" . . . for there is only one thing essential, needful, indispensable, to grow conscious of the Divine Reality and live in it and live it always.” Letters on Yoga
“… for there is only one thing essential, needful, indispensable, to grow conscious of the Divine Reality and live in it and live it always.” Letters on Yoga
KEYS (10k)
4 The Mother
2 Tolstoi
2 Sri Aurobindo
1 William James
1 Wilhelm Reich
1 Taigu Ryokan
1 Swami Akhandananda
1 Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
1 Saint Padre Pio
1 Saint John Chrysostom
1 Israel Gelfand
1 Confucius
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
23 Paulo Coelho
13 Viktor E Frankl
10 Rajneesh
9 Osho
9 Leo Tolstoy
9 Anonymous
7 S ren Kierkegaard
7 Mitch Albom
7 G K Chesterton
7 Cassandra Clare
6 Oswald Chambers
6 John Green
6 Hermann Hesse
6 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 Rainer Maria Rilke
5 Chris Crutcher
4 Various
4 Thomas Merton
4 The Mother
4 Sri Chinmoy
1:There is only one thing in life that never changes, and it is change." ~ Confucius, #KEYS
2:There is only one thing to be feared and that is sin. Everything else is beside the point. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #KEYS
3:Don't spend your energies on things that generate worry, anxiety and anguish. Only one thing is necessary: Lift up your spirit, and love God." ~ Saint Padre Pio, #KEYS
4:Don't waste your energies on things that cause worry, disturbance and anxiety. Only one thing is necessary: to lift the spirit and love God. ~ Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, #KEYS
5:Certainly, He will come to you. Only one thing is needed: your yearning, your earnest longing. He wants nothing else. You have to call on Him with earnestness. ~ Swami Akhandananda, #KEYS
6:There is only one thing which is more unreasonable than the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics, and this is the unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology. ~ Israel Gelfand, #KEYS
7:There is only one thing to do in order to be sure of being happy: it is to love the good and the wicked. Love always and thou wilt be happy always. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
8:Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily… ~ Wilhelm Reich, #KEYS
9:Only one thing is important, it is to find the Divine. For each one and for the whole world anything becomes useful if it helps to find the Divine.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life [T0],#KEYS
10:There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do… contradict other philosophers." ~ William James, (1842 1910), an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, Wikipedia., #KEYS
11:In The Morning :::
In the morning, bowing to all;
In the evening, bowing to all.
Respecting others is my only duty--
Hail to the Never-despising Bodhisattva.
In heaven and earth he stands alone.
A real monk
Needs
Only one thing--
a heart like
Never-despising Buddha. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#KEYS
12:The young generations study numberless subjects, the constitution of the stars, of the earth, the origin of organisms etc. They omit only one thing and that is to know what is the sense of human life, how one ought to live, what the great sages of all times have thought of this question and how they have resolved it. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
13:compensation for sacrificed discipline of the lesser for greater :::
...a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
14:There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109],#KEYS
15:For centuries and centuries humanity has waited for this time. It is come. But it is difficult.
I don't simply tell you we are here upon earth to rest and enjoy ourselves, now is not the time for that. We are here..... to prepare the way for the new creation.
The body has some difficulty, so I can't be active, alas. It is not because I am old, I am not old, I am younger than most of you. If I am here inactive, it is because the body has given itself definitely to prepare the transformation. But the consciousness is clear and we are here to work - rest and enjoyment will come afterwards. Let us do our work here.
So I have called you to tell you that. Take what you can, do what you can, my help will be with you. All sincere effort will be helped to the maximum.
It is the hour to be the heroic. Heroism is not what it is said to be; it is to become wholly unified - and the Divine help will always be with those who have resolved to be heroic in full sincerity.
There!
You are here at this moment that is to say upon earth, because you chose it at one time - you do not remember it any more, but I know it - that is why you are here. Well, you must rise to the height of the task. You must strive, you must conquer all weakness and limitations; above all you must tell your ego: "Your hour is gone." We want a race that has no ego, that has in place of the ego the Divine Consciousness. It is that which we want: the Divine Consciousness which will allow the race to develop itself and the Supramental being to take birth.
If you believe that I am here because I am bound - it is not true. I am not bound, I am here because my body has been given for the first attempt at transformation. Sri Aurobindo told me so. Well, I am doing it. I do not wish anyone to do it for me because.... Because it is not very pleasant, but I do it willingly because of the result; everybody will be able to benefit from it. I ask only one thing: do not listen to the ego.
If there is in your hearts a sincere Yes, you will satisfy me completely. I do not need words, I need the sincere adhesion of your hearts. That's all. ~ The Mother, (This talk was given by the Mother on April 2,1972,#KEYS
16:the process of unification, the perfecting our one's instrumental being, the help one needs to reach the goal :::
If we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavor.
As you pursue this labor of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. ... It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us [the psychic being], to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perfection and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realize. This discovery and realization should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
~ The Mother, On Education, [T1],#KEYS
17:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Love attracts only one thing and that thing is love. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 2:I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 3:Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 4:There's only one thing wrong with my wife's face - it shows. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 5:There is only one thing in life which never changes, and it is change. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 6:Every day there is only one thing to learn: how to be honestly happy. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 7:There's only one thing that can kill the movies, and that's education. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 8:I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 9:There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 10:Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 11:Whenever conscience commands anything, there is only one thing to fear, and that is fear. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 12:If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it's that I've never been a kept woman. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 13:There's only one thing more beautiful than a beautiful dream, and that's a beautiful reality. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 14:Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 15:Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing-the result. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 16:I suppose if you could have only one thing, it would be that-energy. Without it, you haven't got a thing. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 17:I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 18:My heart needs only one thing. It needs to be guided Along the age-old path Of life-blossoming self-awareness. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 19:“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.” ~ william-james, @wisdomtrove 20:I can do only one thing, like a little dog follow closely the Master's footsteps. Pray that I be a cheerful dog. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 21:Meditation tells you only one thing: God is. Meditation reveals to you only one truth: yours is the vision of God. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 22:There is only one thing worse than training employees and losing them, and that's not training them and keeping them ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 23:There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 24:Doing brings ego. Ego is the shadow of action. And there is only one thing that is not-doing, and that is awareness, watchfulness. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 25:There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 26:Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase in pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 27:Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 28:Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 29:For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 30:Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 31:One thing and only one thing a Masonic Lodge can give its members which they can get nowhere else in the world. That one thing is Masonry. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 32:There is only one thing in this world, and that is to keep acquiring money and more money, power and more power. All the rest is meaningless. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 33:Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 34:One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 35:& 36:There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 37:Is there Chance? No. There is karma. Karma causes all things to happen. There is only one thing karma cannot decide, and that is how far you will evolve in this lifetime. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 38:People are buying only one thing from you: the way the engagement (hiring you, working with you, dating you, using your product or service, learning from you) makes them feel. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 39:One should never become devoted to a teacher, any more than one should become devoted to a statue of a god. There is only one thing to be devoted to, and that is your mind. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 40:Every time we have an election, we get in worse men and the country keeps right on going. Times have proven only one thing and that is you can't ruin this country even with politics. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 41:There is only one thing that a man really wants to do, all his life; and that is, to find his way to his God, his Morning Star, salute his fellow man, and enjoy the woman who has come the long way with him. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 42:If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove 43:If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only ONE thing: you can become better yourself. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 44:There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives; To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 45:Mike, however, heard nothing at all. Lost in her breathlike touch, he knew only one thing for sure: In the instant their lips first met, there was a flicker of something almost electrical that made him believe the feeling would last forever. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 46:The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 47:The manager, in today's world, doesn't get paid to be a steward of resources, a favored term not so many years ago. He or she gets paid for one and only one thing: to make things better (incrementally and dramatically), to change things, to act - today. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 48:Archimedes, that he might transport the entire globe ... demanded only a point that was firm and immovable; so also, I shall be entitled to entertain the highest expectations, if I am fortunate enough to discover only one thing that is certain and indubitable. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove 49:nothing's news. it's the same old thing in disguise. only one thing comes without a disguise and you only see it once, or maybe never. like getting hit by a freight train. makes us realize that all our moaning about long lost girls in gingham dresses is not so important after all. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 50:If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove 51:Staying focused on a project or plan is one of the most difficult challenges we face. There is always the house to clean, calls to make, laundry to fold, deadlines to meet. Actually, there is only one thing that keeps us from our goals - lack of focus. And very often, lack of focus is caused by fear. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 52:No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key to history, and why history is often so confused is that it has been written by men who are ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves. . . Language and religion do not make a race& 53:What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 54:W hat Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 55:The life-converting experience is not the discovery that I have choices to make that determine the way I live out my existence, but the awareness that my that my existence itself is not in the center. Once I & 56:And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 57:When we no longer pray, no longer listen to the voice of love that speaks to us in the moment, our lives become absurd lives in which we are thrown back and forth between the past and the future. If we could just be, for a few minutes each day, fully where we are, we would indeed discover that we are not alone and that the One who is with us wants only one thing: to give us love ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 58:I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom ... the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 59:I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom... [and] the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 60:Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 61:I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It's illimitable. It's such a happy life. There's only one thing like it, when you're up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you. You're intoxicated by the boundless space. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 62:There is only one thing in your life YOU can be sure of. That one thing is this moment, now. The last moment has gone forever. The next moment has not come. YOU can become fully conscious only when you are living in the moment. To begin to live in the moment you have to know it exists and understand it. To understand it you have to observe it in relation to yourself and in relation to life. When you understand it, when you become conscious, you will see it is all that exists. To see this is to glimpse reality. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:There was only one thing he ~ Jeanne DuPrau, #NFDB
2:You cannot do only one thing. ~ Garrett Hardin, #NFDB
3:There is only one thing that makes ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
4:I do not have to be only one thing. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
5:There is only one thing that makes a dream ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
6:Only one thing is important, it is to find the Divine ~ The Mother, #NFDB
7:Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
8:I believe in only one thing,the power of human will. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
9:Love attracts only one thing and that thing is love. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
10:Only one thing is certain: we live on a knife edge. In ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
11:Only one thing is important: winning the struggle. ~ John Christopher, #NFDB
12:There's only one thing a bully respected: bigger bully. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
13:Only one person," he whispered to her. "Only one thing. ~ Thea Harrison, #NFDB
14:There's only one thing to say to the censors: Shut up. ~ Chris Crutcher, #NFDB
15:There’s only one thing to say to the censors: Shut up. ~ Chris Crutcher, #NFDB
16:The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive ~ Stanley Kubrick, #NFDB
17:Relax, let go. But remember only one thing: You are a witness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
18:I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
19:Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare! ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
20:There is only one thing age can give you, and that is wisdom. ~ S I Hayakawa, #NFDB
21:There is only one thing in life you can control: Your own effort. ~ Mark Cuban, #NFDB
22:There’s only one thing I don’t love about him. Her. ~ Stephanie Perkins, #NFDB
23:There's only one thing we never wrote down. You know what it was. ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
24:“There is only one thing I want to be part of. You.” ~ Aleksandr Voinov, #NFDB
25:only one thing: the fact that Emily Gold…is dead.” He spread his ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
26:There's only one thing left here to say. Love's never too late. ~ Avril Lavigne, #NFDB
27:if you could do only one thing in ministry, what would you do? ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
28:Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry. ~ Pablo Neruda, #NFDB
29:There's only one thing we can control, and that is how hard we play. ~ Don Meyer, #NFDB
30:There is only one thing you should know. Conquer yourself. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
31:There's only one thing wrong with my wife's face - it shows. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
32:There is only one thing in life which never changes, and it is change. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
33:All actors are whores. They want only one thing: to seduce you. ~ Joyce Carol Oates, #NFDB
34:Every day there is only one thing to learn: how to be honestly happy. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
35:Sometimes there is only one thing left to say, P. S. I Love You.... ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
36:"There is only one thing in life which never changes, and it is change." ~ Confucius, #NFDB
37:There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education. ~ Will Rogers, #NFDB
38:It had not been all suffering and horror. Life is never only one thing. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
39:In the Olympic Oath, I ask for only one thing: sporting loyalty. ~ Pierre de Coubertin, #NFDB
40:I want to be remembered for only one thing: my contribution to aviation. ~ Howard Hughes, #NFDB
41:There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
42:There's only one thing on my mind. There's only one goal. One aim. One focus. ~ Triple H, #NFDB
43:Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
44:There’s only one thing that we have to do in life, and that is to die. ~ T Colin Campbell, #NFDB
45:I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
46:There is only one thing certain and that is that nothing is certain ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
47:There was only one thing that someone with great power wanted. More of it ~ Mary E Pearson, #NFDB
48:There is only one thing Donald Trump is interested in, and that's Donald Trump. ~ John Dean, #NFDB
49:There is only one thing people like that is good for them; a good night's sleep. ~ E W Howe, #NFDB
50:Experience teaches us only one thing at a time - and hardly that, in my case. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
51:In fact, there's really only one thing that everything's made of; it's energy. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
52:There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
53:There's only one thing I never did and wish I had done: climbed over a fence. ~ Mary of Teck, #NFDB
54:There's only one thing that's certainAnd that's everybody, everybody's hurting ~ Jakob Dylan, #NFDB
55:Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
56:Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
57:There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
58:There is only one thing worse than boredom, and that is the fear of boredom. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
59:There's only one thing you can use against pure logic, and that's common sense. ~ Alan Cooper, #NFDB
60:In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that cannot be explained. ~ Georges Braque, #NFDB
61:When you are up to your arse in shit there is only one thing to do. Attack. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
62:There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
63:Only one thing counts in this life - get them to sign on the line that is dotted. ~ Alec Baldwin, #NFDB
64:Only one thing is real wealth and that is self-knowledge, because it cannot be destroyed. ~ Osho, #NFDB
65:There is only one thing which is generally safe from plagiarism -- self-denial. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
66:There is only one thing you have to know about the future: everything gets worse. ~ Tobias Wolff, #NFDB
67:There's only one thing that's impossible to beat... a man that doesn't give up. ~ Conor McGregor, #NFDB
68:Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
69:Politics is a country idiot capable of concentrating on only one thing at a time. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
70:There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: not pursuing it. ~ Jos N Harris, #NFDB
71:There’s only one thing in life, and that’s the continual renewal of inspiration. ~ Diana Vreeland, #NFDB
72:There's only one thing in the world that turns me on. And I love her in lace. ~ Jodi Ellen Malpas, #NFDB
73:Happy is the man who can do only one thing; in doing it, he fulfills his destiny. ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
74:He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted - to be a saint. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
75:At the age of five, Gustav Perle was certain of only one thing: he loved his mother. ~ Rose Tremain, #NFDB
76:In the spiritual life only one thing produces genuine joy and that is obedience. ~ Richard J Foster, #NFDB
77:Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth, and that is not speaking. ~ Naomi Wolf, #NFDB
78:There's only one thing that can heal the heart... Only one... It's love, Gaara. ~ Masashi Kishimoto, #NFDB
79:There's only one thing that can save a man from madness and that's uncertainty. ~ Dmitry Glukhovsky, #NFDB
80:Both trying to suppress the knowledge that hugs like this mean only one thing. GOODBYE. ~ Jane Green, #NFDB
81:There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
82:In the end, there's only one thing you can believe. Bodies are honest; they don't lie. ~ Megan Chance, #NFDB
83:It should be only a part of my life, but it isn't. I have only one thing: my work. ~ Nastassja Kinski, #NFDB
84:There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
85:There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of faliure. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
86:There's only one thing to do in crisis like this - SLEEP ON IT!
Garfield, the cat. ~ Jim Davis,#NFDB
87:In the absence of Death, In the presence of Death, Only one thing remains, It is Love. ~ Vera Nazarian, #NFDB
88:There's only one thing I need." I placed my hand on his heart. "The rest is just details. ~ Tina Reber, #NFDB
89:You can turn this little tiny light into a huge fireball with only one thing–your mind. ~ James R Doty, #NFDB
90:At last, he said, “They may be a despicable people, but only one thing can change that. ~ Jordan M Poss, #NFDB
91:There is only one thing I can say about the Shah- he knows how to draw a crowd. ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, #NFDB
92:There’s only one thing more contagious than a good attitude—and that’s a bad attitude. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
93:Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
94:There’s only one thing worse than not satisfying a desire. And that is not to feel any desire. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
95:There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red. ~ Mark Rothko, #NFDB
96:There is only one thing that that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
97:Life is simple. Life is not complicated. Life is only one thing: Identify yourself. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
98:There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
99:Witches are good for one thing and only one thing.
Tinder.
Bowen Graeme MacRieve. ~ Kresley Cole,#NFDB
100:Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
101:It takes a lot of things to prove you are smart, but only one thing to prove you are ignorant. ~ Don Herold, #NFDB
102:There is only one thing children find harder to hold back than tears, and that is joy. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
103:There is only one thing that could make me near homicidal. Yeah - this is called My Proper Tea. ~ Doc Brown, #NFDB
104:There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” “I’m ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
105:I found that there is only one thing that heals every problem, and that is: to love yourself. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
106:Motivation requires a calm, centered leader who is focused on one thing, and only one thing. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
107:What he wanted the media to cover, constantly and at length, was only one thing: Donald Trump. ~ Joshua Green, #NFDB
108:But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression ~ John Locke, #NFDB
109:When everything falls apart, only one thing sustains our hope: God loves us, he loves everyone! ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
110:Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
111:Why did people ask “What is it about?” as if a novel had to be about only one thing. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
112:There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
113:There is only one thing more numerous than the stars, and that is the darkness that holds them. ~ Jessica Khoury, #NFDB
114:There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
115:Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
116:Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
117:I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it. ~ Hans Eysenck, #NFDB
118:Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives. Where we focus our attention. ~ Greg Anderson, #NFDB
119:Only one thing has to change for us to know happiness in our lives: where we focus our attention. ~ Greg Anderson, #NFDB
120:Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real. ~ Andre Malraux, #NFDB
121:Whenever conscience commands anything, there is only one thing to fear, and that is fear. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #NFDB
122:If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it's that I've never been a kept woman. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
123:There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause. ~ Vaclav Havel, #NFDB
124:There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause. ~ V clav Havel, #NFDB
125:There was only one thing emptier than having lived without love, and that was having lived without pain. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
126:We had been friends. We could not become strangers. It left only one thing: we must be enemies. ~ John Christopher, #NFDB
127:When your back is against the wall, there is only one thing to do, and that is turn around and fight. ~ John Major, #NFDB
128:There is only one thing I respect in so-called Broadway actors... and that is their competitive sense. ~ Elia Kazan, #NFDB
129:I know only one thing. One doesn’t abandon family. One doesn’t leave them, even in the name of love. ~ Alyson Richman, #NFDB
130:I try very much, whenever I do projects, whatever it is, there's only one thing on my mind, only one thing. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
131:Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
132:Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
133:In Khmer we have a saying that when one is both quite sick and old there remains only one thing, that you die. ~ Pol Pot, #NFDB
134:Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing-the result. ~ Vince Lombardi, #NFDB
135:There's only one thing to do with God's offer of the gift of salvation: Say "thank you" and embrace it. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
136:Dying,” Morris suddenly said, “is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
137:Only one thing’s sadder than remembering you were once free, and that’s forgetting you were once free. ~ Leonard Peltier, #NFDB
138:Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
139:There is only one god and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: “Not today. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
140:There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. ~ Douglas Preston, #NFDB
141:When it is a question of an irate middle-aged lady, there is only one thing to be done - listen to her. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
142:When your opponent's sittin' there holdin' all the aces, there's only one thing to do: kick over the table. ~ Dean Martin, #NFDB
143:I suppose if you could have only one thing, it would be that-energy. Without it, you haven't got a thing. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
144:Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing-the result ~ Vince Lombardi Jr, #NFDB
145:I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
146:My heart needs only one thing. It needs to be guided Along the age-old path Of life-blossoming self-awareness. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
147:There is only one thing you need do in order to have the body you desire; you have to find ways to be happy. ~ Lynn Grabhorn, #NFDB
148:There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers. ~ William James, #NFDB
149:Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character. ~ Horace Greeley, #NFDB
150:Only one thing abides: an infinite beauty that passes from form to form, eternally changed and revealed afresh. ~ Georg B chner, #NFDB
151:There is only one thing that can kill the movies, and that is education. ~ Will Rogers (1949) The Autobiography of Will Rogers., #NFDB
152:I can do only one thing, like a little dog follow closely the Master's footsteps. Pray that I be a cheerful dog. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
153:I think if you decide that any book is about Only One Thing you're probably wrong. Even if that thing is in there. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
154:January has only one thing to be said for it: it is followed by February. Nothing so well becomes its passing. ~ Katharine Tynan, #NFDB
155:Life is never that simple. And the fact that it's not that simple to you means only one thing: You're still alive. ~ Carrie Ryan, #NFDB
156:Meditation tells you only one thing: God is. Meditation reveals to you only one truth: yours is the vision of God. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
157:Of only one thing I am certain. If the manuscript is true, all of us had better examine our lives. Carefully. ~ Richard Matheson, #NFDB
158:Talking to yourself proves only one thing: you're still unable to tell the difference between good and bad company. ~ Guy Finley, #NFDB
159:When you're in the world looking for only one thing, you find it or it finds you. The obsession can be mutual ~ Julianna Baggott, #NFDB
160:When you’re in the world looking for only one thing, you find it or it finds you. The obsession can be mutual ~ Julianna Baggott, #NFDB
161:There is only one thing harder in this world than forgiving. It's to ask forgiveness armed only with, 'I'm sorry'. ~ Erma Bombeck, #NFDB
162:There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience. ~ Archibald MacLeish, #NFDB
163:There’s only one thing that warms my heart, and that is the thought that we are going to sweep away these bourgeois. ~ mile Zola, #NFDB
164:Many things in your life matter, but only one thing matters absolutely.. It is finding the essence of who you are. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
165:There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” “I’m not afraid of failing. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
166:There's only one thing more boring than listening to other people's dreams, and that's listening to their problems. ~ Sue Townsend, #NFDB
167:Aingeal, there is only one thing on my body that's ten inches long, and if you'll recall, the scar is no' it. ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
168:If I could tell you only one thing. My message would be this: The world would be a lonely place if you did not exist. ~ Erin Hanson, #NFDB
169:is only one thing more mortifying than having an exclamation mark removed by an editor: an exclamation mark added in. ~ Lynne Truss, #NFDB
170:Love means to learn to look at yourself the way one looks at distant things for you are only one thing among many. ~ Czes aw Mi osz, #NFDB
171:Witches are good for one thing and only one thing. Tinder. —Bowen Graeme MacRieve Third in line for the Lykae throne ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
172:Fuck', I think. What a beautiful word. If I could say only one thing for the rest of my life, that would be it. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings, #NFDB
173:If you don’t trust either the captain or the ship, there remains only one thing for safety: Trusting the storm! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
174:The years keep coming and going, Men will arise & depart; Only one thing is immortal: The love that is in my heart. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
175:Commit as many mistakes as possible, remembering only one thing: don’t commit the same mistake again. And you will be growing. ~ Osho, #NFDB
176:Only one thing is ever guaranteed, that is that you will definitely not achieve the goal if you don't take the shot. ~ Wayne Gretzky, #NFDB
177:Money is only a vehicle that provides you with options, and I say there's only one thing that money can't buy - poverty. ~ Jerry Doyle, #NFDB
178:Soon you'll learn that there's no room for love in a woman's life. There's only one thing you'll need, and that's patience. ~ Etaf Rum, #NFDB
179:There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
180:There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
181:There's only one thing that all the successful companies in the world have in common: None was started by one person. ~ Ernesto Sirolli, #NFDB
182:my boy, are getting married.” There was only one thing to do. “And stop writhing on the floor, Reginald. It fools no one. ~ Chris Dolley, #NFDB
183:On Dreams
Only one thing supersedes the importance of thinking about a better tomorrow. It's taking action today. ~ Vincent Lowry,#NFDB
184:There is only one thing for a man to do who is married to a woman who enjoys spending money, and that is to enjoy earning it. ~ E W Howe, #NFDB
185:If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. ~ Brady Udall, #NFDB
186:I got a huge knot in my stomach because if Antarctica could talk, it would be saying only one thing: you don't belong here. ~ Maria Semple, #NFDB
187:Only one thing is going to remain with you: that is your witnessing, that is your watchfulness. This watchfulness is meditation. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
188:There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
189:There is only one thing worse than arguing with a drunk,’ Faradan Sort said, ‘and that’s arguing with a drunk who’s right. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
190:There's only one thing left to do. St. Paul's on Old Year's Night. For Auld Lang Syne, my dears. For old time's sake. ~ Jacqueline Winspear, #NFDB
191:If you’re in a business where you can do only one thing and it doesn’t work out, it’s hard for your bosses to be mad at you. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
192:There is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore. ~ Golda Meir, #NFDB
193:At that time, there was only one thing better that a good fight, and that was having a good fight and getting paid for it. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
194:If I could tell you only one thing,
My message would be this:
The world would be a lonely place
If you did not exist. ~ Erin Hanson,#NFDB
195:All work which is necessary ennobles him who performs it. Only one thing is shameful - to contribute nothing to the community. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
196:And only one thing came to mind when the landing gear hit the runway a few minutes later. Fuck you, Eric. I’m going home. * ~ Sloane Kennedy, #NFDB
197:You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment. ~ Maxwell Maltz, #NFDB
198:As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
199:The reason for such behavior, her father said, was that the foreign tourists knew only one thing about this country, the war. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen, #NFDB
200:There had been a slaughter of all my other interests, and upon the strange white open scene of the future only one thing remained. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
201:There's only one thing in life for a woman; it's to be a mother... A woman artist must be... capable of making primary sacrifices. ~ Mary Cassatt, #NFDB
202:There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
203:There's only one thing more important... and that is, after you've done what you set out to do, to feel that it's been worth doing. ~ James Hilton, #NFDB
204:There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
205:There’s only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that’s being so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
206:Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase in pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
207:There is only one thing my body remembers more clearly than how much I wanted him and that is how it felt when he was gone. ~ Malin Persson Giolito, #NFDB
208:Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. (“Death Ship”) ~ Richard Matheson, #NFDB
209:In a world plagued with commonplace tragedies, only one thing exists that truly has the power to save lives, and that is love. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
210:Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare! ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
211:There is only one thing more numerous than the stars,” I say, looking up to the heavens. “And that is the darkness that holds them. ~ Jessica Khoury, #NFDB
212:Friendship means only one thing: you don't create fences around you, but try to remove fences from the life of another person. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
213:Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
214:It’s a novel, right? What’s it about?” Why did people ask “What is it about?” as if a novel had to be about only one thing. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
215:Justice. There is only one thing for which a knight has no patience: injustice. Every true knight fights for human dignity at all times. ~ Ethan Hawke, #NFDB
216:There is only one thing worse than coming home from the lab to a sink full of dirty dishes, and that is not going to the lab at all! ~ Chien Shiung Wu, #NFDB
217:There's only one thing I know about life.
I know some things happen by chance,
And some things happen because we make them happen. ~ Geoff Johns,#NFDB
218:There's only one thing that everyone in this world has in common: whether you want to love somebody and you want to be loved in return. ~ Brian McKnight, #NFDB
219:Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
220:There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
221:There is only one thing I fear now-love. For I have seen it and I have felt it and I know that it is love, not death, that undoes us. ~ Jennifer Donnelly, #NFDB
222:There was only one thing I knew for sure. Delaney and I, we were linked by something I didn’t quite understand yet, but I already cherished. ~ Tara Leigh, #NFDB
223:Do only one thing at a time. When you walk, just enjoy walking. When you listen, really listen. You will become happier and more centered.^ ~ Haemin Sunim, #NFDB
224:For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
225:One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything, and consequently get nothing. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
226:Since the appearance of Christ, ethics can be concerned with only one thing: to partake in the reality of the fulfilled will of God. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
227:The country had seen mighty tractors and skyscrapers...There was only one thing Russia had not seen during this thousand years: freedom. ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
228:"Do only one thing at a time. When you walk, just enjoy walking. When you listen, really listen. You will become happier and more centered." ~ Haemin Sunim, #NFDB
229:Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
230:Tofu is the root of all evil, and there's only one thing that can change a man's mind, and that's a modified Uzi with an extra-long clip. ~ Robert Downey Jr, #NFDB
231:Everyone knows there's only one thing less welcome on a stage than a mime, and that's a clown, because everyone knows that clowns eat people. ~ Laurie Notaro, #NFDB
232:power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
233:There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer. ~ John Green, #NFDB
234:There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer. ~ John Green, #NFDB
235:There is only one thing that makes any one athlete better than another, his heart. We all put our underwear on feet first, so we are all human. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
236:There is only one thing to do in order to be sure of being happy: it is to love the good and the wicked. Love always and thou wilt be happy always. ~ Tolstoi, #NFDB
237:Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today may curse tomorrow and only one thing endures - character. ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
238:I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers. ~ William James, #NFDB
239:One thing and only one thing a Masonic Lodge can give its members which they can get nowhere else in the world. That one thing is Masonry. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
240:since I’ve started watching Amelia, my sexual appetite knows only one thing. Her. And it’s time I fed myself because I’m feeling fucking ravenous. ~ Ella Goode, #NFDB
241:Change only one thing, change from misery to bliss. from sadness to celebration. And it can be done very easily because misery is an unnatural thing. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
242:...Everyone knows there's only one thing less welcome on a stage than a mime, and that's a clown, because everyone knows that clowns eat people. ~ Laurie Notaro, #NFDB
243:Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today may curse tomorrow and only one thing endures - character. ~ Horace Greeley, #NFDB
244:Paul was far more concerned with obeying his divine calling than with gaining man’s approval. Only one thing mattered—pleasing the Master. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
245:There was only one thing for a girl to do when she had a close encounter with a guy that hot. Ice cream. I needed lots and lots of ice cream. Even ~ Aileen Erin, #NFDB
246:A hundred things to do, but only one thing to be," he said, obstinately. "But perhaps I don't feel myself worthy of such a wealth of opportunity? ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
247:If I did only one thing at a time I'd think I was wasting my time. If, for example, I only wrote novels I would feel like a charlatan and a fraud. ~ Peter Ackroyd, #NFDB
248:In the darkest of nights, there is only one thing on your mind--should I be required to stand before the Almighty, will I find myself in His favor? ~ Rachel Hauck, #NFDB
249:There is only one thing in this world, and that is to keep acquiring money and more money, power and more power. All the rest is meaningless. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
250:There is only one thing in this world, and that is to keep acquiring money and more money, power and more power. All the rest is meaningless. ~ Napol on Bonaparte, #NFDB
251:Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want." "What's that, Ritchie?" His answer is simple. "To want. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
252:Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. ~ Paul Celan, #NFDB
253:Pure love ... knows that only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest things out of great love - love, and always love. ~ Mary Faustina Kowalska, #NFDB
254:If death is the basic and the fundamental fear, then only one thing can make you fearless, and that is an experience within you of a deathless consciousness. ~ Osho, #NFDB
255:I wish, by the way, that I knew who separated Time from eternity; there seems only one thing to me, and I always feel that I am in eternity. ~ Georgiana Burne Jones, #NFDB
256:There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
257:We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
258:I locate my map and start scanning it for restaurants, but I can think of only one thing. And you know what they say:
When in Rome…eat gelato first. ~ Kristin Rae,#NFDB
259:The Sun-Paul must consider only one thing: what is the relation of this or that external reaction of the animal to the phenomena of the external world? ~ Ivan Pavlov, #NFDB
260:Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
261:He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
262:It is a tremendous freedom to get rid of all self-considerat ion and learn to care about only one thing-the relationship between Christ and ourselves. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
263:Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else.......above all dont forget to follow your destiny through to its conclusion ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
264:I ask only one thing: I ask the right to hope and suffer as I do now; but if even that is impossible, command me to disappear and I will do it.
-Vronsky ~ Leo Tolstoy,#NFDB
265:Oh, become nothing in deep reality, and, as a worker, study only one thing—to become poorer and lower and more helpless, that Christ may work all in you. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
266:A man who goes forth to take the life of another whom he does not know must believe only one thing: that by his act he will change the course of history. ~ Yitzhak Shamir, #NFDB
267:There is really only one thing you need to know about the dead, and it's that they are dead. They can't come back to comfort us. But still they comfort us. ~ Kirsty Logan, #NFDB
268:Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want."
"What's that, Ritchie?"
His answer is simple.
"To want. ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
269:'How much longer will I live?'... Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
270:There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
271:people who have been broken by suffering and sickness ask for only one thing: a heart that loves and commits itself to them, a heart full of hope for them.”2 ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
272:Sometimes we feel only one thing about a road: We must travel on that road at all costs! We know deep in our heart that that path is our path of dreams! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
273:There is only one way to improve society, which is for all of us to improve ourselves. For this to happen, you need do only one thing: improve your inner self. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
274:One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
275:Only one thing is certain: if pot is legalized, it won't be for our benefit but for the authorities. To have it legalized will also be to lose control of it. ~ Germaine Greer, #NFDB
276:The female is, as it were, a mutilated male, and the catamenia are semen, only not pure; for there is only one thing they have not in them, the principle of soul. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
277:The weights and measures of a marriage; we know things but we choose not to think about them. We choose to bury our heads in the sand. Mike says only one thing. ~ Carol Mason, #NFDB
278:It didn’t matter, anyway. There was only one thing she could ask for, in the end, only one real choice. She raised her eyes to the Angel’s. "Jace," she said. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
279:Our future may indeed be roses, or it may be extinction, but only one thing is certain: the journey there is going to be unpredictable and far more remarkable ~ David Gatewood, #NFDB
280:Her father had learned only one thing in prison. Not humility, nor patience, nor understanding...Marshall Kofer had learned to listen, at least to his daughter". ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
281:He main retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevsky said once, 'There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings'. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
282:I have only one thing to say. I’m an aggressive extrovert. A warning is advisable. I hunt down people lurking in corners and shadows, and absolutely no one is safe ~ Dan Skinner, #NFDB
283:If a person is living out his destiny, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
284:There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
285:There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude... we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
286:There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
287:There is only one thing that remains to us, that cannot be taken away: to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that have given meaning to life. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
288:There is only one thing in this world which is worth dedicating all your life. This is creating more love among people and destroying barriers which exist between them. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
289:It didn’t matter, anyway. There was only one thing she could ask for, in the end, only one real choice.
She raised her eyes to the Angel’s.
"Jace," she said. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
290:To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central human system of thought. ~ Robert Graves, #NFDB
291:After all, in fairy tales, there was only one thing to do. In every story with a long sleep and a waking in it. An easy thing, a pretty thing. Standard currency. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
292:She [Sidonie Rougon] never spoke of her husband, nor of her childhood, her family, or her personal concerns. There was only one thing she never sold, and that was herself. ~ mile Zola, #NFDB
293:Fast movement during exercise does not produce fast muscles, or strong muscles, or large muscles, it produces only one thing, a thing to be avoided, it produces injuries. ~ Arthur Jones, #NFDB
294:If somebody wants to be your enemy, there's only one thing you can do. You give them exactly what they want. It confuses them and makes them wonder what you're up to. ~ David Wellington, #NFDB
295:Only one thing is certian about coffee.... Wherever it is grown, sold, brewed, and consumed, there will be lively controversy, strong opinions, and good conversation. ~ Mark Pendergrast, #NFDB
296:As somebody once said, there was only one thing to recommend it—say you wanted to commit suicide and couldn’t quite find the courage, two days in Jeddah would do the trick. ~ Terry Hayes, #NFDB
297:If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
298:The media and my opponent discuss one thing and only one thing, the needs of people living here illegally. In many cases, by the way, they're treated better than our vets. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
299:As we'd slogged away for weeks on the Convention Hall stage in isolation, trying to pump life into our much-vaunted songbook, there'd been only one thing missing: you. ~ Bruce Springsteen, #NFDB
300:In my experience, there’s only one thing that can smell that bad and still be up walking, despite what you may think about some of the homeless you’ve encountered. Zombies. ~ Tim Marquitz, #NFDB
301:Is there Chance? No. There is karma. Karma causes all things to happen. There is only one thing karma cannot decide, and that is how far you will evolve in this lifetime. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
302:From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. ~ Saul Alinsky, #NFDB
303:I'm on the road of least resistance
I'd rather give up than give in to this
So promise me only one thing, would you?
Just don't ever make me promises
No promises ~ Brandon Boyd,#NFDB
304:People are buying only one thing from you: the way the engagement (hiring you, working with you, dating you, using your product or service, learning from you) makes them feel. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
305:Dying," Morrie suddenly said, "is the only one thing to be sad over, Mitch.
Living unhappily is something else.
So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy. ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB
306:Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
307:One should never become devoted to a teacher, any more than one should become devoted to a statue of a god. There is only one thing to be devoted to, and that is your mind. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
308:We have no family to worry about, we have no society to worry about, we have no occupation to worry about, and we simply have one thing and only one thing in our life, Guru seva ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
309:When there is only one thing, what can be added or subtracted? If there are no circles, can pi find an ideal existence? What is logically possible when there is no contrary? ~ Steven L Peck, #NFDB
310:How did the date go?"
"Bad. A text-a-holic...."
"Not the good kind of trouble."
"There's only one thing to say when this happens."
"What's that?"
"Next. ~ Melissa McClone,#NFDB
311:There is only one thing you need to know about me," he finally said. "I will protect you as long as you are necessary, and as long as you do not seek my downfall."
- Knox ~ Gena Showalter,#NFDB
312:If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” “I’m ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
313:The naked pinch hitter takes only one thing to the plate: his raw, and somewhat irrational, confidence in himself. That this confidence is so unreasonable adds to its dignity. ~ Thomas Boswell, #NFDB
314:There’s only one thing holding America back from realizing her full glory. Ready? You want to write this down? No? Okay, here it is: We need to stop taking ourselves so seriously. ~ Tim Dorsey, #NFDB
315:You can't do anything with anybody's body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person - you can do only one thing to make it dirty: kill it. Hiroshima was dirty. ~ Lenny Bruce, #NFDB
316:But there's certainly only one thing I could never agree with George Galloway on. He's a teetotaller and wants to close all the bars in the House of Commons. That is just not on. ~ Nigel Farage, #NFDB
317:When you're addicted to heroin, there is only one thing you can do - go off heroin. But we're not going to throw away these phones, we're not going to throw away our technology. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
318:Hardly anyone has been told the following truth: In order to be genuinely happy there is one and only one thing you need to do: get deprogrammed, get rid of those attachments. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
319:I couldn’t ignore my own name. Worse, it seemed I was the only one that had heard it. That, combined with the mist, could mean only one thing. A ghost. I half turned in my seat, ~ Leighann Dobbs, #NFDB
320:Someday America will have its very own commercial-free TV and radio station devoted to only one thing: to teach people, in their homes, all the essentials of personal achievement. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
321:The myths and legends about Faerie are many and diverse, and often contradictory. Only one thing is certain - that nothing is certain. All things are possible in the land of Faerie. ~ Brian Froud, #NFDB
322:I can only assume that there’s only one thing more frustrating than not being able to find someone, and that’s not being found. I would want someone to find me, more than anything. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
323:I'm a believer in biochemistry. But I tell people to try only one thing at a time to see if it works. And if you do give a powerful drug to a kid, it better have a big wow factor. ~ Temple Grandin, #NFDB
324:Mary wanted to get out of here and on to another plane of life; but these words weren't going to help her out. They had been put together with only one thing in mind: to lock her in. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
325:There’s only one thing that can that can erase uncertainty, that can take away pain, and it’s calling to me in its siren song that blots out the sounds and noises of old New York. ~ Lauren Blakely, #NFDB
326:There was only one thing for me to do when I started my new life in the dorm: stop taking everything so seriously; establish a proper distance between myself and everything else. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
327:Ultimately the way to win the game of life, is found in only one thing: Our ability to choose meaning in any life circumstance. Become the master of meaning and you master your life. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
328:Scientists say because of global warming they expect the world's oceans to rise four and a half feet. The scientists say this can mean only one thing: Gary Coleman is going to drown. ~ Conan O Brien, #NFDB
329:That she was waiting for him, a woman awaiting a courageous man in search of his treasure. From that day on, the desert would represent only one thing to her: the hope for his return. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
330:And when the end comes, and when it is as horrible as good men always knew it would be, there is only one thing to say as all those good men approach the Throne of Judgment: I was misled. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
331:As he stood by the desolate fire, he felt that the only one thing which could assuage his grief would be thorough and complete retribution, brought by his own hand upon his enemies. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
332:For seven years I went about, day and night, with only one thing on my mind – her.
Were there a Christian so faithful to his God as I was to her we would all be Jesus
Christs today. ~ Henry Miller,#NFDB
333:I made a deal that I would spend money on only one thing: getting smarter. I bought books. I would skip a meal and skip watching television, but I wouldn't skip an investment in my brain. ~ Larry Winget, #NFDB
334:It’s like teachers. They know they’re decent folk who are going to do it anyway. And when people are that virtuous, there’s only one thing to do under our system: shit on ’em each paycheck. ~ Tim Dorsey, #NFDB
335:I've made mistakes. More than my share. Hopefully, I've learned from them, but can't guarentee anything. There's only one thing I can promise. I'm taking this to the end." -Bobby Pendragon ~ D J MacHale, #NFDB
336:There is always more to do than you can do, and you can do only one thing at a time. The key is to feel as good about what you’re not doing as about what you are doing at that moment. Time ~ David Allen, #NFDB
337:It was not one folly that Shakespeare talked about. If Love truly is but a myriad of follies then I have committed them all, that can mean only one thing – I loved her truly, madly, deeply! ~ Faraaz Kazi, #NFDB
338:There is only one thing which is more unreasonable than the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics, and this is the unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology. ~ Israel Gelfand, #NFDB
339:What we want and what we need in life are two very different things. But it takes death to put those two contenders into perspective. Right now, there’s only one thing I really want. To live. ~ Jane Corry, #NFDB
340:A photograph can communicate a couple things— and sometimes only one thing—very well. The more you try to say with your photograph, the greater the chance that you will say nothing at all. ~ David duChemin, #NFDB
341:I do feel better, Thomas Hudson thought. That is the funny part. You always feel better and you always get over your remorse. There’s only one thing you don’t get over and that is death. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
342:if there is one thing dog ethologists can agree on (and it might indeed be only one thing), dogs are masters of change. If nothing else, dogs’ defining characteristic is their adaptability. ~ Gregory Berns, #NFDB
343:I've made mistakes. More than my share. Hopefully, I've learned from them, but can't guarentee anything. There's only one thing I can promise. I'm taking this to the end."
-Bobby Pendragon ~ D J MacHale,#NFDB
344:Only one thing matters: live a good, happy life. Do your heart's bidding, even when it leads you on paths that timid souls would avoid. Even when life is a torment, don't let it harden you. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
345:Purpose is a man-made fiction. Nobody on their deathbed gets a plaque that says "he focused on only one thing for his entire life!" Those are counterfeit thoughts in a counterfeit society. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
346:You hae only one thing you may control tonight - whether to use your safe word or not. Otherwise all the decisions, all the choices, are mine. Everything is in my hands. (Jake to Kallie) ~ Cherise Sinclair, #NFDB
347:Anybody who's spent any time with machines at all,' he added, 'and baby, that's us all, knows first and foremost there's only one thing certain about them, computer or bicycle. They go wrong. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
348:Aristotle states that only one thing could justify monarchy, and that was if the virtue of the king and his family were greater than the virtue of the rest of the citizens put together. Tactfully, ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
349:There is only one thing for which God has sent me into the world, and that is to develop every kind of virtue or strength, and there is nothing in all the world that I cannot use for this purpose. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
350:I could use some lunch.” “Do you have any money?” “No,” Lula said. “Do you?” “No.” “There’s only one thing to do then. Senior buffet.” Ten minutes later, I pulled into the Costco parking lot. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
351:Let's say there was a burning building and you could rush in and you could save only one thing: either the last known copy of Shakespeare's plays or some anonymous human being. What would you do? ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
352:The tax code is a monstrosity and there's only one thing to do with it. Scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize the American people. ~ Steve Forbes, #NFDB
353:Only one thing I’ll say for the people watching television, the millions and millions of the One Eye: they’re not hurting anyone while they’re sitting in front of that Eye. But neither was Japhy…. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
354:I’m an atheist swimming in a sea of superstition, surrounded by well-meaning, good people with whom I share a culture and similar concerns, and there’s only one thing I can do. I have to laugh. Living ~ P Z Myers, #NFDB
355:No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn't actually fall down. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
356:We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
357:I'm so glad you're here," Aphrodite said. "War is coming. Bloodshed is inevitable. So there's really only one thing to do." "Uh... and that is?" Annabeth ventured. "Why, have tea and chat, obviously ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
358:realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
359:You know how they say there's only one thing in the universe that's constant?' Jonas started. 'Change. Change is the only constant in the universe. And left alone, all things return to chaos. ~ Nora Raleigh Baskin, #NFDB
360:Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Only one thing is right, and that is the Truth, but nobody knows what it is. It is a thing that changes all the time, and then comes back to the same thing. -Old Yao ~ Lin Yutang, #NFDB
361:If something is stolen from you, don't go to the police. They're not interested. Don't go to a psychologist either, because he's interested in only one thing: that it was really you who did the stealing. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
362:In this life everything perishes over a period of time. Whether it be diamond, beauty, gold or even land. Only one thing withstands this destruction. It is knowledge. The more you give the more you get. ~ Sudha Murty, #NFDB
363:Quite frankly, so am I, because what I'm about to tell you is a fact.
