-Perfection thats quite a job, oh! I miss itthis translation was my pleasure.) But the work on the body is useful something must be attempted in life; we are here to do something new, arent we?!
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And, an incredible thing this cat was very pretty, but she had a wretched tail, a tail like an ordinary cat; and one day when I was with her at the window, one of the neighbors cats wandered into the gardenan angora with three colors, three very prominent colors, and such a beautiful tail trailing behind! So I said (my cat was just beside me), Oh! Just see how beautiful she is! What a beautiful tail she has! And I could see my cat looking at her. My child, in her next litter she had one exactly like that! How did she manage it? I dont know. Three prominent colors and a magnificent tail! Did she hunt up a male angora? Or did she just will for it intensely?
They are really something, you cant imagine! Once, when she was due to give birth and was very heavy, she was walking along the window ledge and I dont know what happened, but she fell. She had wanted to jump from the ledge, but she lost her footing and fell. It must have injured something. The kittens didnt come right away, they came later, but three of them were deformed (there were six in all). Well, when she saw how they were, she simply sat on themkilled them as soon as they were born. Such incredible wisdom! (They were completely deformed: the hind paws were turned the wrong way roundthey would have had an impossible life.)
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let me tell you about a recent occurrence. E. had sent a telegram saying that she had a perforated intestine (but it must have been something else because they operated on her only after several days, and when you are not operated on immediately in such cases, you die). Anyway, it was very serious and she was on the threshold of death that much is certain. She wrote me a letter the day before the operation (what is interesting is that now she doesnt even remember what she wrote). It was a magnificent letter saying that she was conscious of the Divine Presence and of the Divine Plan. Tomorrow they will operate on me, she said. And I am entirely aware that this operation has ALREADY been done, that it is a fact accomplished by the Divine Will; otherwise it could be a fatal ordeal. And she said she was conscious of the supreme Wills action, in a perfect peace. It was a magnificent letter. And the whole thing went off almost miraculously; she recovered in such a miraculous way that the surgeon himself said, I must congratulate you, to which she replied, How surprising! You did the operation! Yes, he said, we did the operation, but it is your body that willed to be healed, and I congratulate you for your bodys willpower. Of course she wrote to me that she knew who had been there to see that all went well. And this feeling of the thing being already accomplished is a beginning of the consciousness Sri Aurobindo speaks of in the Yoga of Self-Perfection, where one is simultaneously both here and there. Because, as Sri Aurobindo says, some people have managed to be entirely there, but what he has called the realization is to be both there and here simultaneously.
Of course, one might wonder what the meaning of everything here is, if it has all been already accomplished above, on an occult plane, and we are merely re-enacting it.
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember a good-hearted priest in Pau [Southern France] who was an artist and wanted to have his church decorateda tiny cathedral. He consulted a local anarchist (a great artist) about it. The anarchist was acquainted with Andrs father and me. He told the priest, I recommend these people to do the paintings they are true artists. He was doing the mural decorationsome eight panels in all, I believe. So I set to work on one of the panels. (The church was dedicated to San Juan de Compostello, a hero of Spanish history; he had appeared in a battle between the Christians and the Moors and his apparition vanquished the Moors. And he was magnificent! He appeared in golden light on a white horse, almost like Kalki.6) All the slaughtered and struggling Moors were depicted at the bottom of the painting, and it was I who painted them; it was too hard for me to climb high up on a ladder to paint, so I did the things at the bottom! But anyway, it all went quite well. Then, naturally, the priest received us and invited us to dinner with the anarchist. And he was so nicereally a kind-hearted man! I was already a vegetarian and didnt drink, so he scolded me very gently, saying, But its Our Lord who gives us all this, so why shouldnt you take it? I found him charming. And when he looked at the paintings, he tapped Morisset on the shoulder (Morisset was an unbeliever), and said, with the accent of Southern France, Say what you like, but you know Our Lord; otherwise you could never have painted like that!
Well.
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, it was magnificent at the balcony this morning!
And then one understands all, allall the details. Some things can be understood intellectually or psychologically (which is very good, it has an effect and it helps you), but that always seems so hazy; it works through an imprecision. But now the vibrations mechanism is understoodits MECHANICS; and thus it becomes precise. All these attitudes the yoga recommendsbeginning with action done as offering, then complete detachment from the result (leaving the result to the Lord), then perfect equanimity in all circumstances, all these stages which one understands intellectually, feels sentimentally, and has fully experiencedwell, all this takes on its TRUE MEANING only when it becomes what could be called a mechanical action of vibrationat that point one understands why it must be like it is.
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am constantly seeing images! Not images, living thingslike answers to questions. A magnificent peacock was taking shape (its the symbol of victory here in India) and its tail opened out, and on it a construction appeared, like this construction of an ideal place. Its a pity this subtle world cant be photographed! There ought to be photographic plates sensitive enough to do it. It has been tried. It would be interesting because it moves, its like a movie.
All right, then. What did you want to ask?
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now I see that these rays emanate from a recumbent oval of white light encircled by a superb rainbow, and I sense that the one whom the light hides from my view is plunged into a profound repose. For long I remain at the outer edge of the rainbow, trying to pierce through the light and see the one who is sleeping encircled by such splendor. Unable to discern anything, I enter the rainbow, and thence into the white and shining oval. Here I see a marvelous being: stretched on what seems to be a mass of white eiderdown, his supple body, of incomparable beauty, is garbed in a long, white robe. His head rests on his folded arm, but of that I can see only his long hair, the hue of ripened wheat, flowing over his shoulders. A great and gentle emotion sweeps through me at this magnificent spectacle, and a deep reverence as well.
Has the sleeper sensed my presence? For now he awakens and rises in all his grace and beauty. He turns towards me and his eyes meet mine, mauve and luminous eyes with a gentle, an infinitely tender expression. Wordlessly he bids me a sublime welcome and my whole being joyously responds. Taking my hand, he leads me to the couch he has just left. I stretch out on this downy whiteness, and his harmonious visage bends over me; a sweet current of force enters wholly into me, invigorating, revitalizing each cell.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Shiva, on the other hand, refused. No, he said, I will come only when you have finished your work. I will not come into the world as it is now, but I am ready to help. He was standing in my room that day, so tall (laughing) that his head touched the ceiling! He was bathed in his own special light, a play of red and gold magnificent! Just as he is when he manifests his supreme consciousnessa formidable being! So I stood up and (I too must have become quite tall, because my head was resting on his shoulder, just slightly below his head) then he told me, No, Im not tying myself to a body, but I will give you ANYTHING you want. The only thing I said (it was all done wordlessly, of course) was: I want to be rid of the physical ego.
Well, mon petit (laughing), it happened! It was extraordinary! After a while, I went to find Sri Aurobindo and said, See what has happened! I have a funny sensation (Mother laughs) of the cells no longer being clustered together! Theyre going to scatter! He looked at me, smiled and said, Not yet. And the effect vanished.
0 1961-08-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The subtle physical is right here (gesture on the surface of the skin). Some people are sensitive in the subtle physical; you move your hand near them and they feel it immediately. Others dont even noticeit depends on the subtle physicals sensitivity. And the circumconscient surrounds it like an envelope. If there are no tears in it, this envelope is a magnificent protection.4 And its not dependent on any spiritual or intellectual rationale, but on a harmony with Nature and life, a kind of stability in the material being. People with strong envelopes are almost always in good health and succeed in what they do. It isnt something mentalwhen they do a work it comes out nicely, if they want to meet someone, they meet him. Things of this nature.
The circumconscient must be that.
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Listen, think it over. Because Im not so sure. When I see, I see segments: a blank, another segment, a blank (Mother seems to sketch a kind of diagram in space), then an apotheosis at the endyour ending is magnificent.
Its not necessary for the whole book to proceed in the same way.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I know that if we publish it here it will have a wide public in Europe and America swallowing it down like holy bread, and it will do a magnificent work. IF it comes from here. Not because of what they think of us [the Ashram], but because of what will be in it.
They want to tidy up your book, do they! They cant take it. I saw this when the book was sent off: they cant take it, they just cant. They put up a barrier; they cant receive what is in it, and so they will do all they can to annul its effects.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The question, of course, is the supramentalization of MATTER the consciousness, thats nothing at all. Most people who have had that experience had it on the mental level, which is relatively easy. Its very easy: abolition of limits set by the ego, indefinite expansion with a movement following the rhythm of the Becoming. Mentally, its all very easy. Vitally. A few months after I withdrew to my room, I had the experience in the vitalwonderful, magnificent! Of course to have the experience there, the mind must have undergone a change, one must be in complete communion; without exception, any individual vital being that hasnt been prepared by what might be called a sufficient mental foundation would be panic-stricken. All those poor people who get scared at the least little experience had better not dabble with thistheyd panic! But as it happensthrough divine grace, you might saymy vital, the vital being of this present incarnation, was born free and victorious. It has never been afraid of anything in the vital world; the most fantastic experiences were practically childs play. But when I had that experience, it was so interesting that for a few weeks I was tempted to stay in it; it was. I once told you a little about that experience (it was quite a while ago, at least two years).5 I told you that even during the day I seemed to be sitting on top of the Earth that was this realization in the vital world. And what fantastic nights it gave me! Nights I have never been able to describe to anyone and never mentioned but I would look forward to the night as a marvelous adventure.
I voluntarily renounced all that in order to go further. And when I did it, I understood what people here in India mean when they say: he surrendered his experience. I had never really understood what that meant. When I did it, I understood. No, I said, I dont want to stop there; I am giving it all to You, that I may go on to the end. Then I understood what it meant.
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the lower mind there was a whole world of difficulties I was unaware of. In the vital I knew, because Id had to do battle therewhich was fine with me! Just imagine, this time I have been given a warrior as my vital being. A magnificent warrior, neither male nor female, and as tall as this room1he is splendid. I was so happy when I first saw him. Well, I thought, thats worth my while!
Yes, there are battles galore there!
0 1962-02-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Sri Aurobindo's play, Andromeda, daughter of the King of Syria, is condemned by her own people to be devoured by Poseidon, the Sea-god, for some impiety she had committed against him. The story is actually about the passage of a half-primitive tribe, living in terror of the old dark and cruel gods, to a more evolved and sunlit stage. Perseus, son of Diana and Zeus, and protected by Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom and intelligence, comes to deliver Andromeda from the rock she is chained to (the rock symbolizes the Inconscient for the Rishis), and founds the religion of Athene, "... the Omnipotent / Made from His being to lead and discipline / The immortal spirit of man, till it attain / To order and magnificent mastery / Of all his outward world" (in the words of Sri Aurobindo). It is the force of progress pitted against the old priests of the old religions, symbolized by the cruel and ambitious Polydaon. Here Mother is scrutinizing an old problem"Always the same problem"that she must have encountered in many existences (Egypt included) and would encounter again eleven years later: the acceptance of the death she is forced into as the Supreme's Will, and then this "love of Life" she twice mentions here.
***
0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this experience left me with a true sense of satisfaction, of fullness: his work had been perfect and his response to the divine Force, to the Grace that came to him, was magnificent. It may be several people,3 it may be one particular person I dont know. It happened just last night.
You remember all the difficulties I encountered in those other visions at night. Well, this was very interesting because it was just the opposite: I was in a very complicated place full of obstacles and difficulties, but someone or something was always there when I arrivedeverything would get sorted out and I would go on my way. It all sorted itself out automatically the feeling of a power putting everything in order. And I remember when the mason arrived, just as I was facing that rather big obstacle, there was someone on my right (someone very official, wearing a dark coat) who thought (the contact was through thought rather than words), Oh! Shes always calling on the workers for help instead of. And I answered, The workers are more efficient and their goodwill (all that business of caste, you know, or of society or social position). The workers have simple hearts, I said, they are efficient in their work and have more goodwill than the people who think theyre so smart! It was funny. So this made two interesting experiences yesterday, one after the other.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Many, many things in my life have completely vanished I dont remember them any more, theyre gone from my consciousness everything that was useless. But there is a very clear vision of everything that was preparing the jiva for its action here. Even before coming and meeting Sri Aurobindo, I had realized everything needed to begin his yoga. It was all ready, classified, organized. magnificent! A superb mental construction which he demolished within five minutes!
How happy I was! Aah! It was really the reward for all my efforts.
Nothing! I knew nothing any more, understood nothing at allnot a single idea left in my head! Everything I had carefully built up over so many years (I was past thirty-five, I think), through all my experiences: conscious yoga, non-conscious yoga, life, experiences lived, classified and organized (oh, what a monument!) crash! It all came tumbling down. magnificent. I hadnt even asked him.
I had tried to get complete mental silenceyou know, what you just described,3 this kind of mental stillness he speaks of (when you have it, anything can pass through your head without causing the least ripple), but I had never succeeded. I had tried, but couldnt do it. I could be silent when I wanted to, but as soon as I stopped thinking solely of that, stopped wanting only that, the invasion resumed and the work had to be done all over again.
0 1962-09-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had some magnificent experiences when I read it the first time (two years ago, I believe). Wonderful, wonderful experiences! And since then, each time I read those lines, the same thing happensnot the same experience, but I come in contact with the same realm.
It will be an interesting thing to do.
0 1962-12-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This cleansing of the middle ground is the whole story of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother I had been dredging, dredging, dredging the mire of the subconscious. The supramental light was coming down before November,2 but afterwards all the mud arose and it stopped.3 Once again Sri Aurobindo verified, not individually this time but collectively, that if one pulls down too strong a light, the violated darkness below is made to moan. It is noteworthy that each time Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had some new experience marking a progress in the transformation, this progress automatically materialized in the consciousness of the disciples, without their even knowing anything about it, as a period of increased difficulties, sometimes even revolts or illnesses, as though everything were grating and grinding. But then, one begins to understand the mechanism. If a pygmy were abruptly subjected to the simple mental light of a cultivated man, we would probably see the poor fellow traumatized and driven mad by the subterranean revolutions within him. There is still too much jungle beneath the surface. The world is still full of jungle, thats the crux of the matter in a word; our mental colonization is a minuscule crust plastered over a barely dry quaternary. And the battle seems endless; one digs and digs, said the Rishis, and the deeper one digs, the more the bottom seems to recede: I have been digging, digging. Many autumns have I been toiling night and day, the dawns aging me. Age is diminishing the glory of our bodies. Thus, thousands of years ago, lamented Lopamudra, wife of Rishi Agastya, who was also seeking transformation. But Agastya doesnt lose heart, and his reply is magnificently characteristic of the conquerors the Rishis were: Not in vain is the labor which the gods protect. Let us relish all the contesting forces, let us conquer indeed even here, let us run this battle race of a hundred leadings.