In this country, there is only one thing that can draw a crown without any shadow of a doubt. The answer?
Beer.
Free beer. ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
364:There is only one thing that remains to us that cannot be taken away: to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that have given meaning to life; but that is not the politician's way. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru, #NFDB
365:Yes, from year to year, from day to day, in our heart of hearts there's only one thing we wait for - a meeting that will bring happiness and love. Really, this hope is all we live for - and how vain it is. ~ Ivan Bunin, #NFDB
366:I'm so glad you're here," Aphrodite said. "War is coming. Bloodshed is inevitable. So there's really only one thing to do."
"Uh... and that is?" Annabeth ventured.
"Why, have tea and chat, obviously ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
367:It has been passed down in many texts of old and by the word of mouth; that no matter the strength of the weapons of man, there is only one thing powerful enough to defeat them all... The power of love. ~ Imania Margria, #NFDB
368:...there was only one thing that interested her and that was getting into bed with men whenever she'd the chance. And I warned her straight. 'You'll be sorry one day, my girl, and wish you'd got me back'. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
369:Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And don’t forget the language of omens. And, above all, don’t forget to follow your Personal Legend through to its conclusion. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
370:Only one thing is important, it is to find the Divine. For each one and for the whole world anything becomes useful if it helps to find the Divine.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The True Aim of Life [T0],#NFDB
371:There is only one thing that a man really wants to do, all his life; and that is, to find his way to his God, his Morning Star, salute his fellow man, and enjoy the woman who has come the long way with him. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
372:You have fire, you have soul. Your strength and resilience amaze me. Your gentleness and kindness humble me. Your beauty takes my breath away. If I could have only one thing in this life, it would be you. ~ Sarah Castille, #NFDB
373:Lost in her breath-like touch, he knew only one thing for sure: In the instant their lips first met, there was a flicker of something almost electrical that made him believe the feeling would last forever. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
374:Don’t be too worried for having too many things unaccomplished. Make a deal; accomplish only one thing; one special thing today. Repeat this tomorrow. It will amaze you how much you’ll get done in a week! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
375:That's one of my favorite things about Twitter: You can tweak your feed into a fabulous novelty engine. That's only one thing you can do with it, but it's one of the things I find most entertaining about it. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
376:If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about. ~ Robert Frost, #NFDB
377:Listen, douchepants,” I said, “you’re not going to tell me anything about disease I don’t already know. I need one and only one thing from you before I walk out of your life forever: WHAT HAPPENS TO ANNA’S MOTHER? ~ John Green, #NFDB
378:My mother once said there’s only one thing worse than not satisfying a desire. And that is not to feel any desire. Hatred–it’s sort of all you have left when you’ve lost everything else. And then it’s taken from you. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
379:When people come to me with a problem, I don’t care what it is — poor health, lack of money, unfulfilling relationships, or stifled creativity—there is only one thing I ever work on, and that is LOVING THE SELF. ~ Louise L Hay, #NFDB
380:Christopher Robin nodded. “Then there’s only one thing to be done,” he said. “We shall have to wait for you to get thin again.” “How long does getting thin take?” asked Pooh anxiously. “About a week, I should think. ~ A A Milne, #NFDB
381:There is only one thing that seems to work . . . to turn directly toward the approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively . . . find out what its secret aim is and what it wants from you. P. 170 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
382:There is only one thing worse than losing the one you love, and that is losing them without knowing why. If you are a dog, then your master is like a god to you, and the pain of losing him is greater still. ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
383:Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time. ~ Connie Willis, #NFDB
384:There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie, #NFDB
385:It scares them because of the forced intimacy with a place that gives nothing back to a stranger, a place where the land and its weather—probably the most violent and extreme on earth—demand only one thing: humility. ~ Timothy Egan, #NFDB
386:I have only one thing to say to the melancholy man: 'Look into the distance.' ... When you look at the stars or the ocean's expanse, your eye is completely relaxed; once your eye is relaxed, your mind is unfettered. ~ Emile Chartier, #NFDB
387:I had been to Jeddah on my previous trip, so I knew it well enough. There was only one thing to recommend it: say, you wanted to commit suicide and couldn’t quite find the courage, two days in Jeddah would do the trick. ~ Terry Hayes, #NFDB
388:Most people never live up to the potential they have been given. The results they produce and the life they experience are only a tiny fraction of what they are truly capable of. Why? What stops us? Only one thing: fear. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
389:There’s only one thing that’s any good with a certain type of woman, you know,’ went on Eddie. ‘Ask her for what you want, ask her whether she means to give it to you, and if she doesn’t, throw her out of the window. ~ Patrick Hamilton, #NFDB
390:I would say that each of us has only one thing to gain from the feminist movement: Our whole humanity. Because gender has wrongly told us that some things are masculine and some things are feminine... which is bullshit. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
391:There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself. If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you - and His experiments always succeed. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
392:Silence is also speech.
-Silerian Proverb
The bitter heart eats it's owner.
-Kintish Proverb
Only one thing is better than learning an enemy is dead: learning that he is in Sileria.
-Valdani Proverb ~ Laura Resnick,#NFDB
393:There is only one thing to be done," went on the old lady, "be simple and quiet. Whenever your soul begins to be disturbed and anxious, put yourself in His Hands, and refuse to decide for yourself. It is easy, so easy. ~ Robert Hugh Benson, #NFDB
394:There was only one thing the perfume could not do. It could not turn him into a person who could love and be loved like everyone else. So, to hell with it he thought. To hell with the world. With the perfume. With himself ~ Patrick S skind, #NFDB
395:Only one thing is harassing you: your own idea of achieving things as quickly as possible. But meditation is not to be achieved; it is already there. It has only to be discovered. And discovery needs only one thing: a silent watcher. ~ Osho, #NFDB
396:It is really intolerable that we can say only one thing at a time; for social behavior displays many features at the same time, and so in taking them up one by one we necessarily do outrage to its rich, dark, organic unity. ~ George C Homans, #NFDB
397:Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
398:So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
399:And in a moment like that, there was only one thing I could ask myself: What would Jack Burton do? “I’m f-f-f-fine,” I said in a hoarse, hardly understandable voice. “That’s a mouthful, and I’m busy. D-do you maybe have a nickname? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
400:He was clearly aware of only one thing, his own total isolation. The world had fallen out from under him, and he was left alone.
To die is to lose the self and rejoin the rest. He had kept himself, and lost the rest. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
401:There is only one thing I want. I would like to be seriously ill, and to hear nothing more about him for at least a week. Why doesn't something happen to me? Why do I have to go through all this? If only I had never set eyes on him! ~ Eva Braun, #NFDB
402:They are all I have left—the stars and the memory of the many times I wished upon them. But with all those wishes, I asked for only one thing.
To see him again.
But I will not see him again. I do not see him now. ~ Christopher Pike,#NFDB
403:All is in the word “know.” To know is to realize. Realization is mindfulness. All the work of meditation is aimed at awakening us in order to know one and only one thing: birth and death can never touch us in any way whatsoever. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
404:Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we look at ourselves and wonder who we are and how we got that way. Only one thing about change remains constant...it is always painful ~ Jodi Picoult, #NFDB
405:He had only one thing to do and that was what he should think about and he must think it out clearly and take everything as it came along, and not worry. To worry was a bad as to be afraid. It simply made things more difficult. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
406:Only one thing mattered: this was not a Horcrux. Dumbledore had weakened himself by drinking that horrible potion for nothing. Harry crumpled the parchment in his hand and his eyes burned with tears as behind him Fang began to howl. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
407:If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only one thing: you can become better yourself ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
408:It will help us to overcome our anger, says Seneca, if we remind ourselves that our behavior also angers other people: “We are bad men living among bad men, and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another. ~ William B Irvine, #NFDB
409:As I conducted my interviews, I realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seemed to be struggling for it. That one thing was the belief in their worthiness. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
410:If you see that some aspect of your society is bad, and you want to improve it, there is only one way to do so: you have to improve people. And in order to improve people, you begin with only ONE thing: you can become better yourself. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
411:Of course, only Americans can name a shop In-n-Out Burger without collapsing into a heap of dirty sniggers. You know the difference between them and us? To us, a double entendre means only one thing; to them, it means absolutely nothing. ~ A A Gill, #NFDB
412:In the sex-positive community, I found countless women who were sexually liberated and open, and required only one thing - that they be empowered and in control of the context, because that's how they felt safe enough to truly let go. ~ Neil Strauss, #NFDB
413:Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there’s only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
414:Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
415:It can no longer be maintained that the properties of any one thing in the universe are independent of the existence or non-existence of everything else. It is, at last, no longer sensible to speak of a universe with only one thing in it. ~ Lee Smolin, #NFDB
416:The entire legacy of humanity will be only one thing, a line of red goop in the paleo-oceanographic record, a time of no calcium carbonate shells that will stretch on for several million years. The sadness of our stupidity is overwhelming. ~ David Vann, #NFDB
417:I ask only one thing of skeptics: don’t bring up Soviet Russia, please. That horrible example of State Capitalism has nothing to do with what I, and other libertarian socialists, would offer as an alternative to the present system. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
418:The Sage desires only one thing, virtue, and he is cautious about only one thing, vice. He is the same in every circumstance because what is most important lies within him, and not with external events, which are constantly changing. ~ Donald J Robertson, #NFDB
419:There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to do our level best right where we are every day of our lives; To use our best judgment, and then to trust the rest to that Power which holds the forces of the universe in his hands. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
420:Winter's here, and you feel lousy: You're coughing and sneezing; your muscles ache; your nose is an active mucus volcano. These symptoms -- so familiar at this time of year -- can mean only one thing: Tiny fanged snails are eating your brain. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
421:Listen to me. I can live without a kidney. I can live without football. I can live without a lot of things. There is only one thing in this world i can't live without. And i'm giving her my kidney so she can live, so we can be together. ~ Michelle Leighton, #NFDB
422:New Rule: There's only one thing to say about the Christian Film and Television Commission giving me the Bigoted Bile Award and naming Religulous the number-one Most Unbearable Movie of 2008: Thank you! You hate me, you really hate me! ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
423:There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” “I’m not afraid of failing. It’s just that I don’t know how to turn myself into the wind.” “Well, you’ll have to learn; your life depends on it.” “But what ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
424:The stock market cares about only one thing above all else: anticipated earnings. If companies make more money, their share prices eventually rise. The stock price is simply a reflection of a company's earning power. Everything else is noise. ~ Peter Mallouk, #NFDB
425:Mike, however, heard nothing at all. Lost in her breathlike touch, he knew only one thing for sure: In the instant their lips first met, there was a flicker of something almost electrical that made him believe the feeling would last forever. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
426:It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos . . . a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them. ~ Christina Dalcher, #NFDB
427:I simply ask you to see that there is only one thing to do when we fall, and that is to get up, and go on with the life that is set in front of us, and try and do the good of which our hands are capable for all the people who come in our way... ~ Geraldine Brooks, #NFDB
428:Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine. ~ Julian Barnes, #NFDB
429:The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
430:When you're faced with a choice, remember this: Everything else will pass away. Your family. Your friends. Your material possessions. Your beauty. Your youth. Your life. And there is only one thing that remains. Ask yourself: Which are you chasing? ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
431:When you’re faced with a choice, remember this: Everything else will pass away. Your family. Your friends. Your material possessions. Your beauty. Your youth. Your life. And there is only one thing that remains. Ask yourself: Which are you chasing? ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
432:The manager, in today's world, doesn't get paid to be a steward of resources, a favored term not so many years ago. He or she gets paid for one and only one thing: to make things better (incrementally and dramatically), to change things, to act - today. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
433:Lord, it is no exaggeration to say that there is only one thing that I really need in life, and I ask for it now. It is to not merely believe in you but in prayer and experience to see and sense your beauty. Let me love you for yourself alone. Amen. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
434:There is only one thing in the world that you have complete control over, and that is your thinking. If you don’t deliberately give yourself positive directions, your mind and your body will continue to act upon directions from anywhere and everywhere, ~ Tommy Newberry, #NFDB
435:To destroy governmental violence, only one thing is needed: It is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
436:Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown. There is only one thing and that which seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception, the Indian maya, as in a gallery of mirrors. ~ Erwin Schrodinger, #NFDB
437:The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
438:You can do anything you want. And you can be anything you want. And you can feel anything you want. But there's only one thing you need to do, and that is: have the slightest vision to see it. Because if you can't see it happening, then it will never happen ~ Tom DeLonge, #NFDB
439:In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
440:There is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression--and that is orthodoxy. I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
441:We must build our faith not on fading lights but on the Light that never fails. When 'important' individuals go away we are sad, until we see that they are meant to go, so that only one thing is left for us to do--to look into the face of God for ourselves. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
442:To be born in that city is useful for only one thing: to have always known, almost instinctively, what today, with endless fine distinctions, everyone is beginning to claim: that the dream of unlimited progress is in reality a nightmare of savagery and death. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
443:Archimedes, that he might transport the entire globe ... demanded only a point that was firm and immovable; so also, I shall be entitled to entertain the highest expectations, if I am fortunate enough to discover only one thing that is certain and indubitable. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
444:No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write, find out wether it spreading out its root in the deepest places of your heart...Delve into yourself for a deep answer ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
445:Only One Thing One thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward. PHILIPPIANS 3:13-14 AMP ~ Various, #NFDB
446:They'll try to kill you."
"Good thing I'm hard to kill." Only one thing concerned me. "Will you?"
"Never. I'm the one who will always watch over you. Always be there to fuck you back to your senses when you need it, the one who will never let you die. ~ Karen Marie Moning,#NFDB
447:Only one thing bothered me: at this very moment, as they say, of inexplicable bliss there would be a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach and my abdomen would be assailed by a melancholy, cold shivering. In the end I couldn't abide such happiness and ran away. ~ Ivan Turgenev, #NFDB
448:With the disintegration of all that [Nietzsche] had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition. ~ Karl Jaspers, #NFDB
449:Oh Thou that givest both the beginning and the completion, give Thou victory in the day of need so that what neither a man's burning wish nor his determined resolution may attain to, may be granted unto him in the sorrowing of repentance: to will only one thing. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
450:To fall into it again in appearance was to leave it behind in reality! He had to do it! He would have done nothing if he didn't do that! His whole life would have been useless, all his penitence wasted, and there would be only one thing left to say: What is the point? ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
451:If somebody had told me my method would not work I nevertheless would have tried it out to make sure for myself, for when I am wrong only one thing convinces me of it, and that is, to lose money. And I am only right when I make money. That is speculating. ~ Jesse Lauriston Livermore, #NFDB
452:Only one thing surprises me more than the stupidity with which most men live their lives and that is the intellegence inherent in that stupidity. [...] The wise man makes his life monotonous, for then even the tiniest accident becomes imbued with great significance. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
453:Maintaining a close relationship with the Savior is the only goal Paul would set. He wasn’t perfect at it, but he singlemindedly pursued it. And he encourages us to do so today. Life is much simpler when we choose to pursue only one thing—the race before us. Don’t look back. ~ Various, #NFDB
454:If you want to win this world to Christ, you are going to have to sit in the smoking section. That is where lost people are found, and if you make them put their cigarette out to hear the message they will be thinking about only one thing: "When can I get another cigarette? ~ Neil Cole, #NFDB
455:Maintaining the trust of the consumer is critical to our business. We live and breathe only one thing, which is wanting to connect consumers with great local businesses, and I don't feel we can do that if we don't have effective ways to prevent gaming of the system. ~ Jeremy Stoppelman, #NFDB
456:Only one thing I expect from all of you: to be yourself, to discover your inner beauty, your purity of consciousness, your hidden splendor - and spread it to as many people as possible. People are miserable. Help them to laugh a little, to sing a little, to dance a little. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
457:Love is when two (or more) hearts build a safe emotional, mental, and spiritual home that will stand strong no matter how much anyone changes on the inside or the outside. It demands only one things and expects only one thing: that each person be his or her own true self. ~ Neil Strauss, #NFDB
458:Music overwhelmed me, soaked into my skin like water. I didn’t have words for the squiggles and dashes across the pages, or the way his fingers stretched across the keys to make my heart race. If I could hear only one thing for the rest of my life, this was what I wanted. ~ Jodi Meadows, #NFDB
459:We know the Truth; we do not judge by appearances. We know that we live in a mental world, and to know that is the key to life. If a child could be taught only one thing, it should be taught that this is a mental world. I would let all the other things go and teach him that. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
460:Maston: What a man! Even if he is a Frenchman.
Barbicane: The French are a great people, gentlemen. There's only one thing they need to make them the greatest people in the world.
Maston: Yes, only one.
Volsius: And that is ... ?
Maston: They need to be Americans. ~ Jules Verne,#NFDB
461:No one is every only one thing. Inside one person there are so many different people, and quite often they're at war with each other, and sometimes one of them is winning, and sometimes another. We're all so hard to understand, aren't we? I don't even understand myself. ~ Louis de Berni res, #NFDB
462:The gentle Rabbi reminds us that few things really matter and only one thing is necessary ... Martha found it in the gentle reminder to slow down, let go, and be careful of challenging another woman's choices, for you never know when she may be sitting at the feet of God. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
463:You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action - that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one. ~ Plato, #NFDB
464:We recognized only one thing as our duty and destiny: every one of us had to become himself, had to be true to and live for the sake of the seed of nature at work in himself, so completely that the uncertain future would find us ready for anything and everything it might bring. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
465:You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action; that is, whether he is acting justly or unjustly, like a good man or a bad one. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
466:We talked, she and I. She asked about my work and it was a pretense, she was not interested in my work. And when I answered, it was a pretense. I was not interested in my work either. There was only one thing that interested us, and she knew it. She had made it plain by her coming. ~ John Fante, #NFDB
467:We presume that with love comes exclusivity. Since we presume it, we believe it even more strongly. With love comes only one thing: honesty. And honesty is different from loyalty. Most of us never get this difference. Most of us never remain happy in a relationship either. ~ Novoneel Chakraborty, #NFDB
468:You don't want to continue to do one thing and only one thing. You want to keep challenging yourself and if you do well at it, great, if you fall on your face, you tried. Like, she's really terrible at comedy! Who knew? But if you didn't try and put yourself out there you'd never know. ~ Lucy Liu, #NFDB
469:Harry neither knew nor cared what the message meant. Only one thing mattered: this was not a Horcrux. Dumbledore had weakened himself by drinking that terrible potion for nothing. Harry crumpled the parchment in his hand and his eyes burned with tears as behind him Fang began to howl. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
470: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
471:All his life there was only one thing Lec was allowed to believe. It had surrounded him, cocooned him, constricted him with the same stifling softness as the layers of insulation around him now. For the first time in his life, Lev feels those bounds around his soul begin to loosen. ~ Neal Shusterman, #NFDB
472:He possessed the power. He held it in his hand. A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to command the love of mankind. There was only one thing that power could not do: it could not make him able to smell himself. ~ Patrick S skind, #NFDB
473:He possessed the power. He held it in his hand. A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to command the love of mankind. There was only one thing that power could not do: it could not make him able to smell himself. ~ Patrick Suskind, #NFDB
474:I walked all around it [the Guggenheim Bilbao] and couldn't find one clear, clean shot. To make things worse, the weather was lousy. Nothing about this rang commercial money shot. In a situation like this there's only one thing to do: forget about pleasing editors, please yourself. ~ Robert Polidori, #NFDB
475:nothing's news. it's the same old thing in disguise. only one thing comes without a disguise and you only see it once, or maybe never. like getting hit by a freight train. makes us realize that all our moaning about long lost girls in gingham dresses is not so important after all. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
476:There’s really only one thing you can do—ride the wave of notoriety for all it’s worth. Who knows, you might actually get a rich, hot, famous guy who’s hung like a horse. And then you’ll fuck your way into the sunset and live happily ever after with a big cock in your bed every night. ~ Meghan March, #NFDB
477:If he knew one and only one thing about Rehvenge after all these years, it was that he was a male of worth. In spite of being a pimp and a club owner, a degenerate and a reprobate, an evil-hearted, sadistic SOB . . . he was, and always would be, one of the finest males Trez had ever known. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
478:The point is that only one thing matters in this world, to prepare oneself for death. One can try to be as comfortable as possible until one dies... Because being comfortable does not have any meaning either. It just does not. Everything is only a big meaninglessness that one must bear. ~ Odd Nerdrum, #NFDB
479:Israel is a tremendous success story. When I arrived, there were 600,000 Jews living here. Today there are close to 6 million. We have one of the world's top high-tech industries and a high standard of living. There is only one thing we haven't achieved: Making the country safer for Jews. ~ Yair Lapid, #NFDB
480:What if I mess up?" "Oh, you will. You'll mess up, you'll make mistakes, you'll break things. Some you'll be able to piece together, and others you'll lose. That's all a given. But there's only one thing you have to do for me." "What's that?" "Stay alive long enough to mess up again. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
481:Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him— mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
482:To the sight of the swallows dying in mid air, Alessandro was finally able to add his own benediction. "Dear God, I beg of you only one thing. Let me join the ones I love. Carry me to them, unite me with them, let me see them, let me touch them." And then it all ran together, like a song. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
483:But the only real things in a novel are the sequences of letters, words and sentences that make it up, and the paper on which they're printed. What they produce in a reader's head are private and unique landscapes of objects in motion that have only one thing in common: they don't exist. ~ lvaro Enrigue, #NFDB
484:Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, ‘There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
485:If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
486:When I take my last breath, will there be a wish that I had more stuff? I'll wish for only one thing, I think. That I loved better. That I had been better at loving and not being distracted by stuff or accomplishment. This life is so short and it will soon be over. What will we use it for? ~ Colin Beavan, #NFDB
487:Only one thing comforted him: he had finally learned what it was to love. And the feeling was deeper and more meaningful than anything he'd felt before. He felt like he was dying. To die, one must have first been alive. And the Beast could finally say that by finding love, he had lived. ~ Serena Valentino, #NFDB
488:Only one thing comforted him: he had finally learned what it was to love. And the feeling was deeper and more meaningful than anything he’d felt before. He felt like he was dying. To die, one must have first been alive. And the Beast could finally say that by finding love, he had lived. ~ Serena Valentino, #NFDB
489:group hug. The three demigods did not oblige. Hazel backed into a palmetto tree. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Aphrodite said. “War is coming. Bloodshed is inevitable. So there’s really only one thing to do.” “Uh…and that is?” Annabeth ventured. “Why, have tea and chat, obviously. Come with me! ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
490:No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His worker, only one thing will, and that is a personal relationship to Himself which has gone through the mill of His spring-cleaning until there is only one purpose left--I am here for God to send me where He will. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
491:there's only one thing i know for certain anymore." he turned, his eyes a clear black. "that i would do anything for you, even if it means going against mu instincts or my very nature. i would lay down everything i possess, even my soul, for you. if that isn't love, it's the best i have. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
492:There's only one thing I know for certain anymore." He turned, his eyes a clear black. "That I would do anything for you, even if it means going against my instincts or my very nature. I would lay down everything I possess, even my soul, for you. If that isn't love, it's the best I have. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
493:In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us - that we be men and women of prayer, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
494:You are sitting and smoking; you believe that you are sitting in your pipe, and that your pipe is smoking you; you are exhaling yourself in bluish clouds. You feel just fine in this position, and only one thing gives you worry or concern: how will you ever be able to get out of your pipe? ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
495:Helena Bonham-Carter and I sat down to talk about [Cinderella movie] and she said, 'I really want to do it but only one thing I insist on and that's wings.' She had to have wings and [costume designer] Sandy Powell didn't want wings to begin with but had to be talked around, but that was fun. ~ Kenneth Branagh, #NFDB
496:I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It ɹnds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
497:Wherever you go - in every country, or in every continent, people yearn and hunger for only one thing, to love and be loved. Love transcends international boundaries and heals the wounds of hatred, racial, prejudice, bigotry and ignorance. It is the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
498:There really has been only one thing in my life that has made me feel complete, and that is the game of football. The ability to throw a football was my God-given talent. That was my blessing and my passion; that was my calling in live, and everything that I've accomplished has derived from that. ~ Terry Bradshaw, #NFDB
499:There's only one thing I want."
"And that is?"
"I want to see Kat."
Nancy's smile didn't fade. "And what are you willing to do to accomplish that?"
"Anything," I said without hesitation, and I meant it. "I will do anything, but I want to see Kat first and I want to see her now. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
500:Don't be embarrassed about being loved. I'm not asking you for anything; just let me love you and play the piano again tonight, just once more, if I still have the strength to do it. In exchange I ask only one thing: If you hear anyone say that I'm dying, go straight to my ward. Let me have my wish. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
501:Don’t be embarrassed about being loved. I’m not asking you for anything; just let me love you and play the piano again tonight, just once more, if I still have the strength to do it. In exchange I ask only one thing: If you hear anyone say that I’m dying, go straight to my ward. Let me have my wish. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
502:Nothing has a greater impact on spiritual growth than reflection on Scripture. If churches could do only one thing to help people at all levels of spiritual maturity grow in their relationship with Christ, their choice is clear. They would inspire, encourage, and equip their people to read the Bible.1 ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
503:And that, too, was the truth, that a man cannot step back from a fight and stay a man. We make much in this life if we are able. We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation. I could not walk away. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
504:Perhaps the most terrifying statistic of all that Soares uncovered was that in Albany County (minority population 13 percent) more than 95 percent of imprisoned drug law offenders were black or Hispanic. Whichever way you look at the figure, it can mean only one thing—something is rotten in the state. ~ Misha Glenny, #NFDB
505:I know only one thing. when i sleep, i know no fear, no, trouble no bliss. blessing on him who invented sleep. the common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. there is only one bad thing about sound sleep. They say it closely resembles death. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky, #NFDB
506:I know only one thing. when i sleep, i know no fear, no, trouble no bliss. blessing on him who invented sleep. the common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. there is only one bad thing about sound sleep. they say it closely resembles death. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky, #NFDB
507:Staying focused on a project or plan is one of the most difficult challenges we face. There is always the house to clean, calls to make, laundry to fold, deadlines to meet. Actually, there is only one thing that keeps us from our goals - lack of focus. And very often, lack of focus is caused by fear. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
508:To be a great Technician is simply insufficient to the task of building a great small business. Being consumed by the tactical work of the business, as every Technician suffering from an Entrepreneurial Seizure is, leads to only one thing: a complicated, frustrating, and, eventually, demeaning job! ~ Michael E Gerber, #NFDB
509:When Pandora’s curiosity got the best of her, she opened the forbidden box, unknowingly allowing hunger, pestilence, sickness, poverty, crime, and vice to escape into the world. Only one thing remained—hope. When Pandora opened the box again, hope also entered the world, with a lot of catching up to do. ~ Paul A Offit, #NFDB
510:I knew only one thing which I have learned well by now : love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. it find its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
511:Rylann blinked.
Oh, boy.
Putting aside the fact that Jon was babbling and suddenly breaking out the Italian, she’d caught the “babe” he’d slipped in there. As she knew well from the three years they’d dated, that could mean only one thing.
She’d just been internationally drunk-dialed. ~ Julie James,#NFDB
512:I do not ask for your abosolution. I simply ask you to see that there is only one thing to do when we fall, and that is get up, and go on with the life that is set in front of us, and try to so the good of which our hands are capable for the people who come in our way. That, at least, has been my path ~ Geraldine Brooks, #NFDB
513:I don't think we feel only one thing in our lives. I don't think it's simple as either (a) being in love or (b) not being in love. I think our feelings for each other are really complicated and motivated by an endless interconnected web of desires and fears.
I wanted to reflect that as best as I could ~ John Green,#NFDB
514:What if I mess up?"
"Oh, you will. You'll mess up, you'll make mistakes, you'll break things. Some you'll be able to piece together, and others you'll lose. That's all a given. But there's only one thing you have to do for me."
"What's that?"
"Stay alive long enough to mess up again. ~ Victoria Schwab,#NFDB
515:I never understood the low art/high art distinction. I think there's real currency in pop culture. We read trashy magazines as much as the next person. So I never saw the point in listening to only one thing. That low art/high art distinction comes from the establishment telling me how I'm supposed to think. ~ Kele Okereke, #NFDB
516:In the morning, bowing to all;
In the evening, bowing to all.
Respecting others is my only duty--
Hail to the Never-despising Bodhisattva.
In heaven and earth he stands alone.
A real monk
Needs
Only one thing--
a heart like
Never-despising Buddha.
~ Taigu Ryokan, In The Morning
,#NFDB
517:It was not necessary that he be your friend, it was not even important that you had no means with which to repay him. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, proclaim your friendship. And then, no matter how poor or powerless the supplicant, Don Corleone would take that man’s troubles to his heart. ~ Mario Puzo, #NFDB
518:The enthusiasm of today’s youth is as pure and bright as it was in our time. Only one thing has happened: a shift of goals, the replacement of one beauty with another! The entire misunderstanding lies merely in the question of which is more beautiful: Shakespeare or a pair of boots, Raphael or petroleum? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
519:For the first time in the whole of knowing him, Aldrik looked lost, shell-shocked. She tried to offer him an encouraging smile, but there was only one thing to be done. She had something more important to give him than her smiles. Vhalla dropped to her knee before the Emperor of the realms.
"Long live Solaris. ~ Elise Kova,#NFDB
520:Their weapons did not fail them,” Lu Shi said. “Their soldiers didn’t fail them. Their economy was not in danger of collapse. Only one thing failed them, but it was enough to send the indomitable American military slinking home like a beaten mongrel. Their national willpower failed. They lost the desire to win. ~ Jeff Edwards, #NFDB
521:The young generations study numberless subjects, the constitution of the stars, of the earth, the origin of organisms etc. They omit only one thing and that is to know what is the sense of human life, how one ought to live, what the great sages of all times have thought of this question and how they have resolved it. ~ Tolstoi, #NFDB
522:I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it. If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad. Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts. ~ Hans Eysenck, #NFDB
523:He stayed there with her through the night. Every time she struggled to open her eyes, she'd see him, the ghostly outline of white ears against the threatening shadows.
Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps he hadn't. There was only one thing Cassidy Evans knew for sure: It had been a marvelous tea party. ~ Carrie Ryan,#NFDB
524:I think only one thing.
Where 's Octavia?
As I get closer to the bottom, I notice that it's water that I'm falling into. It's salty-green and smooth, until...
I'm driven through the surface and go deeper. I'm surrounded.
I'm drowning. I think. I'm drowning.
But I'm smiling too. ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
525:Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t. In perfect competition, a business is so focused on today’s margins that it can’t possibly plan for a long-term future. Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
526:You are sitting and smoking; you believe that you are sitting in your pipe, and that your pipe is smoking you; you are exhaling yourself in bluish clouds. You feel just fine in this position, and only one thing gives you worry or concern: how will you ever be able to get out of your pipe? ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
527:In The Morning :::
In the morning, bowing to all;
In the evening, bowing to all.
Respecting others is my only duty--
Hail to the Never-despising Bodhisattva.
In heaven and earth he stands alone.
A real monk
Needs
Only one thing--
a heart like
Never-despising Buddha. ~ Taigu Ryokan,#NFDB
528:Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t. In perfect competition, a business is so focused on today’s margins that it can’t possibly plan for a long-term future. Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
529:Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do. Go through his clothes and look for loose change. ~ Billy Crystal, #NFDB
530:But honesty requires courage. As she cornered the thief in his lair, she found that she wasn’t so sure of herself. She was sure of only one thing. It made her fall back a little. She lifted her chin.
Her heart had an unsteady rhythm they both could hear when she told the thief that he might keep what he had stolen. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
531:Eugene Wigner wrote a famous essay on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences. He meant physics, of course. There is only one thing which is more unreasonable than the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics, and this is the unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology. ~ Israel Gelfand, #NFDB
532:I just discovered something, Mads." Ronan curled his arm over her shoulders and pulled her against him. "There's only one thing I enjoy more than surprising you."
"What's that?" She snuggled into his embrace and rested her head on his chest....
Ronan kissed the top of her head and murmured, "When you surprise me. ~ Sara Humphreys,#NFDB
533:The Winter Prince was before me, with his noble, knightly bearing and the impossible beauty that is paralytic at close range. And I wanted nothing more than to vanish into his arms, and his embrace, but I saw the look on his face and I remembered then that he was my enemy and that there was only one thing to do.
Run. ~ Kailin Gow,#NFDB
534:There is only one thing solid enough to hold on to and it is her. I love her. She is my other half, my second chance, the only way in the world I could have learned to be more than a monster. Her weakness showed me my strength, her faith made me believe, her love made me whole. I will never forget her, and I wont let her go. ~ Stacey Jay, #NFDB
535:There's only one thing harder than living in a home with an adolescent - and that's being an adolescent. The moodiness, the volatility, the wholesale lack of impulse control, all would be close to clinical conditions if they occurred at another point in life. In adolescence, they're just part of the behavioral portfolio. ~ Jeffrey Kluger, #NFDB
536:Man wants to make certain about the future,about tommorow--which cannot be done. Let it sink as deeply in your heart as possible, it cannot be done. Don't waste your present moment trying to make the future certain. The future is uncertainity that is the very quality of the future.
One can do only one thing: Be alert and wait. ~ Osho,#NFDB
537:nothing's news.
it's the same old thing in
disguise.
only one thing comes without a
disguise and you only see it
once, or
maybe never.
like getting hit by a freight
train.
makes us realize that all our
moaning about long lost girls
in gingham dresses
is not so important
after
all. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
538:Doing brings ego. Ego is the shadow of action. And there is only one thing that is not doing and that is awareness, watchfulness. The only thing that is not part of the world of action is pure awareness. No shadow is created by pure awareness. It is so pure that light can pass through it - it is transparent and no shadow is created. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
539:What is passive is his attitude to the rest of the world. He will not be distracted by any other task. As passive observers, we are not doing anything else; we are focused on observing. A better term in my mind would be engaged passivity: a state that is the epitome of engagement but happens to be focused on only one thing, or person ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
540:I am chaos eternal. I desire everything this world and the next offers. I am greed, I am hunger. Oh how I hunger... I want the pathetic mortals of this world to bow before me. I want all that they own, all they desire, every marvelous creation of theirs, but there is only one thing in this world that I need, and that, Muse, is you. ~ Pippa DaCosta, #NFDB
541:Perhaps seeing through the world, explaining the world, despising the world, is an important matter for the great thinkers, but only one thing is important for me, the ability to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it or myself, but the ability to see it and myself and all that exists with love and admiration and honour. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
542:When Jack was returning to America from his years in Thailand, he sought out an elderly Western monk and asked him if he had any advice about being back in the West. “Only one thing,” said the monk. “When you’re running to catch the subway and you see it leaving without you, don’t panic, just remember, ‘There’s always another train. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
543:For the sacrificed, in the hour of sacrifice, only one thing counts: faith-alone among enemies and skeptics. Faith, in spite of the humiliation which is both the necessary precondition and the consequence of faith, faith without any hope of compensation other than he can find in a faith which reality seems so thoroughly to refute. ~ Dag Hammarskjold, #NFDB
544:There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose "story" "plot" "continuity"... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
545:Zen is a single step—the journey of one single step. You can call it the last step or the first step, it doesn’t matter. It is the first and it is the last, the alpha and the omega. The whole teaching of Zen consists of only one thing: how to take a jump into nothingness, how to come to the very end of your mind, which is the end of the world. ~ Osho, #NFDB
546:I’m so bedeviled by my own ambitions that it never occurred to me that a clouded mind is a recipe for disaster or, that outside my office, there is an entire world full of colors and possibilities. To me, there is only one thing that matters: I have to reach a point where I can finally boast to myself and the whole world that I made it. ~ Carol Vorvain, #NFDB
547:There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer... ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
548:Life as such has to be taken as a cosmic joke - and then suddenly you relax because there is nothing to be tense about. And in that very relaxation something starts changing in you - a radical change, a transformation - and the small things of life starts having new meaning, new significance. One learns only one thing, how to rejoice in life. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
549:No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key to history, and why history is often so confused is that it has been written by men who are ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves. . . Language and religion do not make a race--there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
550:To be born in that city—I went so far as to write once, thinking not of myself but of Lila’s pessimism—is useful for only one thing: to have always known, almost instinctively, what today, with endless fine distinctions, everyone is beginning to claim: that the dream of unlimited progress is in reality a nightmare of savagery and death. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
551:And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
552:He[Napoleon] had destroyed only one thing: the Jacobin Revolution, the dream of equality, liberty and fraternity, and of the people rising in its majesty to shake off oppression. It was a more powerful myth than his, for after his fall it was this, and not his memory, which inspired the revolutions of the nineteenth century, even in his own country. ~ Eric Hobsbawm, #NFDB
553:There are people who will be wanting to apply "Win" to their own, personal life. If you remember only one thing, and I'm going to do it right here, right now because I just happened to come to it, that phrase - if you remember only one thing - there are 125 specific language recommendations in "Win" that can make a difference in your day-to-day lives. ~ Frank Luntz, #NFDB
554:You made them hate me." Said Ender
"So? What will you do about it? Crawl in a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well better be." -Graff ~ Orson Scott Card,#NFDB
555:Mary had the same face as ma used to have sitting staring into the ashes it was funny that face it slowly grew over the other one until one day you looked and the person you knew was gone. And instead there was a half-ghost sitting there who had only one thing to say: All the beautiful things of this world are lies. They count for nothing in the end. ~ Patrick McCabe, #NFDB
556:Like I said, everyone has an Achilles’ heel. Nancy’s is pretty obvious.” Luc stabbed a straw through his Capri Sun. “There’s only one thing that she cares about in this whole entire world, that she’d throw her family in front of a tank for—if she even has a family, because I’m pretty sure she was hatched from an egg—and it’s those baby Origins. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
557:For the multifold secret to work only one thing is necessary. You must take action. You must give. You must share. You must act with abandon. Send out waves of love and kindness into the world and then simply wait for the response. Or, better yet, continue to send out more waves. Why wait? The response will come. Keep sending waves and enjoy the reaction. ~ John Kremer, #NFDB
558:God is indeed the righteous Judge. When Christ returns, those who rejected Him will literally cry to the mountains, “‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’” (Luke 23:30). Judgment is coming, but may the thought of it cause us to weep, plead, and pray. Never boast or feel satisfaction. Only one thing stands between us and the lost: a blood-stained cross. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
559:Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don’t care about the elephant because it’s only one thing when you’ve been thinking about a million others. ~ Jack Gantos, #NFDB
560:If there's anything in life that we should be passionate about, it's the gospel. And I don't mean passionate only about sharing it with others. I mean passionate about thinking about it, dwelling on it, rejoicing in it, allowing it to color the way we look at the world. Only one thing can be of first importance to each of us. And only the gospel ought to be. ~ C J Mahaney, #NFDB
561:Evolution is an unproven theory. If what its fundamentalist supporters believe is true, fishes decided to grow lungs and legs and walk up the beach. The idea is so comically daft that only one thing explains its survival-that lonely, frightened people wanted to expel God from the Universe because they found the idea that He exists profoundly uncomfortable. ~ Peter Hitchens, #NFDB
562:My soul, when I tend to it, is a far more expansive and fascinating source of guidance than my ego will ever be, because my soul desires only one thing: wonder. And since creativity is my most efficient pathway to wonder, I take refuge there, and it feeds my soul, and it quiets the hungry ghost—thereby saving me from the most dangerous aspect of myself. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
563:If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us. ~ A A Gill, #NFDB
564:He said after a little while, 'I see why you say that only men do evil, I think. Even sharks are innocent, they kill because they must.'
'That is why nothing can resist us. Only one thing in the worl can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
565:I detected sarcoma." He put his finger on his neck. "Right here."
The other man nodded--his head seemed to be nodding continually--and muttered:
"Yes. There's no possibility of operating."
"Of course not," said the old specialist, his eyes shining with a kind of sinister irony. "There's only one thing that could remove it--the guillotine. ~ Henri Barbusse,#NFDB
566:Well, every girl with half a brain knows there’s only one thing to do when you break up with your man—”
“No, we didn’t break up—” Luce said, at the exact same time as Shelby said:
“Change your hair.”
“Change my hair?”
“Fresh start,” Shelby said. “I’ve dyed mine orange, chopped it off. Hell, once I even shaved it after this jerk really broke my heart. ~ Lauren Kate,#NFDB
567:Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do”; “Accept the past as past without denying it or discarding it”; “Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others”; “Don’t assume that it’s too late to get involved.”
“Dying, is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy. ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB
568:I am a mess. Like that MargieMocha, I am spilled across a floor, but there's nobody to mop me up. I have only one thing to show for the day: Perry Delloplane. The sound of a name. It is a grape in my mouth. I roll it over and over on my tongue--perrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplane--but when I try to crush it with my teeth, it slips away. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
569:Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine.
Perhaps this is an illusion all lovers have about themselves: that they escape both category and description. ~ Julian Barnes,#NFDB
570:Only one thing had her balking: his cool kiss. Especially when compared to Mr. Pinter's hot ones.
Curse that man. No matter how much she told herself his kisses hadn't meant anything, her wounded pride wanted to believe otherwise. Her wounded pride insisted they'd been too passionate to be meant only as a lesson.
Her wounded pride was a blasted nuisance. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
571:The life-converting experience is not the discovery that I have choices to make that determine the way I live out my existence, but the awareness that my that my existence itself is not in the center. Once I 'know' God, that is, once I experience God's love as the love in which all my human experiences are anchored, I can desire only one thing: to be in that love. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
572:Life has no answer. Life has only one thing, one problem— which is, living. The man who lives totally, completely, every minute without choice, neither accepting nor rejecting the thing as it is, such a man is not seeking an answer, he is not asking what the purpose of life is, nor is he seeking a way out of life. But that requires great insight into oneself. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
573:Love spells are a lot like platform diving. Once you start the process, there’s no going back, and the end will be fugly if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. —Mariketa the Awaited Mercenary of the Wiccae, Future Leader of the House of Witches Witches are good for one thing and only one thing. Tinder. —Bowen Graeme MacRieve Third in line for the Lykae throne ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
574:Let's be clear about what people never say about Playboy on television. It was nothing more than an instrument for onanism. That's what it was. And the Internet co-opted that industry of self- gratification. There is no necessity for lonely men or teenagers to use Playboy. It turns out no one bought that magazine for the articles ever; it was used for only one thing. ~ Greg Gutfeld, #NFDB
575:My numbers and my stats were exactly the same. I was doing what the coaches wanted me to do. And what I had been doing up to that point was enough to get me a very well-paying contract with the Vikings. ... In my mind there was only one thing that had changed from the year before and the year I got cut: And that was I started speaking out in support of same-sex rights. ~ Chris Kluwe, #NFDB
576:What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
577:Maintaining a close relationship with the Savior is the only goal Paul would set. He wasn’t perfect at it, but he singlemindedly pursued it. And he encourages us to do so today. Life is much simpler when we choose to pursue only one thing—the race before us. Don’t look back. Heavenly Father, keep our eyes on the goal, forgetting the successes and failures of this past year. ~ Various, #NFDB
578:The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here, and I don't like to see the rooks and starlings in the fields, because I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to see them with me. I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet you my own dear! Come to me - come to me, and save me from what threatens me! - Your faithful heartbroken ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
579:I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love. ~ Bernhard Schlink, #NFDB
580:And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
581:And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
582:As the Good itself is only one thing, so it alone wishes to be what helps us along. But the Good is not something external to us, like a slave who comes against his will when the master uses the whip. The place and the path are within each of us. And just as the place is the blessed state of the striving soul, so the path is the striving soul's continual transformation. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
583:David cuts through all the many needs, wants, and desires that may have been bouncing around inside him and essentially says, "If I could have only one thing, I want to be with God, to be in His presence, to know that he is always with me." Whether in good times or bad times, David knew the thing he needed most: to feel God's presence close by, intimately, through worship. ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
584:I turn to look over my shoulder - in a minute, I will lay down my pen - and think, write that there is only one thing I know for certain, and it has everything to do with “happy”. Indeed, it is the last thing I will say on the subject:
There is not a story, in the entire history of the world, that cannot be improved upon by the inclusion of a character named Kit. ~ Lauren Baratz Logsted,#NFDB
585:It all threatens to well back up, the tangle of things I’m too exhausted to face. There’s only one thing I know with absolute certainty, and as I whisper her name and lean into her again, she lets me. Her hand leaves my chest and invites me in—she cups my cheeks as our lips meet, drawing me away from the frantic heat and toward something slower, something quiet. Something real. ~ Amie Kaufman, #NFDB
586:When we no longer pray, no longer listen to the voice of love that speaks to us in the moment, our lives become absurd lives in which we are thrown back and forth between the past and the future. If we could just be, for a few minutes each day, fully where we are, we would indeed discover that we are not alone and that the One who is with us wants only one thing: to give us love ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
587:All the peoples in the world who talk of a cosmic serpent have been saying as much for millennia. He had not seen it because the rational gaze is forever focalized and can examine only one thing at a time. It separates things to understand them, including the truly complementary. It is the gaze of the specialist, who sees the fine grain of a necessarily restricted field of vision. ~ Jeremy Narby, #NFDB
588:My narcotic was what had got me through the war; it was an ability to let my emotions be stirred by only one thing - my love for Helga. This concentration of my emotions on so small an area had begun as a young lover's happy illusion, had developed into a device to keep me from going insane during the war, and had finally become the permanent axis about which my thoughts revolved ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
589:When we no longer pray, no longer listen to the voice of love that speaks to us in the moment, our lives become absurd lives in which we are thrown back and forth between the past and the future. If we could just be, for a few minutes each day, fully where we are, we would indeed discover that we are not alone and that the One who is with us wants only one thing: to give us love ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
590:In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything. Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t. In perfect competition, a business is so focused on today’s margins that it can’t possibly plan for a long-term future. Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
591:Probably, the nature of homophobia will never be widely interrogated, while we will continue to be excluded from school curricula, subjected to vicious media distortions, or entirely ignored, denied basic civil rights while our demands are ridiculed and derided. But in the midst of all this only one thing has changed for certain. We have changed. We will never go back into the closet. ~ Sarah Schulman, #NFDB
592:According to great masters, there is no sin and there is no virtue. There is only one thing: that is awareness. If you are aware, you can do anything you want and it is not sin. If you are not aware, you may do so-called virtuous acts, but there is no virtue in them. Out of unconsciousness virtue cannot blossom. It blossoms only when you are full of light, full of love, full of consciousness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
593:I do not claim any ability to read God's mind. I am sure of only one thing. When we look at the glory of stars and galaxies in the sky and the glory of forests and flowers in the living world around us, it is evident that God loves diversity. Perhaps the universe is constructed according to a principle of maximum diversity. ~ Freeman Dyson, in "Progress In Religion : A Talk By Freeman Dyson" (9 May 2000), #NFDB
594:There's only one thing that all of the central banks control and that is the base, their own liability, and they can control that in various ways. They can control it directly by open market operations, buying and selling government securities or other assets, for example, buying and selling gold, or they can control it indirectly by altering the rate at which banks lend to one another. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
595:I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom ... the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
596:So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .” “Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen to their parents, or people don’t leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? There’s only one thing that’s universal.” “What’s that?” “The truth. ~ Chris Crutcher, #NFDB
597:During the thousand years of her history Russia had seen many great things. During the Soviet period the country had seen global military victories, vast construction sites, whole new cities, dams across the Dnieper and the Volga, canals joining different seas. The country had seen mighty tractors and skyscrapers...There was only one thing Russia had not seen during this thousand years: freedom. ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
598:I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom... [and] the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
599:No one thing keeps Innis Lear alive or its heart beating! That is not love! That is selfishness. That is pretending we are all only one thing. Only a star, only a woman, only a bastard. You're more than that, and I am, too: a woman and daughter of a foreign queen and a star priest. I'm all of that. Take one piece away and the rest shifts and changes, just like...just like this island, or any land. ~ Tessa Gratton, #NFDB
600:For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; asthough there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart. ~ Eugene Ionesco, #NFDB
601:Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
602:So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .”
Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen to their parents, or people don’t leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? There’s only one thing that’s universal.”
What’s that?”
The truth. ~ Chris Crutcher,#NFDB
603:The skies bend, the time stops, the lanes move and the fires dance,
It can mean only one thing that I am with you.
You are enigmatic yet so beautiful that I have lost my sense,
You are as immaculate as the unadulterated morning dew
And your beauty leaves me in a mystified trance.
I do not foresee what you and I will be
But I promise to be with you till the rocks keep meeting the sea. ~ Faraaz Kazi,#NFDB
604:Vhalla was there the moment her prince became her Emperor. He turned back to her helplessly. For the first time in the whole of knowing him, Aldrik looked lost, shell-shocked. She tried to offer him an encouraging smile, but there was only one thing to be done. She had something more important to give him than her smiles. Vhalla dropped to her knee before the Emperor of the realms.
"Long live Solaris. ~ Elise Kova,#NFDB
605:A rising tide of desire threatened to swamp her like a tidal wave, washing away fear and doubt and leaving behind it the knowledge that in her topsy turvy life, she was certain of only one thing: she wanted this man, right now, and she'd deal with the consequences later....
"I want to make love to you," he said, his voice low and thrumming through her veins as if it were a music only she could hear. ~ Deborah Blake,#NFDB
606:The speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
607:Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender. ~ William Gaddis, #NFDB
608:I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It's illimitable. It's such a happy life. There's only one thing like it, when you're up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you. You're intoxicated by the boundless space. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
609:My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
610:It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well -- such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like -- in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually. ~ Leonardo da Vinci, #NFDB
611:Love means to look at yourself/ The way one looks at distant things/ For you are only one thing among many/ And whoever sees that way heals his own heart,/ Without knowing it, from various ills./ A bird and a tree say to him: Friend./ Then he wants to use himself and things/ So that they stand in the glow of ripeness./ It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:/ Who serves best doesn't always understand. ~ Czes aw Mi osz, #NFDB
612:Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it. Went through and could resurface, 'enriched' by it all. ~ Paul Celan, #NFDB
613:Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. ~ Thomas Friedman, #NFDB
614:So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .”
“Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen to their parents, or people don’t leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? There’s only one thing that’s universal.”
“What’s that?”
“The truth. ~ Chris Crutcher,#NFDB
615:My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing-which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
616:My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
617:By realizing the reality of our Prince within us, we are never bothered again by the fact that we do not understand ourselves, or that other people do not understand us. The only One who truly understands me is the One who made me and who redeems me... It is a tremendous freedom to get rid of every kind of self-consideration and learn to care about only one thing - the relationship between our Prince and ourselves. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
618:(1) an attribute is predicated of some subject, (35) so that the subject to which ‘being’ is attributed will not be, as it is something different from ‘being’. [186b] Something, therefore, which is not will be. Hence ‘substance’ will not be a predicate of anything else. For the subject cannot be a being, unless ‘being’ means several things, in such a way that each is something. But ex hypothesi ‘being’ means only one thing. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
619:This is an old direct marketing technique in which customers are given the opportunity to preorder a product that has not yet been built. A smoke test measures only one thing: whether customers are interested in trying a product. By itself, this is insufficient to validate an entire growth model. Nonetheless, it can be very useful to get feedback on this assumption before committing more money and other resources to the product. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
620:Then there was survival. There was going on, as she had always gone on, without much joy, against her will, against her instincts, without the stomach for it, but on and on and on, without relief, without release, without a hand to reach out and touch her heart. Without kindness or comfort. But on.
Forced into such poverty, imprisoned in such despair, there was only one thing she was sure she could do. She could survive. ~ Robert Goolrick,#NFDB
621:The wolf stared down at me, paws still on my chest, its shaggy tail thumping from side tot side and spraying us both with snow. It seemed like...it expected me to do something. Maybe my mind was completley gone, because there was only one thing I could thing of right now that might satisfy it. I reached up en awkwardly patted the side of its head, since that was al i could reach.
"Nice puppy," I whispered, and passed out. ~ Jennifer Estep,#NFDB
622:There hasn't been any other woman," Heath said against her mouth, making her tremble. "There couldn't be. I'm too obsessed with my own wife. There's only one thing you can give me that no one else can . . . and heaven and hell be damned, I'll get it from you no matter how long I have to wait, no matter how hard I have to ride you. No, I'm not talking solely about my husbandly rights, although that would be a good place to start. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
623:But what now? What am I supposed to do with all these feelings? I suppose there´s only one thing I can do. I´ll write him another letter. A postscript with as many pages as it takes to X away whatever feelings I have left for him. I´ll put this wholw thing to rest once and for all. I go to my room and I find my special writing pen, the one with the really smooth inky-blackink. I take out my heavy writing paper, and I begin to write. ~ Jenny Han, #NFDB
624:Fay generously accepted this failing, and did without her brood, and tried not to overwhelm Robin with all the love she was meant to lavish on a houseful of kids. Her religion truly meant something to her, and she was ennobled by it. Her husband, on the other hand, dug into his Bible like a cave, burrowing away from life, which he hated. He wanted only one thing from life, and that was his Heavenly reward for having endured it. ~ Chet Williamson, #NFDB
625:There is one more thing I need you to know.” His lips hovered just above mine. “You need to know that I don’t give a fuck if your memory returns while I’m gone, cause it doesn’t change shit for us. But from this point out there is only one thing I need you to remember.” “What’s that?” “This.” King gripped the back of my neck and pulled me into him, crashing his lips to mine in a kiss that had me trembling with both desire and fear. ~ T M Frazier, #NFDB
626:Finn is God: I reach between us and release the buckles that are holding us together. This is when I really panic. The ride up in the plane didn't scare me. Or the height or the jump or the noise. None of that scared me. Right now, only one thing does. Julie Seagle: Tell me. Finn is God: I'm terrified that when I undo that buckle and release you, that you'll get up and walk away from me. I can't think of anything more excruciating. ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
627:I was convinced that the Natural History Museum was missing only one thing: a unicorn. Well, a unicorn and a dragon. Also it was missing werewolves. (Why was there nothing about werewolves in the Natural History Museum? I wanted to know about werewolves.) There were vampire bats, but none of the better-dressed vampires on display , and no mermaids at all, not one— I looked— and as for griffins or manticores, they were completely out. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
628:There is only one thing I want to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence. ~ William Howard Taft, #NFDB
629:Do you feel no compunction, Socrates, at having followed a line of action which puts you in danger of the death penalty?'
I might fairly reply to him, 'You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action--that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one. ~ Socrates,#NFDB
630:You are different from the really great man in only one thing: The great man, at one time, also was a very little man, but he developed one important ability: he learned to see where he was small in his thinking, and actions. Under the pressure of some task which was dear to him he learned better and better to sense the threat that comes from his smallness and pettiness. The great man, then, knows when and in what he is a little man. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
631:Brain Rule #6 We don’t pay attention to boring things. • The brain’s attentional “spotlight” can focus on only one thing at a time: no multitasking. • We are better at seeing patterns and abstracting the meaning of an event than we are at recording detail. • Emotional arousal helps the brain learn. • Audiences check out after 10 minutes, but you can keep grabbing them back by telling narratives or creating events rich in emotion. ~ John Medina, #NFDB
632:I lived in a plenty tough neighborhood. When somebody called me a 'dirty little Guinea', there was only one thing to do-break his head. When I got older, I realized that you shouldn't do it that way. I realized that you've got to do it through education. Children are not to blame. It is the parents. How can a child know whether his playmate is an Italian, a Jew or Irish, unless the parents have discussed it in the privacy of their homes. ~ Frank Sinatra, #NFDB
633:There was only one thing I could do to ease the pain. I turned to the only four guys who'd never let me down. The only four guys who'd never broken my heart, who'd never disappointed me.
John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
Anybody who has ever clung to a song like a musical life raft will understand. Or put on a song to bring out an emotion or a memory. Or had a soundtrack playing in their head to drown out a conversation or a scene. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg,#NFDB
634:In reality there was only one thing you dreaded: letting yourself fall, taking the step into uncertainty, the little step beyond all the securities that existed. And whoever had once surrendered himself, one single time, whoever had practiced the great act of confidence and entrusted himself to fate, was liberated. He no longer obeyed the laws of earth; he had fallen into space and swung along in the dance of the constellations. That was it. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
635:I had suddenly become aware of my hands, which meant only one thing: It was time to say my farewells and make a graceful—or at least dignified—exit.
Dogger had once told me, 'Your hands know when it's time to go.'
And he had been right. The hands are the canaries in one's own personal coal mine: They need to be watched carefully and obeyed. A fidget demands attention, and a full-blown not-knowing-what-to-do-with-them means 'Vamoose! ~ Alan Bradley,#NFDB
636:If you want to remain totally free, then don't choose. That's where the teaching of choiceless awareness comes in. Why the insistence of the great masters just to be aware and not to choose? Because the moment you choose, you have lost your total freedom, you are left with only a part. But if you remain choiceless, your freedom remains total. So there is only one thing which is totally free and that is choiceless awareness. Everything else is limited. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
637:Love"
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand. ~ Czes aw Mi osz,#NFDB
638:Steward, Daughtry. Mr. Daughtry, friend, sir, or whatever I may name you, this is no fairy-story of the open boat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand. This is real. I have a heart. That, sir”—here he waved his extended hand under Daughtry’s nose—“is my hand. There is only one thing you may do, must do, right now. You must take that hand in your hand, and shake it, with your heart in your hand as mine is in my hand. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
639:That's when I saw you, really saw you for the first time. I didn't intend to look at you, it just happened. It was like those pictures, you know, those optical illusions. You can gaze at them forever and see only one thing. Then when you relax your eyes for just a moment, another picture magically appears. The funny thing with that kind of visual trick it that it's really hard to go back to seeing the original picture once you've seen the new one. ~ Kimberly Sabatini, #NFDB
640:There’s only one thing you can say when you come up against magic like this, and Mitch waited a long moment in silence to find the right words, to make them good and true and real.
“Not tomorrow,” he said. “Because it’s Sunday and it’s Christmas Day. And not Monday, because it’s a federal holiday, but Tuesday. Will you marry me on Tuesday?”
She looked up and her lashes were wet as though she’d been crying too, dawning belief in her eyes. “Yes. ~ Jo Graham,#NFDB
641:All the great masters in the world have been saying only one thing down the centuries, "Have your own mind and have your own individuality. Don't be a part of the crowd; don't be a wheel in the whole mechanism of a vast society. Be individual, on your own. Live life with your own eyes; listen to music with your own ears." But we are not doing anything with our own ears, with our own eyes, with our own minds; everything is being taught, and we are following it. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
642:Burning the candle at both ends for God's sake may be foolishness to the world, but it is a profitable Christian exercise-for so much better the light. Only one thing in life matters. Being found worthy of the Light of the World in the hour of His visitation. We need have no undue fear for our health if we work hard for the kingdom of God; God will take care of our health if we take care of His cause. In any case it is better to burn out than to rust out. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
643:Dinner began at five and went on until seven forty. It was a meal worthy of the age, the house, and the season. Pea soup to begin, followed by a roast swan with sweet sauce, giblets, mutton steaks, a partridge pie, and four snipe. The second course was a plum pudding with brandy sauce, tarts, mince pies, custards, and cakes, all washed down with port wine and claret and Madeira and home-brewed ale. Ross felt that there was only one thing missing: Charles. ~ Winston Graham, #NFDB
644:The younger you are, the more likely you will give your attention to many things. That’s good because if you’re young you’re still getting to know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses. If you focus your thinking on only one thing and your aspirations change, then you’ve wasted your best mental energy. As you get older and more experienced, the need to focus becomes more critical. The farther and higher you go, the more focused you can be—and need to be. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
645:Love
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
~ Czeslaw Milosz,#NFDB
646:In July 1970, the Women’s Liberation Basement Press, in Berkeley, California, launched an underground comic book called It Aint Me Babe. The cover of its first issue featured Wonder Woman marching in a rally protesting stock comic-book plots. Inside, Supergirl tells Superman to get lost, Veronica ditches Archie for Betty, Petunia Pig tells Porky Pig to cook his own dinner, and when Iggy tells Lulu “No girls allowed!” she has only one thing to say: “Fuck this shit! ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
647:To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say, a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this barbaric age). ~ Robert Graves, #NFDB
648:If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious. ~ G I Gurdjieff, #NFDB
649:In the end he realizes there's only one thing to do. He grabs her under the arms and drags her towards the stairs. By the time he gets her there, her pajama pants have slid down, revealing what she sometimes calls (called, he reminds himself) her winky. Once, when he was in bed with her, and she was giving him relief for a particularly bad headache, he tried to touch her winky and she slapped his hand away. Hard. Don't you ever, she had said. That's where you came from. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
650:The duration of a person’s life is only a moment; our substance is flowing away this very moment; the senses are dim; the composition of the body is decaying, the soul is chaos, our fate is unknowable, and reputation uncertain. In a word all bodily things are like a flowing river, and everything of the soul is dream and smoke, and life is all warfare and a stranger’s wanderings, and the reward is oblivion. What then could possibly guide us? Only one thing: Philosophy. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
651:What shall we do now?" asked Dorothy sadly. "There is only one thing we can do," returned the Lion, "and that is to go to the land of the Winkies, seek out the Wicked Witch, and destroy her." "But suppose we cannot?" said the girl. "Then I shall never have courage," declared the Lion. "And I shall never have brains," added the Scarecrow. "And I shall never have a heart," spoke the Tin of Woodman. "And I shall never see Aunt Em and Uncle Henry," said Dorothy, beginning to cry. ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
652:I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
653:Last spring I was worried about what gloves to wear. What can I do against Keating?” “Always go with the white, and stay safe.” Holmes made a steeple of his fingers. “Arm yourself against every eventuality and survive. There is only one thing to do once you have such distinguished enemies. Wait and watch. And when your moment comes, you make them pay dearly. Difficult times do not last.” She finished his favorite piece of advice. “Difficult, obstinate, and impertinent people do. ~ Emma Jane Holloway, #NFDB
654:Therefore, they is only one thing to do …” Here I stopped speaking altogether for a while, allowing these last words to enter their consciousness. Minutes passed and they said nothing, then Henry’s voice broke the silence, his deaf man’s bleat hoarse and cracked, a shock in the stillness: “Us gotta kill all dem white sonsabitches. Ain’t dat what de Lawd done told you? Ain’t dat right, Nat?” It was as if by those words we were committed. Us gotta kill … I talked on, detailing my plans. ~ William Styron, #NFDB
655:I knew I had been made to lead the party and that I was colder in temperament than the others, but I was not only deeply disturbed, I had lost respect for and trust in the Parents in some vital way. I did not entirely believe them when they said they would consider changing their plan. Their utter indifference to our personal fate was obvious. And not believing some of what they said, I came to question everything they said. I wanted really only one thing and that was to get away from them. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
656:Look, Madeline," Lady Gertrude said, "everyone's gaping at you!"
"I know." The future duchess stared straight ahead, her shoulders stiff, her back straight.
Never had Remington seen a woman less comfortable with her own distinction. Never had he enjoyed the success of his own plan quite so much. The ton adored only one thing more than a romance, and that was a scandal. He had- and would- give them both. "Maybe it's because of your hair," he murmured.
Madeline shot him a glare. ~ Christina Dodd,#NFDB
657:Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman…whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
658:There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
659:Often nothing keeps the pupil on the move but his faith in his teacher, whose mastery is now beginning to dawn on him .... How far the pupil will go is not the concern of the teacher and master. Hardly has he shown him the right way when he must let him go on alone. There is only one thing more he can do to help him endure his loneliness: he turns him away from himself, from the Master, by exhorting him to go further than he himself has done, and to "climb on the shoulders of his teacher." ~ Eugen Herrigel, #NFDB
660:Hellian leaned against a tree. 'Seems t'me, Cap'in, we got two things we can do and only two. We can retreat back t'the coast. Build ten thousand rafts and paddle away 's fast as we can. Or we go on. Fast, vicious mean. And iffin they come at us two thousand at once, then we run an' hide like we was trained t'do. Fast and vicious mean, Cap'in, or a long paddle.'
'There is only one thing worse than arguing with a drunk,' Faradan Sort said, 'and that's arguing with a drunk who's right. ~ Steven Erikson,#NFDB
661:If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my had. As formative events go, nothing else comes close; my careening, zigzag existence, my wounded brain and faith in God, my collisions with joy and affliction, all of it has come, in one way or another, out of that moment on a summer morning when the left rear tire of a United States postal jeep ground my tiny head into the hot gravel of the San Carlos Apache Indian reservation. ~ Brady Udall, #NFDB
662:Now I have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal imaginable by the madness of modern sophists, which will be anything like so startling as fulfilling any one of the old ones. On the day that any copybook maxim is carried out there will be something like an earthquake on the earth. There is only one thing new that can be done under the sun; and that is to look at the sun. If you attempt it on a blue day in June, you will know why men do not look straight at their ideals. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
663:The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
664:Have you read Gaboriau’s works?” I asked.
“Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?”
Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically. “Lecoq
was a miserable bungler,” he said, in an angry
voice; “he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a text-book for detectives to teach them what to avoid. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,#NFDB
665:There is only one thing in your life YOU can be sure of. That one thing is this moment, now. The last moment has gone forever. The next moment has not come. YOU can become fully conscious only when you are living in the moment. To begin to live in the moment you have to know it exists and understand it. To understand it you have to observe it in relation to yourself and in relation to life. When you understand it, when you become conscious, you will see it is all that exists. To see this is to glimpse reality. ~ Barry Long, #NFDB
666:And then I get it. The 318s have somehow decided to make me do the things that are in my notebook. All the things I’m afraid of. The things I’ve been writing since the seventh grade. And if I don’t, they’re going to post the book on the internet, and everyone at school, no, everyone with an internet connection, will know all my secrets. For a second, it feels like my throat swallows up my heart and my breath catches in my throat. There’s only one thing left to do. I put my head in my hands and start to cry. ~ Lauren Barnholdt, #NFDB
667:I've got a lot to download on your mercy and grace. I've always rushed up to You and dumped whatever it was and hurried away, fascinated by my own busyness. I want to turn all this over to You slowly, carefully, examining every fragment as I pass it off, so there'll never be any question about it again. Every time I've dumped and run, I've nearly always run back and snatched it out of Your hands. Help me in this.......Right now, I'm certain of only one thing - that You love us, and that's where we all have to begin. ~ Jan Karon, #NFDB
668:This is a sad day for all of us, and to none is it sadder than to me. Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do; that is, to devote what strength and powers I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have to sacrifice so much... I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been re-established. ~ Neville Chamberlain, #NFDB
669:Its funny how certain objects convey a message -- my washer and dryer, for example. They can't speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I'm doing fairly well. "No more laundromat for you," they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can't cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, "Well, he must be doing something. My numbers are off the charts." The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary and says only one thing: "You are going to die. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
670:Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
671:There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends. I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home; Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways. ~ Agnes Sligh Turnbull, #NFDB
672:It's funny how certain objects convey a message - my washer and dryer, for example. They can't speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I'm doing fairly well. "No more laundromat for you," they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can't cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, "Well, he must be doing _something - _my numbers is off the charts." The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary, and says only one thing: "You are going to die." ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
673:Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of the their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
674:Don’t give in to your fears,” said the alchemist, in a strangely gentle voice. “If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.” “But I have no idea how to turn myself into the wind.” “If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” “I’m not afraid of failing. It’s just that I don’t know how to turn myself into the wind.” “Well, you’ll have to learn; your life depends on it.” “But what if I can’t? ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
675:Of all games in the world, the one most universally and eternally popular is the game of school. You collect six children, and put them on a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the book and cane. We play it when babies, we play it when boys and girls, we play it when men and women, we play it as, lean and slippered, we totter towards the grave. It never palls upon, it never wearies us. Only one thing mars it: the tendency of one and all of the other six children to clamour for their turn with the book and the cane. ~ Jerome K Jerome, #NFDB
676:There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards. ~ Ralph Nader, #NFDB
677:The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception (the Indian māyā); the same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors, and in the same way Gaurisankar and Mount Everest turned out to be the same peak seen from different valleys. ~ Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, #NFDB
678:Container"
I was screaming into the canyon
At the moment of my death
The echo I created
Outlasted my last breath
My voice it made an avalanche
And buried a man I never knew
And when he died his widowed bride
Met your daddy and they made you
[Hook:] 3x
I have only one thing to do and that's
To be the wave that I am and then
Sink back into the ocean
Sink back into the o-
Sink back into the ocean
Sink back into the o-
Sink back into the ocean
Sink back into the ocean ~ Fiona Apple,#NFDB
679:It’s easy to be close, but almost impossible to stay close. Think about friends. Think about hobbies. Even ideas. They’re close to us—sometimes so close we think they are part of us—and then, at some point, they aren’t close anymore. They go away. Only one thing can keep something close over time: holding it there. Grappling with it. Wrestling it to the ground, as Jacob did with the angel, and refusing to let go. What we don’t wrestle we let go of. Love isn’t the absence of struggle. Love is struggle. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
680:It wasn't that I hated being asked a bunch of questions. I had nothing against questions. I just didn't like listening to them, because some questions take forever to make sense. Sometimes waiting for a question to finish is like watching someone draw an elephant starting with the tail first. As soon as you see the tail your mind wanders all over the place and you think of a million other animals that also have tails until you don't care about the elephant because it's only one thing when you've been thinking about a million others. ~ Jack Gantos, #NFDB
681:Dying is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is Something else. So many of the people who came to visit me are unhappy.. Why?...
For one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it. They're more unhappy than me-even in my current condition. I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving caring souls. How many people can say that? ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB
682:In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us—that we be men and women of prayer, people who live close to God, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it. As Merton said in the last public address before his death, “That is his call to us—simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
683:But give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens. And possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love. Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for You alone. For there is only one thing that can satisfy love and reward it, and that is You alone. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
684:But this is one of the things that makes rap at its best so human. It doesn't force you to pretend to be only one thing or another, to be a saint or a sinner. It recognizes that you can be true to yourself and still have unexpected dimensions and opposing ideas. Having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is the most common thing in the world. The real bullshit is when you act like you don't have contradictions inside you, that you're so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places. ~ Jay Z, #NFDB
685:The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
686:From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams... only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues.... Until he has those means and power instruments, his tactics are very different from power tactics. Therefore, every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization, whether by means of local organizations, churches, service groups, labor Unions, corner gangs, or as individuals. ~ Saul Alinsky, #NFDB
687:It’s very dangerous to have someone like you, because one day he’ll find that you are not the person he thought you were. He’ll end up someday having only one thing in common with you and that’ll be a shared sense of contempt and disgust for you. Of course you knew all along how foolish and worthless you were, you just hoped that if you crouched down behind yourself enough he wouldn’t see it. But one day when your guard is off-duty you see him see. You both catch you at yourself. Catch you behaving. And then you’re lost. No. You were lost all along. ~ Carrie Fisher, #NFDB
688:The mind may succeed in making you intelligent, but it is poorly equipped to make you happy, fulfilled, at peace with yourself. Merlin doesn’t argue with the mind. All debates are generated by thinking, and the wizard doesn’t think. He sees. And that is the key to the miraculous, for whatever you can see in your inner world you will bring into existence in the outer world. Live with this first lesson, let the water of wisdom begin to seep into the secret passages inside your being, and observe. The wizard is inside you, and he wants only one thing: to be born. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
689:Dying," Morrie suddenly said, "is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy." Why?
"Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it. They're more unhappy than me-even in my current condition.
"I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that? ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB
690:Estate agents. You can't live with them, you can't live with them. The first sign of these nasty purulent sores appeared round about 1894. With their jangling keys, nasty suits, revolting beards, moustaches and tinted spectacles, estate agents roam the land causing perturbation and despair. If you try and kill them, you're put in prison: if you try and talk to them, you vomit. There's only one thing worse than an estate agent but at least that can be safely lanced, drained and surgically dressed. Estate agents. Love them or loathe them, you'd be mad not to loathe them. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
691:A best friend is someone with whom you can sit on the porch, without a word, and then walk away with the feeling that it was the best conversation that ever had in your life. I would like to see next to me was the man in whose presence my heart beat would be evenly and uniformly, the man next to whom I would be calm, because I was not afraid to be the next day to lose him. And the time would have flowed more slowly, and we could just keep quiet, knowing that to talk with us there is still a whole life. Only one thing makes a dream impossible - it is the fear of failure. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
692:Dying," Morris suddenly said, "is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy."
Why?
"Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it. They're more unhappy than me -- even in my current condition. I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that? ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB
693:Clary hesitated - only for a moment, but the moment stretched out as long as any moment ever had. She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything. - an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth. But then again, perhaps those things weren't in the power of angels to grant, or they would have already been granted. And perhaps people were supposed to find these things for themselves.
It didn't matter, anyway. There was only one thing she could ask for, in he end, only one real choice.
She raised her eyes to the Angel's.
"Jace. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
694:To reconcile conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of both sides. If we take sides, it is impossible to do the work of reconciliation. And humans want to take sides. That is why the situation gets worse and worse. Are there people who are still available to both sides? They need not do much. They need do only one thing: Go to one side and tell all about the suffering endured by the other side, and go to the other side and tell all about the suffering endured by this side. This is our chance for peace. But how many of us are able to do that? ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
695:I cannot say to you what is right or wrong. I can say only one thing to you: be conscious - that is right. Don't be unconscious because that is wrong. And then whatsoever you do in consciousness is right. But people are living in unconsciousness. And let me tell you: in unconsciousness you may think you are doing something right, but it can't be right. Out of unconsciousness, virtue cannot flower; it may appear virtuous but it can't be. Deep down it will still be something wrong. If you are unconscious and you give money to a poor man, watch: your ego is strengthened. This is sin. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
696:When He was challenged by Jesus to accept a life of voluntary poverty, the rich young man knew he was faced with the simple alternative of obedience or disobedience. When Levi was called from the receipt of custom and Peter from his nets, there was no doubt that Jesus meant business. Both of them were to leave everything and follow. Again, when Peter was called to walk on the rolling sea, he had to get up and risk his life. Only one thing was required in each case-to rely on Christ's word, and cling to it as offering greater security than all the securities in the world. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
697:And if you learn only one thing from the ensuing maybe let it be this: the police were not merely interested observers who occasionally witnessed criminality and were then basically compelled to make an arrest, rather the police had the special ability to in effect create Crime by making an arrest almost whenever they wishes, so widespread was wrongdoing. Consequently, the decision on who would become a body was often affected by overlooked factors like the candidate's degree of humility, the neighborhood it lived in, and most often the relevant officers' need for overtime. ~ Sergio de la Pava, #NFDB
698:Everness
Only one thing does not exist: oblivion.
God, who saves the metal and the dross,
encodes within the prophetic memory
moons that will be and have already been.
It's all there. Thousands of reflections
that, between each dawn and dusk,
your face left and has yet to
leave in many mirrors.
And everything is part of that diverse
looking glass of memory, the universe;
staggering corridors which have no end
and doors that close after your passing;
only on the far side of sunset
will you see Archetypes and Splendors.
~ ~ ~ ~
,#NFDB
699:Now that you have measured the lines, you—your System 2, the conscious being you call “I”—have a new belief: you know that the lines are equally long. If asked about their length, you will say what you know. But you still see the bottom line as longer. You have chosen to believe the measurement, but you cannot prevent System 1 from doing its thing; you cannot decide to see the lines as equal, although you know they are. To resist the illusion, there is only one thing you can do: you must learn to mistrust your impressions of the length of lines when fins are attached to them. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
700:Many things in your life matter, but only one thing matters absolutely.It matters whether you succeed or fail in the eyes of the world. It matters whether you are healthy or not healthy, whether you are educated or not educated. It matter whether you are rich or poor - it certainly makes a difference in your life. Yes, all these things matter, relatively speaking, but they don't matter absolutely.There is something that matters more than any of those things and that is finding the essence of who you are beyond that short-lived entity, that short-lived personalized sense of self. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
701:There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.
That message is simple:
When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing. ~ Paul Kalanithi,#NFDB
702:She listens, determined to locate the trapped bird that had called out from within the madness of suffering. But there is only silence now, not even a halting fragment. Ali! Ali! A dervish, having renounced dealings with all words except that one, never utters another, in any circumstance...The sentence enters her mind from a book she had been looking at earlier. Her gaze is drifting across the sky where the moon sits in a great cold ring as she recalls more and more words. Only one thing matters, only one word. If we speak, it is because we have not found that thing, nor shall find it. ~ Nadeem Aslam, #NFDB
703:There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.
That message is simple:
When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing. ~ Paul Kalanithi,#NFDB
704:One of the greatest hindrances in coming to Jesus is the excuse of temperament. We make our temperament and our natural affinities barriers to coming to Jesus. The first thing we realize when we come to Jesus is that He pays no attention whatever to our natural affinities. We have the notion that we can consecrate our gifts to God. You cannot consecrate what is not yours; there is only one thing you can consecrate to God, and that is your right to yourself (Romans 12:1). If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you. God’s experiments always succeed ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
705:THE POETRY TEACHER The university gave me a new, elegant classroom to teach in. Only one thing, they said. You can’t bring your dog. It’s in my contract, I said. (I had made sure of that.) We bargained and I moved to an old classroom in an old building. Propped the door open. Kept a bowl of water in the room. I could hear Ben among other voices barking, howling in the distance. Then they would all arrive— Ben, his pals, maybe an unknown dog or two, all of them thirsty and happy. They drank, they flung themselves down among the students. The students loved it. They all wrote thirsty, happy poems. ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
706:Many things in your life matter, but only one thing matters absolutely.
It matters whether you succeed or fail in the eyes of the world. It matters whether you are healthy or not healthy, whether you are educated or not educated. It matter whether you are rich or poor — it certainly makes a difference in your life. Yes, all these things matter, relatively speaking, but they don't matter absolutely.
There is something that matters more than any of those things and that is finding the essence of who you are beyond that short-lived entity, that short-lived personalized sense of self. ~ Eckhart Tolle,#NFDB
707:There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have -- for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace -- that is true. The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves, and binds us to something larger -- we know that’s what matters. We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We don’t go wrong when we do that. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
708:There was only one thing that did, as far as I remember. That was underwear. Everybody in that house always had new or almost-new and very fancy underwear. She kept careful check. “Now, honey,” she explained to me, “if you were walking downtown and you were run over by a truck and they took you to the hospital and they saw that your panties were all torn and ragged and your slip was pinned at the shoulder by a safety, you’d be so ashamed you’d have to die.” “And just think how people would talk after,” I tried to joke with her. She didn’t see it. “And think of that,” she said seriously. “Yes, indeed. ~ Shirley Ann Grau, #NFDB
709:I get caught up in outcomes. I convince myself they're truths. No one will notice how wrong you are if everything you do ends up right. The rest becomes incidental. So incidental that, after a while, you forget. Maybe you are perfect. Good. It must be true. Who can argue with results? You're not so wrong after all. So you buy into it and you go crazy maintaining it. Except it creeps up on you sometimes, that you're not right. Imperfect. Bad. So you snap your fingers and it goes away.
Until something you can't ignore happens and you see it all over yourself.
And there's only one thing left to do. ~ Courtney Summers,#NFDB
710:Words can be more lethal than blades, Magnus. And Loki is a master of words. To beat him, you must find your inner poet. Only one thing can give you a chance to beat Loki at his own game.”
“Mead,” I guessed. “Kvasir’s Mead.”
The answer didn’t sit right with me. I’d been on the streets long enough to see how well “mead” improved people’s skills. Pick your poison: beer, wine, vodka, whiskey. Folks claimed they needed it to get through the day. They called it liquid courage. It made them funnier, smarter, more creative. Except it didn’t. It just made them less able to tell how unfunny and stupid they were acting. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
711:compensation for sacrificed discipline of the lesser for greater :::
...a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
712:If we—all of us—accept the grace of Jesus Christ, he changes our heart and from sinners makes us saints. To become holy we do not need to turn our eyes away and look somewhere else, or have as it were the face on a holy card! No, no, that is not necessary. To become saints only one thing is necessary: to accept the grace that the Father gives us in Jesus Christ. There, this grace changes our heart. We continue to be sinners for we are weak, but with this grace which makes us feel that the Lord is good, that the Lord is merciful, that the Lord waits for us, that the Lord pardons us—this immense grace that changes our heart. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
713:1. A tiger doesn't lose sleep ... over the opinion of sheep ... BE A LEADER!
2. Judge people from where they stand, not from where you stand.
3. Remember that much truth is spoken in jest.
4. Accept what is, let go what was, and have faith in what will be
5. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a stroke of good luck.
6. Work hard so that you can shop harder
7. There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about
8. Money can't buy class
9. The sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful and so are you
10. One day or day one. You decide! ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
714:Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have. Men were different. They might hate each other but they stuck together against the world and against any woman who would ensnare one of them. ~ Betty Smith, #NFDB
715:Eight Years Old, Eighteen Years Old
Cassidy was barely conscious when the March Hare, finally finished, gingerly lifted her onto her stump and gently slid a teacup onto her finger. She strained her senses and thought she heard a long sigh and the creak of old bones as he settled at the other end of the table. He stayed there with her through the night. Every time she struggled to open her eyes, she'd see him, the ghostly outline of white ears against the threatening shadows.
Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps he hadn't. There was only one thing Cassidy Evans knew for sure: It had been a marvelous tea party. ~ Carrie Ryan,#NFDB
716:THE 1920’S, IT IS SAID, WERE A TIME OF “DISILLUSIONMENT.” Progressivism had failed. The war for democracy had ended in the debacle of Versailles; idealism gave way to “normalcy.” Defeated, intellectuals turned away from reform. Following H. L. Mencken, they now ridiculed “the people,” whom they had once idolized. Many of them fled to Europe. Others cultivated the personal life, transferring their search for salvation from society to the individual. Still others turned to Communism. In the general confusion, only one thing was certain: the old ideals, the old standards, were dead, and liberal democracy was part of the wreckage. Such ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
717:-but deep down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property. What though the board was up, and cosiness to let?--someone would come along and take it again some day.
And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle was so gentle, and the yew-tree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky.
He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving in the world! ~ John Galsworthy,#NFDB
718:There is only one thing. It is oblivion.
God, who saves the metal, saves the slag
and figures in his prophetic memory
the moons that will be and those that have been.
Everything is done. The thousands of reflections
that between the two twilights of the day
your face was leaving in the mirrors
and those that will be leaving.
And everything is a part of the diverse
crystal of that memory, the universe;
their arduous corridors have no end
and the doors close as you pass;
just on the other side of sunset
you will see the Archetypes and Splendors.
~ ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Everness (& interpretation)
,#NFDB
719:3. An innovation, to be effective, has to be simple and it has to be focused. It should do only one thing, otherwise, it confuses. If it is not simple, it won’t work. Everything new runs into trouble; if complicated, it cannot be repaired or fixed. All effective innovations are breathtakingly simple. Indeed, the greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say: ‘This is obvious. Why didn’t I think of it?’ Even the innovation that creates new uses and new markets should be directed toward a specific, clear, designed application. It should be focused on a specific need that it satisfies, on a specific end result that it produces. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
720:Of all games in the world, the one most universally and eternally popular is the game of school. You collect six children and put them on a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the book and cane. Only one thing mars it: the tendency of one and all of other six children to clamour for their turn with the book and cane. The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep.
[published in 1900] ~ Jerome K Jerome,#NFDB
721:First importance. The Bible tells us that, while there are many different callings and many possible areas of service in the kingdom of God, one transcendent truth should define our lives. One simple truth should motivate our work and affect every part of who we are.
Christ died for our sins.
If there's anything in life that we should be passionate about, it's the gospel. And I don't mean passionate only about sharing it with others. I mean passionate in thinking about it, dwelling on it, rejoicing in it, allowing it to color the way we look at the world. Only one thing can be of first importance to each of us. And only the gospel ought to be. ~ C J Mahaney,#NFDB
722:There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
723:The whole chorus saying only one thing: look
at what goes, where we stand in the midst of it:
Golden eyes of the beginning, deep patience
of the end. Stone-deaf, the rocks in silence
are writing our lives: mossed, or lichen- daubed
to brightness, their gravity is here to stay. . .
but so is the butterfly winged with light
and in a dozen minds at once, letting its life
be wamble and whim as air determines, though still
a fixed purpose sticks to it, it knows the score
the chorus follows as one voice, singing
Light whelms, whelms, and will end us, while
a painter, old, is leaning slightly to the right or left.
~ Eamon Grennan,#NFDB
724:To speak truth, sir, I don't understand you at all: I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection--one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
725:You are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:41-42)
Choosing to please God sounds right at first, but it so often leads to a performing life, a girl trying to become good, a lean-on-myself theology. If I am trying to please God, it is difficult trust God. But when I trust God, pleasing him is automatic.
Anything we do to get life and identity outside of Christ is an idol, even service to Christ. He doesn't want my service. He wants me. And from that life-giving relationship, "streams of living water will flow from within" (John 7:38 NIV) ~ Emily P Freeman,#NFDB
726:Emma: What do you want from me, Jules? What do you want me to do?
Jules: What do I want? I want you to know what it's like. To be tortured al the time, night and day, desperately wanting what you know you should never want, what doesn't even want you back. to know how it feels to understand that a decision you made when you were twelve years old means you can never have the one thing that would make you truly happy. I want you to dream about only one thing and want onlny one thing and obsess about only one thing like I do ...
Emma: Julian...
Jules: ... like I do with you! Like I do with you, Emma. I thought you loved me. I don't know how I got that so wrong. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
727:I said my goodbyes to Madge at the front door and watched her for a few moments as she made her way down the driveway before closing it again. At first I rested my forehead against the woodwork, wondering what I might do next, but as I turned, a hand grabbed me by the neck and threw me across the floor. I hit the wall of the hallway with a scream and felt a body, invisible, rushing towards me. Before it could reach me, however, another presence swept in from my left side and there was a sound like thunder as they collided, one roaring at the other, before both presences disappeared entirely, leaving only one thing, one familiar thing, in their wake. The scent of cinnamon. ~ John Boyne, #NFDB
728:Ah, hell. Even now, insulated by so many intervening years, I could choke on the pity of it. They started out so young and brave, my parents, and ended up such sordid messes. Only one thing saved my father from dying as a slobbering drunk, and that was Alzheimer’s disease, alcohol being unavailable in the nursing home he finally expired in. As for my mother, she didn’t live long enough to find out that I grew up to have all the things she craved, that the entire package, plus some, would be delivered exactly a generation late—the adventure, the causes, the friends and hot romances. She died, too, before we could settle things between us, on her third suicide attempt. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich, #NFDB
729:Perhaps there was no answer right from the start. Humans lose sight of this... They fear the truth that they cannot comprehend. There are no true boundaries between good and evil in this world. Heaven and Hell do not really exist. The real truth is something you must discover for yourselves, as you stumble through suffering and confusion.