(Rig-Veda I.179)
0 1963-03-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And he was blue. His aura was blue, with blue pulsationsnot radiating out or upward, but coagulated all around him. A blue like the sea when its very deep, very tranquil, but luminous. A magnificent blue.
Satprem's Tantric guru.
0 1963-04-22, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have just written a word to Mother to tell her that if I could, I would catch the first train home. When I arrived here, I got a horrible impression as never before, almost a panic. Everything was so terribly void and far away. Probably I have grown hypersensitive. If I were not afraid of yielding to that impression and if it werent rude to X, I would take noon train today. The new guest house is beyond description1: cement walls enclosed within cement walls; the plan is so wonderful that not a whiff of air can blow in here, nor can one see a single blade of grass. There are magnificent wrought-iron railings and openwork cement designs, but not even the most basic amenities. I absolutely refused to enter that sarcophagus, so they put me up in an adjoining house purchased by X and used as a garage. Its unspeakably filthy. It didnt even occur to them to offer me a mat. Finally they brought a bench for me to sleep on, which I refused. So much for the material conditions. I hope the body will get better. As soon as I can decently leave, I shall weigh anchor.
Signed: Satprem
0 1963-06-22, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a rather amusing experience while walking [during japa]. I was looking at peoples attitude (I mean those who think they lead a spiritual life, who think they have made a surrender), and how they are utterly vexed when things dont happen the way they want! (They dont always admit it, they dont always say it to themselves, but its a fact.) Then all at once, I saw a huge robothuge, magnificent, resplendent, covered with gold and jewelsa huge being but a robot. And all-powerfulall-powerful, capable of doing anything, anything at all; anything you could imagine, he could do it: you had only to press a button and he did it. And it was (laughing) as if the Lord were telling me, See, here is what I am to them!
I couldnt have recounted the experience just like that, but I made a note of it. He said, See, this is what I am to them. So I wrote it down.
0 1963-06-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its magnificent, that thing.
(silence)
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, your flowers [roses]. A magnificent color.
Then I have another photo of the Pope (Mother shows Time magazine).
0 1963-07-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its magnificent magnificent.
In French it would be poor.
0 1963-07-17, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A few days afterwards, as Satprem was referring to these "constructions," Mother interrupted him with this observation: "Last night, it wasn't that way! I spent more than an hour in all the possible theosophical groups, and they had magnificent buildings! They were rather old (!), but magnificent anyway, with gardens, halls, auditoriums magnificent places. But there was no sign of any new construction. It was solid with hundreds and hundreds of very busy people. I was there for more than two hours. Which means there are places where no construction is going onpeople live in what has already been built."
Mother is referring to her own answer in the form of help or action.
0 1963-09-28, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are some lines [in Savitri] that all of a sudden are so magnificent! They come with such power, but once written down, thats not it any more.
For example, you SEE that image of the mask of Death covering the Supremes face.
0 1963-10-05, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I kept going up, but all the ways I knew stopped short. First I had started up a very large staircase, a magnificent staircase of pink marble, that was the way I had to go upstairs, but just as I turned on the landingplop! impossible to get through. (But how is it? Impossible to get through, yet I went up just the same?..) And I find myself on another landing, I try again to go up from thereplop! stopped, impossible to get through. I try again and find myself on the third landing (but in fact I was on a higher floor, because I had already climbed two flights before I was stopped), I reach the third landing and find myself on a squarea perfect squareedged with a parapet of pink marble, but with reddish veins, very beautiful: very beautiful, it was chiseled magnificent. Then a door, a sort of bronze door behind me, which was closed. So I watched and saw the water rising and rising (it wasnt water, but it was liquid like water). And in front of me: an immensity. No limits. I seemed to be above all the other houses; there were no trees, no mountains, nothingan immensity, like a perfectly cloudless sky; and it wasnt white, but there was light in it. I was looking down and I saw the water rising and rising and risinglike the Flood. But it wasnt water.
It will come back until I understand.
0 1963-11-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, that Russian woman who went up into the stratosphere2 (she went around the earth several times, I dont know how many), anyway she came on a visit to India and gave a lecture somewhere about her journey. And she said (in a very lovely way, it seems, I dont know her exact words) that she saw the earth from up there and that it was so beautiful, so magnificent! And she made this reflection: From up there, there are no demarcations between countries, it makes so harmonious a unity that it seems unthinkable men should fight among themselves. Thats lovely.
Of course, as soon as you go high enough, theres a unity, a whole, which is so beautiful and without divisionsWhy do men fight?
0 1964-03-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there was nothing stunning or magnificent or astounding about it: nothing of the kind, nothing spectacular, nothing to give the feeling of a great experiencevery quiet, but very, very self-assured. Very quiet.
Once it was over, after the balcony,3 when I came back from the balcony, I said spontaneously, Very well, then, well have to wait another four years.4
0 1964-07-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive had very faint and momentary perceptions of what it could beit was beautiful. It was magnificent.
And the physical world is made to express Beauty; if it became harmonious instead of being the ignoble thing it is, if it became harmonious, it would have an exceptional vibratory quality! Its rather curious: the vital world is magnificent, the mental world has its splendors, the overmental world with all its gods (who are existing beings, I know them well) is truly very beautiful; but I tell you, since I had that Contact, I have found all that hollowhollow and lacking the essential.
And that essential thing, in its principle, is here, on earth.
0 1964-09-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, what a beautiful realization to achieve! A beautiful work can be done in that way. To be able to feel and SEE the thing to be said, and THATS what should be saidnot with the thought, This man is going to die, I shouldnt make him too unhappy, I should, all that is perfectly useless. Perfectly useless, and you put yourself in a kind of mental muddle; besides, it doesnt really help, it doesnt have the expected effect. While this inner vision to see why that being is ill and what that physical disorder expresses in the destiny of the soul of that man or this womanits magnificent, magnificent!
And ultimately, saying, You will be cured, is just as useless as saying, You wont be cured, both are equally incorrect from the point of view of the true Truth, and unsatisfactory for someone who has had a first contact with a life other than physical life.
--
And then then if you could speak the True Thing, the right word (word or sentence), have the thought which is the TRUE thought in every casewhat marvelous power you would have over your patient! It would be magnificent.
You understand, to know all the material, cellular questions with the full knowledge of all the details, and at the same time to have that visionif you could put both together, you would be a divine doctor. That would be marvelous.
0 1964-11-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first time it came was the day before yesterday; I was resting (after lunch I rest for half an hour), and at the end of my rest, suddenly I see myself I see myself standing near my bed, very tall, with a magnificent dress, and with someone dressed in white beside me. And I saw this just when I seemed about to faint: I was at once the person standing and the person on the bed who was watching, and at the same time I felt that thing flowing downward, flowing downward from the head the head empties completely. And the person standing smiled, while the person in the bed wondered, What! I am fainting but I am in my bed! There. And as it was time for me to wake up (that is, to return to the outer consciousness), I came back.
And I was left with this problem: who was standing there? Very tall, with a splendid dress, and then a person (who was a human person, but much shorter), a white person beside me, all white. And just when I become conscious of this, when I see this, the head empties completely of something, and the face of the person standing (who was me) smiles. And then, the other part of me that was lying down in my bed said, What! Its odd, I am fainting; how is it that I am fainting?I am in my bed!
0 1964-11-21, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Absolutely nonexistence. And I wondered, But where is that person I used to call me? Where is she, what is she doing?It had evaporated (Mother blows air between her fingers), absolutely evaporated. Oh, how I laughed, mon petit, how delighted I was! For half an hour I laughed within. I said to myself, Well, its a success! Then I looked at that poor body and thought, If this too could be changed into something else, it would be magnificent!
(Looking at Satprem out of the corner of her eyes) Its very goodits very good, its a sure sign that one has emerged from ones ego.
0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, thats just what I thought! There is in the Illustrated Weekly the history of those Eucharistic Congresses, and it seems a French lady was behind the origin of the first Congress (not so long ago, in the last century, I believe). And then (Mother smiles), theres a magnificent portrait of the Pope with a message he wrote specially for the Weeklys readers, in which he took great care not to use Christian words. He wishes them I dont know what, and (its written in English) a celestial grace. Then I saw (he tried to be as impersonal as possible), I saw that in spite of everything, the Christians greatest difficulty is that their happiness and fulfillment are in heaven.
Instead of a celestial grace, they read to me, or I heard, a terrestrial grace! When I heard that, something in me started vibrating: What! But this man has been converted! Then I had it repeated and heard it wasnt that but really a celestial grace.
0 1964-12-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Maybe nothing at all will come! I cant say. This morning This morning, I dont know, did you think of your visit here? Yes? I heard magnificent music magnificent! But it was music it took at least four hands to play it, or several instruments. If that came
Wait. The message (it isnt a message!) There is a photo of me in which I have my hands folded and I look happy (!), so I wrote underneath, Salut Toi, Vrit. Then I was asked to put it into English I said, Salute to the advent of the Truth.
--
Well see now if we find something. This morning, it was magnificent. But even if that were there, I wouldnt be able to play it: it would take almost an entire orchestra! And moreover, its no longer there. It lasted ten or fifteen minutes I dont even remember what it wasits gone.
Well try, well see.
0 1965-03-03, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This aphorism is magnificent. There is nothing to say, of course, it says everything.
***
0 1965-05-08, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When people write me long letters (what letters I receive! laments all the time: my health is going wrong, my work is going wrong, my relationships are going wronglaments all the time), and I always see, behind, that Consciousness, luminous, magnificent, marveloussun-filled, you knowexactly as if to say, Whenever will you be cured of that mania! The mania of the tragic and the lower.
Somewhere in the reason, one understandsit isnt that reason doesnt understand, but the reason has no power to make this matter obey.
0 1965-05-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(To Sujata:) But this is another matter: if you have a nice goodwilled doctor, very patient, very experienced in lenses and with a magnificent collection of them (!), if you go and see him and he takes some trouble, he will be able to help you. But a gentleman who, with all his so-called science, looks down on you and tells you, You have this and that and such-and-such a deformation
(Sujata:) I dont think theres any deformation, nothing, its inside rather, as if the canals werent very clean, so the sight cannot get through.
0 1965-06-18 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The second time, he was stronger than the first; and the third time, he was magnificent: a tall, superb being with that vibrant, radiant substance. And what a sprint! What leaps! It was fantastic. The last time, it was fantastic, as if he skimmed over the ground.
We speak very, very rarely. Sometimes he tells me something, but its with a special import and a special aimwe understand each other without words. There he didnt say anything, but I understood.
It was part of a very long activity, but that thing struck me very much because it was like the answer [to what I said some time ago]. He said, Yes, its true, you are right, it is like that. And that change in his body over the three times: the first time he was as I knew him, but younger and more agile; the second time, he was already stronger; and the third time, he was magnificent.
I wanted to tell you this.
0 1965-06-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then in the north (thats where there is the most space, naturally), in the direction of Madras: the cultural zone. There, an auditorium (the auditorium I have dreamed of doing for a long time: plans had already been made), an auditorium with a concert hall and grand organ, the best you find now (it seems they make wonderful things). I want a grand organ. There will also be a theater stage with wings (a revolving stage and so on, the very best you can find). So, here, a magnificent auditorium. There will be a library, there will be a museum, exhibition rooms (not in the auditorium: in addition to it), there will be a cinema studio, a cinema school; there will be a gliding club: already we almost have the governments authorization and promiseanyway its already at a very advanced stage. Then, towards Madras, where there is plenty of space, a stadium. And a stadium that we want to be the most modern and the most perfect possible, with the idea (an idea Ive had for a long time) that twelve years (the Olympic games take place every four years), twelve years after 1968 (in 1968, the Olympiad will be held in Mexico), twelve years after, we would have the Olympic games in India, here. So we need space.
In between these sections, there are intermediary zones, four intermediary zones: one for public services (the post, etc.), a zone for transportation (railway station and, if possible, an airfield), a zone for food supplies (that one would be towards the Lake and would include dairies, poultry farms, orchards, cultivation, etc.it would spread to incorporate the Lake estate3: what they wanted to do separately will be done as a part of Auroville); then a fourth zone (Ive said public services, transportation, food supplies), and the fourth zone: shops. We dont need many shops, but a few are necessary to get what we dont produce. These zones are like quarters, you see.
--
Outside the walls, in my first formation there was on one side the industrial estate, and on the other the fields, farms, etc., that were to supply the city. But that really meant a countrynot a large one, but a country. Now its much more limited; its not my symbol anymore, there are only four zones, and no walls. And there will be money. The other formation, you know, was really an ideal attempt. But I reckoned it would take many years before we began: at the time, I expected to begin only after twenty-four years. But now, its much more modest, its a transitional experiment, and its much more realizable the other plan was I nearly had the land: it was at the time of Sir Akbar (you remember?) of Hyderabad. They sent me photographs of Hyderabad State, and there, among those photos, I found my ideal place: an isolated hill (a rather large hill), below which a big river flowed. I told him, I would like to have this place, and he arranged the whole thing (it was all arranged, they had sent me the plans, and the papers and everything declaring it to be donated to the Ashram). But they set a condition (the area was a virgin forest and uncultivated lands): they would give the place on condition, naturally, that we would cultivate it, but the products had to be used on the spot; for instance the crops, the timber had to be used on the spot, not transported away, we werent allowed to take anything out of Hyderabad State. There was even N. who was a sailor and who said he would obtain a sailing boat from England to sail up the river, collect all the products and bring them back to us hereeverything was very well seen to! Then they set that condition. I asked if it was possible to remove it, then Sir Akbar died and it was over, the whole thing fell through. Afterwards I was glad it hadnt worked out because, with Sri Aurobindo gone, I could no longer leave Pondicherry I could leave Pondicherry only with him (provided he agreed to go and live in his ideal city). At the time I told Antonin Raymond, who built Golconde, about the project, and he was enthusiastic, he told me, As soon as you start building, call me and I will come. I showed him my plan (it was on the model of my symbol, enlarged), and he was quite enthusiastic, he found it magnificent.
It fell through. But the other project, which is just a small intermediate attempt, we can try.
--
The Americans are ruining themselves. There is a queer phenomenon: money seems to have been swallowed up somewhere, to have vanished from circulationin America the dollars value is dropping, they are moaning. Here, people are ruined. Theres an industrialist who had a magnificent industry (it seems it was marvelous), and with that income tax the government has succeeded in ruining himhe closed down. Then he partially reopened and filled in new papers for his new company and new industries; now, he had a dog, he had given a name to his dog, and he signed the papers with the dogs name! And he put the dogs photograph. (Laughing) So, naturally, he got letters asking him if he thought people were idiots. He answered, No, only a dog would accept your conditions. Not bad, eh?