You suffering... you dear ones... We who dwell in Heaven... There's only one thing I can do. I can pray that you all never have to be sad. I hope you meet the people that you love. Find the truth. Be happy. Never forget that you were born out of great love. We will meet again. Somewhere, somehow in the great pool of time. We will meet again. ~ Kaori Yuki,#NFDB
730:With his free hand, Thomas produces a small key. It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos that don’t seem to have a reason for being except in an elevator, a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them. Where do we get this shit? Bridal shower and wedding gifts, stocking stuffers, spur-of-the-moment purchases at Ikea. They’re all so goddamned useless, hidden in the backs of kitchen drawers, taken for granted and never taken out. This is what goes through my mind as Thomas frees me with the high-tech equivalent of a can opener. ~ Christina Dalcher, #NFDB
731:Only one thing is necessary: we should all have a pure heart, with no anger, hatred, irritation, or hostility in it. If you feel hostility toward another person, think about their inner state. Do not think about yourself, or that you want to prove yourself right. In your quiet, inner thoughts, try to find the good in others. Do not say anything bad about others, even in your own thoughts. When you interact with a person, try to find as much common ground as possible, the more the better, and try to nurture this feeling. To cease being angry with a person and instead to seek peace, forgiveness and love toward him, remind yourself of any sins you may have in common and compare them. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
732:There are circumstances that must shatter you; and if you are not shattered, then you have not understood your circumstances. In such circumstances, it is a failure for your heart not to break. And it is pointless to put up a fight, for a fight will blind you to the opportunity that has been presented by your misfortune. Do you wish to persevere pridefully in the old life? Of course you do: the old life was a good life. But it is no longer available to you. It has been carried away, irreversibly. So there is only one thing to be done. Transformation must be met with transformation. Where there was the old life, let there be the new life. Do not persevere. Dignify the shock. Sink, so as to rise. ~ Leon Wieseltier, #NFDB
733:Only one thing is inarguable: without a body of convictions, life becomes a series of events in futile pursuit of utopia on earth, or of endless material possessions, or of sybaritic comfort, or of self-satisfied mastery of a narrow series of intellectual disciplines.... If you choose faith, then you move beyond ritual to search for your own individual path. You become engaged in a process of remaking yourself--by what you do, what values you adopt, what you teach your children, how closely you listen to a neighbor, how good a steward you are for future generations, how sincerely you try to understand another persons suffering and joy, and how loving you are, not only to those who you love but also to strangers. ~ Bill Bradley, #NFDB
734:Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as i think Emma Goldman said, 'If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.' And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
735:The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
736:Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ~ Audre Lorde,#NFDB
737:The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn. ~ T H White, #NFDB
738:The strongest drive inside of a submissive, underneath all their emotional wounds, is for the Master to push aside any curtains or walls they may have erected to separate them from their true self, the naked, vulnerable soul. Because that soul wants only one thing. Do you want to know what that is?"
<…> "I don't want to know. That's not what the training's about."
"Wrong. That's what submissive training is all about. Getting past those shields so she feels truly bound to her Master, a part of him as he's a part of her. The ultimate connection, where thought isn't necessary. They're together in the most elemental and perfect way there is. She stared at him. "Let me go, Tyler. I can't do this." "You can. You will. ~ Joey W Hill,#NFDB
739:Spiral pathways wound their way downward like a whirlpool in pursuit of copper, the life food of a new age begun by the discovery of bronze. Bronze was an alloy more durable than its copper predecessor, being used in everything from tools and decoration to weapons and armor. It was discovered by mixing tin with copper, which resulted in the harder bronze that would last longer and kill more efficiently in weaponry. For all those reasons, especially the last, gods and kings needed plenty of bronze to build their kingdoms. Extracting copper ore from the ground was laborious work. It required many men to unearth the volume demanded by such rulers. The necessary work force could be met by only one thing: Slaves, and lots of them. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
740:Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.
Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."
These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.
It is this spiritual freedom- which cannot be taken away- that makes life meaningful and purposeful. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
741:There’s only one thing that the ruling circles throughout history have ever wanted-all the wealth, the treasures, and the profitable returns; all the choice lands and forests and game and herds and harvests and mineral deposits and precious metals of the earth; all the productive facilities and gainful inventiveness and technologies; all the control positions of the state and other major institutions; all public supports and subsidies, privileges and immunities; all the protections of the law and none of its constraints; all of the services and comforts and luxuries and advantages of civil society with none of the taxes and none of the costs. Every ruling class in history has wanted only this-all the rewards and none of the burdens. ~ Michael Parenti, #NFDB
742:Each leaf on the maples and lindens was sharply outlined, as if chiselled from black stone. Taken as a whole, however, the great mass of trees seemed like a flat black pattern against the bright sky. The world’s beauty had surpassed itself. It was one of those moments when everyone stops to gaze in wonder—not only the idler with time on his hands but also the shift worker on his way home and the traveller half-dead on his feet. At times like this we cease to have distinct perceptions of light, space, silence, rustlings, warmth, sweet smells, the swaying of long grass or leaves—all the millions of ingredients that make up the world’s beauty. What we perceive then is true beauty, and it tells us only one thing: that life is a blessing. ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
743:This photograph, this swipe of grain, so briefly glimpsed: I could tell it contained extraordinary information. It was black and white. It was about power. Twelve men were depicted there, in unmistakable configuration. Twelve men, but two distinct human types, equally represented, six of one type, half a dozen of the other. The first type had power, and safety in numbers. The second type had no power-had numbers, but no safety: numbers conferred only grief and weakness. The first type was silently saying something to the second type. Six men were saying to the other six: Whatever else divides us, whatever else is between us, only one thing matters. We belong to the living, you to the dead. We are the living and you are the dead. The dead. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
744:Each man’s destiny is different, Paul,” Gallucci continued. “Sometimes it calls for action, sometimes a change in attitude, and sometimes simply suffering and acceptance. When it’s suffering, you have to remember that your own pain is totally unique in the universe. Nobody can relieve you of it or suffer it in your place. It’s the way you bear it that gives your life its special meaning. “Dostoyevsky once wrote that there was only one thing that he dreaded: not to be worthy of his sufferings. The way I see it, what determines whether a man is worthy or not are the choices he makes. No matter how desperate the conditions, no matter how great the suffering, no one can deprive you of that last inner freedom to choose your attitude toward life. ~ Preston Fleming, #NFDB
745:Only one thing was wanting: an institution which not only secured the newly acquired riches of individuals against the communistic traditions of the gentile order, which not only sanctified the private property formerly so little valued and declared this sanctification to be the highest purpose of all human society; but, an institution which set the seal of general social recognition on each new method of acquiring property and thus amassing wealth at continually increasing speed; an institution which perpetuated not only this growing cleavage of society into classes but also the right of the possessing class to exploit the non-possessing, and the rule of the former over the latter.
And this institution came. The state was invented. ~ Friedrich Engels,#NFDB
746:It even reached a point of such confusion that men and women were imprisoned in the same cells and used the latrine bucket in each other's presence—who cared about those niceties? Give up your gold, vipers! The interrogators did not write up charge sheets because no one needed their papers. And whether or not a sentence would be pasted on was of very little interest. Only one thing was important: Give up your gold, viper! The state needs gold and you don't. The interrogators had neither voice nor strength left to threaten and torture; they had one universal method: feed the prisoners nothing but salty food and give them no water. Whoever coughed up gold got water! One gold piece for a cup of fresh water!
People perish for cold metal. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,#NFDB
747:(T)his world is pure illusion. It looks real but the first step of knowledge that the wizard must learn is not to trust his senses... The cycle of life and death continues forever, but only to the senses... (P)erhaps you were always alive, and birth was simply a moment of forgetting.... Light! It is all light.... The light is all, and in the light there is only one thing -- eternal life. It cannot be created or destroyed. The wizard is not afraid to walk in the darkness -- indeed he must -- because that is where illusion dies... (Wizards) dabble in eternity. The wizard looks around him and finds the eternal in all directions. His only choice is what to do with it.... It is also joy to pierce the illusion and find the wellspring of creative power. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
748:Neither day nor night is our master. And do you know what happens when a woman walks without fear?”
Teia shook her head, but there was a sudden longing deep in her that swelled so strong it paralyzed her tongue. Tell me. Tell me.
“She becomes.”
Becomes what? Teia didn’t say the words aloud, but he knew what she was thinking, for he answered:
“She becomes whatever she wills. Minus only one thing.” In the dark, he held up a finger, almost like he was scolding her.
Teia was silent now. The question was obvious, and now she didn’t want to ask it.
Sharp said, “She has one thing she can never be, never again. You know what it is, don’t you?”
The words came unbidden to her lips, from a place so dark no light had ever touched it: “A slave. ~ Brent Weeks,#NFDB
749:The Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert talk about the two "hungers". There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger. The Little Hunger wants food for the belly; but the Great Hunger, the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning...
There is ultimately only one thing that makes human beings deeply and profoundly bitter, and that is to have thrust upon them a life without meaning.
There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness. But of far more comfort to the soul is something greater than happiness or unhappiness, and that is meaning. Because meaning transfigures all. Once what you are doing has for you meaning, it is irrelevant whether you're happy or unhappy. You are content - you are not alone in your Spirit - you belong. ~ Laurens van der Post,#NFDB
750:I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System. ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
751:As she hurried on deck, her mind was awhirl. All that time that Mr. Grayson had been touching her, teasing her…she’d been consorting with a pirate. If he had the slightest inkling that she carried hundreds of pounds beneath her stays, he’d surely stop at nothing to get it. And yet, she could not bid caution to overtake the gothic thrill. For Heaven’s sake, a pirate.
She could be in danger, she admonished herself.
She could be plundered.
The possibility really ought to have frightened her more than it did.
Perhaps she could not escape the man, but she had to tamp down this response he incited in her. There was only one thing for it. She would go to her cabin and sketch. Something simple, innocent. Rosebuds, apples, blocks of wood. Anything but him. ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB
752:There is little joy in those first moments of recognition- for the reality is that most encounters of such depth, most first glances of love come to nothing. And while the sincerity of that rare moment when your heart is bursting should be the signal to fling yourself on the ground in the path of this stranger, it's the depth of such sincerity that paralyses you, holds you back from the silence of phrases like "hello" and "good morning."
And as they pass, granting only single, torturous details like fingers upon the handle of an umbrella, or a hair pin bearing the weight of a twist, or a wool collar beaded with pearls of rain- there is only one thing you could ever say that would be true, that would make them stop walking and turn to face you.
But such a thing is unsayable. ~ Simon Van Booy,#NFDB
753:Edmund said they must gather gulls’ eggs from the rocks, but when they came to think of it they couldn’t remember having seen any gulls’ eggs and wouldn’t be able to cook them if they found any. Peter thought to himself that unless they had some stroke of luck they would soon be glad to eat eggs raw, but he didn’t see any point in saying this out loud. Susan said it was a pity they had eaten the sandwiches so soon. One or two tempers very nearly got lost at this stage. Finally Edmund said:
“Look here. There’s only one thing to be done. We must explore the wood. Hermits and knights-errant and people like that always manage to live somehow if they’re in a forest. They find roots and berries and things.”
“What sort of roots?” asked Susan.
“I always thought it meant roots of trees,” said Lucy. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
754:Life is beautiful because it is insecure. Life is beautiful because there is death. Life is beautiful because it can be missed. If you cannot miss it, everything is forced upon you, then even life becomes an imprisonment. You will not be able to enjoy it. Even if you are ordered to be blissful, commanded to be free, then bliss and freedom both are gone. “Will existence protect me when I allow myself to let go?” Try! Only one thing I can say to you.… I am not talking to your fear, remember. Only one thing I can say to you—all those who have tried have found that it protects. But I am not talking to your fear. I am simply encouraging your adventure, that’s all. I am persuading, seducing you toward adventure. I am not talking to your fear. All those who have tried have found that infinite is the protection. ~ Osho, #NFDB
755:And he was leveling the pistol on Gideon as if he itched to fire it. “What do you want with me? Is it gold you want?”
“There’s only one thing I want of you, and that’s Sara,” Gideon said bluntly, ignoring the pistol. “I want my fiancé. Either you take me to her, or I hold you and your ship captive until you do.”
“Or I could shoot you and your cursed pirates. Even now my men have yours under their guns and can pick them off at will if I command it.”
Gideon sneered at him. “Barnaby!” he shouted. “How fare the earl’s men and their guns?”
Barnaby and the other fifteen men emerged from behind the forward house, pushing a group of disarmed and disgruntled sailors ahead of them. “Oh, they fare quite well, Captain. As for their guns, let’s just say we’ve added to our arsenal substantially today. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
756:He who wishes to fulfill his mission must be a man of one idea, that is, of one great overmastering purpose, overshadowing all his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life. —Bate. The shortest way to do anything is to do only one thing at a time. —Cecil. The power of concentration is one of the most valuable of intellectual attainments. —Horace Mann. The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one direction. —Emerson. Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius and art. —Cicero. "It puffed like a locomotive," said a boy of the donkey engine; "it whistled like the steam-cars, but it didn't go anywhere." The world is full of donkey-engines, of people who can whistle and puff and pull, but they don't go anywhere, they have no definite aim, no controlling purpose. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
757:No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
758:Something wonderful has happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. "Will you," said Mercury, "have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing." For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side." Not one of the gods said a word, on the contrary, they all began to laugh. Hence, I concluded that my request was granted, and found that the gods knew how to express themselves with great taste; for it would hardly have been suitable for them to answer gravely: "It is granted thee. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
759:Something wonderful has happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. "Will you," said Mercury, "have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing." For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side." Not one of the gods said a word, on the contrary, they all began to laugh. Hence, I concluded that my request was granted, and found that the gods knew how to express themselves with great taste; for it would hardly have been suitable for them to answer gravely: "It is granted thee". ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
760:Something wonderful has happened to me. I was carried up into the seventh heaven. There all the gods sat assembled. By special grace I was granted the favor of a wish. "Will you," said Mercury, "have youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful maiden, or any of the other glories we have in the chest? Choose, but only one thing." For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed myself to the gods as follows: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose this one thing, that I may always have the laugh on my side." Not one of the gods said a word, on the contrary, they all began to laugh. Hence, I concluded that my request was granted, and found that the gods knew how to express themselves with taste; for it would hardly have been suitable for them to have answered gravely: "It is granted thee. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
761:We can’t get through — it’ll take ages. . . .” Harry looked up at the tunnel ceiling. Huge cracks had appeared in it. He had never tried to break apart anything as large as these rocks by magic, and now didn’t seem a good moment to try — what if the whole tunnel caved in? There was another thud and another “ow!” from behind the rocks. They were wasting time. Ginny had already been in the Chamber of Secrets for hours. . . . Harry knew there was only one thing to do. “Wait there,” he called to Ron. “Wait with Lockhart. I’ll go on. . . . If I’m not back in an hour . . .” There was a very pregnant pause. “I’ll try and shift some of this rock,” said Ron, who seemed to be trying to keep his voice steady. “So you can — can get back through. And, Harry —” “See you in a bit,” said Harry, trying to inject some confidence into his ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
762:The whole affair was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic. There were a lot of condomy problems that I did not get a particularly good look at. No headboards were broken. No screaming. Honestly, it was probably the longest time we’d ever spent together without talking. Only one thing followed type: Afterward, when I had my face resting against Augustus’s chest, listening to his heart pound, Augustus said, “Hazel Grace, I literally cannot keep my eyes open.” “Misuse of literality,” I said. “No,” he said. “So. Tired.” His face turned away from me, my ear pressed to his chest, listening to his lungs settle into the rhythm of sleep. After a while, I got up, dressed, found the Hotel Filosoof stationery, and wrote him a love letter: ~ John Green, #NFDB
763:The truth is simply that money, power, and all the possessions for which men torment and ultimately shoot each other mean little to one who has come to himself, to a self-willed man. He values only one thing, the mysterious power in himself which bids him live and helps him to grow. This power can be neither preserved nor increased nor deepened by money and power, because money and power are the inventions of distrust. Those who distrust the life-giving force within them, or who have none, are driven to compensate through such substitutes as money. When a man has confidence in himself, when all he wants in the world is to live out his destiny in freedom and purity, he comes to regard all those vastly overestimated and far too costly possessions as mere accessories, pleasant perhaps to have and make use of, but never essential. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
764:Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinkin' fast
I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free
I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me
Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there
Everybody got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interestin' right about now
My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin’ to be kind
So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine
Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long
-Bob Dylan, “Mississippi ~ Bob Dylan,#NFDB
765:A strange thing happened to me in my dream. I was rapt into the Seventh Heaven. There sat all the gods assembled. As a special dispensation I was granted the favor to have one wish. "Do you wish for youth," said Mercury, "or for beauty, or power, or a long life; or do you wish for the most beautiful woman, or any other of the many fine things we have in our treasure trove? Choose, but only one thing!" For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed the gods in this wise: "Most honorable contemporaries, I choose one thing — that I may always have the laughs on my side." Not one god made answer, but all began to laugh. From this I concluded that my wish had been granted and thought that the gods knew how to express themselves with good taste: for it would surely have been inappropriate to answer gravely: your wish has been granted. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
766:He tried to remember Moon Child's eyes, but was no longer able to. He was sure of only one thing: that her glance had passed through his eyes and down into his heart. He could still feel the burning trail it had left behind. That glance, he felt, was embedded in his heart, and there it glittered like a mysterious jewel. And in a strange and wonderful way it hurt.
Even if Bastian had wanted to, he couldn't have defended himself against this thing that had happened to him. However, he didn't want to. Oh no, not for anything in the world would he have parted with that jewel. All he wanted was to go on reading, to see Moon Child again, to be with her.
IT never occurred to him that he was getting into the most unusual and perhaps the most dangerous of adventures. But even if he had known this, he wouldn't have dreamed of shutting the book. ~ Michael Ende,#NFDB
767:Emma: I tried so hard.
Jules: In the battle? Emma, you did everything you could ...
Emma: Not in the battle. To make you not love me. I tried.
Jules: Is it that awful? Having me love you?
Emma: It was the best thing in the world. And then it was the worst. And I didn't even have a chance ...
Jules: You're going to have to learn to live with it. Even if it horrifies you. Even if it makes you sick. Just like I'm going to have to live with whatever other boyfriend you have, because we are forever no matter how, Emma, no matter what you want to call what we have, we will always be us.
Emma: There won't be any other boyfriends. What you said before, about thinking and obsessing and wanting only one thing. That's how I fel you you.
Jules, say somethin, please...
Jules: Julian. I want you to call me Julian. Only ever that. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
768:Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinkin' fast
I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free
I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me
Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there
Everybody got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interestin' right about now
My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin’ to be kind
So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine
Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long
-Bob Dylan, “Mississippi ~ Bob Dylan,#NFDB
769:Perhaps I was mad, as I thought at moments; perhaps I was not like other men? But I was able to do the same things the others did; with little effort and industry I could read Plato, was able to solve problems in trigonometry or follow a chemical analysis. There was only one thing I could not do: wrest the dark secret goal from myself and keep it before me as others did who knew exactly what they wanted to be--professors, lawyers, doctors, artists, however long this would take them and whatever difficulties and advantages this decision would bear in its wake. This I could not do. Perhaps I would become something similar, but how was I to know? Perhaps I would have to continue my search for years on end and would not become anything, and would not reach a goal. Perhaps I would reach this goal but it would turn out to be an evil, dangerous, horrible one? ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
770:Perhaps I was mad, as I thought at moments; perhaps I was not like other men? But I was able to do the same things the others did; with a little effort and industry I could read Plato, was able to solve problems in trigonometry or follow a chemical analysis. These was only one thing I could not do: wrest the dark secret goal from myself and keep it before me as others did who knew exactly what they wanted to be- professors, lawyers, doctors, artists, however long this would take them and whatever difficulties and advantages this decision would bear in its wake. This I could not do. Perhaps I would become something similar but how was I to know? Perhaps I would have to continue my search for years on end and would not become anything, and would not reach a goal. Perhaps I would reach this goal but it would turn out to be an evil, dangerous, horrible one? ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
771:Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love . . . In a concentration camp, the guards possess almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your God, curse your family, work without pay, eat human excrement, kill and then bury your closest friend or even your own mother. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle—the kind we may secretly long for—do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John Hall has put it, “God’s problem is not that God is not able to do certain things. God’s problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life.” (Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God) ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
772:You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
773:For its effective salvation mankind will need to undergo something like a spontaneous religious conversion: one that will replace the mechanical world picture with an organic world picture, and give to the human personality, as the highest known manifestation of life, the precedence it now gives to its machines and computers. This order of change is as hard for most people to conceive as was the change from the classic power complex of Imperial Rome to that of Christianity, or, later, from supernatural medieval Christianity to the machine-modeled ideology of the seventeenth century. But such changes have repeatedly occurred all through history; and under catastrophic pressure they may occur again. Of only one thing we may be confident. If mankind is to escape its programmed self-extinction the God who saves us will not descend from the machine: he will rise up again in the human soul. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
774:The room had been picked and stripped till only the bare walls and floor remained. Here where they had been married, where the wedding supper had taken place, where Trina had bade farewell to her father and mother, here where she had spent those first few hard months of her married life, where afterward she had grown to be happy and contented, where she had passed the long hours of the afternoon at her work of whittling, and where she and her husband had spent so many evenings looking out of the window before the lamp was lit—here in what had been her home, nothing was left but echoes and the emptiness of complete desolation. Only one thing remained. On the wall between the windows, in its oval glass frame, preserved by some unknown and fearful process, a melancholy relic of a vanished happiness, unsold, neglected, and forgotten, a thing that nobody wanted, hung Trina’s wedding bouquet. ~ Frank Norris, #NFDB
775:Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: our daughter, Cady. I hope I'll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters-but what would they say? I don't know what this girl will be like when she is fifteen; I don't even know if she'll take to the nickname we've given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.
That message is simple:
When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing. ~ Paul Kalanithi,#NFDB
776:Blindness to larger contexts is a constitutional defect of human thinking imposed by the painful necessity of being able to concentrate on only one thing at a time. We forget as we virtuously concentrate on that one thing that hundreds of other things are going on at the same time and on every side of us, things that are just as important as the object of our study and that are all interconnected in ways that we cannot even guess. Sad to say, our picture of the world to the degree to which it has that neatness, precision, and finality so coveted by scholarship is a false one.
I once studied with a famous professor who declared that he deliberately avoided the study of any literature east of Greece lest the new vision destroy the architectonic perfection of his own celebrated construction of the Greek mind. His picture of that mind was immensely impressive but, I strongly suspect, completely misleading. ~ Hugh Nibley,#NFDB
777:Listen to what I say, then believe what your heart tells you is true. For it is in your heart where your wisdom lies, and in your heart where your truth dwells, and in your own heart where God resides in most intimate communion with you. I ask only one thing. What is that? Please do not confuse what is in your heart with what is in your mind. What is in your mind has been put there by others. What is in your heart is what you carry with you of me. Yet you can close your heart to me, and many have. And many also have closed their minds. And please, do not tell others that unless THEY believe what is in YOUR mind, I am going to condemn them. And finally, whatever you do, do not condemn them yourself, on my behalf. We keep doing that. We don’t seem to know how to stop. And we’re putting ourselves through sheer hell. Yet now here is the Good News: Humanity need not go through hell in order to get to heaven. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
778:There was only one thing for me to do when I started my new life in the dorm: stop taking everything so seriously; establish a proper distance between myself and everything else. Forget about green-felt pool tables and red N-360s and white flowers on school desks; about smoke rising from tall crematorium smokestacks, and chunky paperweights in police interrogation rooms. It seemed to work at first. I tried hard to forget, but there remained inside me a vague knot-of-air kind of thing. And as time went by, the knot began to take on a clear and simple form, a form that I am able to put into words, like this: Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life. Translated into words, it’s a cliché, but at the time I felt it not as words but as that knot of air inside me. Death exists—in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a billiard table—and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
779:Staring at a blank piece of paper, I can't think of anything original. I feel utterly uninspired and unreceptive. It's the familiar malaise of 'artist's block' and in such circumstances there is only one thing to do: just start drawing.
The artist Paul Klee refers to this simple act as 'taking a line for a walk', an apt description of my own basic practice: allowing the tip of a pencil to wander through the landscape of a sketchbook, motivated by a vague impulse but hoping to find something much more interesting along the way. Strokes, hooks, squiggles and loops can resolve into hills, faces, animals, machines -even abstract feelings- the meanings of which are often secondary to the simple act of making (something young children know intuitively). Images are not preconceived and then drawn, they are conceived as they are drawn. Indeed, drawing is its own form of thinking, in the same way birdsong is 'thought about' within a bird's throat. ~ Shaun Tan,#NFDB
780:It's a physical sickness. Étienne. How much I love him.
I love Étienne.
I love it when he cocks an eyebrow whenever I say something he finds clever or amusing. I love listening to his boots clomp across my bedroom ceiling. I love that the accent over his first name is called an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent.
I love that.
I love sitting beside him in physics. Brushing against him during labs. His messy handwriting on our worksheets. I love handing him his backpack when class is over, because then my fingers smell like him for the next ten minutes. And when Amanda says something lame, and he seeks me out to exchange an eye roll — I love that, too. I love his boyish laugh and his wrinkled shirts and his ridiculous knitted hat. I love his large brown eyes, and the way he bites his nails, and I love his hair so much I could die.
There's only one thing I don't love about him. Her. ~ Stephanie Perkins,#NFDB
781:Only one thing, in those years, drew from her a cry of fury. This was the publication, in 1563, of a single, stout book. It was known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; and it was an astonishing feat of propaganda. For this book, carefully written to evoke every man’s pity and rage, described in detail the martyrs of England – by which it meant those Protestants who had perished under Bloody Mary. Of the Catholics who had suffered martyrdom before then, it said not a word. That some of these Protestants, like vicious old Latimer, had been burners and torturers themselves, it conveniently forgot. The sale of the book was prodigious. Soon, it seemed, only Catholic persecution of Protestants had ever existed. “ ’Tis a lie,” Susan would protest. “And I fear it will persist.” It would indeed. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was destined to be read in families, to give warning to children, and to shape English people’s perception of the Catholic Church for generations. ~ Edward Rutherfurd, #NFDB
782:Fatima went back to her tent, and, when daylight came, she went out to do the chores she had done for years. But everything had changed. The boy was no longer at the oasis, and the oasis would never again have the same meaning it had had only yesterday. It would no longer be a place with fifty thousand palm trees and three hundred wells, where the pilgrims arrived, relieved at the end of their long journeys. From that day on, the oasis would be an empty place for her.
From that day on, it was the desert that would be important. She would look to it everyday, and would try to guess which star the boy was following in search of his treasure. She would have to send her kisses on the wind, hoping that the wind would touch the boy's face, and would tell him that she was alive. That she was waiting for him, a woman awaiting a courageous man in search of his treasure. From that day on, the desert would represent only one thing to her: the hope for his return. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
783:Manage me, I am a mess, swept under the rug of yesterday’s home improvement, a whimsical urge tossed aside for the easy reassurance of home and comfort. I am the photograph tucked away as a book-mark, in a book left half unread, once reopened to find memories crawling back into peripheral sight, faded, creased and lonely. I long to be admired, long to be held, torn and laughed at, laughed with, like a distant relative or an old friend breathing in their last breath. I missed the moment when time collapsed and memory was erased, replaced by finicky social experiments, lost in the blur of intoxication, sucked through multi-colored bendy-straws, making way for a spinning world where hub-caps stood still, but our vision didn’t. If I could leave you with only one thing, it would be small, foldable, and made from trees, with a few careless words, scribbled in blue; Take a minute to learn me, take a moment to love me, because I need your love to live,and without it, I am nothing. ~ Alex Gaskarth, #NFDB
784:I had never before spent a night with a woman, had someone lying by my side in the quietness of the dark, hearing her breath and feeling her warmth beside me.
It is a sin, and it is a crime. I say it frankly, for I have been taught so all my life, and only madmen have said otherwise. The Bible says it, the fathers of the church have said it, the prelates now repeat it without end, and all the statues of the land prescribe punishment for what we did that night. Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. It must be so, for the Bible speaks only God’s truth. I sinned against the law, against God’s word reported, I abused my family and exposed them even more to risk of public shame, I again risked permanent exclusion from those rooms and books which were my delight and my whole occupation; yet in all the years that have passed since I have regretted only one thing: that it was but a passing moment, never repeated, for I have never been closer to God, nor felt His love and goodness more. ~ Iain Pears,#NFDB
785:As Cain stalked his prey, he knew that they were not alone. Only one thing could have pulled off the kind of blinding that occurred to his clan earlier in the day: they must have an angel with them. The wolves tread softly through the jungle. They smelled their prey and knew they were near. Like silent ghosts, they glided through the forest, eyes ablaze like glowing coals, figures dark as the night. They came upon the four hiding in the bush, waiting for an attack. Their backs were to the wolves that had crept up behind them. Fifteen of the monsters leapt on their quarry, fangs blazing. But the quarry was not their quarry. They were rocks dressed with the clothes of the quarry. The humans had dressed themselves in leaves and hid in the trees They rained down arrows and javelins, taking out a dozen wolves in mere moments. They swung down on vines to the ground and slashed, stabbed, and sliced their way through the wolverine forces on their way to the rock wall. The rest of the pack raced after them with snarls and howls. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
786:My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing-which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no menas of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thought, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversations with her would have been just as vivid and just as stisfying. 'Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death. ~ Viktor E Frankl,#NFDB
787:There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [109],#NFDB
788:Marturano recommended something radical: do only one thing at a time. When you’re on the phone, be on the phone. When you’re in a meeting, be there. Set aside an hour to check your email, and then shut off your computer monitor and focus on the task at hand. Another tip: take short mindfulness breaks throughout the day. She called them “purposeful pauses.” So, for example, instead of fidgeting or tapping your fingers while your computer boots up, try to watch your breath for a few minutes. When driving, turn off the radio and feel your hands on the wheel. Or when walking between meetings, leave your phone in your pocket and just notice the sensations of your legs moving. “If I’m a corporate samurai,” I said, “I’d be a little worried about taking all these pauses that you recommend because I’d be thinking, ‘Well, my rivals aren’t pausing. They’re working all the time.’ ” “Yeah, but that assumes that those pauses aren’t helping you. Those pauses are the ways to make you a more clear thinker and for you to be more focused on what’s important. ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB
789:Rainbow Bridge Poem
"There is a bridge connecting Heaven and Earth. It is called the Rainbow Bridge because of its many colors. Just this side of the Rainbow Bridge, there is a land of meadows, hills and valleys with lush green grass.
When a beloved pet dies, the pet goes to this place. There is always food and water and warm spring weather. There, the old and frail animals are young again. Those who are maimed are made whole again. They play all day with each other.
There is only one thing missing. They are not with their special person who loved them on Earth. So, each day they run and play until the day comes when one suddenly stops playing and looks up! The nose twitches! The ears are up! The eyes are starving! And this one suddenly runs from the group!
You have seen, and when you an your special friend meet, you take him in your arms and embrace. Your face is kissed again and again and again, and you look once more into the eyes of your trusting pet.
Then you cross the Rainbow Bridge, never again to be separated. ~ Unknown,#NFDB
790:Belial said, “My children. My minions. No, the Nephilim are not gone from the land. They are still here. And they will rise up.” The unholy Nephilim had been purged from the land, first by the Flood, and finally through the holy wars of Canaan by Joshua ben Nun and King David. There was only one thing Belial could mean by their return. Belial changed the subject. “Yahweh has protected his chosen seedline of Messiah through all the ages. I must say however, that I am not impressed with his choice of a final vessel. You have neither the constitution nor the military skills of your namesake, Joshua.” Joshua was Hebrew for Jesus. “Now there was a ballsy warrior. I hated that godlicker and his tail-wagging dog, Caleb. “But you, you are but a simple carpenter. Pshaw! I fail to see how you will fulfill his conquest. The only thing you have going for you is the Covering. Apparently, the heavenly principalities and powers cannot touch you.” Belial paused. The bodiless demonic horde faded back into the howling desert rocks. A subtle smirk grew on Belial’s lips. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
791:The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it then that will adhere and follow? Only one thing, philosophy. And philosophy doth consist in this, for a man to preserve that spirit which is within him, from all manner of contumelies and injuries, and above all pains or pleasures; never to do anything either rashly, or feignedly, or hypocritically: wholly to depend from himself and his own proper actions: all things that happen unto him to embrace contentedly, as coming from Him from whom he himself also came; and above all things, with all meekness and a calm cheerfulness, to expect death, as being nothing else but the resolution of those elements, of which every creature is composed. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
792:Welcome, in other words, to the Land of Plenty. To the good life, where almost everyone is rich, safe, and healthy. Where there’s only one thing we lack: a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Because, after all, you can’t really improve on paradise. Back in 1989, the American philosopher Francis Fukuyama already noted that we had arrived in an era where life has been reduced to “economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.”18 Notching up our purchasing power another percentage point, or shaving a couple off our carbon emissions; perhaps a new gadget – that’s about the extent of our vision. We live in an era of wealth and overabundance, but how bleak it is. There is “neither art nor philosophy,” Fukuyama says. All that’s left is the “perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.” According to Oscar Wilde, upon reaching the Land of Plenty, we should once more fix our gaze on the farthest horizon and rehoist the sails. “Progress is the realization of Utopias,” he wrote. But ~ Rutger Bregman, #NFDB
793:Madness,” he exclaimed to himself, in astonishment, faltering. “Madness! What do they want? Once again, once again!” War once again, war that had so recently shattered his whole life? With a strange shudder, he looked at those young faces, staring at the black mass on the move in ranks of four, like a square strip of film running, unrolling out of a narrow alley as if out of a dark box, and every face it showed was instantly rigid with bitter determination, a threat, a weapon. Why was this threat so noisily uttered on a mild June evening, hammered home in a gently dreaming city? “What do they want? What do they want?” The question still had him by the throat. Only just now he had seen the world in bright, musical clarity, with the light of love and tenderness shining over it, he had been part of a melody of kindness and trust. And suddenly the iron steps of that marching throng were treading everything down, men girding themselves for the fray, men of a thousand different kinds, shouting with a thousand voices, yet expressing only one thing in their eyes and their onward march, hate, hate, hate. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
794:Who can escape when in your grip,
When your dark eyes confront one?
I do not wish to flee when you seize me,
I never shall believe that you only destroy.
I know that you must course through everyone's life
and nothing earthbound stays untouched by you,
Though life without you would be beautiful!
And yet, it is worthwhile to experience you.
Indeed, you are not a night's phantom;
You come to remind the spirit of its strength:
It's the battle that has made the greatest persons great
-on rugged roads towards the goal.
For that, and happiness and joy,
give me only one thing;
pain which lends true greatness.
So, come and let us wrestle breast to breast;
do come, even if it means life or death.
Do come and lip into the heart's deepest interior
and rummage through the depths of life.
Take away dream's illusion and joy;
take away things not worth one's unlimited strivings.
You are not mankind's final conqueror.
Although we expose our breast to your blows
and although we collapse in death,
you are the pedestal for our soul's greatness. ~ Lou Andreas Salom,#NFDB
795:...[Y]ou know very well the truth of what I [say]... I have incurred a great deal of bitter hostility; and this is what will bring about my destruction, if anything does... the slander and jealousy of a very large section of the people. They have been fatal to a great many other innocent men, and I suppose will continue to be so; there is no likelihood that they will stop at me. But perhaps someone will say 'Do you feel no compunction, Socrates, at having followed a line of action which puts you in danger of the death-penalty?' I might fairly reply to him 'You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action; that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one...['] The truth of the matter is this, gentlemen. Where a man has once taken up his stand, either because it seems best to him or in obedience to his orders, there I believe he is bound to remain and face the danger, taking no account of death or anything else before dishonour. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
796:Now,’ he continued, again addressing me, ‘I have received the pilgrim – a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.’ ‘To speak truth, sir, I don’t understand you at all; I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection; one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure.’ ‘Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and, at this moment, I am paving hell11 with energy.’ ‘Sir?’ ‘I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint. Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have been. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
797:perhaps that’s what it’s for – self-confidence and courage and energy and peace – perhaps it’s to be used in the world. Perhaps there’s only one thing to do with it: spend it.
I’m always super-conscious of how whenever I go out into the world, whenever I get involved in a relationship, my idea of who I think I am utterly collides with the reality of who I actually am. And I continue to go out even though who I am always comes up short. I always prove myself to be less generous, less charming, less considerate, not as bold or energetic or intelligent or courageous as I imagined in my solitude. And I’m always being insulted, or snubbed, or disappointed. And I’m never in my pyjamas.
And yet, in some way, maybe this is better. Each of us in this room could suffer the pangs of withdrawal and gain the serenity of the non-smoker. We could be demi-gods in our little castles, all alone, but perhaps, at heart, none of us here wants that. Maybe the only cure for self-confidence and courage is humility. Maybe we go out in order to fall short... because we want to learn how to be good at being people... and moreover, because we want to be people. ~ Sheila Heti,#NFDB
798:The peculiarities of my early education are one way in which being from the West has set me apart. A man in Alabama asked me how I felt the West was different from the East and the South, and I replied that in the West "lonesome" is a word with strongly positive connotations. I must have phrased my answer better at the time, because both he and I were struck by the apt ness of the remark, and people in Alabama are far too sensitive to language to be pleased with a phrase such as "strongly positive connotations." For the moment it will have to serve, however.
I remember when I was a child at Coolin or Sagle or Talache, walking into the woods by myself and feeling the solitude around me build like electricity and pass through my body with a jolt that made my hair prickle. I remember kneeling by a creek that spilled and pooled among rocks and fallen trees with the unspeakably tender growth of small trees already sprouting from their backs, and thinking, there is only one thing wrong here, which is my own presence, and that is the slightest imaginable intrusion - feeling that my solitude, my loneliness, made me almost acceptable in so sacred a place. ~ Marilynne Robinson,#NFDB
799:the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom-which cannot be taken away-that makes life meaningful and purposeful. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
800:Everything is argued over in this world. Apart from only one thing that is not argued over. Nobody argues about democracy. Democracy is there as if it was some sort of saint in the altar from whom miracles are no longer expected. But it’s there as a reference. A reference. Democracy. And no-one attends to the matter that the democracy in which we live is a democracy taken captive, conditioned, amputated. Because the power..the power of the citizen, the power of each one of us, is limited, in the political sphere, I repeat, in the political sphere, to remove a government that we do not like and replace it with another one that perhaps we might like in the future. Nothing else. But the big decisions are taken in a different sphere, and we all know which one that is. The big international financial organisations, the IMFs, the World Trade Organisations, the World Banks, the OECDs. All..not one of these entities is democratic. And so, how can we keep talking about democracy, if those who effectively govern the world are not chosen democratically by the people? Who chooses the representatives of each country in those organisations? Your respective peoples? No. Where then is the democracy? ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
801:BIG IDEAS Go small. Don’t focus on being busy; focus on being productive. Allow what matters most to drive your day. Go extreme. Once you’ve figured out what actually matters, keep asking what matters most until there is only one thing left. That core activity goes at the top of your success list. Say no. Whether you say “later” or “never,” the point is to say “not now” to anything else you could do until your most important work is done. Don’t get trapped in the “check off” game. If we believe things don’t matter equally, we must act accordingly. We can’t fall prey to the notion that everything has to be done, that checking things off our list is what success is all about. We can’t be trapped in a game of “check off” that never produces a winner. The truth is that things don’t matter equally and success is found in doing what matters most. Sometimes it’s the first thing you do. Sometimes it’s the only thing you do. Regardless, doing the most important thing is always the most important thing. 5 MULTITASKING “To do two things at once is to do neither.” —Publilius Syrus So, if doing the most important thing is the most important thing, why would you try to do anything else at the same time? ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
802:About the wedding . . .” Her mom tucked a stray lock behind her ear. “You shouldn’t have run away, but I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t talk to anyone.” “I was lost and I didn’t know what to do,” Maddie said, clenching her hands in her lap. “I didn’t want to disappoint you all.” Shannon sighed and shook her head. “What am I going to do with you?” “I don’t think I ever really loved Steve,” Maddie spoke what she’d ignored for so long. “I’m sorry I couldn’t marry him. I know how much you wanted him for a son-in-law.” Shannon sighed, nodding. “I did. You scared me. You were always a little wild like your daddy. Steve was a nice, safe boy. He wanted to protect you. And after the accident, I couldn’t keep you safe enough.” Maddie sniffed and hiccupped, and confessed, “I met someone. A man.” “I figured that out as soon as I opened the door.” “How?” “I might be old, but I’m no fool.” Shannon patted her hand. “There’s only one thing that makes a woman cry like that. What happened?” “I love him and I wanted to help. I broke his trust and he told me to leave.” Shannon clucked her tongue and pulled her close. “This seems like a girlfriend problem. Do you want me to call them?” “Yes, please.” She ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB
803:Take the responsibility into your own hands, it is your life. So do whatsoever you like to do, ant never do anything that you don’t like to do. If you have to suffer for it, suffer, but don’t do it; do only that which you enjoy. If you have to suffer for it, suffer for it. One has to pay the price for everything; nothing is free in life. Then that is the price.
If you enjoy something and the whole world condemns it, good! let them condemn. You accept that consequence because you like it so much, it is worth it.
If you don’t like a thing and the whole world says ’beautiful’ it is meaningless, because you will never enjoy your life. It is your life – and who knows? tomorrow you may die. So enjoy it while you are alive! It is nobody else’s business – neither the parents nor the society’s nor anybody else’s. It is your life. And when you die the society will continue, so don’t bother about the society.
When you die, only you die – nobody dies in your place. Your death will be absolutely individual. Death proves only one thing, that each individual is individual. And death is going to be yours, so how can life be of somebody else? You cannot live a borrowed life; you have to live your own life. ~ Osho,#NFDB
804:Either it falls on your head like a roof tile or it attaches itself to your insides like a tapeworm. Afterward, you no longer see the world in the same way. You’ve got only one thing on your mind: the thing that has taken you over, body and soul. You want to lift it so you can see what’s under it. And from that point on, you can never turn back. Besides, you’re no longer giving the orders. You think you’re in control, doing what you want to do, but it’s not true. You’re nothing but the instrument of your own frustrations. For you, life and death come down to the same thing, Somewhere, you must have renounced everything that could have given you a chance of returning to earth, to the real world. You’re an extraterrestrial. You live in a kind of limbo, stalking houris and unicorns. As for this world, you don’t even want to hear about it anymore. You’re just waiting for the right moment to cross the threshold. The only way to get back what you’ve lost or to fix what you’ve screwed up -- in other words, the only way to make something of your life -- is to end it with a flourish. … The way you see it, the day of your funeral procession will be the day when you’re exalted in other people’s eyes. ~ Yasmina Khadra, #NFDB
805:You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse...go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
806:The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a million lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics, why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics until it is time to learn to plough.”* ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
807:Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself. Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism. If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time. But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing. At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything. This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about. You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought. Descartes said, “I think; therefore I am.” The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, “I am not; therefore I cannot think. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
808:Gareth! Thank God you're up and about. I was just coming to get you —" "What is it?" "Lucien, the bastard! He's sent her away!" "'Dammit, Andrew, why the hell didn't you come get me earlier?!" Andrew vaulted down the stairs after him. "I just learned of it this second! Nerissa went to Miss Paige's room and found her gone, and one of the servants told her Lucien sent her packing back to Boston on the morning stage! You've got to find her, Gareth, before it's too late!" I'll kill him, Gareth vowed, striding angrily through the Gold Parlour, the Red Drawing Room, the Tapestry Room and toward the Great Hall. "Where is he?" "Outside, on the west lawn." The report of a pistol cracked the mid-morning quiet. Then another. Andrew didn't need to say anything more, for there was only one thing that Lucien ever used the west lawn for. Dueling practice. Another pistol shot banged out in the distance. Gareth saw a footman standing rigidly near the door, pretending not to notice the drama unfolding beneath his nose. "Gallagher? Send word to the stables. I need Crusader saddled immediately." "Yes, my lord." "And get a message to Lord Brookhampton, telling him to summon the Den and have them waiting for me on the green in twenty minutes. Move, man!" Another ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
809:A Baby In The House
I knew that a baby was hid in that house,
Though I saw no cradle and heard no cry;
But the husband was tip-toeing 'round like a mouse,
And the good wife was humming a soft lullaby;
And there was a look on the face of the mother,
That I knew could mean only one thing, and no other.
The mother, I said to myself, for I knew
That the woman before me was certainly that;
And there lay in a corner a tiny cloth shoe,
And I saw on a stand such a wee little hat;
And the beard of the husband said, plain as could be,
'Two fat chubby hands have been tugging at me.'
And he took from his pocket a gay picture-book,
And a dog that could bark, if you pulled on a string;
And the wife laid them up with such a pleased look;
And I said to myself, 'There is no other thing
But a babe that could bring about all this, and so
That one thing is in hiding somewhere, I know.'
I stayed but a moment, and saw nothing more,
And heard not a sound, yet I know I was right;
What else could the shoe mean that lay on the floor,
The book and the toy, and the faces so bright;
And what made the husband as still as a mouse?
I am sure, very sure, there's a babe in that house.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
810:One admires Christ according to aesthetic categories as an aesthetic genius, calls him the greatest ethicist; one admires his going to his death as a heroic sacrifice for his ideas. Only one thing one doesn’t do: one doesn’t take him seriously. That is, one doesn’t bring the center of his or her own life into contact with the claim of Christ to speak the revelation of God and to be that revelation. One maintains a distance between himself or herself and the word of Christ, and allows no serious encounter to take place. I can doubtless live with or without Jesus as a religious genius, as an ethicist, as a gentleman—just as, after all, I can also live without Plato and Kant. . . . Should, however, there be something in Christ that claims my life entirely with the full seriousness that here God himself speaks and if the word of God once became present only in Christ, then Christ has not only relative but absolute, urgent significance for me. . . . Understanding Christ means taking Christ seriously. Understanding this claim means taking seriously his absolute claim on our commitment. And it is now of importance for us to clarify the seriousness of this matter and to extricate Christ from the secularization process in which he has been incorporated since the Enlightenment. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
811:Get up, Edward." "No." She sighed. There was only one thing for it. She grabbed the sheet and stripped of off the bed. He did not cover himself as she expected him to. Instead, he looked at her and grinned wolfishly. "Like what you see?" he growled. "Um..." 'Like' was such an insipid word to describe the effect his nakedness had on her. She couldn't tear her gaze away from his powerful thighs and the thick member resting there. He cleared his throat. "Let me know when you're finished." The heat in her face rose, but she would not let him embarrass her. It ought to be the other way round! "It's quite fascinating. I've never seen one before. Thank you for the education." "Bloody hell." He snatched at the sheet, but she held it out of his reach. "Give me that back." She took it off the bed completely. "Get up." He cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. "If you insist." He stood. How was it that he seemed so much more magnificent without clothing? Surely it should be the opposite. He ought to be vulnerable and perhaps even appear smaller in his nakedness. But no. Edward Monk was a man who did not need padded shoulders in his doublet. He was a wonderful specimen of manhood. "Close your mouth," he said with a lopsided grin. "Ha. Very amusing."
-Elizabeth & Monk ~ C J Archer,#NFDB
812:Listen, Stavrogin: to level the mountains is a good idea, not a ridiculous one. I'm for Shigalyov! No need for education, enough of science! There's sufficient material even without science for a thousand years to come, but obedience must be set up. Only one thing is lacking in the world: obedience. The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. As soon as there's just a tiny bit of family or love, there's a desire for property. We'll extinguish desire: we'll get drinking, gossip, denunciation going; we'll get unheard-of depravity going; we'll stifle every genius in infancy. Everything reduced to a common denominator, complete equality. 'We've learned a trade, and we're honest people, we don't need anything else'--that was the recent response of the English workers. Only the necessary is necessary--henceforth that is the motto of the whole globe. But there is also a need for convulsion; this will be taken care of by us, the rulers. Slaves must have rulers. Complete obedience, complete impersonality, but once every thirty years Shigalyov gets a convulsion going, and they all suddenly start devouring each other, up to a certain point, simply so as not to be bored. Boredom is an aristocratic sensation; in Shigalyovism there will be no desires. Desire and suffering are for us. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
813:You perform at your highest potential only when you are focusing on the most valuable use of your time. This is the key to personal and business success. It is the central issue in personal efficiency and time management. You must always be asking yourself, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? Discipline yourself to work exclusively on the one task that, at any given time, is the answer to this question. Keep yourself on track and focused on your most important responsibilities by asking yourself, over and over, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? How you can apply this law immediately: 1. Remember that you can do only one thing at a time. Stop and think before you begin. Be sure that the task you do is the highest-value use of your time. Remind yourself that anything else you do while your most important task remains undone is a relative waste of time. 2. Be clear about the most valuable work that you do for your organization. Whatever it is, resolve to concentrate on doing that specific task before anything else. Why are you on the payroll? What specific, tangible, measurable results are expected of you? And of all the different results you are capable of achieving, which are the most important to your career at this moment? Whatever the answer, this is where you must focus your energies, and nowhere else. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
814:The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it then that will adhere and follow? Only one thing, philosophy. And philosophy doth consist in this, for a man to preserve that spirit which is within him, from all manner of contumelies and injuries, and above all pains or pleasures; never to do anything either rashly, or feignedly, or hypocritically: only to depend from himself, and his own proper actions: all things that happen unto him to embrace contentendly, as coming from Him from whom he himself also came; and above all things, with all meekness and a calm cheerfulness, to expect death, as being nothing else but the resolution of those elements, of which every creature is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by their perpetual conversion of one into another, that dissolution, and alteration, which is so common unto all, why should it be feared by any? Is not this according to nature? But nothing that is according to nature can be evil. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
815:And now, these books. This. He touched PHYSIOGNOMONIE. The secrets of the individual's character as found on his face. Were Jim and Will, then, featured all angelic, pure, half-innocent, peering up through the sidewalk at marching terror? Did the boys represent the ideal for your Woman, Man, or Child of Excellent Bearing, Color, Balance, and Summer Disposition?
Converserly...Charles Halloway turned a page...did the scurrying freaks, the Illustrated Marvel, bear the foreheads of the Irascible, the Cruel, the Covetous, the mouths of the Lewd and Untruthful? the teeth of the Crafty, the Unstable, the Audacious, the Vainglorious, and your Marvelous Beast?
No. The book slipped shut. If faces were judged, the freaks were no worse than many he'd been slipping from the liberty late nights in his long career.
There was only one thing sure.
Two lines of Shakespeare said it. He should write them in the middle of the clock of books, to fix the heart of his apprehension:
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
So vague yet so immense.
He did not want to live with it.
Yet he knew that, during this night, unless he lived with it very well, he might have to live with it for all the rest of his life.
At the window he looked out and thought Jim, Will, are you coming? will you get here?
Waiting, his flesh took paleness from his bones. ~ Ray Bradbury,#NFDB
816:Home? What is home? Home is where a house is that you come back to when the rainy season is about to begin, to wait until the next dry season comes around. Home is where your woman is, that you come back to in the intervals between a greater love - the only real love - the lust for riches buried in the earth, that are your own if you can find them.
Perhaps you do not call it home, even to yourself. Perhaps you call them 'my house,' 'my woman,' What if there was another 'my house,' 'my woman,' before this one? It makes no difference. This woman is enough for now.
Perhaps the guns sounded too loud at Anzio or at Omaha Beach, at Guadalcanal or at Okinawa. Perhaps when they stilled again some kind of strength had been blasted from you that other men still have. And then again perhaps it was some kind of weakness that other men still have. What is strength, what is weakness, what is loyalty, what is perfidy?
The guns taught only one thing, but they taught it well: of what consequence is life? Of what consequence is a man? And, therefore, of what consequence if he tramples love in one place and goes to find it in the next? The little moment that he has, let him be at peace, far from the guns and all that remind him of them.
So the man who once was Bill Taylor has come back to his house, in the dusk, in the mountains, in Anahuac. ("The Moon Of Montezuma") ~ Cornell Woolrich,#NFDB
817:Another unary photograph is the pornographic photograph (I am not saying the erotic photograph: the erotic is a pornographic that has been disturbed, fissured). Nothing more homogeneous than a pornographic photograph. It is always a naive photograph, without intention and without calculation. Like a shop window which shows only one illuminated piece of jewelry, it is completely constituted by the presentation of only one thing: sex: no secondary, untimely object ever manages to half conceal, delay, or distract... A proof a contrario: Mapplethorpe shifts his close-ups of genitalia from the pornographic to the erotic by photographing the fabric of underwear at very close range: the photograph is no longer unary, since I am interested in the texture of the material.
The presence (the dynamics) of this blind field is, I believe, what distinguishes the erotic photograph from the pornographic photograph. Pornography ordinarily represents the sexual organs, making them into a motionless object (a fetish), flattered like an idol that does not leave its niche; for me, there is no punctum in the pornographic image; at most it amuses me (and even then, boredom follows quickly). The erotic photograph, on the contrary (and this is its very condition), does not make the sexual organs into a central object; it may very well not show them at all; it takes the spectator outside its frame, and it is there that I animate this photograph and that it animates me. ~ Roland Barthes,#NFDB
818:What is un-Greek in Christianity. The Greeks did not see the Homeric gods above them as masters and themselves below them as servants, as did the Jews. They saw, as it were, only the reflection of the most successful specimens of their own caste, that is, an ideal, not a contrast to their own nature. They felt related to them, there was a reciprocal interest, a kind of symmachia. Man thinks of himself as noble when he gives himself such gods, and puts himself into a relationship similar to that of the lesser nobility to the higher. Whereas the Italic peoples have a regular peasant religion, with continual fearfulness about evil and capricious powers and tormentors. Where the Olympian gods retreated, there Greek life too grew gloomier and more fearful.
Christianity, on the other hand, crushed and shattered man completely, and submerged him as if in deep mire. Then, all at once, into his feeling of complete confusion, it allowed the light of divine compassion to shine, so that the surprised man, stunned by mercy, let out a cry of rapture, and thought for a moment that he carried all of heaven within him. All psychological inventions of Christianity work toward this sick excess of feeling, toward the deep corruption of head and heart necessary for it. Christianity wants to destroy, shatter, stun, intoxicate: there is only one thing it does not want: moderation, and for this reason, it is in its deepest meaning barbaric, Asiatic, ignoble, un-Greek. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
819:Only One Thing One thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward. PHILIPPIANS 3:13-14 AMP The start of a new year is filled with anticipation of what is ahead—a sense of getting to start over, make a fresh start—and with relief that some things are best left behind. Some make resolutions, only to break them within a few days or hours. Some set goals, both realistic and unrealistic. Many stay up New Year’s Eve in order to welcome in the New Year; others value their sleep more and really couldn’t care less. Luke records a story in his Gospel illustrating our need to resolve to do only one thing. Jesus and His disciples came to Bethany and were invited to stay with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. When Martha came to Jesus, complaining that her sister Mary wasn’t helping her, Jesus spoke to her in loving concern: “There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42 NLT). Maintaining a close relationship with the Savior is the only goal Paul would set. He wasn’t perfect at it, but he singlemindedly pursued it. And he encourages us to do so today. Life is much simpler when we choose to pursue only one thing—the race before us. Don’t look back. Heavenly Father, keep our eyes on the goal, forgetting the successes and failures of this past year. ~ Various, #NFDB
820:We don't know ourselves, we knowledgeable people — we are personally ignorant about ourselves. And there's good reason for that. We've never tried to find out who we are. How could it ever happen that one day we'd discover our own selves? With justice it's been said that 'Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also.' In our hearts we are basically concerned with only one thing, to 'bring something home.' As far as the rest of life is concerned, what people call 'experience' — which of us is serious enough for that? Who has enough time?' In these matters, I fear, we've been 'missing the point.'
Our hearts have not even been engaged — nor, for that matter, have our ears! We've been much more like someone divinely distracted and self-absorbed into whose ear the clock has just pealed the twelve strokes of noon with all its force and who all at once wakes up and asks himself 'What exactly did that clock strike?' — so we rub ourselves behind the ears afterwards and ask, totally surprised and embarrassed 'What have we really just experienced? And more: 'Who are we really?' Then, as I've mentioned, we count — after the fact — all the twelve trembling strokes of the clock of our experience, our lives, our being — alas! in the process we keep losing the count. So we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we have to keep ourselves confused. For us this law holds for all eternity: 'Each man is furthest from himself.' Where we ourselves are concerned, we are not 'knowledgeable people. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
821:In the summer of 1914, he had headed to France in the company of his only son, Alistair. They were driving at high speed through woodland in Northern France when Alistair lost control of the wheel. The car spun into a roadside tree and flipped upside down. Alistair was flung from the vehicle and landed on his head. Cumming was trapped by his leg in a tangle of smouldering metal. ‘The boy was fatally injured,’ wrote Compton Mackenzie in his account of the incident, ‘and his father, hearing him moan something about the cold, tried to extricate himself from the wreck of the car in order to put a coat over him; but struggle as he might, he could not free his smashed leg.’ If he was to have any hope of reaching his son, there was only one thing to do. He reached for his pocket knife and hacked away at his mangled limb ‘until he had cut it off, after which he had crawled over to the son and spread a coat over him.’ Nine hours later, Cumming was found lying unconscious next to his son’s dead body. His recovery was as remarkable as his survival. He was back at his desk within a month, brushing aside any outer shows of mourning for his son. Cumming had the ramrod emotional backbone that so typified the gentlemen of his social class and era. Just a few months after his accident, one of his operatives visited him at his offices on the top floor of Whitehall Court. Cumming, who had not yet received his artificial leg, was inching his substantial frame down six flights of stairs: ‘two sticks, and backside, edging its way down one step at a time.’ Little wonder that his friends described him as ‘obstinate as a mule. ~ Giles Milton, #NFDB
822:Harry took a deep, steadying breath and then said, “Okay, I can’t see the World Cup. Can I go now, then? Only I’ve got a letter to Sirius I want to finish. You know — my godfather.” He had done it. He had said the magic words. Now he watched the purple recede blotchily from Uncle Vernon’s face, making it look like badly mixed black currant ice cream. “You’re — you’re writing to him, are you?” said Uncle Vernon, in a would-be calm voice — but Harry had seen the pupils of his tiny eyes contract with sudden fear. “Well — yeah,” said Harry, casually. “It’s been a while since he heard from me, and, you know, if he doesn’t, he might start thinking something’s wrong.” He stopped there to enjoy the effect of these words. He could almost see the cogs working under Uncle Vernon’s thick, dark, neatly parted hair. If he tried to stop Harry writing to Sirius, Sirius would think Harry was being mistreated. If he told Harry he couldn’t go to the Quidditch World Cup, Harry would write and tell Sirius, who would know Harry was being mistreated. There was only one thing for Uncle Vernon to do. Harry could see the conclusion forming in his uncle’s mind as though the great mustached face were transparent. Harry tried not to smile, to keep his own face as blank as possible. And then — “Well, all right then. You can go to this ruddy … this stupid … this World Cup thing. You write and tell these — these Weasleys they’re to pick you up, mind. I haven’t got time to go dropping you off all over the country. And you can spend the rest of the summer there. And you can tell your — your godfather … tell him … tell him you’re going.” “Okay then,” said Harry brightly. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
823:Man ordinarily lives in loneliness. To avoid loneliness, he creates all kinds of relationships, friendships, organizations, political parties, religions and what not. But the basic thing is that he is very much afraid of being lonely. Loneliness is a black hole, a darkness, a frightening negative state almost like death … as if you are being swallowed by death itself. To avoid it, you run out and fall into anybody, just to hold somebody’s hand, to feel that you are not lonely… Nothing hurts more than loneliness.
But the trouble is, any relationship that arises out of the fear of being lonely is not going to be a blissful experience, because the other is also joining you out of fear. You both call it love. You are both deceiving yourself and the other. It is simply fear, and fear can never be the source of love. Only those who love are absolutely fearless; only those who love are able to be alone, joyously, whose need for the other has disappeared, who are sufficient unto themselves…
The day you decide that all these efforts are failures, that your loneliness has remained untouched by all your efforts, that is a great moment of understanding. Then only one thing remains: to see whether loneliness is such a thing that you should be afraid of, or if it is just your nature. Then rather than running out and away, you close your eyes and go in. Suddenly the night is over, and a new dawn … The loneliness transforms into aloneness.
Aloneness is your nature. You were born alone, you will die alone. And you are living alone without understanding it, without being fully aware of it. You misunderstand aloneness as loneliness; it is simply a misunderstanding. You are sufficient unto yourself. ~ Osho,#NFDB
824:I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."
I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. ~ Audre Lorde,#NFDB
825:Some of the scholastic rabbis just prior to Jesus' time became embarrassed by the fact that a woman with Rahab's background was spared in the destruction of Jericho and brought into Israel as a proselyte. They proposed a different understanding of the Hebrew word for harlot in Joshua 2:1. The Hebrew term is similiar to a word meaning "to feed," they claimed. Perhaps Rahab was really just an innkeeper or a hostess, they countered.
The problem is, the actual Hebrew word really can mean only one thing: "harlot." That was the uncontested undertanding of this text for centuries. In fact, there is no ambiguity whatsoever in the Septuagint or in the Greek tests of Hebrews. The Greek word used to describe Rahab is porne, meaning harlot. Notice that the term comes from the same root as the English term pornography and has similar negative moral overtones.
The idea of sanitizing Rahab's background was revived by some churchmen with overly delicate sensibilities in the Victorian era. C>H> Spurgeon, the best-known Baptist preacher in late nineteenth-century London, replied, This woman was no mere hostess, but a real harlot....I am persuaded that nothing but a spirit of distaste for free grace would ever have led any commentator to deny her sin.
He was exactly right, of course,. Remove the stigma of sin, and you remove the need for grace. Rehab is extraordinary precisely because she received extraordinary grace. There's no need to reinvent her past to try to make her seem less of a sinner. The disturbing fact about what she once was simply magnifies the glory of divine grace, which is what made her extraodinary woman she became. That, after all, is the whole lesson of her life. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,#NFDB
826:We don't know ourselves, we knowledgeable people—we are personally ignorant
about ourselves. And there's good reason for that. We've never tried to find out who
we are. How could it ever happen that one day we'd discover our own selves? With
justice it's been said that "Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also." Our
treasure lies where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always busy with our
knowledge, as if we were born winged creatures—collectors of intellectual honey. In
our hearts we are basically concerned with only one thing, to "bring something
home." As far as the rest of life is concerned, what people call "experience"—which
of us is serious enough for that? Who has enough time? In these matters, I fear, we've
been "missing the point."
Our hearts have not even been engaged—nor, for that matter, have our ears! We've
been much more like someone divinely distracted and self-absorbed into whose ear
the clock has just pealed the twelve strokes of noon with all its force and who all at
once wakes up and asks himself "What exactly did that clock strike?"—so we rub
ourselves behind the ears afterwards and ask, totally surprised and embarrassed "What
have we really just experienced? And more: "Who are we really?" Then, as I've
mentioned, we count—after the fact—all the twelve trembling strokes of the clock of
our experience, our lives, our being—alas! in the process we keep losing the count. So
we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we
have to keep ourselves confused. For us this law holds for all eternity: "Each man is
furthest from himself." Where we ourselves are concerned, we are not
"knowledgeable people. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
827:THE 1920’S, IT IS SAID, WERE A TIME OF “DISILLUSIONMENT.” Progressivism had failed. The war for democracy had ended in the debacle of Versailles; idealism gave way to “normalcy.” Defeated, intellectuals turned away from reform. Following H. L. Mencken, they now ridiculed “the people,” whom they had once idolized. Many of them fled to Europe. Others cultivated the personal life, transferring their search for salvation from society to the individual. Still others turned to Communism. In the general confusion, only one thing was certain: the old ideals, the old standards, were dead, and liberal democracy was part of the wreckage. Such is the standard picture of the twenties; but it is a gross distortion, a caricature, of the period. It has the unfortunate effect, moreover, of isolating the twenties from the rest of American history, of making them seem a mere interval between two periods of reform, and thus of obscuring the continuity between the twenties and the “progressive era” on the one hand and the period of the New Deal on the other. The idea of historical “periods” is misleading in itself. It exercises a subtle tyranny over the historical imagination. Essentially a verbal and pedagogical convenience, it tends to become a principle of historical interpretation as well; and as such it leads people to think of history not as the development of social organisms far too complicated to be depicted in simple linear terms but as a succession of neatly defined epochs, happily corresponding, moreover, to the divisions of the calendar, each century, each decade even, having its own distinctive “spirit of the age.” Thus the Zeitgeist of the twenties, it is assumed, must have been “disillusionment,” just as that of the thirties was reform. The ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
828:The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
Ernest Hemingway
War, Political, Both
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
Ernest Hemingway
War, Justified, Matter
Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.
Ernest Hemingway
War, Once, Happen
The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
Ernest Hemingway
Hate, Leave, Worth
Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him.
Ernest Hemingway
Once, Matter, Learned
The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
Ernest Hemingway
Happiness, Good, Few
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Ernest Hemingway
Defeat, Defeated, Destroyed
You're beautiful, like a May fly.
Ernest Hemingway
Beauty, Beautiful, Fly
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.
Ernest Hemingway
Time, Natural, Talent
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other. ~ Ernest Hemingway,#NFDB
829:If you’re assuming that my plans to leave are nothing more than a reaction to Miss Hathaway … I’ve been considering this for a long time. I’m not an idiot. Nor am I inexperienced with women.” “To say the least,” St. Vincent commented dryly. “But in your pursuit of women—or perhaps I should say their pursuit of you—you seem to have regarded them all as interchangeable. Until now. If you are taken with this Hathaway creature, don’t you think it bears investigating?” “God, no. There’s only one thing it could lead to.” “Marriage,” the viscount said rather than asked. “Yes. And that’s impossible.” “Why?” The fact that they were discussing Amelia Hathaway and the subject of marriage was enough to make Cam blanch in discomfort. “I’m not the marrying kind—” St. Vincent snorted. “No man is. Marriage is a female invention.” “—but even if I were so inclined,” Cam continued, “I’m a Roma. I wouldn’t do that to her.” There was no need to elucidate. Decent gadjis didn’t marry Gypsies. His blood was mixed, and even though Amelia herself might harbor no prejudices, the routine discriminations Cam encountered would certainly extend to his wife and children. And if that wasn’t bad enough, his own people would be even more disapproving of the match. Gadje Gadjensa, Rom Romensa … Gadje with Gadje, Roma with Roma. “What if your heritage made no difference to her?” Westcliff asked quietly. “That’s not the point. It’s how others would view her.” Seeing that the older man was about to argue, Cam murmured, “Tell me, would either of you wish your daughter to marry a Gypsy?” In the face of their discomforted silence, he smiled without amusement. After a moment, Westcliff stubbed out his cigar in a deliberate, methodical fashion. “Obviously you’ve made up your mind. Further debate would be pointless. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
830:Forgive me for tossing you into the moat so unceremoniously. I’m afraid the cannon took me by surprise, and getting you out of harm’s way had me reacting somewhat irrationally.” Shifting her attention away from the dog in her lap, Lucetta settled it on the man now rising from the moat. As he straightened and shoved a hand through dark hair that was obscuring his face, Lucetta completely forgot what she’d been about to say when she got her first good look at him. Standing before her was the very picture of a dashing pirate come to life, a pirate complete with a charming, yet somewhat roguish smile, and . . . he was wearing a patch over his left eye. Oddly enough, Lucetta found herself feeling a bit more charitable toward the man, perhaps because she’d always been drawn to flawed people, probably because she was fairly flawed as well. Realizing that the patch she was staring at was evidently covering some horrible disfigurement—a disfigurement the poor man undoubtedly didn’t care to have people fixating on—Lucetta dropped her gaze, settling it on a chest covered in a dripping wet shirt made of what appeared to be fine lawn material, and . . . “Goodness,” she whispered past a throat that had taken to constricting the moment her gaze settled on an incredibly well-defined form. Lifting her attention the tiniest bit, she found herself, curiously enough, intrigued with the small bit of skin exposed above the man’s collar. It was lightly tanned, a circumstance that could mean only one thing—the gentleman standing before her obviously spent a great deal of time outside, which would make him . . . the gardener. That notion had her feeling even more charitable to the man who’d tossed her into the moat, especially since there was nothing Lucetta appreciated more than a man who was not afraid to put in a hard day’s work. “I ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
831:Dr. Syngmann: I am talking about the only quality that was worth creating the world for, the only power that is worth controlling.
Pastor Jón: Úa?
Dr. Syngmann in a tired, gravelly bass: I hear you mention once more that name which is no name. I know you blame me; I blame myself. Úa was simply Úa. There was nothing I could do about it. I know you have never recovered from it, John. Neither have I.
Pastor Jón: That word could mean everything and nothing, and when it ceased to sound, it was as if all other words had lost their meaning. But it did not matter. It gradually came back.
Dr. Syngmann: Gradually came back? What did?
Pastor Jón: Some years ago, a horse was swept over the falls to Goðafoss. He was washed ashore, alive, onto the rocks below. The beast stood there motionless, hanging his head, for more than twenty-four hours below this awful cascade of water that had swept him down. Perhaps he was trying to remember what life was called. Or he was wondering why the world had been created. He showed no signs of ever wanting to graze again. In the end, however, he heaved himself onto the riverbank and started to nibble.
Dr. Syngmann: Only one thing matters, John: do you accept it?
Pastor Jón: The flower of the field is with me, as the psalmist said. It isn't mine, to be sure, but it lives here; during the winter it lives in my mind until it resurrects again.
Dr. Syngmann: I don't accept it, John! There are limits to the Creator's importunacy. I refuse to carry this universe on my back any longer, as if it were my fault that it exists.
Pastor Jón: Quite so. On the other hand, I am like that horse that was dumbfounded for twenty-four hours. For a long time I thought I could never endure having survived. Then I went back to the pasture. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness,#NFDB
832:So, to summarise: Science is the search for explanation. Religion is the search for meaning. Meaning is not accidental to the human condition because we are the meaning-seeking animal. To believe on the basis of science that the universe has no meaning is to confuse two disciplines of thought: explanation and interpretation. The search for meaning, though it begins with science, must go beyond it. Science does not yield meanings, nor does it prove the absence of meanings. The meaning of a system lies outside the system. Therefore the meaning of the universe lies outside the universe. The belief in a God who transcends the universe was the discovery of Abrahamic monotheism, which transformed the human condition, endowing it with meaning and thereby rescuing it from tragedy in the name of hope. For if God created the physical universe, then God is free, and if God made us in his image, we are free. If we are free, then history is not a matter of eternal recurrences. Because we can change ourselves, we can change the world. That is the religious basis of hope. There are cultures that do not share these beliefs. They are, ultimately, tragic cultures, for whatever shape they give the powers they name, those powers are fundamentally indifferent to human fate. They may be natural forces. They may be human institutions: the empire, the state, the political system, or the economy. They may be human collectivities: the tribe, the nation, the race. But all end in tragedy because none attaches ultimate significance to the individual as individual. All end by sacrificing the individual, which is why, in the end, such cultures die. There is only one thing capable of defeating tragedy, which is the belief in God who in love sets his image on the human person, thus endowing each of us with non-negotiable, unconditional dignity. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
833:Fully His I have been forgiven and set free from my sins. There was a boy who lived in a town on the seaside. He was a skilled and clever carver, and he carved himself a little wooden boat. When he put sails on it, it really sailed. One day, he took it down to the shore and was sailing it at the edge of the sea, but the tide changed and carried his boat out to sea, and he could not recover it. So, he went home without his boat. With the next change of the wind and tide, the boat came back again. A man walking along the seashore found the boat, picked it up, and saw it was a beautiful piece of work. He took it to a local shop and sold it. The shop owner cleaned it up and put it on display in his shop window with a price of thirty-five dollars. Some while later, the boy walked past the shop, looked in the window, and saw his boat with a price of thirty-five dollars. He knew, however, that he had no way to prove that it was his boat. If he wanted his boat, there was only one thing he could do: buy it back. He set to work, taking any job he could to earn the money to buy his boat. Once he earned the money, he walked into the shop and said, “I want to buy that boat.” He paid the money, and, when he got the boat in his hands, he walked outside and stopped on the sidewalk. He held the boat to his chest and said, “Now you’re mine. I made you and I bought you.” That is redemption. First, the Lord made us, but we were in Satan’s slave market. Then, He bought us. We are doubly His. Can you see how valuable you are to the Lord? Think of yourself as that boat for a moment. You may feel so inadequate, so worthless. You wonder whether God ever really cares. Just try to believe that you are that boat in the Lord’s arms and He is saying to you, “Now you’re Mine. I made you and I bought you. I own you; you’re fully Mine.” Thank You, ~ Derek Prince, #NFDB
834:Eventually, I developed my own image of teh "befriending" impulse behind my depression. Imagine that from early in my life, a friendly figure, standing a block away, was trying to get my attention by shouting my name, wanting to teach me some hard but healing truths about myself. But I-- fearful of what I might hear or arrogantly trying to live wihtout help or simply too busy with my ideas and ego and ethics to bother-- ignored teh shouts and walked away.
So this figure, still with friendly intent, came closer and shouted more loudly, but AI kept walking. Ever closer it came, close enough to tap me on the shoulder, but I walked on. Frustrated by my unresponsiveness, the figure threw stones at my back, then struck me with a stick, still wanting simply to get my attention. But despite teh pain, I kept walking away.
Over teh years, teh befriending intent of this figure never disapppeared but became obscured by the frustration cuased by my refusal to turn around. Since shouts and taps, stones and sticks had failed to do the trick, there was only one thing left: drop the nuclear bomb called depression on me, not with the intent to kill but as a last-ditch effort to get me to turn and ask the simple question, "What do you want?" When I was finally able to make the turn-- and start to absorb and act on the self-knowledge that then became available to me-- I began to get well.
The figure calling to me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merton calls "true self." This is not the ego self that wants to inflate us (or deflate us, another from of self-distortion), not the intellectual self that wants to hover above the mess of life in clear but ungrounded ideas, not the ethical self that wants to live by some abstract moral code. It is the self-planted in us by the God who made us in God's own image-- the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be.
True self is true friend. One ignores or rejects such friendship only at one's peril. ~ Parker J Palmer,#NFDB
835:It's a physical sickness. Etienne. How much I love him.
I love Etienne.
I love it when he cocks an eyebrow whenever I say something he finds clever or amusing. I love listening to his boots clomp across my bedroom ceiling. I love that the accent over his first name is called an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent.
I love that.
I love sitting beside him in physics. Brushing against him during lands. His messy handwriting on our worksheets. I love handing him his backpack when class is over,because then my fingers smell like him for the next ten minutes. And when Amanda says something lame, and he seeks me out to exchange an eye roll-I love that,too. I love his boyish laugh and his wrinkled shirts and his ridiculous knitted hat. I love his large brown eyes,and the way he bites his nails,and I love his hair so much I could die.
There's only one thing I don't love about him. Her.
If I didn't like Ellie before,it's nothing compared to how I feel now. It doesn't matter that I can count how many times we've met on one hand. It's that first image, that's what I can't shake. Under the streeplamp. Her fingers in his hair. Anytime I'm alone, my mind wanders back to that night. I take it further. She touches his chest. I take it further.His bedroom.He slips off her dress,their lips lock, their bodies press,and-oh my God-my temperature rises,and my stomach is sick.
I fantasize about their breakup. How he could hurt her,and she could hurt him,and of all the ways I could hurt her back. I want to grab her Parisian-styled hair and yank it so hard it rips from her skull. I want to sink my claws into her eyeballs and scrape.
It turns out I am not a nice person.
Etienne and I rarely discussed her before, but she's completely taboo now. Which tortures me, because since we've gotten back from winter break, they seem to be having problems again. Like an obsessed stalker,I tally the evenings he spend with me versus the evening he spends with her. I'm winning. ~ Stephanie Perkins,#NFDB
836:Of Dimitrios Sotir
Everything he'd hoped for turned out wrong.
He'd seen himself doing great things,
ending the humiliation that had kept his country down
ever since the battle of Magnesia
seen himself making Syria a powerful state again,
with her armies, her fleets,
her big fortresses, her wealth.
He'd suffered in Rome, become bitter
when he sensed in the talk of friends,
young men of the great families,
that in spite of all their delicacy, their politeness
toward him, the son
of King Selefkos Philopatorwhen he sensed that in spite of this there was always
a secret contempt for the Hellenized dynasties:
their heyday was over, they weren't fit for anything serious,
were completely unable to rule their peoples.
He'd cut himself off, indignant, swearing
it would be quite different from the way they thought.
Why, wasn't he himself full of determination?
He would act, he would fight, he would put it all right again.
If he could only find a way of getting to the East,
only manage to escape from Italy,
then all this inner strength,
all this energy,
he'd pass on to his people.
Only to be in Syria!
He was so young when he left his country
he hardly remembered what it looked like.
But in his mind he'd always thought of it
as something sacred that you approach reverently,
as a beautiful place unveiled, a vision
of Greek cities and Greek ports.
And now?
Now despair and sorrow.
They were right, the young men in Rome.
The dynasties resulting from the Macedonian Conquest
can't be kept going any longer.
It doesn't matter. He'd made the effort,
112
fought as much as he could.
And in his bleak disillusion
there's only one thing in which he still takes pride:
that even in failure
he shows the world his same indomitable courage.
The rest: they were dreams and wasted energy.
This Syria -it almost seems it isn't his country
this Syria is the land of Valas and Herakleidis.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy,#NFDB
837:Their gazes locked,he said,"I made a mistake."
"Confusing your wife with a goat?"
What was that he had thought about the difficulty of having a wife who was a truthsayer?
He took a breath,let it out slowly, and sent with it a prayer. "There was a time-a brief time-when I considered you might be guilty."
Truth.
Rycca smiled. She freed her hands, cupped them to his face,and rose on her toes to touch her mouth to his.
"What is that for?" he asked, caught between relief and bewilderment. Likely she would always keep him so off balance and likely he would always be glad of it for truly fortune smiled upon him. A great knot seemed to be untangling in his chest.
"For believing me."
"I only briefly didn't," he repeated.
"No,I mean for believing I am a truthsayer."
"And you know that because-"
She laughed and took his hand again. "Because you are a wise and canny man, Lord Dragon. You could as easily have insisted you never even flirted with the thought that I might be guilty and thereby saved yourself what must surely have been an uneasy moment for a husband."
He was slightly stung but not too much, for her ready forgiveness was as a balm over all else. "Generally speaking, I do tell the truth for its own sake."
"I never thought otherwise. And I would be as truthful with you. Last night, I realized suddenly that I was not afraid. All things considered, that was rather ridiculous but it was how I felt nonetheless."
The knot was definitely gone. Indeed, a great warmth seemd to suffuse him. If a woman who had every reason to fear Vikings could be tied to a punishment post by her own Viking husband and not be afraid, that could mean only one thing.
"You trust me."
"And you trust me."
At that moment, looking down at her, his face held nothing of the mighty warrior and jarl. He looked instead like a boy handed the world. She wanted only to give it to him again and again.
"I would say," Rycca murmured, "that for a rocky beginning, we are managing well enough."
It was an incongruously happy note upon which to discuss a dead man. ~ Josie Litton,#NFDB
838:For centuries and centuries humanity has waited for this time. It is come. But it is difficult.
I don't simply tell you we are here upon earth to rest and enjoy ourselves, now is not the time for that. We are here..... to prepare the way for the new creation.
The body has some difficulty, so I can't be active, alas. It is not because I am old, I am not old, I am younger than most of you. If I am here inactive, it is because the body has given itself definitely to prepare the transformation. But the consciousness is clear and we are here to work - rest and enjoyment will come afterwards. Let us do our work here.
So I have called you to tell you that. Take what you can, do what you can, my help will be with you. All sincere effort will be helped to the maximum.
It is the hour to be the heroic. Heroism is not what it is said to be; it is to become wholly unified - and the Divine help will always be with those who have resolved to be heroic in full sincerity.
There!
You are here at this moment that is to say upon earth, because you chose it at one time - you do not remember it any more, but I know it - that is why you are here. Well, you must rise to the height of the task. You must strive, you must conquer all weakness and limitations; above all you must tell your ego: "Your hour is gone." We want a race that has no ego, that has in place of the ego the Divine Consciousness. It is that which we want: the Divine Consciousness which will allow the race to develop itself and the Supramental being to take birth.
If you believe that I am here because I am bound - it is not true. I am not bound, I am here because my body has been given for the first attempt at transformation. Sri Aurobindo told me so. Well, I am doing it. I do not wish anyone to do it for me because.... Because it is not very pleasant, but I do it willingly because of the result; everybody will be able to benefit from it. I ask only one thing: do not listen to the ego.
If there is in your hearts a sincere Yes, you will satisfy me completely. I do not need words, I need the sincere adhesion of your hearts. That's all. ~ The Mother, (This talk was given by the Mother on April 2,1972,#NFDB
839:Justify my soul, O God, but also from Your fountains fill my will with fire. Shine in my mind, although perhaps this means “be darkness to my experience,” but occupy my heart with Your tremendous Life. Let my eyes see nothing in the world but Your glory, and let my hands touch nothing that is not for Your service. Let my tongue taste no bread that does not strengthen me to praise Your great mercy. I will hear Your voice and I will hear all harmonies You have created, singing Your hymns. Sheep’s wool and cotton from the field shall warm me enough that I may live in Your service; I will give the rest to Your poor. Let me use all things for one sole reason: to find my joy in giving You glory. Therefore keep me, above all things, from sin. Keep me from the death of deadly sin which puts hell in my soul. Keep me from the murder of lust that blinds and poisons my heart. Keep me from the sins that eat a man’s flesh with irresistible fire until he is devoured. Keep me from loving money in which is hatred, from avarice and ambition that suffocate my life. Keep me from the dead works of vanity and the thankless labor in which artists destroy themselves for pride and money and reputation, and saints are smothered under the avalanche of their own importunate zeal. Stanch in me the rank wound of covetousness and the hungers that exhaust my nature with their bleeding. Stamp out the serpent envy that stings love with poison and kills all joy. Untie my hands and deliver my heart from sloth. Set me free from the laziness that goes about disguised as activity when activity is not required of me, and from the cowardice that does what is not demanded, in order to escape sacrifice. But give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens. And possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love. Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for You alone. For there is only one thing that can satisfy love and reward it, and that is You alone. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
840:She saw Daniel hovering over her in his simple peasant's clothes...but then, a moment later, he was bare-chested, with long blond hair...and suddenly he wore a knight's helmet, whose visor he lifted to kiss her lips...but before he did,he shifted into his present self, the Daniel she'd left in her parents' backyard in Thunderbolt when she stepped through into time.
This was the Daniel, she realized, she'd been looking for all along. She reached for him,she called his name, but then he changed again. And again. She saw more Daniels than she'd ever thought possible,each one more gorgeous than the last.They folded into each other like a vast accordion, each image of him tilting and altering in the light of the sky behind him.The cut of his nose,the line of his jawbone, the tone of his skin,the shape of his lips, all whirled in and out of focus,morphing all the time. Everything changed except his eyes.
His violet eyes always stayed the same. They haunted her,hiding something terrible,something she didn't understand. Something she didn't want to understand.
Fear?
In the visions,the terror in Daniel's eyes was so intense Luce actually wanted to look away from their beauty. What could someone as powerful as Daniel fear?
There was only one thing: Luce's dying.
She was experiencing a montage of her death over and over and over again. This was what Daniel's eyes looked like, throughout time,just before her life went up in flames. She had seen this fear in him before.She hated it because it always meant their time was over.She saw it now in every one of his faces. The fear flashed from infinite times and places. Suddenly,she knew there was more:
He wasn't afraid for her,not because she was walking into the darkness of another death.He didn't fear that it might cause her pain.
Daniel was afraid of her.
"Lu Xin!" his voice cried out to her from the battlefield. She could see him through the haze of visions.He was the only thing coming in clearly-because everything else around her was lit up startingly white.Everything inside her was,too.Was her love of Daniel burning her up? Was it her own passion,not his,that destroyed her every time?
"No!" His hand reached out for hers. But it was too late. ~ Lauren Kate,#NFDB
841:First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain. ~ Carson McCullers,#NFDB
842:The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all
acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice.
This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings—happiness, peace of mind, exaltation—must be sought by each man within himself alone.
Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society.
It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed
development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: that is its aim.
No sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to forgo advancing its cause by appealing to men's senses. Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory. ~ Ludwig von Mises,#NFDB
843:Here’s the short version of how to practice mindfuless: 1. Start with two minutes. For two minutes a day, direct your attention to your breath: the way the air comes into your body and your chest and belly expand, and the way the breath leaves your body and your chest and belly deflate. 2. The first thing that will happen is your mind will wander to something else. That’s normal. That’s healthy. That’s actually the point. Notice that your mind wandered, let those extraneous thoughts go—you can return to them as soon as the two minutes are up—and allow your attention to return to your breath. 3. Noticing that your mind wandered and then returning your attention to your breath is the real work of mindfulness. It’s not so much about paying attention to your breath as it is about noticing what you’re paying attention to without judgment, and making a choice about whether you want to pay attention to it. What you’re “mindful” of is both your breath and your attention to your breath. By practicing this skill of noticing what you’re paying attention to, you are teaching yourself to be in control of your brain, so that your brain is not in control of you. This regular two-minute practice will gradually result in periodic moments throughout the day when you notice what you’re paying attention to and then decide if that’s what you want to pay attention to right now, or if you want to pay attention to something else. What you pay attention to matters less than how you pay attention. This is a sideways strategy for weeding trauma out of your garden. It’s a way of simply noticing a weed and then deciding if you want to water it or not, pull it or not, fertilize it or not. The weed of trauma will gradually disappear as long as at least half the time you choose not to nurture it. And the more you choose to withdraw your protection from the trauma, the faster it will wither and die. Mindfulness is good for everyone and everything. It is to your mind what exercise and green vegetables are to your body. If you change only one thing in your life as a result of reading this book, make it this daily two-minute practice. The practice grants the opportunity to “cultivate deep respect for emotions,” differentiating their causes from their effects and granting you choice over how you manage them. ~ Emily Nagoski, #NFDB
844:So he could talk to Jane and find out what had happened between her and Blakeborough after he left. He could finally get an answer to his marriage proposal.
Proposal? Jane would probably call it a marriage command.
He groaned. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to talk to her while he waited. He could always pack her off in another hackney before it was time for Meredith to return home. Yes, that would be best.
Climbing inside the hackney, he doffed his hat and shrugged out of his box coat. But all of his perfectly logical reasons for being there went right out of his head the moment he saw her looking so luscious and lovely in her sunny gown.
Because he desired only one thing. Jane. In his arms. Now.
She must have seen the feral need flare in his face, for her eyes went wide. That was the only reaction she had time for, however, before he dragged her into his embrace so he could take her mouth in a hard, urgent kiss.
God, he wanted her. He would never stop wanting her. Fisting his hands in her puffy sleeves to hold her still, he plundered her mouth the way he ached to plunder her body.
Suddenly she shoved him back. “What are you doing? That’s not why--”
He clasped her head in his hands, dislodging her bonnet, which tumbled to the floor. Then he kissed her again, demanding her to kiss him back, to need him back. It took her a moment, but then she moaned low in her throat and melted against him.
And he exulted. She was soft, so wonderfully soft, his Jane. So wonderfully giving. Surely she wouldn’t be responding to him this way if she had cemented her engagement to Blakeborough.
But then, he’d thought that last night.
He jerked back, gratified to see from her flushed cheeks, reddened lips, and bright eyes that she was now as eager and aroused as he. Indeed, she was already looping her arms about his neck to draw him close once more.
Stopping just short of her mouth, he rasped, “Are you still engaged to Blakeborough?”
Her gorgeous eyes narrowed. “My engagement didn’t stop you last night.”
“It would now.”
A coy smile broke over her lips, and she tightened her grip on his neck. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I am not.”
With a growl of triumph, he kissed her once more. She was here. She was his. Nothing else mattered. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
845:Of course, I’ve only brought up two examples. Other universal laws of physics have been used as weapons as well, though we don’t know all of them. It’s very possible that every law of physics has been weaponized. It’s possible that in some parts of the universe, even … Forget it, I don’t even believe that.” “What were you going to say?” “The foundation of mathematics.” Cheng Xin tried to imagine it, but it was simply impossible. “That’s … madness.” Then she asked, “Will the universe turn into a war ruin? Or, maybe it’s more accurate to ask: Will the laws of physics turn into war ruins?” “Maybe they already are.… The physicists and cosmologists of the new world are focused on trying to recover the original appearance of the universe before the wars more than ten billion years ago. They’ve already constructed a fairly clear theoretical model describing the pre-war universe. That was a really lovely time, when the universe itself was a Garden of Eden. Of course, the beauty could only be described mathematically. We can’t picture it: Our brains don’t have enough dimensions.” Cheng Xin thought back to the conversation with the Ring again. Did you build this four-dimensional fragment? You told me that you came from the sea. Did you build the sea? “You are saying that the universe of the Edenic Age was four-dimensional, and that the speed of light was much higher?” “No, not at all. The universe of the Edenic Age was ten-dimensional. The speed of light back then wasn’t only much higher—rather, it was close to infinity. Light back then was capable of action at a distance, and could go from one end of the cosmos to the other within a Planck time.… If you had been to four-dimensional space, you would have some vague hint of how beautiful that ten-dimensional Garden must have been.” “You’re saying—” “I’m not saying anything.” Yifan seemed to have awakened from a dream. “We’ve only seen small hints; everything else is just guessing. You should treat it as a guess, just a dark myth we’ve made up.” But Cheng Xin continued to follow the course of the discussion taken so far. “—that during the wars after the Edenic Age, one dimension after another was imprisoned from the macroscopic into the microscopic, and the speed of light was reduced again and again.…” “As I said, I’m not saying anything, just guessing.” Yifan’s voice grew softer. “But no one knows if the truth is even darker than our guesses.… We are certain of only one thing: The universe is dying.” The ~ Liu Cixin, #NFDB
846:There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.