Yes, they think people are idiots.
0 1965-06-30, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, something curious happened two nights ago. I was with Sri Aurobindo, it was in a room oh, what a room. Well, it was magnificent, very high-ceilinged, very large, and without anything at all in it; but it was a very large room, and there were kinds of French windows opening out on a balcony or a terrace (it overlooked a town), and those windows, from top to bottom, were a single pane of glass: it gave a magnificent light. He was there. Then for some reason or other I felt he wanted a cup of tea. So I set out in search of his cup of tea, and went through rooms, halls, even construction sites (!), looking for a cup of tea for him; and they were all large roomsall the rooms were large but contrary to the one in which he was, which was so clear, the others were dark. And there was a large hall which was like a dining hall, with a table and everything needed to serve meals, but dark and also there wasnt anything left. There were people (people I know) who said, Ah, (in a sorry tone) its all finished they had finished everything, they had eaten up everything! (Mother laughs) They had swallowed up everything, there was nothing left. Finally, I found someone in a sort of kitchen down below (someone whom I wont name, I know her), who told me, Yes, yes, Ill bring you that right now, right now! And she brought me a pot, saying, Here. I went off with my pot, then I felt somewhat suspicious, and once outside, I lifted the lid and the first thing I see is earth! Red earth. I scratched off the red earth with my fingers, and underneath (laughing), there was a slice of bread!
Anyway, there was a lot like that, I had all sorts of adventures. Then I looked to see if Sri Aurobindo really needed his cup of tea because it seemed so difficult! I saw him, there was that wonderful French window, so clear, and then as if recessed into the wall (I dont know) a sort of platform couch, a place to sit, but it was very pretty, and he was seated or half-reclining on it, and very comfortable. And there was a boy (or a boy had come to ask him something), and there were kinds of stairs leading up to the couch; the boy was reclining on the stairs, asking questions, and Sri Aurobindo was explaining something. I recognized the boy. I thought, Ah, (laughing) hes no longer thinking of his cup of tea, fortunately! Then I woke up. But I thought, If this is how he sees us having gobbled up everything, you understand.
0 1965-10-16, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I always saw him with a perfectly peaceful and smiling face, and above all, the dominant expression was compassion. That was what predominated in his appearance. An expression of compassion so so peaceful, so tranquil, oh, magnificent.
That bust was made by a German woman (Else Fraenkel) and installed in Sri Aurobindo's room in 1958 at the disciples' instance. (One wonders why a bust, with golden illumination, was needed in this room.)
0 1965-11-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its only when you have touched, seen somehow or other, and had a contact with the true Light that you can discern the Vital, and you realize that its absolutely like lighting effects on a theater stage: theatrical effects, an artificial light. But otherwise people are bedazzledits dazzling, its magnificent, and so they are misled. Its only when you have SEEN and had a contact with the Truth Ah! then it makes you smile.
Its showing off, but you have to know the truth in order to discern the showing off.
0 1965-12-15, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this king1 is a remarkable man. He has a remarkable history, but it would be too long to tell. I was in contact with him before (gesture of mental communication), and I had said, I wont speak and I didnt speak. When he came he looked at me, then suddenly (he was standing), he remained standing in meditation, he closed his eyes and remained motionless. And then he asked me his questions mentally I received them. And the answer came from up above, magnificent. An answer with a golden, superb force, and a power telling him that he had a great role to play and had to be strong and so on.
A very, very intelligent man.
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And if you look at it from the wrong side, it1 is a tension, its like something that doesnt leave you a seconds respite. And its true, it doesnt allow you to fall asleep one minute; because in the ordinary consciousness, in the general ordinary life, rest means tamas. Rest means falling back into Inertia. So then, instead of a rest that benefits you, its a rest that stupefies you and then you have to make effort once more to recapture the consciousness you have lost. Thats how the vast majority of people sleep. But now, the lesson is different: when I lie down to rest my body and work without moving (work with an activity that doesnt force the body to move), as soon as there is the slightest not exactly fall, but the slightest descent towards the Inconscient, something in the body immediately gives a startinstantly. It has been like that for a long time, two years, but now its instantaneous, and it very rarely happens there is true rest, which is an expansion and immensity of the being in full Light. Its magnificent.
But during the day, there are perpetual lessons, all the time, all the time, for everything, all the time. The lesson is least pronounced when I have to write something or see people; but there, too, the exact quality of peoples vibration (not their permanent vibration but the vibration in them at that minute), the quality of their consciousness is immediately made known to me through certain reactions in my body (gesture on different levels of the body). The nerves began only a few months ago their work of transfer of power. (What I call transfer of power is that instead of the nerves being moved by and obeying complex and organized forces of Nature, of the character, of the material consciousness in the body, they attune themselves to and directly obey the divine Will.) Its the transfer from one to the other thats difficult: there is the entire old habit, and then the new habit to be formed. It was a rather difficult moment. But now there remain enough old vibrations to be able to gauge exactly (and this has nothing to do with thought, it isnt expressed in words or thoughts or anything like all that: just vibrations), to know exactly the state people near me are in. From that point of view the lesson is going on, its very interesting. And whats wonderful is that more often than not the most receptive vibration, conforming the most to what it should be, is in children, but the very small ones, the tiny tots. I see lots of people, but now I understand why: I learn enormously that way, through that contact (with people whom I dont know, sometimes whom I see for the first time, or whom I havent seen for years). Its very interesting.
0 1966-04-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its quite symbolic, besides: the storm of revolt, of course, the revolt OF THE EARTH against the principle of the Sannyasin. Quite symbolic. And its a magnificent image in the sense that there is great majesty in the appearance.
The vision of the Sannyasin with his back to a bronze door. See Agenda I, November 20, 1958 and November 22, 1958.
0 1966-10-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I saw those curves, I began seeing them. I know them, I have seen them since the beginning of the month and they are growing more precise. And they are quite prettyvery pretty, very elegant. And this one [the new one] is like a magnificent spout of watermuch lovelier than that! And it keeps rising, it doesnt fall back, but it sprays a golden rain on the earth.
Its good.
0 1966-10-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Not last night but the night before, I spent a long time, almost two hours of our time here, with Sri Aurobindo. I have told you he has something that translates as an abode (its magnificent, magnificent!) in the subtle physical. Its always immense, so clear, well-defined, yet fully open. And I get a sense of (Mother takes a deep breath) phew! open, luminousalways, in every case. He is there maybe not quite as he was here (but it makes no difference to me because the change has been very progressive: I have followed Sri Aurobindo almost from day to day, step by step), and he is perhaps rather taller, with perhaps a form that has greater perfection, I dont know, but to me, his expression (Mother smiles with her eyes closed) his expression is inexpressible. I spent a very, very long time with him. In those huge rooms (they are limitless, you know, you feel you could go indefinitely from one room to another, from one place to another), he was directing It was in a part of the place with a certain number of rooms (four, five or six, I dont know), large rooms where he was directing a pottery, just imagine! But it wasnt like here. There were objects made of clay. There wasnt any process of firing, painting or any like that (it wasnt like here), but there were shapes which looked like pottery shapes, and they had a power (Mother gestures downward) to manifest. And then, there was everything: animals, plants, people, things, everything, with all possible colors. I went from one to another, looking, explaining. I had spent a long time with him, and I knew exactly why and how it was done, and afterwards I went and studied the work and observed. Then the rooms were arranged, the things were put in their place: that was as if to show the result. And things charming in their simplicity, yet they contained an extraordinary power of manifestation! But they had a deep meaning. I took an object made of a very dark reddish brown earth, and it was badly put together, that is, the shape wasnt right and I showed it to the pottery foreman (there was a pottery foreman in each room, looking after the work). I showed it to him, and told him (it was fairly big at the bottom, with a small piece at the top [Mother draws a sort of vase with a neck], anyway it wasnt well done), I explained it to him, saying, You understand, its not properly balanced. And while I was holding it in my fingersit broke. Then he said to me, Oh, I am going to mend it. I answered, If you like, but its not as it should be. Of course, we say it with our words, but there, it had a very precise MEANING. Then, there were kinds of big openings between one room and another (they werent rooms, they were huge halls), and one went on to the place where they made fish! But the fish werent fish (!), they had another meaning. And there were fish this big, made of clay, colored and gleaming, magnificent: one was blue-green, another yellowish white, but pretty, so pretty! And they were kept on the floor as if it were water: the fish were kept on the floor, right in the way. So I thought, Thats not very convenient! (Mother laughs) And said like this, it all looks like childishness, but there it had a very deep meaning, very deep.
It was very interesting.
--
Also, since the day I saw those two curves for you, they have been asserting themselves, establishing themselves, and the soaring towards the future is magnificentvery strong, very powerful, and at the same time very luminous (luminous, it has always been so: luminous, even crystalline on the intellectual level), but now it has great force. A great force.
I felt like drawing the curve, but it should be pretty, well done, and I dont have the time but they are there (how can I put it?) in the invisible. The one that climbs, climbs magnificently, like a jet of light.
Voil.
0 1966-11-15, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Not last night but the night before, I again spent the whole night with Sri Aurobindo, at least four hours in that subtle physical world. He has quite a beautiful abode there! Its magnificent magnificent. And its not fluid: its very concrete, yet at the same time not fixed! It has a suppleness that adapts to all necessities. Its really interesting.
But its still a phase of preparation and adaptation: its not final. Its not final: there are experiments, trials. Its extremely supple, its in a phase of formation, as though it were preparing for a manifestation, or rather, learning to be what it must be. Its very interesting.
0 1967-03-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The roses have opened now (Mother holds out a rose to the disciple), and isnt this one a magnificent colour! Beautiful, isnt it?
This morning I had an amusing experience with roses. There was a closed budbig, hardbig and hard, red. I took it, looked at it, then my fingers ran over the flower like that, and (gesture showing the flower opening up), one petal after another and another and yet anotherbefore my eyes. And it was completely hard and closed. I took it and said, Its a pity. I was about to put it back in water so it would open up, and I looked It was so pretty, you know, opening up, happy, as if saying to me, Oh, how happy I am!
--
Tell me, it would be lovely if one could take peoples consciousness as one takes a flower, and then, because one looks at it and holds it and the vibration is that Vibration of supreme Love, it opens up, like that, becomes organized, and grows magnificent.
It would be fine if one could do that(laughing) perhaps one can!
0 1967-04-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And precisely, there is a growing conviction that a perfection realized in Matter is a perfection that is FAR MORE perfect than anywhere else. Thats what gives it a stability it has nowhere else. If there is something somewhere (when there is a great offering and then a joyous self-giving, joyous surrender), if there is something that comes in with even the slightest self-interest for instance, a suffering in some little corner (a pain or disorder), which hopes for or wishes or expects some improvement then it gets caught like this (same gesture of nipping and wringing its neck) and its told, Oh, insincere one! Give yourself unconditionally. Then its magnificent.
Its very interesting.
0 1967-05-10, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After a silence) Listen, Ill give you an example. Some two years ago, I had a vision about U.s son. She had brought him to me (he was almost one) and I had just seen him there (in the music room). He struck me as someone I knew very well, but I didnt know who. Then, that same day in the afternoon, I had a vision. A vision of ancient Egypt, that is I was someone, the high priestess or I dont know who. (Because you dont say to yourself, I am so and so! The identification is total, there is no objectivity, so I dont know.) I was inside a wonderful monument, immense, so high! But it was completely bare: there was nothing, except for one place where there were magnificent paintings. Thats where I recognized the paintings of ancient Egypt. I was coming out of my apartments and entering a sort of great hall: there was a kind of gutter to collect water (on the ground) running round the walls. And I saw the child (who was half-naked) playing in it. I was very shocked, I said, What! This is disgusting! (But the feelings, ideas and so on were all expressed in French in my consciousness.) The tutor came, I had him sent for. I scolded him. I heard soundswell, I dont know what I said, I dont remember those sounds. I heard the sounds I uttered, I knew what they meant, but the expression was in French, and I didnt retain a memory of the sounds. I spoke to him, telling him, What! You let this child play in that? And he answered me (I woke up with his answer), saying (I didnt hear the first words, but to my thought it was), Such is the will of Amenhotep. I heard Amenhotep, I remembered it. So I knew the child was Amenhotep.1
Therefore, I know I spoke; I spoke in a language, but I dont remember more. I remembered Amenhotep because I know the word Amenhotep in my active consciousness. But otherwise, the other sounds didnt stay. I dont have the memory of the sounds.
0 1967-05-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I saw a series of roses, this big (about 25 cm), coming one after the other magnificent! All kinds of colours, which certainly had a significance: they would come and present themselves, as if giving a little bow, and then go away, and then another arrivedroses this big. Because I had complained just before!2 It was just in front of you (gesture on the heart level), magnificent roses of a perfect shape, and all kinds of colours.
Basically, it (meditation) is my lazy moment. When I stay like that, it immediately becomes very pleasant, and theres always something pretty to be seen. Its my lazy moment.
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two or three days ago (this is part of the same field), I saw a baby girl who was born in America just while we were having the meditation here of 4.5.67. That child was born in America (of an Indian mother and an Indian father; the father was here, the mother there), and they brought her to me: a baby no bigger than this, microscopic! Her eyes were closed, a tiny thing: a little over two months old. The child was sleeping in her mothers arms, carried by her mother, her eyes closed, naturally. Andplop!they put her in my lap without warninga tiny little thing like this. At first I stayed put, giving her time to adapt to the new vibration. She began stirring as if something was waking her up, probably the difference in the atmosphere. Then (gesture of descent) I immediately put the consciousness: the Consciousness, the Presence. And the child opened her two arms like this (gesture like a Christ with arms outstretched), she opened her eyes and lookedsuch eyes! magnificent with light, with consciousness, it was magnificent! It lasted maybe a minute, not more, not even that long. Then she seemed to give a start, so I withdrew the Force because (laughing) I became wary. And she started wriggling and But that look and that gesturea gesture of (same gesture like a Christ), with such aspiration, such light! It was magnificent.
I dont know who is there? Well know one day. It gave me the impression of being a force or a principle rather than a person; it didnt have that that cramped character of personality.
The eyes were magnificent, with such consciousness! With the joy of conscious aspirationit was magnificent. Then, afterwards, there was almost a sort of convulsion (it was too much, of course), so I withdrew the Force.
The matter (of the child) was of good quality, not heavy, only not very strong, not strong enough to bear that.
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, because he says light music, but Ive heard light music that I found exceedingly lovely! Even some pieces of film music that were magnificent, and on the other hand some classical pieces, oh, how boring! So
and the spiritual consciousness alone can judge there.
0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, harmony in the form, and the legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty. From a higher viewpoint, it wasnt of a very superior quality, but from a vital viewpoint, it was extremely powerful, and thats what gave them so much power to spread, to appropriate, to seize, to dominate. But what they did is very beautifulall their art is magnificent, magnificent! It was a flowering of beauty. Then there were othersit all came one after the other. And every religion came as a stage in the development and the relationship with the Divine, to lead the consciousness towards a union which is a totality and not a removal from a whole reality so as to obtain another. The need for totality, completeness, is what caused those religions to come like that, one after another.
Seen in that light, its very interesting.
0 1967-08-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards, there was a slight flagging, because there came I cant say the memory (it wasnt a memory), but all the complaints: the same thing as at the balcony on the darshan day the human attitude towards the Supreme is only to complain and demand complain and demand and complain Thats all. It came back. Before, the whole vision was there like that (gesture from high to low), it was magnificent, magnificent: each and every thing, the entire human history, the entire history of intellectual and material evolution, everything, everything like that, everything in its place. It was really fine. And afterwards, there came that wave of complaints.
It was as if the body were asking, What attitude (thats what provided the link), What attitude should I have? What should I do? Because there was the vision of life, death, of all occurences, everything was there. The full knowledge of everything. Oh, all the stories of death were very, very interesting, and how mankind has tried to understand, and how there have been all kinds of solutions (that is, partial attitudes), and all of it, all of it was part of the Whole.
--
And as I said, the body asked oh, it had such a wonderful moment! A moment, a few minutes, so wonderful, when it KNEW how it ought to be. It was magnificent. Then the experience came.1 Till then, it was inexpressible: it was lived, it was a living consciousness, but the mind had become very quiet, so it was inexpressible. Then there came back that great complaint from the world, and the experience started being expressed (Mother looks for a note). It started being expressed, because it isnt just the anonymous demand of thousands of people: its virtually a shower of letters, questions, demands from people who believe who believe they are part of the Work, of the Action, who believe they have given themselves, and all their questionsand such futile questionswhich to them are of crucial importance, but which are so puerile, stupid, unimportant: how to start a business, the opening date, a name for a house, a message for a meeting. And what goings-on, its a deluge from every side. So it all was seen in the new attitudenot new, the consciousness was fully there, there had been a whole tendency to increasingly adopt that attitude, but now it was KNOWN, fully known: what one must be, how one must be. So I came down abruptly to reply to all that.
For some time there had been lots of questions from people I refused, quite simply refused to answer; I would reply with some jest or other: I am not a fortune-teller, or Its none of my concern, none of my business. Jests, and sometimes I would say, Ah, let them leave me alone, thats childishness. And people who think they are very dedicated, for instance a man who has already given at least ten lakhs of rupees (he knows it only too well, but still he did give them!) and who wants to work to bring more but then, his questions So instead of replying with a quip (that was my last experience: its like dictated answers, but they are quips), this morning something came in English (Mother reads her note):
0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this man (I saw his photo, he has a magnificent head) says, I live in Gods presence. Thats what he says, and I dont think he makes any fussbesides he doesnt have the time because he goes to bed after midnight and gets up at five every day, starts work at five-thirty and spends the whole day working, that is, seeing people and people and more people (when that was read out to me, I thought, And I complain!). Its admirable. He did some studies, but he isnt a philosopher, he doesnt have any theories: he seems to have been born like that, with healing hands. He probably gets rid of infections by dehydrating them, so he cures all the diseases of that nature. And they did (poor man, they must have made his life impossible!), they did encephalograms, cardiograms and so on, and they noticed that just when he lays his hands (for a few seconds, two or three minutes at the most), at that moment his heartbeats suddenly go up from sixty to eighty, then fall back to normal. And he doesnt seem to be making any fuss, unlike that German I told you aboutnothing at all, very simple, very nice.
I liked that story.
0 1967-10-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was there (gesture between Mother and the disciple), like that, one of those kinds of lamp stands, like the ones they make with snakes, you know but it was high, this high (gesture about one metre fifty centimetres). It was in copper, with inlays, designs in it, and at the top was a ball that contained all the lights, as if each snakes head was a lightit was magnificent! Really magnificent. And it was burning. There were Power flowers (red hibiscus) forming garlands around the base. And then, someone said, Isnt this more beautiful than material reality?
And that was the artistic constructionmental, artisticwhich was more beautiful than reality. Thats it, the guiding idea of the person in question. Thats it you see; Isnt this more beautiful than real nature? There.
It was very beautiful, a beautiful thing, but its the mental fossilization of the Thing. It was very interestingunexpected, I didnt expect to see that: a shape of a coiled snake, in bronze, with bronze inlays, but magnificently wrought! And the burning lamps, the burning light superior to reality: Isnt this superior?
And the symbol of it was so clear to me that I was astounded.
0 1967-12-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know that I always keep a Transformation flower here (Mother points to her buttonhole); I keep it the whole morning, and when I take off my dress in the afternoon for a bath, the flower is naturally in a pitiful conditionso I used to throw it away. But one day, S. had sent me roses in a glass of water, and it was on my dressing table; I took the Transformation flower and put it in the water, and when I came back from my bath it was magnificent, far fresher and stronger than when I had received it! I kept it the whole night, kept it the next day, it was unchanged! It remained just as fresh. Then the next day, I sent him the flower back in his glass, and when he came to see me in the afternoon, I told him the story. I said, Did you get the Transformation flower? This is what happened. The next day, he wrote me this:
Does the transformation not demand a very high degree of aspiration, surrender and receptivity?
--
And its interesting because those two attitudes can be almost simultaneous, but they are From the standpoint of vibration, of vibratory sensation, they are two opposites that combine with each other: receptivity like this (gesture), towards the Consciousness, the Force, Power, Light, all, that comes from above, and naturally Love (but about Love I will speak later). And it comes (gesture of descent), it comes down and everything, everything is ab-so-lute-ly passive and receptive (gesture of vertical opening): it absorbs and absorbs and absorbs, like that, totally given, in the state of a sponge that absorbs and absorbs and absorbs. At the same time, there is the relationship with the world (horizontal gesture) and the Power coming through and working, with the sense of the Force, the Action, the Thing imposing itself. Its magnificent. And in the SAME vibratory radiance of of That. Always the same all-powerful Perfection being absorbed and acting (gesture of flowing through Mother over the world in a perpetual movement).
That seems to be the secret of all-powerfulness. There is no need at all to go through mental knowledge that diminishes, shrinks, hardens.
0 1968-10-05, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, the other day, on Durgas day,2 I went over there [to the music room where Mother sees people]. I told you last year that she had come and made her surrender. This time, I went there (it was the first time Id come out); as soon as I entered the room, I felt there was something, an impending attack. So I sat down, kept very still, and called the Lord as usual so He would fill the room with his light. And it was She who came in a golden lighta glory of adoration and consecration! She stood there (immense gesture). It was magnificent! magnificent. And the whole morning was very good. Then, in the afternoon, things went wrong again.
Couldnt you strike at these people a little?
0 1968-10-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I constantly see. At night (especially at night), I see moving forms that look like You know how J. is dressed,3 or Dr. Agarwal4 Oh, speaking of Dr. Agarwal, when Pralhad [his son] died, his mother was very anxious to know if he had come to me. I told her, Nothing, I havent seen anything. So I dont know if its as a result of that or if I thought about it, but two days ago (the day before yesterday), I went for a stroll in a forest of the vital! Mon petit, it was beautiful! Oh, a magnificent forest, and so well maintained, so clean, oh, it was lovely! A really magnificent place, really magnificent. Then, I suddenly see a youngish Pralhad there, a mere lad, coming towards me and telling me (in a despairing tone), I dont know, cant find the religion. I told him, You dont need a religion! He said, Oh, theres another man here who cant find a religion. And that was Benjamin!5 I said, Hes an idiot! He doesnt need to find a religion! There you are: Benjamin lost in a mar-vel-ous forest (its beautiful, you know!) because he cant find a religion! And Pralhad looking for a religion! So I wanted to send a line to his mother to tell her, Be consoled, Pralhad is in a very beautiful place!
He looked very well. He was very well dressed.
--
Oh, what a beautiful forest, mon petit! They must be the forests of Its between the subtle physical and the vital, as if joining the two the subtle physical to the vital. Trees as I have only seen in Japan; trees rising straight like columns, planted in rows magnificent! With light-colored grass, very light, pale green. Grass on the ground, airlots of airand at the same time nothing but trees: a forest. But not thick, not crowded. Well then, in that magnificent place, instead of rejoicing, the fool (Mother takes a wailing tone): I dont know what happened to me, I have no religion! (Mother laughs) So I told him, But you should rejoice! No religionyou are in a place much more beautiful than all religions! (In a whining tone)I dont understand.
(silence)
--
(After a silence) All these vital worlds are worlds of suggestion. You are in one wave of suggestion: everything is frightening; you are in another wave of suggestion: everything is charming; you are in another wave: everything is magnificent. Like that. Its odd. Like worlds that exist through suggestion. And its between the subtle physical and the material vital, like this (Mother presses her right hand against her left one), as close as can be.
I have an idea that there also exists a world of medicines which is like that! Because the same medicine, given at different times for the same troubles, produces different results the same medicine. So if, from within, you make a resolve, if you say, You will agree with the medicine (to find out its precise action), then a sort of mischievous little spirit comes and says (in a mocking tone), Whats wrong with you?! But the medicine knows nothing about it, because depending on the case Ah, let me tell you, its a comedy!
0 1968-10-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I knew a painter like that; he was a great painter: Gustave Moreau. But there are few paintings by him, because he was a man who kept doing his paintings over again. He would progress, his vision would progress, and his painting would always appear to him to be outside, unfinishedit couldnt be finished! So its only when he died that they could get his paintings there were many of them, and they were magnificent. Only, each of them was a movement towards something.
Have you seen his house? He left his house with all that was inside, they made it into a museum.
0 1968-11-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I said goodbye to her, she had magnificent eyes. She looked at me luminous eyes, with such force, such beauty.
She knew she wouldnt see you again.
Oh, those magnificent eyes
She knew she wouldnt see you again.
0 1969-01-04, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, in America, there are two or three editions of Sri Aurobindos complete works: one edition for libraries, one for America, and one for India. Theyve sent me samples theyre magnificent! The edition for America is a marvel: big like this, with a marvelous paper
Its a pity we arent doing the French.
0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the vital in full revolt against the mind, but its magnificent! They reject the whole mind. Its interesting, very interesting!
You get the feeling that if they pushed a little farther on (gesture of piercing above), they would catch something.
--
This (pointing to her note), mon petit, it was magnificent; it means this Consciousness is working and working working and teachingnight and day its teaching the body From that point of view, its marvelous. And it goes about like that (gesture everywhere). So naturally, some people imagine that all their fancies are the result of this Consciousness.
One day, I received someone here (it was R., in fact), and the body asked this Consciousness, like that, it asked, How, how to make sure there is no mixture of all the lower movements with this light? Then (I was sitting here), there came down a sort of column wide like this (gesture of about five feet), here (gesture in front of Mother), like a column of light. But it came down IN THE ROOM, mon petit! It wasnt elsewhere it was here. To such a point that I saw it with my own eyes. A light indefinable, dazzling, but I dont know, so tranquil! I cant say, I dont know how to explain so steady, so tranquil. Dazzling. And without any vibrations. And its color indefinable, in the sense that it was neither white nor golden nor It was as if EVERYTHING were there. It cant be described. Wonderful. Then this Consciousness took my consciousness and went like this (gesture in a circle starting from Mother on her left, going through the column of light, then returning to Mother on her right). I felt it [the column of light, when Mothers consciousness went through it]. I felt it, but I didnt see anything [i.e., no shadow]. I didnt see anything, I only saw a slight movement, but It was like a slight movement, but it was the same light.2 Then it went through the column, and came back [into Mother]. And then it took R.s consciousness (same gesture in a circle starting from R., taking her consciousness through the column, and coming back to R.), it went through, and there was an outline [while crossing through the column of light], an outline, and in the place of the head, it was blue, it had become blue [i.e., a shadow in the light]. That was R.s effect: an outline. Then it said something to me (wordlessly, but it was instantly translated into words, in English):
0 1969-05-10, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The mind has imagined all kinds of magnificent reasons, it builds constructions that seems like childishness. Why?
Theres the whole side of Buddhism, nihilism and so on, according to which (we can give a translation for children) the Supreme Lord made a mistake! (Mother laughs) He blundered, so And then well help Him get out of his blunder!
0 1969-06-11, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Raymond is a great architect. When they came here1 and built Golconde, I asked Raymond to prepare the plan for the first Auroville I had conceived (that was when Sri Aurobindo was still alive), and it was magnificent! He didnt leave it here.
But it was an Auroville with, at the center, Sri Aurobindos house (gesture on a hilltop). Sri Aurobindo was alive, so we had put him at the center.
0 1969-06-28, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its magnificent, mon petit!
So let us look at the Great Sense.
--
Its magnificent, its really excellent. Only that word
(silence)
--
Its magnificent, mon petit, you know, its inspired. Theres only the question of that single word. For such a long time Ive been there, racking my brains to find a word!
ONE, with a capital O, when its written, its fine, but when its heard
0 1969-07-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A number of things would have the power to be visible or invisible: to appear just when theres a reason for them to, and to disappear when they no longer need to be there. It opens up magnificent horizons!
Yes, but its already like that in the subtle physical.
0 1969-12-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Indias languages, they have this OM which is a marvel. You know what they say? That OM is the totality of the sounds of the creation perceived by the Supreme; He hears OM as a call to Himas an idea, its magnificent! As a symbol, as a Only
And as a power! Not only as a symbol, but as a power.
0 1970-01-10, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was to you that Baron [Pondicherrys last French governor] said he wanted to be buried in my woolen blankets! (laughter) Yes, it seems he was cold. S. looks after him, and she wrote me that he would wake up shivering; she asked me, Could you send him a blanket or two? It seems there was in the meditation hall one of those big wooden trunks full of magnificent woolen blankets! So I sent him two. I only said, Provided he doesnt carry them away with him because hes quite capable of taking them! (laughter) Then he told F. he was, oh, so happy: Ill ask to be buried in these blankets! (laughter)
***
0 1970-01-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What will happen under there? (Mother points to the underground part of the shell) All that is mental. When you have a big dark underground, whats going to happen in there? Whats going to happen?Lots of unspeakable things. Humanity isnt transformed, we shouldnt forget that! And all kinds of people will come. Even if there is a control at the entrance, you cant stop people from going to see, and what will happen under there? That was my first objection when R. told me, We could build magnificent underground passages! I asked him, Thats very fine, but who will control what will take place under there?