The delusion of the joys of life that had formerly stifled my fear of the dragon no longer deceived me. No matter how many times I am told: you cannot understand the meaning of life, do not thinking about it but live, I cannot do so because I have already done it for too long. Now I cannot help seeing day and night chasing me and leading me to my death. This is all I can see because it is the only truth. All the rest is a lie.
Those two drops of honey, which more than all else had diverted my eyes from the cruel truth, my love for my family and for my writing, which I called art – I no longer found sweet. ~ Leo Tolstoy,#NFDB
847:Sometimes we’re on a collision course, and we just don’t know it. Whether it’s by accident or by design, there’s not a thing we can do about it. A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping, but she had forgotten her coat - went back to get it. When she had gotten her coat, the phone had rung, so she’d stopped to answer it; talked for a couple of minutes. While the woman was on the phone, Daisy was rehearsing for a performance at the Paris Opera House. And while she was rehearsing, the woman, off the phone now, had gone outside to get a taxi. Now a taxi driver had dropped off a fare earlier and had stopped to get a cup of coffee. And all the while, Daisy was rehearsing. And this cab driver, who dropped off the earlier fare; who’d stopped to get the cup of coffee, had picked up the lady who was going to shopping, and had missed getting an earlier cab. The taxi had to stop for a man crossing the street, who had left for work five minutes later than he normally did, because he forgot to set off his alarm. While that man, late for work, was crossing the street, Daisy had finished rehearsing, and was taking a shower. And while Daisy was showering, the taxi was waiting outside a boutique for the woman to pick up a package, which hadn’t been wrapped yet, because the girl who was supposed to wrap it had broken up with her boyfriend the night before, and forgot.
When the package was wrapped, the woman, who was back in the cab, was blocked by a delivery truck, all the while Daisy was getting dressed. The delivery truck pulled away and the taxi was able to move, while Daisy, the last to be dressed, waited for one of her friends, who had broken a shoelace. While the taxi was stopped, waiting for a traffic light, Daisy and her friend came out the back of the theater. And if only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn’t broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab, Daisy and her friend would’ve crossed the street, and the taxi would’ve driven by. But life being what it is - a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone’s control - that taxi did not go by, and that driver was momentarily distracted, and that taxi hit Daisy, and her leg was crushed. ~ Eric Roth,#NFDB
848:Marturano recommended something radical: do only one thing at a time. When you’re on the phone, be on the phone. When you’re in a meeting, be there. Set aside an hour to check your email, and then shut off your computer monitor and focus on the task at hand. Another tip: take short mindfulness breaks throughout the day. She called them “purposeful pauses.” So, for example, instead of fidgeting or tapping your fingers while your computer boots up, try to watch your breath for a few minutes. When driving, turn off the radio and feel your hands on the wheel. Or when walking between meetings, leave your phone in your pocket and just notice the sensations of your legs moving. “If I’m a corporate samurai,” I said, “I’d be a little worried about taking all these pauses that you recommend because I’d be thinking, ‘Well, my rivals aren’t pausing. They’re working all the time.’ ” “Yeah, but that assumes that those pauses aren’t helping you. Those pauses are the ways to make you a more clear thinker and for you to be more focused on what’s important.” This was another attack on my work style. I had long assumed that ceaseless planning was the recipe for effectiveness, but Marturano’s point was that too much mental churning was counterproductive. When you lurch from one thing to the next, constantly scheming, or reacting to incoming fire, the mind gets exhausted. You get sloppy and make bad decisions. I could see how the counterintuitive act of stopping, even for a few seconds, could be a source of strength, not weakness. This was a practical complement to Joseph’s “is this useful?” mantra. It was the opposite of zoning out, it was zoning in. In fact, I looked into it and found there was science to suggest that pausing could be a key ingredient in creativity and innovation. Studies showed that the best way to engineer an epiphany was to work hard, focus, research, and think about a problem—and then let go. Do something else. That didn’t necessarily mean meditate, but do something that relaxes and distracts you; let your unconscious mind go to work, making connections from disparate parts of the brain. This, too, was massively counterintuitive for me. My impulse when presented with a thorny problem was to bulldoze my way through it, to swarm it with thought. But the best solutions often come when you allow yourself to get comfortable with ambiguity. This is why people have aha moments in the shower. It was why Kabat-Zinn had a vision while on retreat. It was why Don Draper from Mad Men, when asked how he comes up with his great slogans, said he spends all day thinking and then goes to the movies. Janice Marturano was on ~ Dan Harris, #NFDB
849:To my son,
If you are reading this letter, then I am dead.
I expect to die, if not today, then soon. I expect that Valentine will kill me. For all his talk of loving me, for all his desire for a right-hand man, he knows that I have doubts. And he is a man who cannot abide doubt.
I do not know how you will be brought up. I do not know what they will tell you about me. I do not even know who will give you this letter. I entrust it to Amatis, but I cannot see what the future holds. All I know is that this is my chance to give you an accounting of a man you may well hate.
There are three things you must know about me. The first is that I have been a coward. Throughout my life I have made the wrong decisions, because they were easy, because they were self-serving, because I was afraid.
At first I believed in Valentine’s cause. I turned from my family and to the Circle because I fancied myself better than Downworlders and the Clave and my suffocating parents. My anger against them was a tool Valentine bent to his will as he bent and changed so many of us. When he drove Lucian away I did not question it but gladly took his place for my own. When he demanded I leave Amatis, the woman I love, and marry Celine, a girl I did not know, I did as he asked, to my everlasting shame.
I cannot imagine what you might be thinking now, knowing that the girl I speak of was your mother. The second thing you must know is this. Do not blame Celine for any of this, whatever you do. It was not her fault, but mine. Your mother was an innocent from a family that brutalized her. She wanted only kindess, to feel safe and loved. And though my heart had been given already, I loved her, in my fashion, just as in my heart, I was faithful to Amatis. Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae. I wonder if you love Latin as I do, and poetry. I wonder who has taught you.
The third and hardest thing you must know is that I was prepared to hate you. The son of myslef and the child-bride I barely knew, you seemed to be the culmination of all the wrong decisions I had made, all the small compromises that led to my dissolution. Yet as you grew inside my mind, as you grew in the world, a blameless innocent, I began to realize that I did not hate you. It is the nature of parents to see their own image in their children, and it was myself I hated, not you.
For there is only one thing I wan from you, my son — one thing from you, and of you. I want you to be a better man than I was. Let no one else tell you who you are or should be. Love where you wish to. Believe as you wish to. Take freedom as your right.
I don’t ask that you save the world, my boy, my child, the only child I will ever have. I ask only that you be happy.
Stephen ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
850:The Weed’s Counsel
SAID a traveller by the way
Pausing, 'What hast thou to say,
Flower by the dusty road,
That would ease a mortal's load?'
Traveller, hearken unto me!
I will tell thee how to see
Beauties in the earth and sky
Hidden from the careless eye.
I will tell thee how to hear
Nature's music wild and clear,—
Songs of midday and of dark
Such as many never mark,
Lyrics of creation sung
Ever since the world was young.
And thereafter thou shalt know
Neither weariness nor woe.
Thou shalt see the dawn unfold
Artistries of rose and gold,
And the sunbeams on the sea
Dancing with the wind for glee.
The red lilies of the moors
Shall be torches on the floors,
Where the field-lark lifts his cry
To rejoice the passer-by,
In a wide world rimmed with blue
Lovely as when time was new.
And thereafter thou shalt fare
Light of foot and free from care.
I will teach thee how to find
Lost enchantments of the mind
All about thee, never guessed
By indifferent unrest.
Thy distracted thought shall learn
Patience from the roadside fern,
And a sweet philosophy
From the flowering locust tree, —
While thy heart shall not disdain
The consolation of the rain.
Not an acre but shall give
204
Of its strength to help thee live.
With the many-wintered sun
Shall thy hardy course be run.
And the bright new moon shall be
A lamp to thy felicity.
When green-mantled spring shall come
Past thy door with flute and drum,
And when over wood and swamp
Autumn trails her scarlet pomp,
No misgiving shalt thou know,
Passing glad to rise and go.
So thy days shall be unrolled
Like a wondrous cloth of gold.
When gray twilight with her star
Makes a heaven that is not far,
Touched with shadows and with dreams,
Thou shalt hear the woodland streams
Singing through the starry night
Holy anthems of delight.
So the ecstasy of earth
Shall refresh thee as at birth,
And thou shalt arise each morn
Radiant with a soul reborn.
And this wisdom of a day
None shall ever take away.
What the secret, what the clew
The wayfarer must pursue?
Only one thing he must have
Who would share these transports brave.
Love within his heart must dwell
Like a bubbling roadside well,
For a spring to quicken thought,
Else my counsel comes to naught.
For without that quickening trust
We are less than roadside dust.
This, O traveller, is my creed, —
All the wisdom of the weed!
Then the traveller set his pack
Once more on his dusty back,
And trudged on for many a mile
Fronting fortune with a smile.
205
~ Bliss William Carman,#NFDB
851:You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If tomorrow they tell you you are to make no more water-pipes and saucepans but are to make steel helmets and machine-guns, then there's only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Woman at the counter and woman in the office. If tomorrow they tell you you are to fill shells and assemble telescopic sights for snipers' rifles, then there's only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Research worker in the laboratory. If tomorrow they tell you you are to invent a new death for the old life, then there's only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Priest in the pulpit. If tomorrow they tell you you are to bless murder and declare war holy, then there's only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Pilot in your aeroplane. If tomorrow they tell you you are to
carry bombs over the cities, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!
You. Man of the village and man of the town. If tomorrow they come and give you your call-up papers, then there's only one thing to do:
Say NO!
You. Mother in Normandy and mother in the Ukraine, mother in Vancouver and in London, you on the Hwangho and on the Mississippi, you in Naples and Hamburg and Cairo and Oslo - mothers in all parts of the earth, mothers of the world, if tomorrow they tell you you are to bear new soldiers for new battles, then there's only one thing to do:
Say NO!
For if you do not say NO - if YOU do not say no - mothers, then: then!
In the bustling hazy harbour towns the big ships will fall silent as corpses against the dead deserted quay walls, their once shimmering bodies overgrown with seaweed and barnacles, smelling of graveyards and rotten fish.
The trams will lie like senseless glass-eyed cages beside the twisted steel skeleton of wires and track.
The sunny juicy vine will rot on decaying hillsides, rice will dry in the withered earth, potatoes will freeze in the unploughed land and cows will stick their death-still legs into the air like overturned chairs.
In the fields beside rusted ploughs the corn will be flattened like a beaten army.
Then the last human creature, with mangled entrails and infected lungs, will wander around, unanswered and lonely, under the poisonous glowing sun, among the immense mass graves and devastated cities.
The last human creature, withered, mad, cursing, accusing - and the terrible accusation: WHY?
will die unheard on the plains, drift through the ruins, seep into the rubble of churches, fall into pools of blood, unheard, unanswered,
the last animal scream of the last human animal -
All this will happen tomorrow, tomorrow, perhaps, perhaps even tonight, perhaps tonight, if - if -
You do not say NO. ~ Wolfgang Borchert,#NFDB
852:the process of unification, the perfecting our one's instrumental being, the help one needs to reach the goal :::
If we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavor.
As you pursue this labor of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. ... It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us [the psychic being], to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perfection and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realize. This discovery and realization should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
~ The Mother, On Education, [T1],#NFDB
853:Rule by decree has conspicuous advantages for the domination of far-flung territories with heterogeneous populations and for a policy of oppression. Its efficiency is superior simply because it ignores all intermediary stages between issuance and application, and because it prevents political reasoning by the people through the withholding of information. It can easily overcome the variety of local customs and need not rely on the necessarily slow process of development of general law. It is most helpful for the establishment of a centralized administration because it overrides automatically all matters of local autonomy. If rule by good laws has sometimes been called the rule of wisdom, rule by appropriate decrees may rightly be called the rule of cleverness. For it is clever to reckon with ulterior motives and aims, and it is wise to understand and create by deduction from generally accepted principles.
Government by bureaucracy has to be distinguished from the mere outgrowth and deformation of civil services which frequently accompanied the decline of the nation-state—as, notably, in France. There the administration has survived all changes in regime since the Revolution, entrenched itself like a parasite in the body politic, developed its own class interests, and become a useless organism whose only purpose appears to be chicanery and prevention of normal economic and political development. There are of course many superficial similarities between the two types of bureaucracy, especially if one pays too much attention to the striking psychological similarity of petty officials. But if the French people have made the very serious mistake of accepting their administration as a necessary evil, they have never committed the fatal error of allowing it to rule the country—even though the consequence has been that nobody rules it. The French atmosphere of government has become one of inefficiency and vexation; but it has not created and aura of pseudomysticism.
And it is this pseudomysticism that is the stamp of bureaucracy when it becomes a form of government. Since the people it dominates never really know why something is happening, and a rational interpretation of laws does not exist, there remains only one thing that counts, the brutal naked event itself. What happens to one then becomes subject to an interpretation whose possibilities are endless, unlimited by reason and unhampered by knowledge. Within the framework of such endless interpretive speculation, so characteristic of all branches of Russian pre-revolutionary literature, the whole texture of life and world assume a mysterious secrecy and depth. There is a dangerous charm in this aura because of its seemingly inexhaustible richness; interpretation of suffering has a much larger range than that of action for the former goes on in the inwardness of the soul and releases all the possibilities of human imagination, whereas the latter is consistently checked, and possibly led into absurdity, by outward consequence and controllable experience. ~ Hannah Arendt,#NFDB
854:A beggar came to an emperor’s palace. The emperor was just in the garden so he heard the beggar. The man on the gate was going to give something, but the beggar said, ”I have one condition. I always take from the master, never from servants.”
The emperor heard. He was taking a walk so he came to look at this beggar, because beggars don’t have conditions. If you are a beggar how can you have conditions? ”Seems to be a rare beggar.” So he came to look – and he WAS a rare beggar. The emperor had never seen such an emperor-like man before; he was nothing. This man had some glory around him, a grace. Tattered his dress was, almost naked, but the begging bowl was very very precious.
The emperor said, ”Why this condition?”
The beggar said, ”Because servants are themselves beggars and I don’t want to be rude to anybody. Only masters can give. How can servants give? So if you are ready, you can give and I will accept it. But then too I have a condition, and that is: my begging bowl has to be completely filled.”
A small begging bowl! The emperor started laughing. He said, ”You seem to be mad. Do you think I cannot fill your begging bowl?” And then he ordered his ministers to bring precious stones, incomparable, unique, and fill the begging bowl with them. But they got into a difficulty, because the more they filled the begging bowl, the stones would fall in it and they would not even make a sound, they would simply disappear. And the begging bowl remained empty.
Then the emperor was in a fix, his whole ego was at stake. He, a great emperor who ruled the whole earth, could not fill a begging bowl! He ordered, ”Bring everything, but this begging bowl has to be filled!”
His treasures... for days together all his treasuries were emptied, but the begging bowl remained empty. There was no more left. The emperor had become a beggar, all was lost. The emperor fell to the beggar’s feet and said, ”Now I am also a beggar and I beg only one thing. Tell me the secret of this bowl, it seems to be magical!”
The beggar said, ”Nothing. It is made of human mind, nothing magical.”
Every human mind is just this begging bowl. You go on filling it, it remains empty. You throw the whole world, worlds together, and they simply disappear without making any sound. You go on giving and it is always begging.
Give love, and the begging bowl is there, your love has disappeared. Give your whole life, and the begging bowl is there, looking at you with complaining eyes. ”You have not given anything. I am still empty.” And the only proof that you have given is if the begging bowl is full – and it is never full. Of course, the logic is clear: you have not given.
You have achieved many many things – they have all disappeared in the begging bowl. The mind is a self-destructive process. Before the mind disappears you will remain a beggar. Whatsoever you can gain will be in vain; you will remain empty.
And if you dissolve this mind, through emptiness you become filled for the first time. You are no more, but you have become the whole. If you are, you will remain a beggar. If you are not, you become the emperor. ~ Osho,#NFDB
855:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education, #self-knowledge,#NFDB
856:The Book Of Annandale
Partly to think, more to be left alone,
George Annandale said something to his friends—
A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough
To suit their funeral gaze—and went upstairs;
And there, in the one room that he could call
His own, he found a sort of meaningless
Annoyance in the mute familiar things
That filled it; for the grate’s monotonous gleam
Was not the gleam that he had known before,
The books were not the books that used to be,
The place was not the place. There was a lack
Of something; and the certitude of death
Itself, as with a furtive questioning,
Hovered, and he could not yet understand.
He knew that she was gone—there was no need
Of any argued proof to tell him that,
For they had buried her that afternoon,
Under the leaves and snow; and still there was
A doubt, a pitiless doubt, a plunging doubt,
That struck him, and upstartled when it struck,
The vision, the old thought in him. There was
A lack, and one that wrenched him; but it was
Not that—not that. There was a present sense
Of something indeterminably near—
The soul-clutch of a prescient emptiness
That would not be foreboding. And if not,
What then?—or was it anything at all?
Yes, it was something—it was everything—
But what was everything? or anything?
Tired of time, bewildered, he sat down;
But in his chair he kept on wondering
That he should feel so desolately strange
And yet—for all he knew that he had lost
More of the world than most men ever win—
So curiously calm. And he was left
Unanswered and unsatisfied: there came
No clearer meaning to him than had come
275
Before; the old abstraction was the best
That he could find, the farthest he could go;
To that was no beginning and no end—
No end that he could reach. So he must learn
To live the surest and the largest life
Attainable in him, would he divine
The meaning of the dream and of the words
That he had written, without knowing why,
On sheets that he had bound up like a book
And covered with red leather. There it was—
There in his desk, the record he had made,
The spiritual plaything of his life:
There were the words no eyes had ever seen
Save his; there were the words that were not made
For glory or for gold. The pretty wife
Whom he had loved and lost had not so much
As heard of them. They were not made for her.
His love had been so much the life of her,
And hers had been so much the life of him,
That any wayward phrasing on his part
Would have had no moment. Neither had lived enough
To know the book, albeit one of them
Had grown enough to write it. There it was,
However, though he knew not why it was:
There was the book, but it was not for her,
For she was dead. And yet, there was the book.
Thus would his fancy circle out and out,
And out and in again, till he would make
As if with a large freedom to crush down
Those under-thoughts. He covered with his hands
His tired eyes, and waited: he could hear—
Or partly feel and hear, mechanically—
The sound of talk, with now and then the steps
And skirts of some one scudding on the stairs,
Forgetful of the nerveless funeral feet
That she had brought with her; and more than once
There came to him a call as of a voice—
A voice of love returning—but not hers.
Whose he knew not, nor dreamed; nor did he know,
Nor did he dream, in his blurred loneliness
Of thought, what all the rest might think of him.
276
For it had come at last, and she was gone
With all the vanished women of old time,—
And she was never coming back again.
Yes, they had buried her that afternoon,
Under the frozen leaves and the cold earth,
Under the leaves and snow. The flickering week,
The sharp and certain day, and the long drowse
Were over, and the man was left alone.
He knew the loss—therefore it puzzled him
That he should sit so long there as he did,
And bring the whole thing back—the love, the trust,
The pallor, the poor face, and the faint way
She last had looked at him—and yet not weep,
Or even choose to look about the room
To see how sad it was; and once or twice
He winked and pinched his eyes against the flame
And hoped there might be tears. But hope was all,
And all to him was nothing: he was lost.
And yet he was not lost: he was astray—
Out of his life and in another life;
And in the stillness of this other life
He wondered and he drowsed. He wondered when
It was, and wondered if it ever was
On earth that he had known the other face—
The searching face, the eloquent, strange face—
That with a sightless beauty looked at him
And with a speechless promise uttered words
That were not the world’s words, or any kind
That he had known before. What was it, then?
What was it held him—fascinated him?
Why should he not be human? He could sigh,
And he could even groan,—but what of that?
There was no grief left in him. Was he glad?
Yet how could he be glad, or reconciled,
Or anything but wretched and undone?
How could he be so frigid and inert—
So like a man with water in his veins
Where blood had been a little while before?
How could he sit shut in there like a snail?
What ailed him? What was on him? Was he glad?
277
Over and over again the question came,
Unanswered and unchanged,—and there he was.
But what in heaven’s name did it all mean?
If he had lived as other men had lived,
If home had ever shown itself to be
The counterfeit that others had called home,
Then to this undivined resource of his
There were some key; but now … Philosophy?
Yes, he could reason in a kind of way
That he was glad for Miriam’s release—
Much as he might be glad to see his friends
Laid out around him with their grave-clothes on,
And this life done for them; but something else
There was that foundered reason, overwhelmed it,
And with a chilled, intuitive rebuff
Beat back the self-cajoling sophistries
That his half-tutored thought would half-project.
What was it, then? Had he become transformed
And hardened through long watches and long grief
Into a loveless, feelingless dead thing
That brooded like a man, breathed like a man,—
Did everything but ache? And was a day
To come some time when feeling should return
Forever to drive off that other face—
The lineless, indistinguishable face—
That once had thrilled itself between his own
And hers there on the pillow,—and again
Between him and the coffin-lid had flashed
Like fate before it closed,—and at the last
Had come, as it should seem, to stay with him,
Bidden or not? He were a stranger then,
Foredrowsed awhile by some deceiving draught
Of poppied anguish, to the covert grief
And the stark loneliness that waited him,
And for the time were cursedly endowed
With a dull trust that shammed indifference
To knowing there would be no touch again
Of her small hand on his, no silencing
Of her quick lips on his, no feminine
Completeness and love-fragrance in the house,
No sound of some one singing any more,
278
No smoothing of slow fingers on his hair,
No shimmer of pink slippers on brown tiles.
But there was nothing, nothing, in all that:
He had not fooled himself so much as that;
He might be dreaming or he might be sick,
But not like that. There was no place for fear,
No reason for remorse. There was the book
That he had made, though.… It might be the book;
Perhaps he might find something in the book;
But no, there could be nothing there at all—
He knew it word for word; but what it meant—
He was not sure that he had written it
For what it meant; and he was not quite sure
That he had written it;—more likely it
Was all a paper ghost.… But the dead wife
Was real: he knew all that, for he had been
To see them bury her; and he had seen
The flowers and the snow and the stripped limbs
Of trees; and he had heard the preacher pray;
And he was back again, and he was glad.
Was he a brute? No, he was not a brute:
He was a man—like any other man:
He had loved and married his wife Miriam,
They had lived a little while in paradise
And she was gone; and that was all of it.
But no, not all of it—not all of it:
There was the book again; something in that
Pursued him, overpowered him, put out
The futile strength of all his whys and wheres,
And left him unintelligibly numb—
Too numb to care for anything but rest.
It must have been a curious kind of book
That he had made it: it was a drowsy book
At any rate. The very thought of it
Was like the taste of some impossible drink—
A taste that had no taste, but for all that
Had mixed with it a strange thought-cordial,
So potent that it somehow killed in him
The ultimate need of doubting any more—
Of asking any more. Did he but live
279
The life that he must live, there were no more
To seek.—The rest of it was on the way.
Still there was nothing, nothing, in all this—
Nothing that he cared now to reconcile
With reason or with sorrow. All he knew
For certain was that he was tired out:
His flesh was heavy and his blood beat small;
Something supreme had been wrenched out of him
As if to make vague room for something else.
He had been through too much. Yes, he would stay
There where he was and rest.—And there he stayed;
The daylight became twilight, and he stayed;
The flame and the face faded, and he slept.
And they had buried her that afternoon,
Under the tight-screwed lid of a long box,
Under the earth, under the leaves and snow.
II
Look where she would, feed conscience how she might,
There was but one way now for Damaris—
One straight way that was hers, hers to defend,
At hand, imperious. But the nearness of it,
The flesh-bewildering simplicity,
And the plain strangeness of it, thrilled again
That wretched little quivering single string
Which yielded not, but held her to the place
Where now for five triumphant years had slept
The flameless dust of Argan.—He was gone,
The good man she had married long ago;
And she had lived, and living she had learned,
And surely there was nothing to regret:
Much happiness had been for each of them,
And they had been like lovers to the last:
And after that, and long, long after that,
Her tears had washed out more of widowed grief
Than smiles had ever told of other joy.—
But could she, looking back, find anything
That should return to her in the new time,
And with relentless magic uncreate
280
This temple of new love where she had thrown
Dead sorrow on the altar of new life?
Only one thing, only one thread was left;
When she broke that, when reason snapped it off,
And once for all, baffled, the grave let go
The trivial hideous hold it had on her,—
Then she were free, free to be what she would,
Free to be what she was.—And yet she stayed,
Leashed, as it were, and with a cobweb strand,
Close to a tombstone—maybe to starve there.
But why to starve? And why stay there at all?
Why not make one good leap and then be done
Forever and at once with Argan’s ghost
And all such outworn churchyard servitude?
For it was Argan’s ghost that held the string,
And her sick fancy that held Argan’s ghost—
Held it and pitied it. She laughed, almost,
There for the moment; but her strained eyes filled
With tears, and she was angry for those tears—
Angry at first, then proud, then sorry for them.
So she grew calm; and after a vain chase
For thoughts more vain, she questioned of herself
What measure of primeval doubts and fears
Were still to be gone through that she might win
Persuasion of her strength and of herself
To be what she could see that she must be,
No matter where the ghost was.—And the more
She lived, the more she came to recognize
That something out of her thrilled ignorance
Was luminously, proudly being born,
And thereby proving, thought by forward thought,
The prowess of its image; and she learned
At length to look right on to the long days
Before her without fearing. She could watch
The coming course of them as if they were
No more than birds, that slowly, silently,
And irretrievably should wing themselves
Uncounted out of sight. And when he came
Again, she might be free—she would be free.
Else, when he looked at her she must look down,
Defeated, and malignly dispossessed
281
Of what was hers to prove and in the proving
Wisely to consecrate. And if the plague
Of that perverse defeat should come to be—
If at that sickening end she were to find
Herself to be the same poor prisoner
That he had found at first—then she must lose
All sight and sound of him, she must abjure
All possible thought of him; for he would go
So far and for so long from her that love—
Yes, even a love like his, exiled enough,
Might for another’s touch be born again—
Born to be lost and starved for and not found;
Or, at the next, the second wretchedest,
It might go mutely flickering down and out,
And on some incomplete and piteous day,
Some perilous day to come, she might at last
Learn, with a noxious freedom, what it is
To be at peace with ghosts. Then were the blow
Thrice deadlier than any kind of death
Could ever be: to know that she had won
The truth too late—there were the dregs indeed
Of wisdom, and of love the final thrust
Unmerciful; and there where now did lie
So plain before her the straight radiance
Of what was her appointed way to take,
Were only the bleak ruts of an old road
That stretched ahead and faded and lay far
Through deserts of unconscionable years.
But vampire thoughts like these confessed the doubt
That love denied; and once, if never again,
They should be turned away. They might come back—
More craftily, perchance, they might come back—
And with a spirit-thirst insatiable
Finish the strength of her; but now, today
She would have none of them. She knew that love
Was true, that he was true, that she was true;
And should a death-bed snare that she had made
So long ago be stretched inexorably
Through all her life, only to be unspun
With her last breathing? And were bats and threads,
Accursedly devised with watered gules,
282
To be Love’s heraldry? What were it worth
To live and to find out that life were life
But for an unrequited incubus
Of outlawed shame that would not be thrown down
Till she had thrown down fear and overcome
The woman that was yet so much of her
That she might yet go mad? What were it worth
To live, to linger, and to be condemned
In her submission to a common thought
That clogged itself and made of its first faith
Its last impediment? What augured it,
Now in this quick beginning of new life,
To clutch the sunlight and be feeling back,
Back with a scared fantastic fearfulness,
To touch, not knowing why, the vexed-up ghost
Of what was gone?
Yes, there was Argan’s face,
Pallid and pinched and ruinously marked
With big pathetic bones; there were his eyes,
Quiet and large, fixed wistfully on hers;
And there, close-pressed again within her own,
Quivered his cold thin fingers. And, ah! yes,
There were the words, those dying words again,
And hers that answered when she promised him.
Promised him? … yes. And had she known the truth
Of what she felt that he should ask her that,
And had she known the love that was to be,
God knew that she could not have told him then.
But then she knew it not, nor thought of it;
There was no need of it; nor was there need
Of any problematical support
Whereto to cling while she convinced herself
That love’s intuitive utility,
Inexorably merciful, had proved
That what was human was unpermanent
And what was flesh was ashes. She had told
Him then that she would love no other man,
That there was not another man on earth
Whom she could ever love, or who could make
So much as a love thought go through her brain;
And he had smiled. And just before he died
283
His lips had made as if to say something—
Something that passed unwhispered with his breath,
Out of her reach, out of all quest of it.
And then, could she have known enough to know
The meaning of her grief, the folly of it,
The faithlessness and the proud anguish of it,
There might be now no threads to punish her,
No vampire thoughts to suck the coward blood,
The life, the very soul of her.
Yes, Yes,
They might come back.… But why should they come back?
Why was it she had suffered? Why had she
Struggled and grown these years to demonstrate
That close without those hovering clouds of gloom
And through them here and there forever gleamed
The Light itself, the life, the love, the glory,
Which was of its own radiance good proof
That all the rest was darkness and blind sight?
And who was she? The woman she had known—
The woman she had petted and called “I”—
The woman she had pitied, and at last
Commiserated for the most abject
And persecuted of all womankind,—
Could it be she that had sought out the way
To measure and thereby to quench in her
The woman’s fear—the fear of her not fearing?
A nervous little laugh that lost itself,
Like logic in a dream, fluttered her thoughts
An instant there that ever she should ask
What she might then have told so easily—
So easily that Annandale had frowned,
Had he been given wholly to be told
The truth of what had never been before
So passionately, so inevitably
Confessed.
For she could see from where she sat
The sheets that he had bound up like a book
And covered with red leather; and her eyes
Could see between the pages of the book,
Though her eyes, like them, were closed. And she could read
284
As well as if she had them in her hand,
What he had written on them long ago,—
Six years ago, when he was waiting for her.
She might as well have said that she could see
The man himself, as once he would have looked
Had she been there to watch him while he wrote
Those words, and all for her.… For her whose face
Had flashed itself, prophetic and unseen,
But not unspirited, between the life
That would have been without her and the life
That he had gathered up like frozen roots
Out of a grave-clod lying at his feet,
Unconsciously, and as unconsciously
Transplanted and revived. He did not know
The kind of life that he had found, nor did
He doubt, not knowing it; but well he knew
That it was life—new life, and that the old
Might then with unimprisoned wings go free,
Onward and all along to its own light,
Through the appointed shadow.
While she gazed
Upon it there she felt within herself
The growing of a newer consciousness—
The pride of something fairer than her first
Outclamoring of interdicted thought
Had ever quite foretold; and all at once
There quivered and requivered through her flesh,
Like music, like the sound of an old song,
Triumphant, love-remembered murmurings
Of what for passion’s innocence had been
Too mightily, too perilously hers,
Ever to be reclaimed and realized
Until today. Today she could throw off
The burden that had held her down so long,
And she could stand upright, and she could see
The way to take, with eyes that had in them
No gleam but of the spirit. Day or night,
No matter; she could see what was to see—
All that had been till now shut out from her,
The service, the fulfillment, and the truth,
And thus the cruel wiseness of it all.
285
So Damaris, more like than anything
To one long prisoned in a twilight cave
With hovering bats for all companionship,
And after time set free to fight the sun,
Laughed out, so glad she was to recognize
The test of what had been, through all her folly,
The courage of her conscience; for she knew,
Now on a late-flushed autumn afternoon
That else had been too bodeful of dead things
To be endured with aught but the same old
Inert, self-contradicted martyrdom
Which she had known so long, that she could look
Right forward through the years, nor any more
Shrink with a cringing prescience to behold
The glitter of dead summer on the grass,
Or the brown-glimmered crimson of still trees
Across the intervale where flashed along,
Black-silvered, the cold river. She had found,
As if by some transcendent freakishness
Of reason, the glad life that she had sought
Where naught but obvious clouds could ever be—
Clouds to put out the sunlight from her eyes,
And to put out the love-light from her soul.
But they were gone—now they were all gone;
And with a whimsied pathos, like the mist
Of grief that clings to new-found happiness
Hard wrought, she might have pity for the small
Defeated quest of them that brushed her sight
Like flying lint—lint that had once been thread.…
Yes, like an anodyne, the voice of him,
There were the words that he had made for her,
For her alone. The more she thought of them
The more she lived them, and the more she knew
The life-grip and the pulse of warm strength in them.
They were the first and last of words to her,
And there was in them a far questioning
That had for long been variously at work,
Divinely and elusively at work,
With her, and with the grace that had been hers;
They were eternal words, and they diffused
A flame of meaning that men’s lexicons
286
Had never kindled; they were choral words
That harmonized with love’s enduring chords
Like wisdom with release; triumphant words
That rang like elemental orisons
Through ages out of ages; words that fed
Love’s hunger in the spirit; words that smote;
Thrilled words that echoed, and barbed words that clung;—
And every one of them was like a friend
Whose obstinate fidelity, well tried,
Had found at last and irresistibly
The way to her close conscience, and thereby
Revealed the unsubstantial Nemesis
That she had clutched and shuddered at so long;
And every one of them was like a real
And ringing voice, clear toned and absolute,
But of a love-subdued authority
That uttered thrice the plain significance
Of what had else been generously vague
And indolently true. It may have been
The triumph and the magic of the soul,
Unspeakably revealed, that finally
Had reconciled the grim probationing
Of wisdom with unalterable faith,
But she could feel—not knowing what it was,
For the sheer freedom of it—a new joy
That humanized the latent wizardry
Of his prophetic voice and put for it
The man within the music.
So it came
To pass, like many a long-compelled emprise
That with its first accomplishment almost
Annihilates its own severity,
That she could find, whenever she might look,
The certified achievement of a love
That had endured, self-guarded and supreme,
To the glad end of all that wavering;
And she could see that now the flickering world
Of autumn was awake with sudden bloom,
New-born, perforce, of a slow bourgeoning.
And she had found what more than half had been
The grave-deluded, flesh-bewildered fear
287
Which men and women struggle to call faith,
To be the paid progression to an end
Whereat she knew the foresight and the strength
To glorify the gift of what was hers,
To vindicate the truth of what she was.
And had it come to her so suddenly?
There was a pity and a weariness
In asking that, and a great needlessness;
For now there were no wretched quivering strings
That held her to the churchyard any more:
There were no thoughts that flapped themselves like bats
Around her any more. The shield of love
Was clean, and she had paid enough to learn
How it had always been so. And the truth,
Like silence after some far victory,
Had come to her, and she had found it out
As if it were a vision, a thing born
So suddenly!—just as a flower is born,
Or as a world is born—so suddenly.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson,#NFDB
83 Integral Yoga
5 Yoga
4 Occultism
2 Psychology
2 Fiction
1 Science
1 Poetry
1 Philosophy
1 Education
1 Christianity
1 Alchemy
71 The Mother
44 Satprem
11 Sri Aurobindo
9 Nolini Kanta Gupta
3 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Swami Krishnananda
2 H P Lovecraft
2 Carl Jung
8 Agenda Vol 09
7 Questions And Answers 1953
7 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
7 Agenda Vol 03
6 Agenda Vol 10
5 Questions And Answers 1954
4 The Synthesis Of Yoga
4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
4 Agenda Vol 02
3 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
3 Letters On Yoga IV
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
3 Agenda Vol 07
3 Agenda Vol 04
3 Agenda Vol 01
2 Words Of Long Ago
2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
2 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 On the Way to Supermanhood
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Agenda Vol 11
2 Agenda Vol 08
2 Agenda Vol 06
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
The first condition was: Nothing more to do with your family Well, we are a long way from that! But I repeat that it only happened because of the war and not because we stopped seeing the need to cut all family ties; on the contrary, this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone? What childishness! It is simply not possible. If you have ever taken the trouble to read over the early ashram rules, you would find that even friendships were considered dangerous and undesirable We made every effort to create an atmosphere in which only one thing counted: the Life Divine.
But as I said, bit by bit things changed. However, this had one advantage: we were too much outside of life. So there were a number of problems which had never arisen but which would have suddenly surged up the moment we wanted a complete manifestation. We took on all these problems a little prematurely, but it gave us the opportunity to solve them. In this way we learned many things and surmounted many difficulties, only it complicated things considerably. And in the present situation, given such a large number of elements who havent even the slightest idea why theyre here (!) well, it demands a far greater effort on the disciples part than before.
0 1958-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
Meanwhile, we should acknowledge that we dont have the key, it is not yet in our hands. Or rather, we know quite well where it is, and there is only one thing to do: the perfect surrender Sri Aurobindo speaks of, the total surrender to the divine Will whatever happens, even in the dark of night.
There is night and sun, night and sun, and night again, many nights, but one must cling to this will for surrender, cling as through a storm, and put everything into the hands of the Supreme Lord. Until the day when the Sun shall shine forever, the day of total Victory.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Integral Yoga
For what occurred here, I can say only one thing: when the Supreme Lord wants to save someone, He clothes his will in every appearance necessary.
As for the emptiness you feel (which perhaps is already better): to those who complained of this sensation of inner emptiness, Sri Aurobindo always said that it is a very good thing; it is the sign that they are going to be filled with something better and truer.
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing you can doANNUL YOURSELF as much as possible. If you can annul yourself completely, then the experience is total. And if your disappearance could be constant, the experience would be constantly there but thats still far away. I dont know if all this (Mother looks at her body).
(silence)
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
only one thing would actually be true, one single thing: to DO it. All this talking and talking and promising and painting things in glowing colorsjust DO it.
(silence)
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And experiences! I have had the most contradictory experiences! only one thing has been continuous from my childhood on (and the more I look, the more I see how continuous it has been): this divine Presence and in someone who, in her EXTERNAL LIFE, might very well have said, God? What is this foolishness! God doesnt exist! So you understand, you see the picture.
You know, its a marvelous, marvelous grace to have had this experience so CONSTANTLY, So POWERFULLY, like something holding out against everything, everything: this Presence. And in my outward consciousness, a total negation of it all. Even later on, I used to say, Well, if God exists, hes a real scoundrel! Hes a wretch and I want nothing to do with this Creator of ours. You know, the idea of God sitting placidly in his heaven, creating the world and amusing himself by watching it, then telling you, How well done! Oh! I said, I want nothing to do with that monster!
0 1961-05-19, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, yes! Actually only one thing would doto have his genius!
Yes, we have to rethink it all.
--
Thats my reproach to itwhy does it struggle? Why, suddenly, do I have a terrible fatigue falling over me and have to brace myself? The body, naturally, does only one thingit automatically repeats the mantra; then all becomes quiet, all is set in order. But why is this effort necessary? It should be done automatically [the sweeping away of bad vibrations]. Why is there a need to remember or to put up a struggle? Oh, a battle!
Its not the body complaining, it doesnt complain at all I am the one who complains! I think that its doing its best, but its thwarted by this type of (one can scarcely speak of a mind) this kind of mind-like activity in matter3 interfering. t is sordid. I havent yet been able to eliminate it completely.
0 1962-05-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, only one thing worries me, one thing alone: your physical health. But to tell the truth (the true truth of what I KNOW), I dont think theres any climate a body cant adapt to.
But I dont think so either!
0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It represents what you put into ityour aspiration, mon petit. No, to me it can represent only one thing. I call it the Supreme, because you have to call it something, but that Something is the farthest limit of our aspiration, our aspiration in every sense, in all directions, on all occasions. Something that is the supreme summit of our aspiration, WHATEVER that aspiration may be, in whatever direction, in whatever realmbeyond, really beyond, Something beyond any form of activity.
For me, the most concrete approach to this is through the vibration of pure Love; not love for something, a love you give or receive, but Love in itself: Love. It is something self-existent. And it is certainly the most concrete approach for me. (But it isnt exclusiveit contains everything else within itself; it doesnt exclude all the other approaches, all the other contacts.)
0 1962-06-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
only one thing depends on the body: speech, expression who knows? (Mother gazes at Satprem for a long time, as though she were considering an unknown possibility.)
Ah, thats enough for today!
0 1962-07-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This has never happened before, its brand-new. Before, there was always that Power transmitted through the higher mind (what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind); it was up there, dissolving, dispersing, changing, doing a whole lot of work, without any difficulty, effortlessly (gesture above the head showing the tranquil, irresistible flowing of a stream), nothing to it. That was my constant, second-to-second action, everywhere, all the time, for everything that came to me. But THIS is completely, completely new. Its a sort of imposition, almost like an imposition on the PHYSICAL brain (I presume it must be for changing the brain cells). And I am allowed to do only one thing (Mother grips the mental construction presented to her); its right in front of me like this and wont leave me, it clings like a leech, stock-still. So I have to bring in the supreme, divine Vibration, the Vibration I experienced the other day [April 13], and hold it steadily (sometimes it takes quite a while) until all is hushed in a divine silence.
(silence)
0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So you understand, you have only one thing to do: finish your book.
Yes oh, I would like to make such a beautiful Sri Aurobindo, and then.
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Buddha, you know, was deeply shocked by the impermanence of things the impermanence of the whole creation, that there was nothing permanent anywhere. That was the starting point of his quest, when he saw that nothing was permanentconstant and permanen thence there was nothing one could call forever. Thats what shocked him, and he felt he had to find something permanent, and in his quest for the Permanent he came upon Nothingness. So his conclusion ran something like this: only one thing is permanentNothingness. As soon as theres creation, its impermanent.
Why did he object to impermanence? That, I dont knowa question of temperament, I suppose. But as far as he was concerned, thats what Nothingness is good for: its permanent.
0 1962-12-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actively, theres only one thing to do: Its not up to me, its the Lord who decides. Its the Lord who acts, its the Lord who organizes everything and to top it off, its even the Lord who sends you away! That irks them more than anything! (Mother laughs.)
Rightly or wrongly, Satprem did not keep the recording of this conversation, not to obey Mother, for he was never very obedient, but because the words that follow rent his heart. He didn't know at the time how very true they all were.
0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
only one thing (which is not even absolute): a sort of equality that has come into the bodynot an equality of soul (laughing): an equality in the cells! It has come into the body. There is no longer that clash of joy and painalways and for everything, every minute, every reaction, You, Lord, to You, Lord. As though the cells were chanting, To You Lord, to You Lord, to You Lord. And well, thats how it is.
There are enough physical miseries to experience what people call physical painquite enough (!) Yet, materially, everything is organized to give every possible joy! For example (ever since the age of five it has been like that), whenever the body felt, Oh, if I had this. Oh, it would be nice to have that, the thing would come in no time. Fantastic! It has always been that way, only it has become more conscious. Before, it would happen without my noticing it, quite naturally. Now, of course, the body has changed, its no longer a baby, it no longer has a childs fancies. But when that kind of Rhythm comes, when something says, Oh, this is fine! mon petit, it comes in TORRENTS from all sides without my saying a word. Just like that. There was a time when the body enjoyed it, it was delighted by it, made very happy by it (even two years ago, a little more perhaps), very happy, it found that amusingit was lovely, you see. But now: To You Lord. Only this, a sort of quiet, constant joy: To You Lord, to You Lord, to You Lord. And on both accounts: for physical pain as well. In that regard, the body is making progress. Although to tell the truth, its life is made so easy! So easy that it would have to be quite hard to please not be satisfied the Lord is full of infinite grace.
0 1963-04-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
only one thing is always present: to keep intact and POWERFULLY conscious the sense of the divine Presence thats all. Thats the single concern of the cells.
From time to time (Mother laughs), they hold a kind of little conference among themselves, they seem to tell each other, No one can interfere with That!4 It makes them happy: All their thoughts are powerless in front of That!
0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once youve been told this very nicely, youre satisfied, you stop worryingits all right, you take things as they are: Thats how things are, its my work and I do it; I ask only one thing, it is to do my work, all the rest doesnt matter.
There, mon petit.