I thought the descent was your idea?
0 1970-01-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its very good, very good its magnificent. That really has a dynamic force.
***
0 1970-02-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the best part is that theres no smuggling! The thing is that ten years ago, he bought from the Nizam of Hyderabad a magnificent palace which was used by the Begum, a very beautiful palace. It aroused jealousies and they harassed him out of it, anyway a loathsome affair. So they heaped all kinds of accusations on him, and for ten years they prevented him from returning to India.
Oh! They told me to beware, as if they were doing me a great favor!
0 1970-04-29, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a magnificent thing.
The Lord asked him to come and meet Him, and he got uphe got up, feeling it was the Lord calling him; he left his room and went to bang his head on the rocks the Lord led him. Its pretty, no?
0 1970-05-20, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The atmosphere is very good. I was precisely like this (gesture inwardly turned to Satprem, to know whether he follows the movement), it was magnificent. Your atmosphere is very good. Its very good. And mentally very peaceful, almost completely silent.
Very pleasant! (Mother laughs)
0 1970-06-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is very good. Its magnificent!
The Asuric Maya, is it the whole present Falsehood?
0 1970-10-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its magnificent, mon petit, magnificent!
Its just the thing needed.
0 1970-10-10, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its magnificent! magnificent.
(at the end of the chapter, Satprem quotes Sri Aurobindos Hour of God)
0 1970-10-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
magnificent, its magnificent!
(silence)
--
You know, its magnificent.
Oh, Mother, I have nothing to do with it, I assure you!
0 1970-11-14, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its calm (vast gesture), luminousits magnificent, you know!
(silence)
0 1970-11-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mon petit, its magnificent, magnificent! (Mother has tears in her eyes).
Oh, Mother, I have nothing to do with it, you know, nothing at all.
0 1970-12-02, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its magnificent!
Is T. translating it into English?
0 1971-02-06, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It creates a magnificent atmosphere, magnificent.
Will we finish the reading before the 21st?
0 1971-12-18, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I saw it, I dont remember what day (recently), all of a sudden, for several hours there was a contact with the Divine Power and Visionit was it was magnificent, things became extraordinary; then, immediately the next day, all the news changed. Really extraordinary. What actually took place isnt what I saw, for it was seen years ahead. But that doesnt matter, its all right.
(Sujata comes in late. Mother hands her the handkerchiefs, laughing)
0 1971-12-25, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its effect on us, the sensation it produces in us depends exclusively on the position of our consciousness. There is the consciousness of being in oneself or being in the whole (being in the whole is already a bit better than being egoistically oneself, and it has its advantages and disadvantages, but its not the truth), the Truth is the Divine as totalitytotality in time and totality in space. And that consciousness, the body CAN have, because this body had it (momentarily, for a few moments), and while it has it, everything is so you see, its not joy, its not pleasure, its not happiness, nothing of all that a sort of blissful peace and luminous and creative. magnificent. Only, it comes and goes, comes and goes. And when you go out of it, you have the impression of falling into a horrible pitour ordinary consciousness (I mean the ordinary human consciousness) is a horrible pit. But we also know why it had to be momentarily that way, for it was necessary in order to go from this to that: everything that happens is necessary for the full development of the goal of creation. You could say (we could word-paint): the goal of creation is for the creature to become conscious as the Creator. There you are.
Its word-painting, but its in that direction.
0 1972-01-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its only when I am immobile, in a sort of cellular contemplation then then its magnificent. Time vanishes, everything everything is changed into something else.
(silence)
0 1972-05-06, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but what feels crushed is what resists, what is unreceptive. One has only to open oneself. Then it becomes like a a for-mi-dable thing. Fabulous! Its our centuries-old habits that resist and give us that feeling, you know, but whatever can open up. You feel as if you were becoming larger and larger and larger. magnificent. Oh, thats it!
***
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Brings brief magnificent reminiscences
And high splendid glimpses of interpreting thought,
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Overflowing from her bright magnificent plane
On the rigid coil and sprawl of mortal Space,
02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A magnificent imbroglio of the Gods,
A game, a work ambiguously divine.
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Denuded of her sweet magnificent suns.
In worlds imagined, never yet made true,
--
The magnificent wrappings of her secrecy
That fold her desirable body out of sight,
02.09 - The Paradise of the Life-Gods, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Of the life-impulses' red magnificent race,
It lived in a jewel-rhythm of the laughter of God
02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Certain coincidences and correspondences in their lives may be noticed here. The year 1905 and those that immediately followed found them together on the crest wave of India's first nationalist resurgence. Again both saw in the year 1914 a momentous period marked by events of epochal importance, one of which was the First World War. For Tagore it was yuga-sandhi, the dying of the old age of Night to the dawning of a new with its blood-red sunrise emerging through the travail of death, sorrow and pain". For Sri Aurobindo it was a cataclysm intended by Nature to effect a first break in the old order to usher in the new. The significant year 1914 was also the period when Rabindranath expressed in the magnificent series of poems of the Balaka his visions and experiences of the forces at work on earth, and Sri Aurobindo began revealing through the pages of the Arya the truths of the supramental infinities that were then pouring down into him and through him into the earth's atmosphere.
So it was natural and almost inevitablewritten among the stars that both should meet once more on this physical earth. Sri Aurobindo had been in complete retirement seeing none except, of course, his attendants. He was coming out only four times in the year to give silent darshan to his devotees and a few others who sought for it. It was in the year 1928. Tagore was then on a tour to the South. He expressed to Sri Aurobindo by letter his desire for a personal meeting. Sri Aurobindo naturally agreed to receive him. Tagore reached Pondicherry by steamer, and I had the privilege to see him on board the ship and escort him to the Ashram. The Mother welcomed him at the door of Sri Aurobindo's apartments and led him to Sri Aurobindo. Tagore already knew the Mother, for both were together in Japan and stayed in the same house and she attended some of his lectures in that country. It may be interesting to mention here that Tagore requested the Mother to take charge of the Visva Bharati, for evidently he felt that the future of his dear institution would be in sure hands. But the Mother could not but decline since it was her destiny to be at another place and another work.
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Here in his inner being, as part and parcel of the Divine, man is absolutely free, has infinite capacity and unbounded aptitude; for here he is master, not slave of Nature, and it is slavery to Nature, that limits and baulks and stultifies man. So does the Upanishad declare in a magnificent and supreme utterance:
It is he in whom the soul, sunk in the impenetrable cavern of the body, darkened by dualities, has awakened and become vigilant, he it is who is the master of the universe and the master of all, yea, his is this world, he is this world.5
03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In her magnificent and termless home.
There Nature on her dumb spiritual couch
03.10 - The Mission of Buddhism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We say then that it was a necessity: it was a necessity that the rational, logical, ratiocinative, analytic mentality should be brought out and given its play and place. It is perhaps an inferior power of the mind or consciousness, but it is a strong power and has its use and utility. It is the power that gives the form and pattern for the display of consciousness and intelligence in outward expression and external living; it is a firm weapon that gives control over these inferior ranges of consciousness. The leap from the sense-consciousness or the elements of consciousness, from a mental growth just adequate and not too specialised, straight into the supra-sensuous and the transcendent had been an inevitable necessity, so that the human consciousness might get the first taste of its supreme status and value: a similar necessity brought to the fore this element of the mind, the mind's own powerof judgement and willso that there might be a greater and wider integration of human nature and also that the higher realities may be captured in our normal consciousness. Even for the withdrawal of the mind from the outer objects to the inner sources, the mind itself can be used with much effect. And Buddha showed it magnificently. And of course, Shankara too who followed in his footsteps.
To abrogate the matter of fact, rational view of life in order to view it spiritually, to regard it wholly as an expression or embodiment or vibration of consciousness-delight was possible to the Vedic discipline which saw and adored the Immanent Godhead. It was not possible to Buddha and Buddhistic consciousness; for the Immanent Divine was ignored in the Buddhistic scheme. Philosophically, in regard to ultimate principles, Buddhism was another name for nihilism, creation being merely an assemblage of particles of consciousness that is desire; the particles scattered and dissolved, remains only the supreme incomparable Nirvana. But pragmatically Buddhism was supremely humanistic.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Greece and Rome may be taken to represent two types of culture. And accordingly we can distinguish two types of elevation or crest-formation of human consciousness one of light, the other of power. In certain movements one feels the intrusion, the expression of light, that is to say, the play of intelligence, understanding, knowledge, a fresh outlook and consideration of the world and things, a revaluation in other terms and categories of a new consciousness. The greatest, at least, the most representative movement of this kind is that of the Renaissance. It was really a New Illumination: a flood of light poured upon the mind and intellect and understanding of the period. There was a brightness, a brilliance, a happy agility and keenness in the movements of the brain. A largeness of vision, a curious sensibility, a wide and alert consciousness: these are some of the fundamental characteristics of this remarkable New Birth. It is the birth of what has been known as the scientific outlook, in the- broadest sense: it is the threshold of the modern epoch of humanity. All the modern European languages leaped into maturity, as it were, each attaining its definitive form and full-blooded individuality. Art and literature flooded in their magnificent creativeness all nations and peoples of the whole continent. The Romantic Revival, starting somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century, is another outstanding example of a similar phenomenon, of the descent of light into human consciousness. The light that descended into human consciousness at the time of the Renaissance captured the higher mind and intelligence the Ray touched as it were the frontal lobe of the brain; the later descent touched the heart, the feelings and emotive sensibility, it evoked more vibrant, living and powerful perceptions, created varied and dynamic sense-complexes, new idealisms and aspirations. The manifestation of Power, the descent or inrush of forcemighty and terriblehas been well recognised and experienced in the great French Revolution. A violence came out from somewhere and seized man and society: man was thrown out of his gear, society broken to pieces. There came a change in the very character and even nature of man: and society had to be built upon other foundations. The past was gone. Divasa gatah. Something very similar has happened again more recently, in Russia. The French Revolution brought in the bourgeois culture, the Russian Revolution has rung in the Proletariate.
In modern India, the movement that led her up to Independence was at a crucial moment a mighty evocation of both Light and Power. It had not perhaps initially the magnitude, the manifest scope or scale of either the Renaissance or the Great Revolutions we mention. But it carried a deeper import, its echo far-reaching into the future of humanity. For it meant nothing less than the spiritual awakening of India and therefore the spiritual regeneration of the whole world: it is the harbinger of the new epoch in human civilisation.
04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives
Of animal and bird and flower and tree.
05.02 - Satyavan, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the magnificent dawning of his force
Built like a moving statue of delight
07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
She edged her ray with a magnificent lie.
Here in Life's nether realms all contraries meet;
07.43 - Music Its Origin and Nature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is a graded scale in the source of music. A whole category of music is there that comes from the higher vital, for example: it is very catching, perhaps even a little vulgar, something that twines round your nerves, as it were, and twists them. It catches you somewhere about your loinsnavel centre and charms you in its way. As there is a vital music there is also what can be called psychic music coming from quite a different source; there is further a music which has spiritual origin. In its own region this higher music is very magnificent; it seizes you deeply and carries you away somewhere else. But if you were to express it perfectlyexecute ityou would have to pass this music too through the vital. Your music coming from high may nevertheless fall absolutely flat in the execution, if you do not have that intensity of vital vibration which alone can give it its power and splendour. I knew people who had very high inspiration, but their music turned to be quite commonplace, because their vital did not move. Their spiritual practice put their vital almost completely to sleep; yes, it was literally asleep and did not work at all. Their music thus came straight into the physical. If you could get behind and catch the source, you would see that there was really something marvellous even there, although externally it was not forceful or effective. What came out was a poor little melody, very thin, having nothing of the power of harmony which is there when one can bring into play the vital energy. If one could put all this power of vibration that belongs to that vital into the music of higher origin we would have the music of a genius. Indeed, for music and for all artistic creation, in fact, for literature, for poetry, for painting, etc. an intermediary is needed. Whatever one does in these domains depends doubtless for its intrinsic value upon the source of the inspiration, upon the plane or the height where one stands. But the value of the execution depends upon the strength of the vital that expresses the inspiration. For a complete genius both are necessary. The combination is rare, generally it is the one or the other, more often it is the vital that predominates and overshadows.
When the vital only is there, you have the music of caf concert and cinema. It is extraordinarily clever and at the same time extraordinarily commonplace, even vulgar. Since, however, it is so clever, it catches hold of your brain, haunts your memory, rings in (or wrings) your nerves; it becomes so difficult to get rid of its influence, precisely because it is done so well, so cleverly. It is made vitally with vital vibrations, but what is behind is not, to say the least, wholesome. Now imagine the same vital power of expression joined to the inspiration coming from above, say, the highest possible inspiration when the entire heaven seems to open out, then it is music indeed; Some things in Csar Franck, some in Beethoven, some in Bach, some in some others possess this sovereignty. But after all it is only a moment, it comes for a moment and does not abide. There is not a single artist whose whole work is executed at such a pitch. The inspiration comes like a flash of lightning, most often it lasts just long enough to be grasped and held in a few snatches.
Something similar to that experience may happen to you when your consciousness is all attentive and concentrated; you feel suddenly that you are being carried aloft, that all your energies are gathered and lifted up, as if your head has opened out and you are thrown into the free air, into the far spaces of extraordinary heights and magnificent lights. The experience gives you in a few seconds what one may in the normal course of things achieve after many years of difficult yoga. Only immediately after the experience you drop down below upon the earth, because the basis has not been built; even you may begin to doubt whether you really had the experience. Still the consciousness has been prepared, something definitive has been done and remains.
***
08.27 - Value of Religious Exercises, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have been to holy places. I have seen monuments considered as very highly religious, in France, in Japan and elsewhere; they were not always the same kind of temples or churches nor were they the same gods but the impression they left on me, my experiences of them were everywhere almost the same, with but slight differences. There is usually a force concentrated at the place, but its character depends entirely upon the faith of the faithful; also there is a difference between the force as it really exists and the form in which it appears to the faithful. For instance, in a most famous and most beautiful place of worship which was, from the standpoint of art, the most magnificent creation one could imagine, I saw within its holy of holies a huge black Spider that had spread its net all around, caught within it and absorbed all the energies emanating from the devotion of the people, their prayers and all that. It was not a very pleasant spectacle. But the people who were there and prayed felt the divine contact, they received all kinds of benefit from their prayers. And yet the truth of the matter was what I saw. The people had the faith and their faith changed what was bad into something that was good to them. Now if I had gone and told them: 'you think it is God you are praying to! it is only a formidable vital Spider that is sucking your force,' surely it would not have been very charitable on my part. But everywhere it is almost the same thing. There is a vital Force presiding. And vital beings feed upon the vibrations of human emotion. Very few are they, a microscopic number, who go to the temples and churches and holy places with the true religious feeling, that is to say, not to pray or beg something of God, but to offer themselves, to express gratitude, to aspire, to surrender. One in a million would be too many. These when they are there, get some touch of the Divine just for the moment. But all others go only out of superstition, egoism, self-interest and create the atmosphere as it is found and it is that that you usually brea the in when you go to a holy place; only as you go there with a good feeling, you say to yourself "what a peace-giving spot!"
I am sorry to say it. But it is like that. I tell you I have purposely made the experiment to some extent everywhere. Perhaps I came across at times in far-away small cornerslike a small village church, for exampleplaces where there was real peace and quiet and some true aspiration. Barring that, everywhere it is but a web of adverse vital forces that use everything for their food. The bigger the congregation, the more portentous the vital deity. Besides, in the invisible world it is only the vital beings that like to be worshipped. For, as I have said, that pleases them, gives them importance. They are puffed up with pride and are happy; when they can have a troop of people adoring them, they reach the very height of satisfaction.
09.05 - The Story of Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is a force of this kind that is the origin of the phenomenon of crystallisation. Crystals gather together in matter, it is already a movement of love. Stones that crystallise, rock crystals, for example, form wonderful designs, so magnificent in their absolute harmony; that comes because of only one thing the Force of Love.
You do not see the thing, because you have not the inner sensibility. But once you have the direct perception of the forces of love behind things you see that it is everywhere the same. And you can even come to understand what man-made manufactured things tell you.
1.001 - The Aim of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The ancient sages and masters, both of the East and the West, have deeply pondered over this question, and one of the most magnificent proclamations of a solution to these problems is found in the Veda. Among the many aspects of this solution that are presented before us by these mighty revelations, I can quote one which to my mind appears to be a final solution at least, I have taken it as a solution to all my problems - which comes in the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda. In all the four Vedas it occurs: tam eva viditv atimtyum eti nnya panth vidyate ayanya. This is a great proclamation. What is the meaning of this proclamation? There is no way of escape from this problem, says this mantra, other than knowing 'That'. This is a very simple aphoristic precept that is before us: Knowing 'That' is the solution, and we have no other solution. Now, knowing 'That' what is this 'That'.
Knowing has been generally regarded as a process of understanding and accumulation of information, gathering intellectual or scientific definitive descriptions in respect of things. These days, this is what we call education. We gather definitions of things and try to understand the modes of their apparent functions in temporal life. This is what we call knowing, ordinarily speaking. I know that the sun is rising. This is a kind of knowledge. What do I mean by this knowledge? I have only a functional perception of a phenomenon that is taking place which I regard as the rise of the sun. This is not real knowledge. When I say, "I know that the sun is rising", I cannot say that I have a real knowledge of the sun, because, first of all, the sun is not rising it is a mistake of my senses. Secondly, the very idea of rising itself is a misconception in the mind. Unless I am static and immovable, I cannot know that something is moving. So when I say, "The sun is moving", I mean that I am not moving; it is understood there. But it is not true that I am not moving. I am also in a state of motion for other reasons which are not easily understandable. So it is not possible for a moving body to say that something else is moving. Nothing that is in a state of motion can say that something else is in motion. There is a relative motion of things, and so perception of the condition of any object ultimately would be impossible. This is a reason why scientific knowledge fails.
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We are gradually led by this proclamation of the Veda into a tremendous vision of life which requires of us to have a superhuman power of will to grasp the interrelationship of things. This difficulty of grasping the meaning of the interrelationship of things is obviated systematically, stage by stage, gradually, by methods of practice. These methods are called yoga the practice of yoga. I have placed before you, perhaps, a very terrible picture of yoga; it is not as simple as one imagines. It is not a simple circus-master's feat, either of the body or the mind, but a superhuman demand of our total being. Mark this definition of mine: a superhuman demand which is made of our total being not an ordinary human demand of a part of our being, but of our total being. From that, a demand is made by the entire structure of life. The total structure of life requires of our total being to be united with it in a practical demonstration of thought, speech and action this is yoga. If this could be missed, and of course it can easily be missed as it is being done every day, then every effort, from the smallest to the biggest, becomes a failure. All our effort ends in no success, because it would be like decorating a corpse without a soul in it. The whole of life would look like a beautiful corpse with nicely dressed features, but it has no vitality, essence or living principle within it. Likewise, all our activities would look wonderful, beautiful, magnificent, but lifeless; and lifeless beauty is no beauty. There must be life in it only then has it a meaning. Life is not something dead; it is quite opposite of what is dead. We can bring vitality and life into our activity only by the introduction of the principle of yoga.
Yoga is not a technique of sannyasins or monks, of mystics or monastic disciples it is a technique of every living being who wishes to succeed in life. Without the employment of the technique of yoga, no effort can be successful. Even if it is a small, insignificant act like cooking food, sweeping the floor, washing vessels, whatever it is even these would be meaningless and a boredom, a drudgery and a stupid effort if the principle of yoga is not applied.
1.00 - Preface, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
BASED on the versicle in the Song of Songs, " Thy plants are an orchard of Pomegranates ", a book entitled Pardis Rimonim came to be written by Rabbi Moses Cordovero in the sixteenth century. By some authorities this philosopher is considered as the greatest lamp in post-Zoharic days of that spiritual Menorah, the Qabalah, which, with so rare a grace and so profuse an irradiation of the Supernal Light, illuminated the literature and religious philosophy of the Jewish people as well as their immediate and subsequent neighbours in the Dias- pora. The English equivalent of Pardis Rimonim - A Garden of Pomegranates - I have adopted as the title of my own modest work, although I am forced to confess that this latter has but little connection either in actual fact or in historicity with that of Cordovero. In the golden harvest of purely spiritual intimations which the Holy Qabalah brings, I truly feel that a veritable garden of the soul may be builded ; a garden of immense magnitude and lofty significance, wherein may be discovered by each one of us all manner and kind of exotic fruit and gracious flower of exquisite colour. The pomegranate, may I add, has always been for mystics everywhere a favourable object for recon- dite symbolism. The garden or orchard has likewise pro- duced in that book named The Book of Splendour an almost inexhaustible treasury of spiritual imagery of superb and magnificent taste.
This book goes forth then in the hope that, as a modern writer has put it:
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 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the hymns of the Rig Veda, magnificent in their colouring and
images, noble and beautiful in rhythm, perfect in their diction,
1.01 - The Castle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
When our supper ended in a muteness which the sounds of chewing and the smacking of lips gulping wine did not make more pleasant, we remained seated, looking one another in the face, with the torment of not being able to exchange the many experiences each of us had to communicate. At that point, on the table which had just been cleared, the man who seemed the lord of the castle set a pack of playing cards. They were tarot cards, larger than the kind we use for ordinary games or that gypsies employ for predicting the future, but it was possible to discern more or less the same figures that are painted in the enamels of the most precious miniatures. Kings, Queens, Knights, and Pages were all young people magnificently dressed, as if for a princely feast; the twenty-two Major Arcana seemed the tapestries of a court theater; and cups, coins, swords, clubs shone like heraldic devices adorned with scrolls and arabesques.
We began to spread out the cards on the table, face up, and to give them their proper value in games, or their true meaning in the reading of fortunes. And yet none of us seemed to wish to begin playing, and still less to question the future, since we were as if drained of all future, suspended in a journey that had not ended nor was to end. There was something else we saw in those tarots, something that no longer allowed us to take our eyes from the gilded pieces of that mosaic.
10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When I was a childabout the age of thirteen and for about a yearevery night as soon as I was in bed, it seemed to me that I came out of my body and rose straight up above the house, then above the town, very high. I saw myself then, clad in a magnificent golden robe, longer than myself; and as I rose, that robe leng thened, spreading in a circle around me to form, as it were, an immense roof over the town. Then I would see coming out from all sides, men, women, children, the old, the sick, the unhappy; they gathered under the outspread robe, imploring help, recounting their miseries, their sufferings, their pains. In reply, the robe, supple and living, stretched out to them individually, and as soon as they touched it, they were consoled or healed, and entered back into their body happier and stronger than they had ever been before coming out of it.
I thank them with gratitude for all the charm they have been able to impart from the outside to our life; I wish, if they are destined to pass for a long or a brief period into other hands than ours, that these hands may be gentle to them and may feel all the respect that is due to what Thy divine Love, O Lord, has made to emerge from the dark inconscience of chaos. (3.3.1914)
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
valuation, or particular story no matter how initially magnificent or appropriate to become increasingly
irrelevant with time; and (2) the dangers that necessarily accrue to a state that forgets or refuses to admit
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community. This is an idea precisely as magnificent as that contained in the Osiris/Horus myth; an idea
which adds additional depth to the brilliant moral hypotheses contained in that myth. The exploratory
1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
ries or pupils! And it is remarkable that in this magnificent
whole, proportionate in scale to the new age which we are enter-
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
alone, all this magnificent universe." (Mundaka Upanishad II, 12) At long last, the dichotomy that is tearing this poor world apart between God and the Devil as if one always had to choose between heaven and earth, and could never be saved except when mutilated was healed for good. Yet, in practice, for the last three thousand years, the entire religious history of India has taken the view that there is a true Brahman, as it were, transcendent, immobile, forever beyond this bedlam, and a false Brahman, or rather a minor one (there are several schools), for an intermediate and more or less questionable reality (i.e., life, the earth, our poor mess of an earth). "Abandon this world of illusion," exclaimed the great Shankara. 17 "Brahman is real, the world is a lie," says the Nirlamba Upanishad: brahman satyam jaganmithya.
Try as we might, we just don't understand through what distortion or oversight "All is Brahman" ever became "All, except the world, is Brahman."
1.02 - The Human Soul, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
1.: BEFORE going farther, I wish you to consider the state to which mortal sin16' brings this magnificent and beautiful castle, this pearl of the East, this tree of life, planted beside the living waters of life17 which symbolize God Himself. No night can be so dark, no gloom nor blackness can compare to its obscurity. Suffice it to say that the sun in the centre of the soul, which gave it such splendour and beauty, is totally eclipsed, though the spirit is as fitted to enjoy God's presence as is the crystal to reflect the sun.18
2.: While the soul is in mortal sin nothing can profit it; none of its good works merit an eternal reward, since they do not proceed from God as their first principle, and by Him alone is our virtue real virtue. The soul separated from Him is no longer pleasing in His eyes, because by committing a mortal sin, instead of seeking to please God, it prefers to gratify the devil, the prince of darkness, and so comes to share his blackness. I knew a person to whom our Lord revealed the result of a mortal sin19' and who said she thought no one who realized its effects could ever commit it, but would suffer unimaginable torments to avoid it. This vision made her very desirous for all to grasp this truth, therefore I beg you, my daughters, to pray fervently to God for sinners, who live in blindness and do deeds of darkness.
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8.: Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it.
9.: A soul which gives itself to prayer, either much or little, should on no account be kept within narrow bounds. Since God has given it such great dignity, permit it to wander at will through the rooms of the castle, from the lowest to the highest. Let it not force itself to remain for very long in the same mansion, even that of self-knowledge. Mark well, however, that self-knowledge is indispensable, even for those whom God takes to dwell in the same mansion with Himself. Nothing else, however elevated, perfects the soul which must never seek to forget its own nothingness. Let humility be always at work, like the bee at the honeycomb, or all will be lost. But, remember, the bee leaves its hive to fly in search of flowers and the soul should sometimes cease thinking of itself to rise in meditation on the grandeur and majesty of its God. It will learn its own baseness better thus than by self-contemplation, and will be freer from the reptiles which enter the first room where self-knowledge is acquired. The palmito here referred to is not a palm, but a shrub about four feet high and very dense with leaves, resembling palm leaves. The poorer classes and principally children dig it up by the roots, which they peel of its many layers until a sort of kernel is disclosed, which is eaten, not without relish, and is somewhat like a filbert in taste. See St. John of the Cross, Accent of Mount Carmel, bk. ii. ch, xiv, 3. Although it is a great grace from God to practise self-examination, yet 'too much is as bad as too little,' as they say; believe me, by God's help, we shall advance more by contemplating the Divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves, poor creatures of earth that we are.
1.03 - Fire in the Earth, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
now magnificently unfold for me: the fact that your
creatures are not merely so linked together in soli-
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
admiration of these magnificent cerements, and of the filial piety
which prompted the children to bestow so beautiful and useful a
1.040 - Re-Educating the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
But the nature of the mind is such, the mind is made in such a way, that it cannot go on thinking continuously of any absurd object. A leaf from a tree cannot become the object of attraction for the mind, because the mind cannot see any value or significance in a leaf, or a pen or a pencil, though a very scientific attitude would find significance in anything. Even a pencil is as important as a deity if we understand the background of it and the way in which it is constituted. But the ordinary mind cannot understand it. It requires the foisting of certain characteristics which are regarded as beautiful, magnificent and capable of fulfilling the wishes of the person concentrating. No one concentrates without a purpose.
It is very well known why we practise yoga, or for the matter of that, why we engage ourselves in any activity at all. The purpose is to fulfil a wish, whether it is a particularised one or a larger one. This wish is supposed to be fulfilled by the practice of concentration of mind. Here, it would be advantageous to note how a wish can be fulfilled by mere concentration of mind. If that had not been the case, why should be there any attempt at all at concentration? Is it possible to fulfil a desire, or come to the attainment of any wish, for the matter of that, by concentration of mind? The answer is yes, as given by the science of yoga. Any wish can be fulfilled, whatever it be, on earth or in heaven, provided we can adjust our thoughts properly, in a prescribed manner. The absence of success in the pursuit of any objective is due to absence of sufficient concentration on the objective. We are not fully interested in anything, as I mentioned sometime back. That is the reason why we cannot achieve anything fully. There is nothing in this world which can draw our attention wholly, and that is why nothing comes to us as we expect it. A half-hearted friendship with anything in this world cannot lead to a permanent success in the matter of union with that object, or utilisation of that object for one's purpose.
1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Rais'd walls of brick magnificently great,
Liv'd Pyramus, and Thisbe, lovely pair!