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They come more and more often, those things that I scribble on a slip of paper, and they always follow the same process: first, always a sort of explosionlike the explosion of a power of truth; it makes great dazzling white fireworks (Mother smiles), much more than fireworks! Then it rolls and rolls (gesture above the head), it works and works; and then comes the impression of an idea (but the idea is lower down, its like clothing), and the idea contains its sensation, it brings the sensation along with it the sensation was there before, but without any idea, so you couldnt define it. There is only one thing: its always the explosion of a luminous Power. Then, afterwards, if you look at it while remaining very still, while above all the head keeps quieteverything keeps quiet (gesture of a stillness turned upward)then, all of a sudden, somebody speaks in your head (!), somebody speaks. Its the explosion that speaks. Then I take a pencil and my paper, and I write. But between what speaks and what writes, there is still a difficult little passage, with the result that when I have written, something above isnt satisfied. So I again keep still: Ah, no, not that wordthis one sometimes it takes two days for the thing to be really definitive. But those who are satisfied with the power of the experience skimp it all and send you off into the world of sensational revelations, which are distortions of the Truth.
One must be very level-headed, very still, very criticalespecially very still, silent, silent, silent, without trying to grab at the experience: Ah, is it this? Ah, is it that? Then one spoils it all. But one must looklook at it very attentively. And in the words, there is a remnant, something left of the original vibration (so little), something remains, something which makes you smile, which is pleasant, it bubbles like a sparkling wine, and then here (Mother shows a word or a passage in an imaginary note), its lackluster; so you look at it with your knowledge of the language or sense of the rhythm of the words, and you notice: Here, a pebble the pebble must be removed; so then you wait, until suddenly it comesplop!it falls into place: the true word. If you are patient, after a day or two it becomes quite exact.
0 1965-05-05, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a feeling that only one thing exists: making contactputting the divine Vibration in contact with Matter. And this is the only thing which is REAL. Things seem to have clarified these past few days, since the 30th; and this morning when I got up, it was so strong that it was really the only thing existing. To such a point that there was a spontaneous perception that whatever thought clothes this thing in, or whatever the organization of life, its totally unimportantits only men who attach importance to that, but from the standpoint of the Work, only this matters: being in this state I am in (which is a very particular state), in which the vibration, the vibration of Matter is put in contact, unitedunitedwith the divine Vibration.
All the rest unreal.1
0 1965-07-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing: a sort of flamea sort of flame that burns all this falsehood.
I have nothing to boast about, you know! I am preaching to this body as much as to others. I should be upright, strong, solid. Why am I stooped like this? I know why, but its not a compliment. I know why, its because all this is still subject to all those suggestions from the world, all the medical thought and all that derives from it and all the suggestions from life. And habits. And all these people here So theres nothing to boast about. Only, I know (the advantage is that I know it), I know it should be otherwise. I know it and the cells also know it, and I told you, yesterday evening they were crying over it, there on my bed; they kept moaning and groaning: I was not made for this life of darkness and disorder, I was made for Light, for Strength and Love. And the answer: Ah! Take it, then! And they were moaning, Why am I compelled to be like this? And all of a sudden, instead of giving them free play: the full Presencein one second it was all gone. But the collective suggestion, the collective atmosphere is so rotten, I may say, that it acts all the time.
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats another interesting point, because I was an outright atheist: till the age of twenty, the very idea of God made me furious. Therefore I had the most solid baseno imaginings, no mystic atavism; my mother was very much an unbeliever and so was my father. So from the point of view of atavism it was very good: positivism, materialism. only one thing: since I was very small, a will for perfection in any field whatever; a will for perfection and the sense of a limitless consciousness no limits to ones progress or to ones power or to ones scope. And that, since I was very small. But mentally, an absolute refusal to believe in a God: I believed only in what I could touch and see. And the whole faculty for experiences was already there (they didnt manifest because the time hadnt come). Only, the sense of a Light here (gesture above the head), which began when I was very small, I was five, along with a will for perfection. A will for perfection: oh, whatever I did always had to be the best I could do. And then, a limitless consciousness. These two things. And my return to the Divine came about through Thons teaching, when I was told for the first time, The Divine is within, there (Mother strikes her breast). Then I felt at once, Yes, this is it. Then I did all the work thats taught to find Him again; and through here (gesture to the heart center) I went there (gesture of junction above with the Supreme). But outwardly, mentally, no religiona horror of religions.
And I see now that it was the most solid base possible for this experience: there was no danger of imaginings.
0 1966-04-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing I have noted (that I am forced to note): there is a power of action on others which infinitely exceeds what it was before. Oh, it makes waves everywhere, everywhere, even in those people who were the most settled in their lives and basically fairly satisfied, as much as one can beeven those are touched.
Well see, well see.
0 1966-06-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing, ONE vibration that seems to be really universal: the Vibration of Love. I am not saying its manifestation, no, nothing of the sort! But the something which is pure Love. That seems to me to be universal.
But as soon as you try to express it, its over.
0 1967-04-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres only one thing, she says somewhere that during the first few weeks, for the child the separation is painful, and so the physical contact is necessary the touch the contact with the skin to give the child the taste of life and the understanding of physical life.1 Thats possible. But nowadays doctors say, The last thing you should do is touch your childput it in a cradle. You should not touch it because that will deform it. It runs quite counter to her theories. Of course, she may be right to a certain extent, its possible. But anyway, its a very small detail, its nothing. I expected a lot and have been somewhat disappointed.
But what this Burmese man has said is fine thats much more interesting: this idea that its high time human nature changed. Thats good. Because in ordinary life, ordinary people tell you, I cant help it, thats the way I am! Its the answer you always get.
0 1967-09-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it explains the manner in which he received P. when he went there. P. (an Indian disciple), as you know, paid him a visit; he was taken there by an Italian who had come here (a very nice boy who showed him around Italy and took him to the Pope). The Pope gave him a private audience, and after talking to him, asking questions, replying (it was a whole conversation), he said to P. with a smile, And now what are you going to give me? (They spoke in French.) Then P. said, I have only one thing, which I always keep with me and is infinitely precious to me, but I will give it to you, and he gave him Prayers and Meditations. And the Pope answered, I am going to read them.
So it all fits together.
0 1968-03-13, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You say this: Yes, science can find. If it moves in a very definite direction, if it progresses sufficiently and doesnt stop on the way, they will find the same thing that mystics have found, that religious people have found, that everyone has found, because there is only one thing to be found and not two. There is only one. So you may go a long way, you may wind and turn and wind again, if you go long enough without stopping, you are sure to reach the same point. Once you have reached there, you feel theres nothing at all to be found! Theres nothing to be found. And thats the power. Thats it, and thats all. Its like that.
What do you mean by Thats the power?
0 1968-05-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, theres only one thing stronger than they, only one: the Lords peace. I dont know if you understand what I mean (I speak with words that sound like their own language), but its (immense gesture above) That, there, they cant touch. But its the only thing. Few people know how to shield themselves from that [magic].
(Mother goes into a long contemplation)
0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ill make a decent copy of it (Mother looks for a paper and goes on). So then, it put everything in perspective. Ah, I must add something to let you understand. I saw D. yesterday, and as she had written to me that she didnt know how to meditate, but that anyhow she would keep quiet so as not to disturb me (!), naturally I started talking! But then, I said things to her that I had never said before (and which I wouldnt be able to repeatnei ther would she, because she understood only very, very little of what I said). I told her that from the standpoint of the manifestation (I didnt speak about beyond the manifestation), from the standpoint of the manifestation, there is only one thing that is true: Consciousness. And that all the rest is the APPEARANCE of something, but not the thing; that THE thing is Consciousness, and all the rest is a sort of play in which everyone has the illusion of being a personality, but its an illusion. While I was speaking, I had the perfectly sincere and spontaneous experience of it. And I realized that this experience of the SINGLE Consciousness playing through innumerable forms (Mother breaks off)
But one cannot express that, words cant. While I was speaking, it was that Consciousness which spoke. And the two experiences together (the childrens notes, I read them yesterday evening; as for D., I had seen her in the morning), the two together gave me the detachment (its not detachment: its a liberation) from the phenomenon of death in such an absolute way that I was able to look throughout History, far into the past, at the whole human tragedy. That is to say, death is a natural phenomenon in the creation on earth, but as a means of TRANSITIONI clearly saw why it had become necessary, how, with the human consciousness and mental development, it had been turned into a tragedy, and how it was becoming again merely a means of transition (a clumsy means, we might say), which was now becoming unnecessary again.
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats the sort of work being done at present, these last few daysconstantly, constantly. The only moment when its not done is when I see people, because when I see people, theres only one thing left: the Lords Presence, and plunging them in that bath of the Lord. That goes on, its always there. So that even if, before [seeing people], there was a difficulty or struggle or conflict between the two states, and a will to hold on, at such times it goes away, because thats not the work then: the work is to plunge all those coming near into the Presence the immutable Presence, constant, active close.
(silence)
0 1968-06-26, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Continuous. There was a time when it would be forgotten now and then; now its beginning not to be forgotten anymore. Its continuous. Theres only one thing that interrupts it, its the work with the outside, the relationship with others for that action which consists in infusing theminfusing them with divine consciousness. So then, this is the result: first, a very clear vision (not a vision in pictures, a very clear vision) of the state they are in; then, this: enveloping and infusing them with divine consciousness; and then, the effect that has, or hasnt. Thats the occupation in relationships with people. The other work [on the cells] is the life of every minute.
Its growing more and more precise, more and more interesting but absorbing.1
0 1968-09-11, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For me, only one thing has happened. A very interesting fact that I noted. I forget the occasion and how it took place, but it was the day before yesterday, and the fact I noted was the presence of the psychic being that the psychic being hasnt gone at all. I said [on August 28], The vital and the mind have gone, but the psychic being hasnt.
I think it was in relation to someone I saw (I dont remember), and I noticed that a very great power was there; and the PHYSICAL being, the body, was conscious of the presence of the psychic being, which was constantly there, behind. It hasnt gone. Conscious.
0 1968-11-13, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres only one thing: like a building up of force a force that MIGHT be a Power. I do feel its slowly, slowly building up. So then, maybe thats what is vibrating and maybe theres an impatience to act? I dont know.
But its not precise yet.
0 1968-12-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its absolutely certainabsolutely certain that if the world, if the creation were as it appears to be to this bodily consciousness as it now is, there would be only one thing to doto blot it out! Thats obviously the explanation of, and justification for, all nihilistic religions and philosophies. It takes a thoroughly unconscious insensitiveness to be able to live happily and contentedly in this horror that is the world. And all this IS the Lord, and not only IS the Lord but is WITHIN the Lord; that is to say, its not as we imagine itthings that were driven away, rejectednot at all, not at all: all this is there WITHIN the Lord. So there.
You see, the body has this experience of being completely disorganized, of having a cold, a pain here, a pain there and when its in a certain attitude (we may call it an attitude, I dont know), at any rate in a certain state of consciousness: vanished! All that no longer exists, theres not a tracetheres no cold anymore, no pain anymore, nothing anymore, its all gone! Though its ready to come back. And not only gone (which would be a psychological phenomenon), but the CIRCUMSTANCES of people and things around CHANGE! They become different: in one case, everything is like thatstubborn, twisted and in the other
0 1969-05-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At any rate (this is very clear), the consciousness striving to help the body in the work has made it understand per-fect-ly well that going away isnt a solution. Even if there was earlier a curiosity to know what the body will be, that curiosity is gone; as for the desire to stay on, that went away long ago; the possible desire to leave when things become a bit suffocating went away with the idea that it would change nothing at all. So only one thing remains for the body: to perfect acceptance. Thats all.
When it doesnt talk about it, its relatively easier; when it expresses it, it becomes very concrete.
0 1969-05-28, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the bodys cells (I dont know whether its specific to this body; I cant believe this body to be so exceptional), they are ABSOLUTELY convinced, and they keep trying and trying and trying all the time, all the time, for every misery, every difficulty, every Theres only one solution, only one thing: You, You alone, to YouYou alone exist. Thats what expressed itself as the illusion of the world in the consciousness of people such as Buddhists and others, but that was a half translation.
The true translation is, You alone exist, You alone. All the rest all the rest is misery. Misery, suffering darkness.
0 1969-08-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When one is assailed by the vision of this disorder and this confusion, there is only one thing to do, its to go into the consciousness in which one knows that there is only ONE Being, ONE Consciousness, ONE Powerthere is only ONE Onenessand all those things take place within this Oneness. And that all our petty vision, our petty knowledge, our petty judgments, our petty all of it is nothing, its microscopic in comparison with the Consciousness that rules over the Whole. And then, if one has in the least the sense of why separate individualities exist, maybe its only to enable aspiration the existence of aspiration, of this movement, this movement of self-giving and surrender, of trust and FAITH. The faith that there lies the raison dtre of the makeup of individuals, and the aspiration to become THAT in all ones intensity and all ones sincerity Thats the only thing needed.
Thats the only thing needed, the ONLY thing; the only thing that subsists. All the rest phantasmagoria.
0 1969-09-13, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Id need a practical piece of information, I dont know if you can give it to me. Either way, theres only one thing (whether he stays in there or comes out of it), either way he can do useful worknot in the same manner, but he can do useful work. As for me, I want him to choose the way in which he is saferyou know, I dont trust those people in the least, I know theyre capable of ANYTHING. So either way, they can do as much mischief as they likeperhaps he knows which way he will be safer, by staying on or getting out? I dont know Staying on may be a protection, it may prevent them from doing certain things; getting out may make him less detestable to them, that is to say, they may expel him and leave him alone.
But he says, If I am expelled and get out, I lose all power, I cant do anything anymore. And that was precisely the object of his vision: its by staying there that he can bring-light. Thats his problem. If I get out, I cant do anything anymore. And he told me that all those priests who got out to try and make the Church progress have been expelled by the Church and no longer have any power.
0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Near you, A.R. says that he only feels a difference in intensity of the same Thing. I tried to explain to him that it was not quite the same thing, but he irrefutably says that there is only one thing with varying intensities, and that you only let That flow through more purely than others do. And as we spoke of Avatars, he said: There cannot be a difference between an Avatar and a realized Yogi, or if there is a difference, it means that the Yogi isnt truly realized.
In short, we both turned round an indefinable differencewhich may be the Grace.
0 1969-12-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, I heard Sunils music (and it was so interesting because of that). Its very fine, his music, and then this Consciousness showed me how You see, the consciousness here takes a certain attitude, and it has the whole joy and harmony; the thing remains the same, but then (Mother makes a gesture of a slight tipping to the left) a very slight change in the attitude of the consciousness, and it becomes almost unbearable! Experiences of that sort, all the time, all the time to show you that in reality, only one thing matters, its the attitude of the consciousness: the old attitude of the individual being (Mother makes a gesture of contraction into oneself), or this (gesture of expansion). Probably it must be (to put it into words we can understand) the presence of the ego and the abolition of the ego. Thats it.
And then, as I said, for all the most ordinary activities of life, there is the demonstration that if the presence is tolerated (certainly in order to make you understand what it is), it can actually throw you off balance from the standpoint of health, and that the only remedy is the disappearance of the egoand along with it, the disappearance of the whole discomfort. For the things we regard as the most indifferent, the most Its for everything, just everything, all the time, all the time, night and day.
0 1970-01-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for me, you know, I dont believe in external decisions. Simply, I believe in only one thing: the force of Consciousness exerting a PRESSURE like this (crushing gesture). And the Pressure keeps increasing. Which means its going to sift people.
Otherwise, there would be no solution, because, you see, in the past (just some ten years ago) I used to go about and see things. But thats over. It wasnt a decision I made, I didnt at all think it was over, its not that at all: it was something that COMPELLED me. You understand? So I said all right. Its not incapacity: this body is extremely docile, it does everything its asked to do; if it were asked to go out, it would manage to go out. Its extremely docile. But thats how it is, there is a Command: NO. And I know why.
0 1970-03-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there is one thing. In what he wrote, in what he told me, Sri Aurobindo seemed to take as a sign of the transformation the constant presence of Ananda [bliss]. And that was one of the things I told him about: the being manifesting in this body, and consequently the body (because even from a very young age, the body had tried to surrender to the inner being, not to remain independent), in the body itself, there had never been either the feeling or the need, or even the intent of living in Ananda. Since it was very small, the body was built with I might put it like this: the will to do what had to be doneto be what it had to be and to do it. When it was very small, the object of the surrender was not known, but the minute it knew it, for it that was very definitive. You understand, the first contact (as I said) was the divine Presence in the psychic being, and so, the minute it became a facta patent fact, there was no arguing, the experience was perfectly conclusivefrom that minute, the body had only one idea left (not even one idea, one will), to be what THAT wanted it to be. Now, for it, its beyond any possible discussion: its like this (gesture hands open), simply attentive and anxious to do what the Divine wants it to do, and it tries more and more not to feel any difference. Thats beginningits not yet there everywhere. In many parts of the body, there is only one thing left: there is not the Thing that wants and the thing that obeys, its no longer like thatonly ONE Vibration. Its beginning. But it doesnt expect it to result in a sense of delight or Ananda or In fact, its quite indifferent to that. It was born and formed quite indifferent.
I said that to Sri Aurobindo. (Laughing) He looked at me and said, There arent two people like you on earth! (Mother laughs) Because, he says, people may overcome the need to be happy (not be happy, that doesnt mean anything), anyway the need of satisfaction, of Ananda, but for it to be spontaneous! Like that, effortless.
0 1972-04-02b, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you think I am here because I am bound, you are wrong. I am not bound. I am here because my body has given itself for the first attempt at transformation. Sri Aurobindo told me so, he told me, I know of no one who can do it, except you. I said, All right, I will do it. Its not I dont wish anyone to do it in my place, because because its not very pleasant, but I am doing it gladly, because everybody will benefit from the results. I ask only one thing: dont listen to the ego. Thats all. The time of the ego is over. We want to go beyond humanity and its ego, to leave it behind, we want a race without ego, with a divine consciousness in place of the ego. There, thats all.
Anything to say?
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When man was a dweller of the forest,a jungle man,akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order asks only one thing of man, namely, to be strong and powerful, that is to say, fierce, ruthless, cruel and regimented. Regimentation can be said to be the very characteristic of the order, the regimentation of a pack of wild dogs or wolves. A particular country, nation or raceit is Germany in Europe and, in her wake, Japan in Asiais to be the sovereign nation or master race (Herrenvolk); the rest of mankindo ther countries and peoplesshould be pushed back to the status of servants and slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. What the helots were in ancient times, what the serfs were in the mediaeval ages, and what the subject peoples were under the worst forms of modern imperialism, even so will be the entire mankind under the new overlordship, or something still worse. For whatever might have been the external conditions in those ages and systems, the upward aspirations of man were never doubted or questioned they were fully respected and honoured. The New Order has pulled all that down and cast them to the winds. Furthermore in the new regime, it is not merely the slaves that suffer in a degraded condition, the masters also, as individuals, fare no better. The individual here has no respect, no freedom or personal value. This society or community of the masters even will be like a bee-hive or an ant-hill; the individuals are merely functional units, they are but screws and bolts and nuts and wheels in a huge relentless machinery. The higher and inner realities, the spontaneous inspirations and self-creations of a free soulart, poetry, literaturesweetness and light the good and the beautifulare to be banished for ever; they are to be regarded as things of luxury which enervate the heart, diminish the life-force, distort Nature's own virility. Man perhaps would be the worshipper of Science, but of that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life.
Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its over-shadowing menaceeven though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstancesyet, because of the stand they have taken, now bear the fate of the world on their shoulders, carry the whole future of humanity in their march. It is of course agreed that to have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being. He does not change, his is a hardened mould, a settled immutable form of a particular consciousness, a definite pattern of qualities and activitiesgunakarma. Asura-nature means a fundamental ego-centricism, violent and concentrated self-will. Change is possible for the human being; he can go downward, but he can move upward too, if he chooses. In the Puranas a distinction has been made between the domain of enjoyment and the domain of action. Man is the domain of action par excellence; by him and through him evolve new and fresh lines of activity and impulsion. The domain of enjoyment, on the other hand, is where we reap the fruits of our past Karma; it is the result of an accumulated drive of all that we have done, of all the movements we have initiated and carried out. It is a status of being where there is only enjoyment, not of becoming where there can be development and new creation. It is a condition of gestation, as it were; there is no new Karma, no initiative or change in the stuff of the consciousness. The Asuras are bhogamaya purusha, beings of enjoyment; their domain is a cumulus of enjoyings. They cannot strike out a fresh line of activity, put forth a new mode of energy that can work out a growth or transformation of nature. Their consciousness is an immutable entity. The Asuras do not mend, they can only end. Man can certainly acquire or imbibe Asuric force or Asura-like qualities and impulsions; externally he can often act very much like the Asura; and yet there is a difference. Along with the dross that soils and obscures human nature, there is something more, a clarity that opens to a higher light, an inner core of noble metal which does not submit to any inferior influence. There is this something More in man which always inspires and enables him to break away from the Asuric nature. Moreover, though there may be an outer resemblance between the Asuric qualities of man and the Asuric qualities of the Asura, there is an intrinsic different, a difference in tone and temper, in rhythm and vibration, proceeding as they do, from different sources. However cruel, hard, selfish, egocentric man may be, he knows, he admitsat times, if hot always, at heart, if not openly, subconsciously, if not wholly consciously that such is not the ideal way, that these qualities are not qualifications, they are unworthy elements and have to be discarded. But the Asura is ruthless, because he regards ruthlessness as the right thing, as the perfect thing, it is an integral part of his swabhava and swadharma, his law of being and his highest good. Violence is the ornament of his character.
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
only one thing, represented by one small homely wordCall. Whatever may be the case with other paths of sadhana, for Sri Aurobindo's Path this is the keynote. Has the call come to you, have you received the call? That is everything. If you have this call it does not matter in the least whether you have other qualities, be they good, be they bad. That serves as proof and pointer that you are meant for this Path. If you have this one thing needful you have everything, and if you have it not, you have nothing, absolutely nothing. You may be wise beyond measure, your virtues and austerities may be incalculable, yet if you lack is, you lack the fitness for Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. On the other hand, if you have no virtues worth the name, if you are uneducated or ill-educated, if you are weak and miserable, if your nature is full of flaws and lapses, yet if the call is there in you secreted somewhere, then all else will come to you, will be called in as it were inevitably: riches and strengths will grow and develop in you, you will transcend all obstacles and dangers, all your wants will be made good, all your wear and tear will be whole. In the words of the Upanishad: Sin will not be able to traverse you, you will traverse all sin, sin will not burn you, you will burn it away.4
Now what exactly is this wonderful thing? This power that brings into being the non-being, realises the impossible? Whose is this Call, from where does it come? It is none other than the call of your own inmost being, of your secret self. It is the categorical imperative of the Divine seated within your heart. Indeed, the first dawning of the spiritual life means the coming forward, the unveiling of this inner being. The ignorant and animal life of man persists so long as the inner being remains in the background, away from the dynamic life, so long as man is subject to the needs and impulses of his mind and life and body. True, through the demands and urges of this lower complex, it is always the inner being that gains and has its dictates carried out and is always the secret lord and enjoyer; but that is an indirect effect and it is a phenomenon that takes place behind the veil. The evolution, in other words, of the inner or psychic being proceeds through many and diverse experiencesmental, vital and physical. Its consciousness, on the one hand, grows, that is, enlarges itself, becomes wider and wider, from what was infinitesimal it moves towards infinity, and on the other, streng thens, intensifies itself, comes up from behind and takes its stand in front visibly and dynamically. Man's true individual being starts on its career of evolution as a tiny focus of consciousness totally submerged under the huge surface surge of mind and life and body consciousness. It stores up in itself and assimilates the essence of the various experiences that the mind and life and body bring to it in its unending series of incarnations; as it enriches itself thus, it increases in substance and potency, even like fire that feeds upon fuels. A time comes when the pressure of the developed inner being upon the mind and life and body becomes so great that they begin to lose their aboriginal and unregenerate freedom the freedom of doing as they like; they have now to pause in their unreflecting career, turn round, as it were, and imbibe and acquire the habit of listening to the deeper, the inner voice, and obey the direction, the comm and of the Call. This is the Word inviolate (anhata-vn) of which the sages speak; this is also referred to as the still small voice, for indeed it is scarcely audible at present amidst the din and clamour of the wild surges of the body and life and mind consciousness.
06.03 - Types of Meditation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The next type we may call concentration, instead of meditation. Here we do not pursue a thought-line, but fix the thought upon one object unmoved. It means a further process of withdrawing the consciousness from its habitual outgoing and dispersive movement. The thought is held at a point and attention is focussed upon it: it is continuous and unbroken attention, for example, upon an idea, a phrase (mantra) or an image. One can concentrate also upon a physical point, say, fixing the gaze upon the tip of one's nose, or on a luminous point outside etc. In this discipline the whole mind is gathered together and focussed: or, everything else is shut out leaving only one thing upon which all the light of the consciousness is directed. It is a standstill consciousness, like a flame erect and immobile in a windless place.
There is a third grade when the mind becomes a void, all thoughts being driven out, all vibrations tranquillised. It is a wide silence suffused with a still luminosity. The operation is difficult. For it means a kind of continuous and methodical drainage or rarefication which takes more or less a very long time. First you throw' out well-formed ideas and notions, processes and products of reasoning and judgment the bigger waves, as it were; as soon as these subside you find there are smaller waves below or behindhalf-formed thoughts, budding ideas, fugitive notions and so on; when these too are quieted down, you come across still another layer of smaller ripples of thought, close to sensations, nervous reactions, vibrations of the brain-mind, rudimentary precepts, etc., etc. One may go on like that if not ad infinitum, at least, to a considerable length. One arrives in the end at what is practically a vacuum, to all intents and purposes a silent mind. Even then it is a difficult and arduous process and may not be as absolute as one may expect. There are other surer and even perhaps easier processes to attain the same end. Thus instead of striving and struggling and forcing your will upon the restless waves, you simply relax yourself, bypass them as it were, await and aspire and open yourself towards the Silence that is above: call for the silence with trust and reliance and it comes not unoften as a massive inundation, a glacial sweep and automatically overwhelms you, drowning and filling you from top to toe. There is also another way: to contact, to enter into the Mother's Presence. Mother's Presence means all the realisations to which we aspire concretised, brought down, near to us, within our human reach. We have not to travel far and wide, mount to inaccessible heights, labour and strainwith blood and sweat and tearsto get what we want: all the gettings are ready-made there in our atmosphere, we have only to know and perceive, open something in us for them to flow in. That is perhaps the action of Grace: silence, absolute silence, not only in the mind, but in the whole being, can come this way too.
07.13 - Divine Justice, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You must understand once for all that the Divine, when he acts is not moved by human notions. Possibly he does things even without what we call reason. In any case the reasons are not of the human kind; above all, the Divine has not that sense of justice which man has. For example, when you see a man full of greed for money, trying to cheat people just for the sake of getting a few rupees, your idea of justice cries out that such a man should be deprived of all money, he must be reduced to poverty. But actually you find things happening to the contrary. Although that is only the appearance of the situation; behind there is an altogether different picture. The greedy gets the object of his greed, but he has to make an exchange, give up some other possibilities. He gets money but he loses in his consciousness. And then it also happens very often that when he does get what he desired so much, he finds himself not so happy, generally he is even less happy than before: he is tormented by the wealth he has gained. You must not judge things by apparent success or by apparent failure. One can say, on the whole, that the Divine gives what one asks for and that is the best way in which one gets his lesson. If your desire is ignorant, unconscious, obscure, selfish, you increase in yourself ignorance, unconsciousness, obscurity and selfishness, that is to say, you move away more and more from truth and consciousness and happiness, in other words, away from the Divine. For the Divine, however, there is only one thing which is true, the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Union. Each time you put material things in front of you, you become more and more material, you push behind more and more the Divine. To the eye of the ignorant you may have all the appearance of wonderful success, but this success, from the standpoint of truth, is a terrible defeat, you have bartered truth for falsehood.
To judge by appearances, by apparent success is an act of complete ignorance. Even in the case of a person hardened to the core, who has apparently the utmost success, there is a counterpart: exactly this hardening, this evil that is put up thicker and thicker between the outer consciousness and the inner truth becomes also more and more unbearable. The outer success has to be paid for very dearly. One must be very great, very pure, one must have a very high, very unselfish spiritual consciousness to be able to succeed and yet not be affected. There is nothing so difficult to bear than success. That is the true test in life. When you are not successful, you turn very naturally to yourself, go within you, seek there comfort for the outer failure. And they who have the Flame within them and the Divine helping them truly, that is to say, if they are mature enough to get the help, if they are ready to follow the path, must expect blows coming upon them one after another, because that helps. Indeed that is the most powerful, most direct and most effective help. But if you have 'Success, take care! Ask yourself, at what price you have had it? What is the thing you have paid for the success? Of course, there are people of a different kind. They who have gone beyond, who are conscious of their soul, who are entirely surrender they can succeed and success does not touch them. But one has to rise very high to be able to shoulder the burden of success. It is perhaps the last and final test that the Divine puts to anyone. He says: Now that you are noble and high and unselfish, you belong to Me alone. I shall make you triumph. We shall see if you can bear the blow!
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.
09.09 - The Origin, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing to be found, not two.
If Science moves forward in a definite direction, if it progresses sufficiently, if it does not stop short on the way, it will find the same thing as was found by the mystics.
1.01 - The Science of Living, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. only one thing is
absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary
10.32 - The Mystery of the Five Elements, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It must be noted, however, that parallelism means similarity but also difference. The manner of approach to the reality, the way of expressing it is different in the east and in the west. The ancients express a truth or a fact symbolically, the moderns express it in a straightforward matter-of-fact way. The ancients used symbols; for they wanted a multiple way of expression, that is to say, a symbol embodying a movement refers at the same time to many forms of the same movement on different levels, along different lines, in diverse applications. It is like the multiple meanings of a verbal root in Sanskrit. The scientific terms, on the other hand, are very specific; they connote only one thing at a time. Each term with its specific sense is unilateral in its movement.
Now furthermore, the Great Five need not be restricted to the domain of matter alone as being its divisions and levels and functions, but they may be extended to represent the whole existence, the cosmos as a whole. Indeed they are often taken to symbolise the stair of existence as a whole, the different levels of cosmic being and consciousness. Thus at the lowest rung of the ladder as always is the earth representing precisely matter and material existence; next, water represents life and the vital movement; then, fire represents the heart centre from where wells up all impulse and drive for progression. It holds the evolutionary urge: we call it the Divine Agni, the Flame of the Inner Heart, the radiant Energy of Aspiration. The fourth status or level of creation is mind or the mental world, represented by air, the Vedic Marut; finally, Vyom or space represents all that is beyond the mind, the Infinite Existence and Consciousness. The five then give the chart, as it were, of nature's constitution, they mark also the steps of her evolutionary journey through unfolding time.
1.03 - The Gods, Superior Beings and Adverse Forces, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you had understood and reacted in the right way, you would have passed the test and got rid not only of this special difficulty but probably of this hostiles influence altogether. But you failed and got possessed. And only one thing was left to me to do, it was to flood you with the pure light, the white flame of purification to chase from inside you the intruder. It is what you took probably for a cut in our relations, a wall of separation between us; there was nothing of the kind; I was inside you, penetrating you as usual, but in the form of this supreme purity which is so foreign to all that is anti-divine or even to all ordinary human movement.
This adverse entity is not only vital, it is also mental and supports its desires by some apparently reasonable principles which become aggressively stupid by their rigidity. When this seizes you, you seem to lose all common sense and the most elementary understanding.
1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"What Brahman is cannot he described. All things in the world - the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy - have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is."
VIDYASAGAR (to his friends): "Oh! That is a remarkable statement. I have learnt something new today."
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment; its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not self-mutilation, but a transformation of our natural human parts into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature; it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the sacrifice and the manner of the sacrifice. The sacrifice may be offered to others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme. The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread, to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all that we are. Whoever the recipient, whatever the gift, it is the Supreme, the Eternal in things, who receives and accepts it, even if it be rejected or ignored by the immediate recipient. For the Supreme who transcends the universe, is yet here too, however veiled, in us and in the world and in its happenings; he is there as the omniscient Witness and Receiver of all our works and their secret Master. All our actions, all our efforts, even our sins and stumblings and sufferings and struggles are obscurely or consciously, known to us and seen or else unknown and in a disguise, governed in their last result by the One. All is turned towards him in his numberless forms and offered through them to the single Omnipresence. In whatever form and with whatever spirit we approach him, in that form and with that spirit he receives the sacrifice.
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
to the fact that the schoolmaster who used to worry him many years ago wore a coat of that color. Innumerable illusions are based upon such associations. Many things leave their mark upon the soul while remaining outside the pale of consciousness. The following may occur. Someone reads in the paper about the death of a well-known person, and forthwith claims to have had a presentiment of it yesterday, although he had neither heard nor seen anything that might have given rise to such a thought. And indeed it is quite true that the thought occurred to him yesterday, as though of its own accord, that this particular person would die; only one thing escaped his attention: two or three hours before this thought occurred to him yesterday, he went to visit an acquaintance; a newspaper lay on the table; he did not actually read it, but his eyes unconsciously fell on the announcement of the dangerous illness of the person in question. He remained unconscious of the impression he had received, and yet this impression resulted in his presentiment.
Reflection upon these matters will show how great is the source of illusion and fantasy contained
1.098 - The Transformation from Human to Divine, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The objects whatever be their nature outside in the world with which we come in contact, are what are invoked and evoked by our inner potentialities. We cannot see anything which we do not deserve, or which is not intended to be a teacher for us or a means of passing through experience. Here, in ordinary life, the life that we are living today, many of these tendencies are pressed down, repressed by the power of a particular form of desire which we are fulfilling in our daily life and a particular form of ego-affirmation, which sets aside every other affirmation. Every time one particular aspect comes to the surface, it pushes the other aspects to the background, so that we appear to be only one thing at a time, and not two things. We do not have two moods at one moment; there is always one mood only, though these moods may go on changing every day, or even in the same day at different times. The different experiences we pass through and the different objects we face in life are the activities of these predominant aspects in our inner personality which work gradually, stage by stage, according to the convenience of the time or when circumstances become favourable.
But in yoga, something different happens. We are not pushing aside certain aspects of our personality and presenting only certain predominant features for the purpose of objective experience. The entire thing is stirred up into action, because the purpose of yoga is to liberate the soul from the total bondage to which it is subject in the form of phenomenal experience. Therefore, we have to face everything, every day, at one stroke. This happens, says the Yoga Shastra, at a particular stage not in the very advanced stage of prajna jyotis or atikranta bhavaniya, where we have completely mastered everything and we know things very well, nor when nothing has happened and we are just at the rudimentary, beginning stage of practice. These difficulties start when we are about to transcend the first level this is what the Yoga Shastra tells us. When we have entered the stage called prathama kalpita and we are about to rise to the next one, namely, the madhu bhumika, then there is this dramatic encounter of the meditating consciousness with everything blessed on earth or in heaven.
1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The powers, or the siddhis, which the Vibhuti Pada speaks about are not creations, inventions, etc., but are only spontaneous actions of prakriti just as there is a spontaneous movement of water in the fields. What does yoga practice do? It does exactly what the farmer does in the fields. Instead of blocking the passage of water and not allowing it to flow into the field for the purpose of irrigation, the farmer opens up a stream, creates a channel, and allows the water to flow. This is what yoga does. At present the movement of energies, which flow of their own accord, are blocked. The movements are blocked due to there being no passage for the entry of the forces of nature. What is it that blocks the entry of these forces? There is only one thing which is the principal obstruction of the operation of natural forces in us. That is the I-principle, the ego, the asmita, which has various other accompaniments raga, dvesa, etc. Raga, dvesa, abhinivesa all these things mentioned earlier are accompanying features of the single impediment which is asmita. We are so powerful in our ego that nothing from outside can enter it. It is hard like flint, and it is, therefore, incapable of allowing the entry of any force into itself, just as any amount of water poured on hard rock will not enter the rock.
Thus, the aspect which is emphasised here in this sutra, in the context of yoga practice, is the function that the practicant performs in his discipline called yoga. There is spontaneity manifest everywhere. Nature is spontaneity, in other words. Everything happens of its own accord. On the other hand, we may say that the pains that we experience in our lives are not part of nature, because pain is not a part of natural action. It is a peculiar situation that is created by not allowing the forces of nature to enter into ones own system. Ultimately, it is neither pleasure nor pain that is a characteristic of nature. Pleasures and pains are the emotional reactions of the mind. These two reactions cease, and something new altogether arises and comes into play when we become as natural as prakriti itself. Yoga practice is a process of becoming more and more natural in ones being, and eliminating those causes which have made us unnatural. What is it that is natural, and what is unnatural? Anything that cannot harmonise with the laws of prakriti should be regarded as unnatural; and anything that is in harmony with the laws of prakriti is natural. What are these laws of prakriti?
1.09 - The Greater Self, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
This perfection, this oneness of substance and consciousness and being, is like the world's golden memory, the blurred image that each one and each thing strives to conjure up and capture, the goad of the world's great Thirst, the driving force of its gigantic Need to be and embrace and grow. It is like a tenacious memory thrusting things and beings and even galaxies into a mortal embrace that would like to be an embrace of love, that would like to understand all, hold and possess and encompass all within its circumference. Each thing strives toward that gropingly: the sea anemone with its tentacles, the atom with its gravitation, and man with his intelligence and his heart. But our thirst cannot be quenched until it seizes all, encompasses all in its being, and there remains not one particle of the universe that has not become our substance, for, in reality, everything was always our substance and our being and our own face under millions of smiles or sufferings seeking their smile but which cannot really smile so long as they have not found what they always were. There is no other suffering in the world, no other gap, no other lack. But so long as this need is not fulfilled, we will go on and on; atoms will go on whirling to make increasingly purer and lighter kinds of matter, sea anemones ceaselessly seizing and men adding up their treasures, plundering or loving but only one thing is lovable, and until they love everything, they will have nothing really and will possess only their shadow.
But how is it that this self, this great self that we are, divided itself, multiplied, atomized into a million things and beings? Why the long journey of repossession? Actually, it did not really divide; it was never pulverized into stars separated by light-years, into amoebas of consciousness separated by teguments, rinds or armor of being, into little men separated from each other by a white skin or black and a few vague thoughts. Nothing was ever separated and our stars meet in one single little star that shines in the heart of man and in each thing and each pebble of the universe. How could we ever recognize the world if we were not already it? We can only know what we are, and anything that is not us is simply nonexistent or invisible to our eyes. We can foresee tomorrow, sense an accident coming, a pain or a thought ten thousand miles away, a treasure buried in a field, the tiny life quivering in a leaf in front of us only because we are connected; we are one, and everything is already there, immediately and without separation tomorrow and the day after, the here and there, in sight and out of sight. There is no separation; there are only eyes that do not see well. There is a sum of invisible things that gradually become visible, from the protoplasm to the caterpillar to man, and we have not exhausted the whole spectrum. Tomorrow perhaps, we shall see that the distance between one country and another, one being and another, between today and tomorrow is as fragile and illusory as the tuft of grass separating one caterpillar from another in the same field. And we shall step over the wall of time and space as today we step over the caterpillar's tuft of grass.
1.10 - Harmony, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
From within that silence in him a silence that is not empty, not an absence of noise, not a cold and toneless blank, but the smooth breadth of the open sea, an extreme of sweetness that fills him and needs neither words nor thought nor comprehension: it is instant comprehension, the embracing of everything, the absolute here and now. So what could be missing? the seeker, the newborn to be, begins to see the mental play. First, he sees that those thousands of thoughts, gray or blue or paler, do not actually emanate from any brain. Rather, they float in midair, as it were. They are currents, vibrations, which are translated into thoughts in our heads when we capture them, as waves are translated into music or words or images into our television sets; and everything shifts and moves and whirls at different levels, flows universally over our motley little frontiers: captured in English, German, French; colored yellow, black, or blue depending on the height of our antenna; rhythmic, broken, or scattered into a powdering of microscopic thoughts depending on our level of reception; musical, grating, or discordant depending on our clarity or complication. But the seeker, the listener, does not try to pick up one channel or another, to turn the dials of his machine to capture this or that he is tuned in to the infinite, focused on a little flame in the center, so sweet and full, free from interference and preference. He needs only one thing: that that flame in him burn and burn, that that flowing pass again and again through his clearing, without words, without mental meaning, and yet full of meaning and of all meaning, as if it were the very source of meaning. And, at times, without his thinking or wanting it, something comes and strikes him: a little vibration, a little note alighting on his still waters and leaving a whole train of waves. And if he leans a little, to see, stretches toward that little eddy (or that slight note, that point calling out, that rip in the expanse of his being), a thought appears, a feeling, an image or a sensation as though there were really no dividing line between one mode of translation and another; there is just something vibrating, a more or less clear rhythm, a more or less pure light being lit in him, a shadow, a heaviness, an uneasiness, sometimes a glittering little rocket, dancing and light as a powdering of sunshine on the sea, an outpouring of tenderness, a fleeting smile and sometimes a great, solemn rhythm that seems to rise from the depths of time, immense, poignant, eternal, which calls up the unique sacred chant of the world. And It flows effortlessly. There is no need to think or want; the only need is to be again, to burn in unison with a single little flame that is like the very fire of the world. And, when necessary, just for a second, a little note comes knocking at his window, and there comes exactly the right thought, the impulse for the required action, the right or left turn that will open up an unexpected trail and a whole chain of answers and new opportunities. The seeker, the fervent one, then intimately understands the invocation of this five or six-thousand-year-old Vedic poet: O Fire, let there be created in us the correct thought that springs from Thee.24
But wrong thoughts, too, are a surprising source of discoveries. As a matter of fact, more and more, he realizes that this kind of distinction is meaningless. What, in the end, is not for our own good? What does not ultimately turn out to be our greater good? The wrong paths are part of the right one and pave a broader way, a larger view of our indivisible estate. The only wrong is not to see; it is the vast grayness of the terra incognita of our limited maps. And we indeed limit our maps. We have attri buted those thoughts, feelings, reactions and desires to the little Mississippi flowing through our lands, to the thriving Potomac rivers lined with stone buildings and fortresses and indeed, they have got into the habit of running through those channels, cascading here or there, boiling a little farther below, or disappearing into our marshes. It is a very old habit, going back even before us or the ape, or else a scarcely more recent one going back to our schooldays, our parents or yesterday's newspaper. We have opened paths, and the current follows them it follows them obstinately. But for the demechanized seeker, the meanders and points of entry begin to become more visible. He begins to distinguish various levels in his being, various channeling centers, and when the current passes through the solar plexus or through the throat, the reactions or effects are different. But, mostly, he discovers with surprise that it is one and the same current everywhere, above or below, right or left, and those which we call thought, desire, will or emotion are various infiltrations of the same identical thing, which is neither thought nor desire nor will nor anything of the sort, but a trickle, a drop or a cataract of the same conscious Energy entering here or there, through our little Potomac or muddy Styx, and creating a disaster or a poem, a millipede's quiver, a revolution, a gospel or a vain thought on the boulevard we could almost say at will. It all depends on the quality of our opening and its level. But the fundamental fact is that this is an Energy, in other words, a Power. And thus, very simply, quite simply, we have the all-powerful source of all possible changes in the world. It is as we will it! We can tune in either here or there, create harmony or cacophony; not a single circumstance in the world, not one fateful event, not one so-called ineluctable law, absolutely nothing can prevent us from turning the antenna one way or the other and changing this muddy and disastrous flood into a limpid stream, instantly. We just have to know where we open ourselves. At every moment of the world and every second, in the face of every dreadful circumstance, every prison we have locked ourselves alive in, we can, in one stroke, with a single cry for help, a single burst of prayer, a single true look, a single leap of the little flame inside, topple all our walls and be born again from top to bottom. Everything is possible. Because that Power is the supreme Possibility.
1.23 - On mad price, and, in the same Step, on unclean and blasphemous thoughts., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
There is only one thing in which we have no power to meddle; and we shall tell you this, for we cannot bear your blows: If you keep up a sincere condemnation of yourself before the Lord you can count us as weak as a cobweb. For prides saddle-horse, as you see, is vainglory on which I am mounted. But holy humility and self-accusation laugh at both the horse and its rider, happily singing the song of victory: Let us sing to the Lord, for gloriously has He been glorified: horse and rider He has thrown into the sea1 and into the abyss of humility.
1 Exodus xv, 1
1.31 - Continues the same subject. Explains what is meant by the Prayer of Quiet. Gives several counsels to those who experience it. This chapter is very noteworthy., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
itself with only one thing, and the memory has no desire to busy itself with more: they both see
that this is the one thing needful and that anything else will unsettle them. Persons in this state
1.52 - Family - Public Enemy No. 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
If one's family were reasonable human beings, (But they never are, she sighed) one could perhaps do wiseliest by explaining the situation. "This Work of mine you don't understand it, no need that you should is the only important part of my life. I mean to be scrupulously careful of your feelings, and I see no reason why my chosen career should damage our relations. There is only one thing to remember: IF I ever get the faintest suspicion that you are opposing me, or condemning my plans, or interfering in any way, even with the best intentions, THEN with a single blow I sever our relations, and for ever." "Well, that's really very nice of you, Holy One," you might say; "but you are not the only one to be considered, what about the Masters? Do they ride us on the snaffle? Tradition says not so."