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Take, for instance, the construction of Golconde. I am not going to enter into an elaborate description of its development. Considering that our resources in men and money were then limited, how such a magnificent building was erected is a wonder. An American architect with his Japanese and Czechoslovakian assistants foregathered. Old buildings were demolished, our sadhaks along with the paid workers laboured night and day and as if from a void, the spectacular mansion rose silently and slowly like a giant in the air. It is a story hardly believable for Pondicherry of those days. But my wonder was at the part the Mother played in it, not inwardly which is beyond my depth but in the daylight itself. She was in constant touch with the work through her chosen instruments. As many sadhaks as possible were pressed into service there; to anyone young or old asking for work, part time, whole time, her one cry: "Go to Golconde, go to Golconde." It was one of her daily topics with Sri Aurobindo who was kept informed of the difficulties, troubles innumerable, and at the same time, of the need of his force to surmount "them. Particularly when rain threatened to impede or spoil some important part of the work, she would invoke his special help: for instance, when the roof was to be built. How often we heard her praying to Sri Aurobindo, "Lord, there should be no rain now." Menacing clouds had mustered strong, stormy west winds blowing ominously, rain imminent, and torrential Pondicherry rain! We would look at the sky and speculate on the result of the fight between the Divine Force and the natural force. The Divine Force would of course win: slowly the Fury would leash her forces and withdraw into the cave. But as soon as the intended object was achieved, a deluge swept down as if in revenge. Sri Aurobindo observed that that was often the rule. During the harvesting season too, S.O.S. signals would come to Sri Aurobindo through the Mother to stop the rain. He would smile and do his work silently. If I have not seen any other miracle, I can vouch for this one repeated more than once. During the roof-construction, work had to go on all night long and the Mother would mobilise and marshal all the available Ashram hands and put them there. With what cheer and ardour our youth jumped into the fray at the call of the Mother, using often Sri Aurobindo's name to put more love and zeal into the strenuous enterprise! We felt the vibration of a tremendous energy driving, supporting, inspiring the entire collective body. This was how Golconde, an Ashram guest house, was built, one of the wonders of modern architecture lavishly praised by many visitors. Let me quote the relevant portion of a letter from Sri Aurobindo, written in 1945 with regard to Golconde:
"...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
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My aim in drawing this picture of the Mother is not merely to demonstrate her dynamism. There have been quite a number of people in the world, Napoleon for example, who had a magnificent vital energy, but they are of a different category. Here all her actions are symbolic, they are the expressions of the Divine Force, chit shakti, she embodies, and that force she has given freely to the young ones as she had done to the older generation. It infiltrates everything that it comes in contact with; she leaves a part of her Divine Presence wherever she goes. She has said also she never forgets any person who has come in contact with her even for a moment! The person finds a place in her Divine Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo said to me that with each one of us here she has her emanation. I believe that would be in some sense true for all those who have come in contact with her, and it would help them through life's strenuous and perilous journey.
I shall now finish this chapter with an account of my utter discomfiture in trying to argue with the Mother over a subject about which I had very little knowledge. The Mother was describing to Sri Aurobindo the physical features of the brothers of a particular family. At some point, I don't remember exactly when, I was foolish enough to contradict her. She replied, "Better keep quiet! You know nothing." The episode was over and I had forgotten all about it. But the surprise of surprises, later on the Mother called me out of Sri Aurobindo's room and putting her hand on my shoulder explained almost in an apologetic tone how I was wrong. I expressed my sincere regret for my interruption and said that I certainly did not mind her rebuke. I was indeed very much moved by her divine considerateness. If she would be rude or severe on occasions she once said that Sri Aurobindo was a gentleman, she was not we have seen her Mahakali aspect, freezing silence, ironical smile, cold look, her Mahalakshmi graciousness too was showered upon us often. For example, she used to give me, on my birthdays, a pair of fine dhotis from the stock meant for Sri Aurobindo. However hard she might appear outside, and it was unfortunately for us very necessary she is our true Mother and her only concern is to lead us to the Light.
1.04 - The Qabalah The Best Training for Memory, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Honest, you needn't worry; it works on ball-bearings, and there's always those "Thirteen Fountains of magnificent Oil flowing down the Beard of Macroprosopus" in case it creaks a little at first. But seriously, all the mathematics you need is simple Addition and Multiplication.
"Yeah!" you rudely reply. "That's what you think; but you haven't got very far in the Qabalah!"
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
a spark smoldered in them. Oh, now he is not wearing his magnificent cardinals robes in which he
paraded before the crowds the day before, when they were burning the enemies of the Roman Church;
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these children of freedom, at their freely given love, and at their magnificent suffering for Your sake.
Remember, though, there were only a few thousand of them, and even these were gods rather than men.
1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Palermo with a magnificent belt of verdure, were withering. Food was
becoming scarce. The people were in great alarm. All the most
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
"P reported to the Mother my reactions to Sri Aurobindo's recent contribution to the War Fund. I did not know about it. Suddenly I saw the Mother quite unmindful of me, I thought it might be because She was very busy in those days. But I observed Her for three days, and was convinced that something was amiss. I approached Her and asked, 'Why are you ignoring me?' She said, 'You know it very well.' But I was puzzled. I guessed every other reason than the true one, which according to Her was serious. I did not think that P would report to Her my talks with him. So I begged her to tell me what I had done, because I was sure to rectify my grave error. To this She said, with severity, 'There are things that were settled long before you were even born. We have been working on them for a long time. Now you with your infinitesimally small mind believe that all that is nothing, that Sri Aurobindo and I are wrong, and that you are right in your judgment!' I was taken aback; it flashed before me, 'What could be the reason?' Being nonplussed, I expressed my surprise, 'Is it something about the War that I spoke to P?' The Mother made the sign of Yes. I felt relieved and said, 'Oh, it was nothing. I just spoke to him casually; it was not at all serious.' But the Mother's face was stern and She said, 'Not serious? It was almost unbelievable that you of all persons could speak like that about Sri Aurobindo! Haven't you read all that He has given out to the Press?' I said, 'Yes, Mother, I have. But have not the British done anything wrong to India?' The Mother replied, 'We never said that they had not, nor do we say that in the future they will not do so any more. But today the question is not that; don't you understand it? When you see your neighbour's house on fire, and yet you do not go to help to put it out because he has done wrong to you, you risk the burning of your own house and the loss of your own life. Do you not see the difference between the forces that are fighting for the Divine and those for the Asuras?' I said, 'Yes, Mother, I do see; only what baffles me is that Churchill, whom you and Sri Aurobindo have chosen as your direct instrument, wants today India's help for his own country's existence; and yet says that His Majesty's government has no intention of liquidating its Empire!' The Mother said, 'But leave all that to the Divine. Churchill is a human being. He is not a yogi aspiring to transform his nature, Today he represents the Soul of the Nation that is fighting against the Asuras. He is being guided by the Divine directly and his soul is responding magnificently. All concentration must be now to help the Allies for the victory that is ultimately assured, but there must be no looseness, not the slightest opening to the Asuras. After the battle is won, if Churchill's soul can remain still in front and he continues to be guided by the Divine, he will go very fast in the line of evolution. But generally on earth it doesn't happen like that. His human mind and vital will take the lead after the crisis is over, and then he will come down to the level of the ordinary human being, though of a higher order.'"
When Dr. Rao, one of the consultant physicians attending on Sri Aurobindo, said that a lot of people in Madras were wondering how Sri Aurobindo, who had been so anti-British, could contribute to the War Fund, the Master explained to him at great length why he had taken that step. His intention was that Dr. Rao should speak about it to others when the occasion arose. Among the points already known, Sri Aurobindo disclosed his own occult action in the War. He said, "Do you know that Hitler is trying to get a foothold in South America and doing extensive propaganda there? It can lead to an attack against the U.S.A. He is now practically master of Europe. If he had invaded England after the collapse of France, he could have been in Asia by this time.... Now another force has been set up against his. Still the danger has not passed. He has a 50% chance of success. Up to the time when France collapsed, he was remarkably successful because he had behind him an Asuric Power which guided him; from that Power he received remarkably correct messages."
1.06 - On Thought, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The great and magnificent King ascended to the chamber of the Great Collection and, stopping at the threshold, exclaimed with intense emotion:
Away! Advance no further, thoughts of lust! Away! Advance no further, thoughts of bad will! Away! Advance no further, thoughts of hate!
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Then the great and magnificent King left the chamber of the Great Collection and, entering the golden chamber, sat upon a seat of silver. He beheld the world in a thought of love and his love went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of love, with a love growing without end or limit, he enfolded the vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
He beheld the world in a thought of pity and his pity went forth to the four regions in turn; and then with his heart full of pity, with pity growing without end or limit, he enfolded the vast world, in its entirety, to its very ends.
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
a magnificently staged finale, he sees his life as one grand
show. Then, when it is all over and the body bag is zipped
--
euphoria. The little room expanded into a magnificent hall.
A plain wardrobe I had been staring at for three weeks
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
This is roughly the story of the grand epic Savitri traced from the earliest conception to its final consummation. Undoubtedly the first three Books were of a much higher level of inspiration and nearer perfection than the rest, for with ample leisure, and working by himself he could devote more time and care to that end, which unfortunately could not be said about the rest of the Books. Apart from the different versions I have mentioned, there is a huge mass of manuscripts which we have left unclassified since they are in fragments[4] all of which testifies to the immense labour of a god that has gone into the building of the magnificent epic. For a future research scholar, when Savitri earns as wide a recognition as, for instance, Dante's or Homer's epic, if not more, a very interesting work remains to be done; going into the minutest detail, he would show where new lines or passages have been added, or where one line slightly changed becomes an overhead line, or how another line after various changes comes back to its original version, etc., etc. I was chosen as a scribe probably because I didn't have all these gifts, so that I could, like a passive instrument, jot down faithfully whatever was dictated while Amal would have raised doubts, argued with him or been lost in sheer admiration of the beauty and the grandeur! Dilip would have started quoting line after line in rapturous ecstasy before the poem had come out! I submit no apology, nor am I conscience-stricken for my failures, for he knew what was the worth of his instrument. I am only grateful to him for being able to serve him with the very faculty which he had evolved and developed in me.
We can at last see how from among scattered seeds a single huge banyan tree has grown and spread itself to the transcendent and the cosmic infinite and excites our perpetual wonder. I wish I could provide a more faithful and vivid picture of its daily growth, a branch here, an offshoot there, trimming the old twigs, reviving the dying ones, discarding the outworn crowding branches till there soared up into the sky a majestic vision under whose perennial shade the world can repose awhile, in its long journey to the Eternal. To show how he expanded the poem I may quote one long new passage which he appended to the end of Book II, Canto VI, The Kingdoms and the Godheads of the Greater Life:
--
"He has crammed the whole universe in a single book. It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
"You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided.'... And the day He actually began it, He told me, 'I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.' And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete, up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages....
1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
fresh, so magnificent. It seemed to have lifted my pall of
gloom and I felt light and happy without knowing why. ...
1.08 - The Change of Vision, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
This change of vision is not spectacular or immediate; it is produced by small drops of a new outlook one hardly knows is a new outlook. One walks right past it, perhaps not unlike the caveman who walks past a gold nugget, glances at it because it glitters, and throws it away. Gold? What use is gold? We have to walk by the same futile point again and again, which does glitter a little and has a special something about it, before we understand that gold is gold we have to invent gold; we have to invent the whole world and find what is already there. The difficulty is not in discovering hidden secrets but in discovering the visible, and that unsuspected gold in the midst of banality actually, there is no banality; there is only unconsciousness. There is an age-old habit of looking at the world in relation to our needs and with respect to ourselves, like the logger in the forest who sees rosewood and only rosewood. Some measure of eccentricity is necessary to make the discovery. And in the end we realize that that eccentricity is the first step to a truer centricity and the key to a whole new set of relations. Our forest becomes stocked with a variety of unknown trees, and everything is a discovery. We have also been biased by what we could call the visionary's tradition. It has always seemed that the privileged among men were the ones who had visions, who could see our everyday grayness in pink and green and blue, see apparitions and supernatural phenomena a sort of supercinema one enjoys free of charge in the privacy of one's own room by pressing the psychic button. And that is all very well, there's nothing to say, but experience shows that this sort of vision changes absolutely nothing. Tomorrow millions of men could be given the power of vision by a stroke of grace, and they would turn on their little psychic television again and again; they would see gods laden with gold (and perhaps a few hells more in accord with their natural affinities), flowers more magnificent than any rose (and a scattering of awesome serpents), flying or haloed beings (but devils imitate halos very well, they are more showy than the gods, they like tinsel), landscapes of dream, sumptuous fruits, crystal dwellings but in the end, after the hundredth time, they would be as bored as before and leap avidly at the six-o'clock news. Something is sorely wanting in all that supernatural fireworks. And, to tell the truth, that something is everything. If our natural does not become truer, no amount of supernatural will remedy it; if our inner dwelling is ugly, no miraculous crystal will ever brighten our day, no fruit will ever quench our thirst. Unless Paradise is established on earth, it will never be anywhere. For we take ourselves everywhere we go, even into death, and so long as this stupid second is not filled with heaven, no eternity will ever be lit with any star. The transmutation must take place in the body and in everyday life; otherwise no gold will ever glitter, here or anywhere else, for ages of ages. What matters is not to see in pink or green or gold, but to see the truth of the world, which is so much more marvelous than any paradise, artificial or not, because the earth, this very small earth among millions of planets, is the experimental site where the supreme Truth of all the worlds has chosen to incarnate in what seems to be its very contradiction, and, by virtue of this very contradiction, to become all-light in darkness, all-breadth in narrowness, immortality in death, and living plenitude in each atom at each instant.
But we have to collaborate.
1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We, as little beginners in the practice of yoga, need not go into these miracles of the magnificent achievements of the great masters. We have to find out how they became masters; that is what is more important. How did Suka become Suka? What was the secret behind it? What was the power of Vasishtha? He could simply stun all the celestial weapons of Visvamitra by a mere wooden stick that he had in front of him. Even the brahmastra would not work before that yogadanda. What is that secret? From where did he get that power? And Bharadvaja simply snapped his fingers and celestials dropped from the skies with golden plates of delicacies and served the millions and millions of soldiers of Bharata, who was in the forest in search of Rama. Merely a snap of the fingers would do, and celestials start dropping from the skies. From where is all this possible?
These are very interesting things to hear, of course, though it is very difficult to understand how it is possible. But if we know the science behind it, we can know the rationality behind it. And what is possible for one, what has been possible for one, should be possible for others, also, if the proper technique of meditation is practised.
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
_Goethe_.--No mere German, but a European event: a magnificent attempt
to overcome the eighteenth century by means of a return to nature, by
--- Overview of adj magnificent
The adj magnificent has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (12) brilliant, glorious, magnificent, splendid ::: (characterized by grandeur; "the brilliant court life at Versailles"; "a glorious work of art"; "magnificent cathedrals"; "the splendid coronation ceremony")
--- Similarity of adj magnificent
1 sense of magnificent
Sense 1
brilliant, glorious, magnificent, splendid
=> impressive (vs. unimpressive)
--- Antonyms of adj magnificent
1 sense of magnificent
Sense 1
brilliant, glorious, magnificent, splendid
INDIRECT (VIA impressive) -> unimpressive
--- Pertainyms of adj magnificent
1 sense of magnificent
Sense 1
brilliant, glorious, magnificent, splendid
--- Derived Forms of adj magnificent
1 sense of magnificent
Sense 1
brilliant, glorious, magnificent, splendid
RELATED TO->(noun) magnificence#1
=> impressiveness, grandness, magnificence, richness
RELATED TO->(noun) magnificence#2
=> magnificence, brilliance, splendor, splendour, grandeur, grandness
--- Grep of noun magnificent
lorenzo the magnificent
Wikipedia - Bardelys the Magnificent -- 1926 film
Wikipedia - Conan the Magnificent -- Book by Robert Jordan
Wikipedia - Giuliano de' Medici -- 15th-century Italian nobleman, brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent
Wikipedia - Guns of the Magnificent Seven -- 1969 film by Paul Wendkos
Wikipedia - List of campaigns of Suleiman the Magnificent -- list of the campaigns carried out by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I
Wikipedia - List of people known as the Magnificent -- Wikimedia list article
Wikipedia - Magnificent Brute -- 1936 film
Wikipedia - Magnificent Coloring World Tour -- 2016 concert tour by Chance the Rapper
Wikipedia - Magnificent frigatebird -- Species of bird
Wikipedia - Magnificent Montague -- American DJ
Wikipedia - Magnificent Obsession (1935 film) -- 1935 film by John M. Stahl
Wikipedia - Magnificent Obsession
Wikipedia - Magnificent (U2 song) -- 2009 single by U2
Wikipedia - Mihrimah Sultan (daughter of Suleiman I) -- Ottoman Sultan (1522-1578), daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent
Wikipedia - Peace of Amasya -- 1555 treaty between Shah Tahmasp of Safavid Iran and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire
Wikipedia - Suleiman the Magnificent -- Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566
Wikipedia - Tarzan the Magnificent -- 1960 film by Robert Day
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Ambersons (film) -- 1942 film by Orson Welles, Robert Wise
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Ambersons -- 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Concubine -- 1962 film
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Cuckold -- 1964 film
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Dope -- 1942 film by Walter Lang
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Flirt -- 1928 film
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Fraud -- 1939 film by Robert Florey
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Lie -- 1931 film
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Matador -- 1955 film
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Scoundrels -- 1991 Hong Kong comedy film by Lee Lik-chi
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Seven (2016 film) -- 2016 film directed by Antoine Fuqua
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins -- 1971 film by Graham Stark
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Seven (Minus 4) Caballeros -- 2005 Donald Duck comic book story by Don Rosa
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Seven (professional wrestling) -- Professional wrestling stable
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Seven Ride -- 1972 film by George McCowan
Wikipedia - The Magnificent Seven -- 1960 film directed by John Sturges
Wikipedia - The Return of the Magnificent -- 2nd studio album by DJ Jazzy Jeff
Wikipedia - Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession -- 2004 documentary film directed by Alexandra Cassavetes
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selforum - magnificent matrimandir
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Magnificent_Seven_(2016_film)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Magnificent_Seven_Ride
The Magnificent Seven (1998 - 1999) -
The Magnificent Marble Machine (1975 - 1976) - The Magnificent Marble Machine is an American television game show based on the arcade game of pinball. The show ran on NBC from July 7, 1975 to March 12, 1976, but was interrupted for two weeks in January due to scheduling changes on the network and aired repeats from March 15 to June 11. It aired...
Bartok the Magnificent(1999) - Ace animator Don Bluth directed this direct-to-video follow-up to his 1997 hit Anastasia, concentrating on the adventures of Bartok the Albino Bat (voice of Hank Azaria). Bartok and his best friend, Zozi the Bear (voice of Kelsey Grammer), are now making their way as street performers, but they find...
Magnificent Butcher(1990) - A plump butcher student of Wong Fei Hung, Lam Sai-Wing (Sammo) gets into trouble with a rival kung-fu school known as Five Dragons and is accused of raping the head of that school's goddaughter and killing his son. Now Ko, the head of five dragons, wants revenge.
Z Channel:A Magnificent Obsession(2004) - Xan Cassavettes directed documentary about the fondly remembered Los Angeles based premium movie network"The Z Channel"
The Magnificent Seven(1960) - The American Western remake of "Seven Samurai" (1954). Seven gunmen have been hired to defend a small town against a group of Mexican marauders.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/117/El_Hazard__The_Magnificent_World -- Adventure, Comedy, Romance, Fantasy
https://myanimelist.net/anime/118/El_Hazard_2__The_Magnificent_World -- Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) ::: 6.6/10 -- PG | 1h 55min | Adventure, Comedy, Family | 15 July 2005 (USA) -- A young boy wins a tour through the most magnificent chocolate factory in the world, led by the world's most unusual candy maker. Director: Tim Burton Writers: Roald Dahl (book), John August (screenplay)
Kincsem - Bet on Revenge (2017) ::: 7.3/10 -- Kincsem (original title) -- Kincsem - Bet on Revenge Poster Ern Blaskovich lost everything after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Kincsem, a magnificent horse gives a purpose of his meaningless, self-destructing life. He gets a chance to gain everything back: revenge, love and fame. Director: Gbor Herendi Writers: Blint Hegeds (screenplay), Gbor Herendi
Magnificent Obsession (1954) ::: 7.1/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 48min | Drama, Romance | 7 August 1954 (USA) -- A rich playboy whose recklessness inadvertently causes the death of a prominent doctor tries to make amends to his widow, and falls for her in the process. Director: Douglas Sirk Writers:
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) ::: 7.7/10 -- Not Rated | 1h 28min | Drama, Romance | 10 July 1942 (USA) -- The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved. Directors: Orson Welles, Fred Fleck (uncredited) | 1 more credit Writers: Booth Tarkington (from the novel by), Orson Welles (script writer)
The Magnificent Seven (1960) ::: 7.7/10 -- Approved | 2h 8min | Action, Adventure, Western | 12 October 1960 (USA) -- Seven gunfighters are hired by Mexican peasants to liberate their village from oppressive bandits. Director: John Sturges Writer: William Roberts (screenplay)
The Magnificent Seven (2016) ::: 6.9/10 -- PG-13 | 2h 12min | Action, Adventure, Western | 23 September 2016 (USA) -- Seven gunmen from a variety of backgrounds are brought together by a vengeful young widow to protect her town from the private army of a destructive industrialist. Director: Antoine Fuqua Writers:
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to ::: 7.0/10 -- Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes Poster Hoping to push Britain to the forefront of aviation, a London publisher organizes an international air race across the English Channel, but must contend with two entrants vying for his daughter, as well as national rivalries and cheating. Director: Ken Annakin Writers:
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https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Bushoujo_Senshi_Neo_Sailor_Moon_Imperial_Shooting_Majestic_Star_Galaxy_Storm:_Rise_Of_The_Queen_Of_The_Magnificent_Moon_Kingdom_&_The_True_Rulers_Of_The_Solar_System--Fall_Of_The_Silver_Millennium
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Bushoujo_Senshi_Neo_Sailor_Moon_Imperial_Shooting_Majestic_Star_Galaxy_Storm:_Rise_Of_The_Queen_Of_The_Magnificent_Moon_Kingdom_&_The_True_Rulers_Of_The_Solar_System--Legendary_Guardians_of_The_Vast_Mutliple_Galaxies
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Hanma Baki: Son of Ogre -- -- TMS Entertainment -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Martial Arts Shounen -- Hanma Baki: Son of Ogre Hanma Baki: Son of Ogre -- Third part of the Baki series. -- ONA - ??? ??, 2021 -- 11,668 N/ASenjuushi -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Military -- Senjuushi Senjuushi -- Despair War is a battle between ancient guns and contemporary guns. Due to a nuclear war, the world was destroyed. Under the full governance of a world empire, people are living with their freedom taken. Despite the forbidden rule of owning any weapons, there is a resistance that secretly fights against the world empire. They own ancient guns left as art and fight using these. Then, the Kijuushi appear as the souls of the ancient guns. Proud and magnificent, the "Absolute Royal" are the only ones that can give hope to this world. The story depicts the everyday life of the Kijuushi. Laughter, despair, happiness, confusion, pain; they would still pursue their own absolute loyalty to fight. What do they fight for? What should they protect? -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 11,661 4.92
Howl no Ugoku Shiro -- -- Studio Ghibli -- 1 ep -- Novel -- Adventure Drama Fantasy Romance -- Howl no Ugoku Shiro Howl no Ugoku Shiro -- That jumbled piece of architecture, that cacophony of hissing steam and creaking joints, with smoke billowing from it as it moves on its own... That castle is home to the magnificent wizard Howl, infamous for both his magical prowess and for being a womanizer—or so the rumor goes in Sophie Hatter's small town. Sophie, as the plain daughter of a hatmaker, does not expect much from her future and is content with working hard in the shop. -- -- However, Sophie's simple life takes a turn for the exciting when she is ensnared in a disturbing situation, and the mysterious wizard appears to rescue her. Unfortunately, this encounter, brief as it may be, spurs the vain and vengeful Witch of the Waste—in a fit of jealousy caused by a past discord with Howl—to put a curse on the maiden, turning her into an old woman. -- -- In an endeavor to return to normal, Sophie must accompany Howl and a myriad of eccentric companions—ranging from a powerful fire demon to a hopping scarecrow—in his living castle, on a dangerous adventure as a raging war tears their kingdom apart. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Walt Disney Studios -- Movie - Nov 20, 2004 -- 901,461 8.66
Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 4 - The Lost Tower -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Comedy Martial Arts Shounen Super Power -- Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 4 - The Lost Tower Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 4 - The Lost Tower -- Led by Yamato, Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and Sai are assigned to capture Mukade, a rogue ninja who is pursuing the ancient chakra Ryuumyaku located underneath the Rouran ruins. While the Ryuumyaku has been sealed by the Fourth Hokage, the group fails to prevent Mukade from releasing its power. Consequently, a strong energy burst engulfs both Naruto and Yamato before they can escape. -- -- As he awakens in a magnificent yet hostile kingdom, Naruto meets its young queen Saara and three Konohagakure ninjas on a top-secret mission. They reveal to him that he has time-traveled to Rouran 20 years into the past! To make matters worse, Mukade has already infiltrated the royal court, becoming the naive queen's most trusted minister under the alias Anrokuzan. -- -- Joining forces with the three ninjas, Naruto must protect Saara's life without fail to stop the villain's plans and return to the present. -- -- -- Licensor: -- VIZ Media -- Movie - Jul 31, 2010 -- 180,781 7.41
Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 4 - The Lost Tower -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Comedy Martial Arts Shounen Super Power -- Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 4 - The Lost Tower Naruto: Shippuuden Movie 4 - The Lost Tower -- Led by Yamato, Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, and Sai are assigned to capture Mukade, a rogue ninja who is pursuing the ancient chakra Ryuumyaku located underneath the Rouran ruins. While the Ryuumyaku has been sealed by the Fourth Hokage, the group fails to prevent Mukade from releasing its power. Consequently, a strong energy burst engulfs both Naruto and Yamato before they can escape. -- -- As he awakens in a magnificent yet hostile kingdom, Naruto meets its young queen Saara and three Konohagakure ninjas on a top-secret mission. They reveal to him that he has time-traveled to Rouran 20 years into the past! To make matters worse, Mukade has already infiltrated the royal court, becoming the naive queen's most trusted minister under the alias Anrokuzan. -- -- Joining forces with the three ninjas, Naruto must protect Saara's life without fail to stop the villain's plans and return to the present. -- -- Movie - Jul 31, 2010 -- 180,781 7.41
Senjuushi -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Military -- Senjuushi Senjuushi -- Despair War is a battle between ancient guns and contemporary guns. Due to a nuclear war, the world was destroyed. Under the full governance of a world empire, people are living with their freedom taken. Despite the forbidden rule of owning any weapons, there is a resistance that secretly fights against the world empire. They own ancient guns left as art and fight using these. Then, the Kijuushi appear as the souls of the ancient guns. Proud and magnificent, the "Absolute Royal" are the only ones that can give hope to this world. The story depicts the everyday life of the Kijuushi. Laughter, despair, happiness, confusion, pain; they would still pursue their own absolute loyalty to fight. What do they fight for? What should they protect? -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 11,661 4.92
Windaria -- -- Idol, Kaname Productions -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Drama Fantasy Romance Sci-Fi -- Windaria Windaria -- Two pairs of young lovers become embroiled in a war between two rival kingdoms, the primitive but resplendent Isa and the militaristic but undisciplined Paro. Izu and his young wife, Marin, are simple farmers who live in the unassuming village of Saki, which lies directly between Isa and Paro. While Saki does not have the beauty of Isa nor the war machines of Paro, they do possess a magnificent tree known as "Windaria," to which the villagers give their prayers in return for "good memories." -- -- When the war erupts, Izu decides to join Paro's army, enthralled by the fantastic motorbike "given" to him as a bribe. Before he departs, they each take a vow: He will definitely return to her, and until he does, she will wait for him. The other two lovers are Jill, the prince of Paro, and Ahanas, Princess of Isa. They initially want nothing to do with the rapidly escalating conflict, but after Jill's father, Paro's king, dies by his son's hand in an altercation over the war, Jill has little choice but to realize his father's final wish: the taking of Isa. -- -- The only problem is that he had promised his beloved, Ahanas, that he would not become involved. Windaria is a war parable set in a fantasy land of unicorns and ghost ships. -- -- (Source: AnimeNfo) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- Movie - Jul 19, 1986 -- 7,639 6.53
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Bardelys the Magnificent
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Guns of the Magnificent Seven
HMCS Magnificent (CVL 21)
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Magnificent
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Mount Magnificent Conservation Park
One Magnificent Morning
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Where's Wally?: The Magnificent Poster Book!
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