This depends wholly on you. If you are a quite ordinary Aspirant, and a few dozen incarnations one way or the other don't make such a difference, then They presumably won't bother about you at all. In the course of centuries, Karma will roll out the creases.
1951-02-05 - Surrender and tapasya - Dealing with difficulties, sincerity, spiritual discipline - Narrating experiences - Vital impulse and will for progress, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Evidently there is one difficulty: in your conscious being something does not want the difficulty, wishes sincerely to overcome it, but there are numberless movements in other parts of your consciousness of which you are not conscious. You say, I want to be cured of that; unfortunately it is not sufficient to say I want, there are other parts of the consciousness which hide themselves so that you may not be busy with them, and when your attention is turned away these parts try to assert themselves. That is why I say and shall always repeat, Be perfectly sincere; do not try to deceive yourself, do not say, I have done all that I could. If you do not succeed, it means that you do not do all that you can. For, if you truly do all that you can, you will surely succeed. If you have any defect which you want to get rid of and which still persists, and you say, I have done all that I could, you may be sure that you have not done all that you should have. If you had, you would have triumphed, for the difficulties that come to you are exactly in proportion to your strengthnothing can happen to you which does not belong to your consciousness, and all that belongs to your consciousness you are able to master. Even the things and suggestions that come from outside can touch you only in proportion to the consent of your consciousness, and you are made to be the master of your consciousness. If you say, I have done all that I could and in spite of everything the thing continues, so I give up, you may be already sure that you have not done what you could. When an error persists in spite of everything it means that something hidden in your being springs up suddenly like a Jack-in-the-box and takes the helm of your life. Hence, there is only one thing to do, it is to go hunting for all the little dark corners which lie hidden in you and, if you put just a tiny spark of goodwill on this darkness, it will yield, will vanish, and what appeared to you impossible will become not only possible, practicable, but it will have been done. You can in this way in one minute get rid of a difficulty which would have harassed you for years. I absolutely assure you of it. That depends only on one thing: that you truly, sincerely, want to get rid of it. And it is the same for everything, from physical illnesses up to the highest mental difficulties. One part of the consciousness says, I dont want it, but behind there hides a heap of things which say nothing, do not show themselves, and which just want that things continue as they aregenerally out of ignorance; they do not believe that it is necessary to be cured, they believe that everything is for the best in the best of worlds. As the lady with whom I had those conversations used to say, The trouble begins as soon as you want to change. A great French writer has repeated this and has made out of it his pet theory: Misery begins when you want to perfect yourself; if you do not wish to perfect yourself, you wont have any misery! I may tell you that this is absolutely wrong, but there are, all the same, things in you that want absolutely to be left alone, not to be disturbed in any way: Oh! What a nuisance you are, leave us alone!
The whole world is full of the poison [doubt, hesitation, depression]. You take it in with every breath. If you exchange a few words with an undesirable man or even if such a man merely passes by you, you may catch the contagion from him. So long as you belong to humanity and so long as you lead the ordinary life, it does not matter much if you mix with the people of the world; but if you want the divine life, you will have to be exceedingly careful about your company and your environment.
1951-02-08 - Unifying the being - ideas of good and bad - Miracles - determinism - Supreme Will - Distinguishing the voice of the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is a temptation that every teacher meets at each step, for the very simple reason that ordinary humanity, in a general way, not being in personal contact with the divine powers, understands nothing of what an illumined consciousness may be and asks for material proofs. It is on this demand that most religions are established and, for reasons which I may very frankly call political, they have put at the origin of their religion a more or less considerable number of miracles as having been performed by the founders, and they have thus more or less crudely encouraged among ignorant people the taste, the necessity for seeing what they call miracles in order to believe in the divine power of a person. This is an extraordinary ignorance, because it is not at all necessary to have a divine power or consciousness to perform miracles. It is infinitely more easy to perform miracles with the help of small entities of the vital world who are material enough to be in touch with the physical world and act upon it, than to live in the consciousness of the higher regions and to work upon Nature only through the intermediary of all the other domains. It has been repeated over and over again to all human intellects that the proof of a beings divinity is that he can raise the dead, cure maladies, and do many other things of the same kind (except making a fool wise).1 Well, I guarantee that this is not a proof; it proves only one thing, that these Masters are in contact with the powers of the vital world and that with the help of those beings they can perform these miracles, thats all. If one relies upon that to recognise the superiority of a man, one would make a glaring mistake. Naturally, there are other religions which are established on revelations made to their founders. These revelations are more or less happy mental transcriptions of the knowledge they received. This is already of a higher order but it is not yet a proof. And I would finally say, the human demand for proofs is not at all favourable to ones development. Because the true divine power has organised the world according to a certain plan and in this plan there was no question of things happening in an illogical way; otherwise from the very beginning the world would have been illogical and it is not so. Men imagine for the most part one of two things, either that there is a material world to which they belong, that all comes from there, all returns there and all ends therethese are the unbelieversor, the believers, most of them, that there is something which they call God and then the physical world, and that this physical world is the creation of that God who knows what he is doing or does what he wants; and the confusion lies in saying that everything happens by a kind of arbitrariness, natural or supernatural. There are very few people who know that there exists in the universe an infinite number of gradations and that each one of these gradations has its own reality, its own life, its own law, its own determinism, and that the creation did not come about like that, by an arbitrary will, in an arbitrary way but is a deploying of consciousness and each thing has evolved as a logical result of the preceding one. I am telling you all this as simply as I can, you see, it is a very incomplete expression, but if I wanted to tell you the story exactly as it is, it would be a little difficult to make you understand. Only I would like you to know my conclusion (I have already spoken about it several times, more or less in detail), it is this: each one of these numberless regions has its own very logical determinismeverything proceeds from cause to effect; but these worlds, although differentiated, are not separate from each other and, by numerous processes which we may study, the inner or higher worlds are in constant contact with the lower or external worlds and act upon these, so that the determinism of one changes the determinism of the other. If you take the purely material domain, for instance, and if you notice that the material laws, the purely material laws are altered by something all of a sudden, you ought to say that it was a miracle, because there is a rupture of the determinism of one plane through the intervention of another, but usually we do not call this a miracle. For example, when the human will intervenes and changes something, that seems to you quite natural, because you have been accustomed to it from your childhood; you remember, dont you, the example I gave you the other day: a stone falls according to the law of its own determinism, but you wish to interrupt its fall and you stretch out your hand and catch it; well you ought to call this a miracle, but you dont because you are used to it (but a rat or a dog would perhaps call it a miracle if they could speak). And note that it is the same for what people call a miracle; they speak of a miracle because they are absolutely ignorant, unaware of the gradations between the will which wants to express itself and the plane on which it expresses itself. When they have a mental or a vital will, the thing seems quite natural to them, but when it is a question of the will of a higher world the world of the gods or of a higher entitywhich all of a sudden upsets all your little organisation, that seems to you a miracle. But it is a miracle simply because you are unable to follow the gradations by which the phenomenon took place. Therefore, the Supreme Will, that which comes from the very highest region, if you saw it in its logical action, if you were aware of it continually, it would seem to you altogether natural. You can express this in two ways: either say, It is quite natural, it is like this that things must happen, it is only an expression of the divine Will, or, each time you see on the material plane an intervention coming from another plane, you ought to say, It is miraculous! So I may say with certainty that people who want to see miracles are people who cherish their ignorance! You understand my logic, dont you? These people love their ignorance, they insist upon seeing miracles and being astounded! And that is why people who have done yoga seriously consider it altogether fatal to encourage this tendency; hence it is forbidden.
There is a miracle because you do not give people time to see the procedure by which you do things, you do not show them the stages. Thus, some men have reached higher mental regions and do not need to follow step by step all the gradations of thought; they can jump from one idea to a far distant inference without the intermediary links; this is usually called intuition (it is not altogether an intuition; it is that the idea, to begin with, is at a great height and from there these people can see while descending the whole totality of things and consequences without passing through all the gradations as ordinary human thought is obliged to do). It is an experience I have had; when I used to speak with Sri Aurobindo, we never had the need to go through intermediary ideas; he said one thing and I saw the far off result; we used to talk always like that, and if a person had happened to be present at our conversations he would have said, What are they talking about! But for us, you know, it was as clear as a continuous sentence. You could call that a mental miracleit was not a miracle, it was simply that Sri Aurobindo had the vision of the totality of mental phenomena and hence we had no need to waste a good deal of time in going through all the gradations. For any person capable of following the line, the thing would have been quite natural and logical; for ignorant people it was a miracle.
1951-03-10 - Fairy Tales- serpent guarding treasure - Vital beings- their incarnations - The vital being after death - Nightmares- vital and mental - Mind and vital after death - The spirit of the form- Egyptian mummies, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but it is not a physical serpent, it is a vital serpent. The key to the treasures is in the vital world and it is guarded by an immense black serpenta tremendous serpent, ten times, fifty times larger than an ordinary one. It keeps the gates of the treasure. It is magnificent, black, always erect and awake. I happened once to be standing before it (usually these beings obey me when I give them an order), and I said to it, Let me pass. It replied, I would willingly let you pass, but if I do, they will kill me; so I cannot let you pass. I asked, What must I bring you in order to gain entrance? It said, Oh, only one thing would oblige me to give way to you: if you could become master of the sex impulse in man, if you succeeded in conquering that in humanity, I could no longer resist, I would allow you to pass.
It has not yet allowed me to pass. I must admit that I have not fulfilled the condition, I have not been able to obtain such a mastery of it as to conquer it in all men.
1951-04-09 - Modern Art - Trend of art in Europe in the twentieth century - Effect of the Wars - descent of vital worlds - Formation of character - If there is another war, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think so. Recently I saw some pictures which truly showed something other than ugliness and indecency. It is not yet art, it is very far from being beautiful, but there are signs that we are going up again. You will see, fifty years hence we shall perhaps have beautiful things to see. I felt this some days ago, that truly we had come to the end of the descending curvewe are still very low down, but are beginning to climb up. There is a kind of anguish and there is still a complete lack of understanding of what beauty can and should be, but one finds an aspiration towards something which will not be sordidly material. For a time art had wanted to wallow in the mire, to be what they called realistic. They had chosen as real what was most repulsive in the world, most ugly: all deformities, all filth, all ugliness, all the horrors, all the incoherences of colour and form; well, I believe this is behind us now. I had this feeling very strongly these last few days (not through seeing pictures, for we do not have a chance to see much here, but by sensing the atmosphere). And even in the reproductions we are shown, there is some aspiration towards something which would be a little higher. It will need about fifty years; then Unless there is another war, another catastrophe; because certainly, to a large extent, what is responsible for this taste for the sordid are the wars and the horrors of war. People were compelled to put aside all refined sensibility, the love of harmony, the need for beauty, to be able to undergo all that; otherwise, I believe, they would really have died of horror. It was so unspeakably foul that it could not be tolerated, so it perverted mens taste everywhere and when the war was over (admitting that it ever ended), they wanted only one thing, to forget, forget, forget. To seek distraction, not to think of all the horror they had suffered. Now there, one goes very low. The whole vital atmosphere is completely vitiated and the physical atmosphere is terribly obscure.
Hence, if we can escape another world war Because war is there, it has never stopped. It has been there from almost the beginning of this century; it began with China, Turkey, Tripolitania, Moroccoyou are following?the Balkans, it has never stopped, it has become worse, but each time it has become a world war, it has assumed altogether sordid proportions. All you my children, you have been born after the war (I am speaking of the First [World] War), so you do not know much about this, and then you have been born here, in a country which has been truly privileged. But the children born in Europe, latterly, these little ones, who were children of the war, carry something in them which will be very difficult to efface, a kind of horror, a fright. One could not have been mixed up with that without knowing what horror is. The first war was perhaps worse than the second. The second was so atrocious that all was lost. But the first, oh! I dont know. The last months I spent in Paris were truly fantastic. And it cant be told. The life in the trenches, for example, is something that cannot be told. The new generations do not know. But, you see, the children born now will not even know if this was true, all these horrors which are related to them. What happened in the conquered countries, in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, in France the frightful things, unbelievable, unthinkable, which took placeunless one has been very close by, has seen, one cannot believe it. It was I was saying the other day that the vital world is a world of horrors; well, all the horrors of the vital world had descended upon earth, and upon earth they are still more horrible than in the vital world, because in the vital world, if you have an inner power, if you have the knowledge, if you have strength, you act upon themyou act, you can subdue them, you can show yourself stronger. But all your knowledge, all your power, all your strength is nothing in this material world when you are subjected to the horrors of a war. And this acts in the terrestrial atmosphere in such a way that it is very, very difficult to efface it.
1951-04-19 - Demands and needs - human nature - Abolishing the ego - Food- tamas, consecration - Changing the nature- the vital and the mind - The yoga of the body - cellular consciousness, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These periods are very difficult periods of the bodily life; one feels that there is now only one thing which decides, the Supreme Will. There is no longer any supportany support, from the support of habit to the support of knowledge and of will, all the supports have vanished there is only the Supreme.
(Silence)
1951-05-03 - Money and its use for the divine work - problems - Mastery over desire- individual and collective change, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo has answered this question. He says that money in itself is an impersonal force: the way in which you acquire money concerns you alone personally. It may do you great harm, it may harm others also, but it does not in any way change the nature of the money which is an altogether impersonal force: money has no colour, no taste, no psychological consciousness. It is a force. It is like saying that the air breathed out by a scoundrel is more tainted than that breathed out by an honest man I dont think so. I think the result is the same. One may for reasons of a practical nature refuse money which has been stolen, but that is for altogether practical reasons, it is not because of divine reasons. This is a purely human idea. One may from a practical point of view say, Ah! No, the way in which you have acquired this money is disgusting and so I dont want to offer it to the Divine, because one has a human consciousness. But if you take someone (let us suppose the worst) who has killed and acquired money by the murder; if all of a sudden he is seized by terrible scruples and remorse and tells himself, I have only one thing to do with this money, give it where it can be utilised for the best, in the most impersonal way, it seems to me that this movement is preferable to utilising it for ones own satisfaction. I said that the reasons which could prevent one from receiving ill-gotten money may be reasons of a purely practical kind, but there may also be more profound reasons, of a (I do not want to say moral but) spiritual nature, from the point of view of tapasya; one may tell somebody, No, you cannot truly acquire merit with this fortune which you have obtained in such a terrible way; what you can do is to restore it, one may feel that a restitution, for instance, will help one to make more progress than simply passing the money on to any work whatever. One may see things in this wayone cant make rules. This is what I never stop telling you: it is impossible to make a rule. In every case it is different. But you must not think that the money is affected; money as a terrestrial force is not affected by the way in which it is obtained, that can in no way affect it. Money remains the same, your note remains the same, your piece of gold remains the same, and as it carries its force, its force remains there. It harms only the person who has done wrong, that is evident. Then the question remains: in what state of mind and for what reasons does your dishonest man want to pass on his money to a work he considers divine? Is it as a measure of safety, through prudence or to lay his heart at rest? Evidently this is not a very good motive and it cannot be encouraged, but if he feels a kind of repentance and regret for what he has done and the feeling that there is but one thing to do and that is precisely to deprive himself of what he has wrongly acquired and utilise it for the general good as much as possible, then there is nothing to say against that. One cannot decide in a general wayit depends upon the instance. Only, if I understand well what you mean, if one knows that a man has acquired money by the most unnamable means, obviously, it would not be good to go and ask him for money for some divine work, because that would be like rehabilitating his way of gaining money. One cannot ask, that is not possible. If, spontaneously, for some reason, he gives it, there is no reason to refuse it. But it is quite impossible to go and ask him for it, because it is as though one legitimised his manner of acquiring money. That makes a great difference.
And generally, in these cases, those who go and ask money from rascals use means of intimidation: they frighten them, not physically but about their future life, about what may happen to them, they give them a fright. It is not very nice. These are procedures one ought not to use.
1951-05-05 - Needs and desires - Discernment - sincerity and true perception - Mantra and its effects - Object in action- to serve - relying only on the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But after all, I believe one doesnt need much. Once, I remember, four of us had gone on a walking tour across the mountains of France. We had started from one town and had to reach another. It was about an eight or ten days journey across the mountain. Naturally, each of us carried a bag slung across our back, for one needs a few things. But then, before starting we had a little discussion to find out what things we really needed, what was quite indispensable. And always we came to this: Let us see, that thing we can manage in this way and everything was reduced to so little. I knew a Danish painter who used to say, Do you know, when I travel, I need only one thing, a tooth-brush. But somebody replied, But no, if you dont have a brush, you can rub with your finger!
Before undertaking any action one tries to know whether the impulse comes from the Mother or not, but generally one doesnt have enough discernment to know it and yet one acts. Can one know from the result of the action whether it came from the Mother or not?
1953-04-08, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Divine is everywhere. Yes. Things dont seem to be divine. As for me, I see only one solution: if you want to help humanity, there is only one thing to do, it is to take yourself as completely as possible and offer yourself to the Divine. That is the solution. Because in this way, at least the material reality which you represent will be able to grow a little more like the Divine.
We are told that the Divine is in all things. Why dont things change? Because the Divine does not get a response, everything does not respond to the Divine. One must search the depths of the consciousness to see this. What do you want to do to serve humanity? Give food to the poor?You can feed millions of them. That will not be a solution, this problem will remain the same. Give new and better living conditions to men?The Divine is in them, how is it that things dont change? The Divine must know better than you the condition of humanity. What are you? You represent only a little bit of consciousness and a little bit of matter, it is that you call myself. If you want to help humanity, the world or the universe, the only thing to do is to give that little bit entirely to the Divine. Why is the world not divine? It is evident that the world is not in order. So the only solution to the problem is to give what belongs to you. Give it totally, entirely to the Divine; not only for yourself but for humanity, for the universe. There is no better solution. How do you want to help humanity? You dont even know what it needs. Perhaps you know still less what power you are serving. How can you change anything without indeed having changed yourself?
1953-05-06, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats very good. We begin to touch the practical. To those who do not find it satisfactory, I would say: There is only one thing to do, start working for its change, find a way for it to be otherwise and to be good. Things are as they are. Why are they so? Perhaps one might knowit is not certain. In any case they are so. The most remarkable thing is that if you are sincere you will find out why they are so and how they are so: the cause, the origin and the process. For it is one single thing. There is what we call the Truth, the basis of everything; because if this were not there, there would be nothing. Once you have found the Truth, you find the origin, you find the means of changing the causehow it is so, why it is so and the means of changing it. If you are in contact with the Divine, you have the key to everything. You know the how, the why and the process to change.
There is something to do: to work, it is so interesting. You represent a small agglomerated mass of substance that makes up yourself. Enter within and find the key. You have only to go down inside there. You cannot say: That is beyond me, it is too big for me. Go within your little person and you will find the key which opens all the doors.
1953-05-27, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It has been called by various names, each one has presented it in his own way. According to the angle of seeing, ones experience differs. All those who have found the Divine within themselves have found Him in a certain way, following a certain experience and from a certain angle, and this angle was self-evident to them. But then, if they are not well on their guard, they begin to say: To find the Divine, one must do this and do that. And it is like that and it is that path one should follow, because for them that was the path of success. When one goes a little further, has a little more experience, one becomes aware that it is not necessarily like that, it can be done through millions of ways. There is only one thing that is certain, it is that what is found is always the same. And thats remarkable, that whatever the path followed, whatever the form given to it, the result is always the same. Their experience and everyones is the same. When they have touched the Thing, it is for all the same thing. And this is just the proof that they have touched That, because it is the same thing for all. If it is not the same thing, it means that they have not yet touched That. When they have touched That, it is the same thing. And to That, you may give all the names you like, it makes no difference.
Words are words. After all, they mean nothing, unless there is something behind. Have you never noticed that when you speak to certain people, you may express yourself quite clearly and yet they understand nothing; and to others you say just two words and they understand immediately? You have not had this experience? No? I have had it often. Therefore, it does not depend upon the external form, the words one speaks, but on the force of the thought one puts into them; and the greater, stronger, more precise and clear the thought-force, the more the chance of what you say being understood by people who are able to receive that force. But if one speaks without thinking, usually it is impossible to understand what he says. It makes a kind of noise, that is all. For example, when you have the habit of speaking with someone, exchanging ideas with him, when between the two of you there is a certain mental adjustment, that is, when you have taken the precaution of saying, When I use this word, I mean this, and the other person has said, When I use that word, I mean that, and so on; when you are used to an interchange, when you have established a kind of contact between brain and braineven if it be only thatyou understand each other quite easily. But with people who come altogether from elsewhere, with whom you have never spoken, you need a little time to adjust and adapt yourself to understand what they mean by the words they use. What is it that makes you understand? It is just the kind of mental sense that is behind the words. When the thought is strongly thought out, there is a powerful vibration and it is that which is sensed; the word is only an intermediary means. You can develop this sense to the point of having a direct mental contact with a minimum of words or even without any words at all; but then you must have a very great force of thought-concentration. And for everything one does, it is like that. When there is a developed consciousness behind, when one has the power to concentrate it, one can do anything at allthis consciousness will act.2 Certainly it is not the bodily mechanism that makes you act; the mechanism is simply an instrument, nothing more. The day you catch that (it is invisible, but you can catch it), and when you catch it and put it into your movement, this movement becomes conscious and you do well whatever you do. The day you do not catch it, it slips from you like water through your fingers; and then you are clumsy, you do not understand, you do not know what to do. Hence, it is not the physical mechanism that counts, it is what is behind.
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Yes, if it moves in a very definite direction, if it progresses sufficiently, if it does not stop on the way, scientists will find the same thing the mystics have found, and all religious people, everybody, because there is only one thing to find, there are not two. There is only one. So one can go a long way, one can turn round and round and round, and if one turns and turns long enough without stopping, one is bound to come to the same spot. Once there, one feels as though there is nothing at all to find. As I have just told you, there is nothing to find. It is That, the Power.3 It is That, that is all. It is so. Still another question?
Can the Divine withdraw from us?
1953-07-08, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, if you have a little knowledge and consciousness, you can become aware of the reason, and then, when one realises the reason, there is only one thing to do, just this (gesture), as one brushes off a fly. Flies are very troublesome and come back again and again; and evil formations take care! have the same habit as flies. You brush flies away, they return, you brush them away again, again they return. They think it is a game. Have you never noticed, flies take this as a game? truly, even as they are sent away, they return. Only, if at a particular moment you become angry, you get into a temper and do this (gesture), even if you do not touch it, the fly will not come back. It feels it. Try, you will see.
But a bad thought is a bad deed. There are people who do not know it, but truly a bad thought is a bad deed and if one thinks and wishes harm to someone, well, one is responsible for the misfortunes that come upon him just as much as though one had acted. But the unfortunate thing is that this is not recognised and that never does one intervene in the bad thoughts of people. There are even people who take great pleasure in inciting the bad thoughts of others. I have known such people (unfortunately far too many), when they have something unpleasant to say to somebody, they never miss the opportunity of telling him: You know, somebody said that about you, and also: You know, that other person said this about you. And thus they create as much harm as they think of. And this they do at times simply through stupidity, most often through vanity, in order to show off that they know something. But at bottom, in the consciousness, there is what is called mischief-making something that enjoys creating disorder, misunderstandings, disputes among people, unpleasant situations, and feels at ease amidst these. There are many people with a very sharp tongue. It is called in French une langue de vipre, a viperish tongue. This is their great amusement. And they do much, much, much harm. But even without speaking, if one has a strong thought and thinks ill of people, one does a bad deed.
1953-07-15, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing that can truly save you, it is to have a contact, even the slightest, with your psychic beingto have felt the solidity of that contact. Then whatever comes to you from this person or that circumstance you place in front of that and see whether it is all right or not. Even if you are satisfiedin every wayeven if you say to yourself: At last I have found the friend I wanted to have. I am in the best circumstances of my life, etc., then put that before this little contact with your psychic being, you will see whether it keeps its bright colour or suddenly there comes a little uneasiness, not much, nothing making a great noise, but just a little uneasiness. You are no longer so sure that it was as you thought! Then you know: yes, it is that small voice which one must listen to always. It is that which is the truth and the other cant trouble you any longer.
If you come to the spiritual life with a sincere aspiration, sometimes an avalanche of unpleasant things falls upon you: you quarrel with your best friends, your family kicks you out of the house, you lose what you thought you had gained. I knew someone who had come to India with a great aspiration and after a very long effort towards knowledge and even towards Yoga. That was long long ago. At that time, people used to put on watch-chains and trinkets. This gentleman had a golden pencil which his grandmo ther had given him to which he was attached as the most precious thing in the world. It was fixed to his chain. When he landed at one of these portsat Pondicherry or perhaps elsewhere in India or at Colombo, I believe it was at Colombo they used to get into small boats and the boats took you ashore. And so this gentleman had to jump from the gangway of the ship into the boat. He missed his step, somehow got back his balance, but he made a sudden movement and the little gold pencil dropped into the sea and went straight down into the depths. He was at first very much aggrieved, but he told himself: Why, that is the effect of India: I am freed from my attachments. It is for very sincere people that the thing takes such a form. Fundamentally, the avalanche of troubles is always for sincere people. Those who are not sincere receive things with the most beautiful bright colours just to deceive them, and then in the end to enable them to find out that they are mistaken! But when someone has big troubles, it proves that he has reached a certain degree of sincerity.
1953-09-09, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing the vital abhors; it is a dull life, monotonous, grey, tasteless, worthless. Faced with that, it goes to sleep, falls into inertia. It likes extremely violent things, it is true; it can be extremely wicked, extremely cruel, extremely generous, extremely good and extremely heroic. It always goes to extremes and can be on one side or the other, yes, as the current flows.
And this vital, if you place it in a bad environment, it will imitate the bad environment and do bad things with violence and to an extreme degree. If you place it in the presence of something wonderfully beautiful, generous, great, noble, divine, it can be carried away with that also, forget everything else and give itself wholly. It will give itself more completely than any other part of the being, for it does not calculate. It follows its passion and enthusiasm. When it has desires, its desires are violent, arbitrary, and it does not at all take into account the good or bad of others; it doesnt care the least bit. But when it gives itself to something beautiful, it does not calculate either, it will give itself entirely without knowing whether it will do good or harm to it. It is a very precious instrument.
1953-10-28, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even for a cylinder, if you drew only one line, one part of the cylinder would escape you altogether. This movement in a spiral is precisely to try and make everything enter this phenomenon of evolutionso that not only one thing may advance whilst the others remain behind. And so, according to the centre where the progress is concentrated, one seems to move away from one thing and enter into another. But in the long run, when one evolves consciously, one does not forget one thing in order to do another. What is bad at present is forgetfulness; it is that when following a certain activity for a realisation, one forgets all the others or they go into the background, they have no longer any intensity. But this is a human shortcoming which can be correctedit ought to be corrected.
Do all progress in a spiral, and all together or separately?
1954-02-17 - Experience expressed in different ways - Origin of the psychic being - Progress in sports -Everything is not for the best, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It all depends on what meaning you put into the word God. It is a word (I have told you this at least four or five times) to express something you do not know but are trying to attain. Well, if you have received a religious education, you are accustomed to call this God. If you have received a more positivist and also a more philosophical education, you are accustomed to call this by all sorts of names, and you may at the same time have the idea that it is the supreme truth. If one wants to speak of God and describe him, one is obliged to make use of things which are the most inaccessible to our consciousness, and to call God what is beyond anything we know and can grasp and beall that is too far for us to be able to understand, we call God. Only some religions (there are some) give a precise form to the godhead; and sometimes they give several forms and they have several gods; sometimes they give one form and have only one God; but all this is human fabrication. There is something, there is a reality which is beyond all our expressions, but which we can succeed in contacting by practising a discipline. We can identify ourselves with it. Once one is identified with it one knows what it is, but one cannot express it, for words cannot say it. So, if you use one kind of vocabulary, if you have a particular mental conviction, you will use the vocabulary corresponding to that conviction. If you belong to another group which has another way of speaking, you will call it or even think about it in that way. I am telling you this to give you the true impression, that there is something there which cannot be graspedgrasped by thought but which exists. But the name you give it matters little, thats of no importance, it exists. And so the only thing to do is to enter into contact with itnot to give it a name or describe it. In fact, there is hardly any use giving it a name or describing it. One must try to enter into contact, to concentrate upon it, live it, live that reality, and whatever the name you give it is not at all important once you have the experience. The experience alone counts. And when people associate the experience with a particular expression and in so narrow a way, so closed up in itself that apart from this formula one can find nothing that is an inferiority. One must be able to live that reality through all possible paths, all occasions, all formations; one must live it, for that indeed is true, for that is supremely good, that is all-powerful, that knows all, that Yes, one can live that, but one cannot speak about it. And if one does speak, all that one says about it has no great importance. It is only one way of speaking that is all. There is an entire line of philosophers and people who have replaced the notion of God by the notion of an impersonal Absolute or by a notion of Truth or a notion of justice or even by a notion of progressof something eternally progressive; but for one who has within him the capacity of identifying himself with that, what has been said about it hasnt much importance. Sometimes one may read a whole book of philosophy and not progress a step farther. Sometimes one may be quite a fervent devotee of a religion and not progress. There are people who have spent entire lifetimes seated in contemplation and attained nothing. There are people (we have well-known examples) who used to do the most modest of manual works, like a cobbler mending old shoes, and who had an experience. It is altogether beyond what one thinks and says of it. It is some gift thats there, that is all. And all that is needed is to be thatto succeed in identifying oneself with it and live it. At times you read one sentence in a book and that leads you there. Sometimes you read entire books of philosophy or religion and they get you nowhere. There are people, however, whom the reading of philosophy books helps to go ahead. But all these things are secondary. There is only one thing thats important: that is a sincere and persistent will, for these things dont happen in a twinkling. So one must persevere. When someone feels that he is not advancing, he must not get discouraged; he must try to find out what it is in the nature that is opposing, and then make the necessary progress. And suddenly one goes forward. And when you reach the end you have an experience. And what is remarkable is that people who have followed altogether different paths, with altogether different mental constructions, from the greatest believer to the most unbelieving, even materialists, have arrived at that experience, it is the same for everyone. Because it is truebecause it is real, because it is the sole reality. And it is quite simply that. I do not say anything more. This is of no importance, the way one speaks about it, what is important is to follow the path, your path, no matter whichyes, to go there.
I did not understand the explanation of the psychic you have given: One could say, for example, that the creation of an individual being is the result of the projection, in time and space, of one of the countless possibilities latent in the supreme origin of all manifestation which, through the medium of the one and universal consciousness, takes concrete form in the law or the truth of an individual and so, by a progressive development, becomes his soul or psychic being.
1954-05-05 - Faith, trust, confidence - Insincerity and unconsciousness, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh! One doesnt know? That is because one is not sufficiently sincere and doesnt look at oneself. For, I guarantee this, if you are conscious that you are insincere, you know where it lies. Otherwise you could not be aware of your insincerity. For instance, in a certain circumstance one knows, knows that one should do this: I should do this; and at the same time one does not wish to do it, eh! And so, within oneself one finds a means, a sort of way of deceiving oneself and not doing it, because one does not want to do itah, that happen very often! (Laughter) And then, if at that moment, the moment when you are doing this little inner work to find an excuse for not doing what you dont want to do, if at that moment you become aware that you are insincere and still continue to do it, this means that you are perverse. If you ask me, this is what I call being wicked, bad. But if you realise that you are insincere, this means that you are conscious that you are insincere, and how can you say I am not conscious of my insincerity? Ninety times out of a hundred one does it without knowing. That indeed is the misery. It is that one deceives oneself with such facility, finds good tricks for not doing what one doesnt want to do, or the contrary: for doing what one wishes to do when one knows very well one shouldnt do itit is the same thing. So you give yourself good reasons, and, unhappily, as I said, most men are so unconscious that they do it without even realising it. They think they are very sincere: No, sincerely, I thought I had to do itlike that, quite innocently. But thats because they are not sincere, not at all because they are quite unconscious. But if one is just a little conscious of what is happening within, one perceives very well the little trick one has played and how one has foundhas somewhere been so cleverly unearthing, an excellent excuse for doing what one wanted to do. Even when one knows very well one ought not to do it. It is these two, you see: a play between unconsciousness and insincerity, insincerity and unconsciousness, in this way. But if you tell me, I am conscious of my insincerity, then naturally at that moment this fact faces you: Have you decided to remain in the darkness or do you want to progress? There, the problem comes up. If you are conscious of your insincerity, you have only one thing to do: that is to put a red-hot iron on it and make yourself sincere. That is the feeling. You must take a red-hot iron: it bur well, and then ouch! thats the way.
For a moment it hurts a little, afterwards one is left in peace.
1954-07-07 - The inner warrior - Grace and the Falsehood - Opening from below - Surrender and inertia - Exclusive receptivity - Grace and receptivity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Instead of self-opening we could put receptivity, something that opens in order to receive. Now, instead of opening and receiving from all sides and from everyone, as is usually done, one opens only to the Divine to receive only the divine force. It is the very opposite of what men usually do. They are always open on the surface, they receive all the influences from all sides. And then this produces inside them what we might call a pot-pourri (Mother laughs) of all kinds of contradictory movements which naturally create countless difficulties. So here, you are advised to open only to the Divine and to receive only the divine force to the exclusion of everything else. This diminishes all difficulties almost entirely. only one thing remain difficult. It is One can do it and, unless one is in a state of total alchemy, well, it is difficult to be in contact with people, to speak to them, for example, to have any kind of exchange with them without absorbing something from them. It is difficult. If one is in a kind of if one is in an atmosphere thats like a filter, then everything that comes from outside is filtered before it touches you. But it is very difficult; it requires a very wide experience. That is why, also, people who wanted the easiest path went into solitude to sit under a tree, did not speak any more and saw nobody; for this helps to diminish undesirable exchanges. Only, it has been noticed that these people begin to become enormously interested in the life of little animals, the life of plants, for it is difficult not to have any exchange with anything at all. So it is much better to face the problem squarely and be surrounded by an atmosphere so totally concentrated on the Divine that what comes through this atmosphere is filtered in its passage.
And then again, even when this has been done, there is still the problem of food; as long as our body is compelled to take in foreign matter in order to subsist, it will absorb at the same time a considerable amount of inert and unconscious forces or those having a rather undesirable consciousness, and this alchemy must take place inside the body. We were speaking of the kinds of consciousness absorbed with food, but there is also the Inconscience thats absorbed with foodquite a deal of it. And that is why in many yogas there was the advice to offer to the Divine what one was going to eat before eating it (Mother makes a gesture of offering, hands joined, palms open). It consists in calling the Divine down into the food before eating it. One offers it to Him that is, one puts it in contact with the Divine, so that it may be under the divine influence when one eats it. It is very useful, it is very good. If one knows how to do it, it is very useful, it considerably reduces the work of inner transformations which has to be done. But, you see, in the world as it is, we are all interdependent. You cannot take in the air without taking in the vibrations, the countless vibrations produced by all kinds of movements and all kinds of people, and you mustif you want to remain intactyou must constantly act like a filter, as I was saying. That is to say, nothing that is undesirable should be allowed to enter, as when one goes to infected areas, one wears a mask over the face so that the air may be purified before one breathes it in. Well, something similar has to be done. One must have around oneself so intense an atmosphere in a total surrender to the Divine, so intensified around oneself that everything that passes through is automatically filtered. Anyhow, it is very useful in life, for there arewe spoke about this toothere are bad thoughts, bad wills, people who wish you ill, who make formations. There are all kinds of absolutely undesirable things in the atmosphere. And so, if one must always be on the watch, looking around on all sides, one would think only of one thing, how to protect oneself. First of all, it is tiresome, and then, you see, it makes you waste much time. If you are well enveloped in this way, with this light, the light of a perfectly glad, totally sincere surrender, when you are enveloped with that, it serves you as a marvellous filter. Nothing that is altogether undesirable, nothing that has ill-will can pass through. So, automatically, these things return where they came from. If there is a conscious ill-will against you, it comes, but cannot pass; the door is closed, for it is open only to divine things, it is not open to anything else. So it returns very quietly to the source from where it came.
1954-07-21 - Mistakes - Success - Asuras - Mental arrogance - Difficulty turned into opportunity - Mothers use of flowers - Conversion of men governed by adverse forces, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You must not judge things from an outer success or a semblance of defeat. We may sayand generally this is what almost always happenswe could say that the Divine gives what one desires, and of all lessons this is the best! For, if your desire is inconscient, obscure, egoistic, you increase the unconsciousness, the darkness and egoism within yourself; that is to say, this takes you farther and farther away from the truth, from consciousness and happiness. It takes you far away from the Divine. And for the Divine, naturally, only one thing is true the divine Consciousness, the divine Union. And each time you put material things in front, you become more and more materialistic and go farther and farther away from full success.
But for the Truth that other success is a terrible defeat. You have exchanged truth for falsehood!
1954-08-25 - Ananda aspect of the Mother - Changing conditions in the Ashram - Ascetic discipline - Mothers body, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the beginning we were very, very, very strict. For a long time the first condition was this: You have no longer anything to do with your family. Well, we are now far from that, arent we? And I tell you it was only in this way that it happened. It doesnt mean that we didnt see that it was necessary; it was a very necessary condition. So long as one keeps all the ties which bind one to life, you understand, which make you a slave of the ordinary life, how can you belong only to the Divine? Thats childishness, it is not possible! But if you take the trouble to read the first rules of the Ashram, even friendship among people was considered dangerous and not very desirable. We had tried to create an atmosphere where only one thing counted, the divine life. But as I said, you know, little by little it has changed.
This has one advantage. We were too much outside life. Many problems did not occur which, when the full manifestation is wanted, would suddenly appear. We have taken up the problems a little too soon. But it was necessary to solve them. One learns many things in this way. Many difficulties are overcome. But it becomes more complicated. And perhaps, in the present condition, with such a large number of elements which dont have the least idea of the purpose for which they are here it asks much more effort from the disciples than before.
1955-06-08 - Working for the Divine - ideal attitude - Divine manifesting - reversal of consciousness, knowing oneself - Integral progress, outer, inner, facing difficulties - People in Ashram - doing Yoga - Children given freedom, choosing yoga, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But even if you must be the one and only being in the whole creation who gives himself integrally in all purity to the Divine, and being the only one, being naturally absolutely misunderstood by everybody, scoffed at, ridiculed, hated, even if you were that, there is no reason for not doing it. One must be either a tinsel actor or else a fool. Because others don't do it? But what does it matter whether they do it or not? "Why, the whole world may go the wrong way, it does not concern me. There is only one thing with which I am concerned, to go straight. What others do, how is it my concern? It is their business, not mine."
This is the worst of all slaveries!
1955-06-29 - The true vital and true physical - Time and Space - The psychics memory of former lives - The psychic organises ones life - The psychics knowledge and direction, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing which knows in you, thats your psychic; it makes no mistake, it will immediately, instantaneously tell you, if you obey it without a word and without your ideas and arguments, it will make you do the right thing. But all the rest you are lost. And for everything: what are you going to study, what are you not going to study, what work are you going to do, what path are you going to take? But then there are all the possibilities which come in, all that you have either studied or met in life, all the suggestions you have received from all sides, which are there, like that, dancing around you. And with what will you decide? I am speaking of people who are absolutely sincere and have no preconceived ideas, prejudices, established rules which they follow in a mechanical routine, without endeavouring to know the truth at all, and for whom their mental construction is the truth. Then it is so simple, one goes straight on his path, bumps his nose against the wall but doesnt notice it until the nose is smashed. But otherwise it is terribly difficult.
This was what Sri Aurobindo meant when he said that one lived constantly in ignorance and that unless the mind of ignorance is replaced by the mind of light one could not follow the true path, and that this was the indispensable preparation before any integral transformation could take place.
1956-02-08 - Forces of Nature expressing a higher Will - Illusion of separate personality - One dynamic force which moves all things - Linear and spherical thinking - Common ideal of life, microscopic, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When the Buddha wanted to make his disciples understand these things, he used to tell them: every time you send out a vibration, a desire for example, the desire for some particular thing, your desire starts circulating from one person to another, from one to another across the universe and will go right round and come back to you. And as it is not only one thing but a world of things, and as you are not the only transmitting centerall individuals are transmitting centersit is such a confusion that you lose your bearings in there. But these vibrations move about in a single, absolutely identical field; it is only the complication and interception of the vibrations which give you the impression of something independent or separate.
But theres nothing separate or independent; there is only one Substance, one Force, one Consciousness, one Will, which moves in countless ways of being.
1956-02-22 - Strong immobility of an immortal spirit - Equality of soul - Is all an expression of the divine Will? - Loosening the knot of action - Using experience as a cloak to cover excesses - Sincerity, a rare virtue, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I remember having read in a class, before our present class starteda class which also used to be held on Wednesdays, perhaps, I dont quite know, in which I used to read books I read a book by Anatole France, who had a very subtle wit I think it was Le Livre de Jerome Coignard but I am not absolutely surewhere he says that men would be perfectly happy if they were not so anxious to improve life. I am not quoting the exact words but the idea. Unhappiness begins with this will to make men and things better! (Mother laughs) That is his way of saying exactly the same thing I was just telling you in another form. If you want to be peaceful, happy, always satisfied, to have perfect equality of soul, you must tell yourself, Things are as they should be, and if you are religious you should tell yourself, They are as they should be because they are the expression of the divine Will, and we have only one thing to do, that is to accept them as they are and be very quiet, because it is better to be quiet than to be restless. He turns the thing round and puts it in another way; he says life is very comfortable and very tolerable and very acceptable, if men dont begin to wish that it should be different. And the minute they are not happy, naturally nobody is happy! Since they find that it is not what it should be, well, they begin to be unhappy and others too.
But if everyone had the good sense to say, Things are as they should be; one dies because one has to die, and one is ill because one has to be ill, one is separated from those one loves because one has to be separated, and then, etc and one is in poverty because one has to be poor, one, you know, there is no end to it. Well, if completely, totally, one says, Things are as they should be, it makes no sense to grieve or to revolt, its foolish! Ah! one must be logical. So we say that misery begins with the will to make things better than they are. Why do you not want to be ill when you are ill? You are much more ill when, being ill, you dont want to be ill, than if you tell yourself, All right, it is Gods Will, I accept my illness! At least you are quiet, that helps you to recover, perhaps. And poor peoplewhy do they want to be rich? And people who lose their children or their parentswhy dont they want it to be like that? If everybody wanted things to be as they are, everybody would be happy.
1957-02-06 - Death, need of progress - Changing Natures methods, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is obvious that the most dominant characteristic of matter is inertia, and that, if there were not this violence, perhaps the individual consciousness would be so inert that rather than change it would accept to live in a perpetual imperfection. That is possible. Anyway, this is how things are made, and for us who know a little more, there is only one thing that remains to be done it is to change all this, as far as we have the means, by calling the Force, the Consciousness, the new Power which is capable of infusing into material substance the vibration which can transform it, make it plastic, supple, progressive.
Obviously the greatest obstacle is the attachment to things as they are; but even Nature as a whole finds that those who have the deeper knowledge want to go too fast: she likes her meanderings, she likes her successive attempts, her failures, her fresh beginnings, her new inventions; she likes the fantasy of the path, the unexpectedness of the experience; one could almost say that for her the longer it takes, the more enjoyable it is.
1957-03-22 - A story of initiation, knowledge and practice, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They forget only one thing, that they have obtained the knowledgeintellectual, mental knowledgebefore having deserved it, that is, before having put into practice what they have read, and that, naturally, there is discrepancy between their state of consciousness and the ideas, the knowledge they can speak about at length but which they havent practised.
So it is for the impatient ones that I am going to read this story, to tell you how things happened in the days of old when one couldnt simply have a book and read it, when one depended on the Guru or the Initiate to obtain the knowledge which he alone had; he had received it from another Guru, another Initiate, and he transmitted it to you when he pleased, that is, when he found you worthy of having it.
1958-01-01 - The collaboration of material Nature - Miracles visible to a deep vision of things - Explanation of New Year Message, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I will tell you only one thing: you should not misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that from now on everything is going to take place without any difficulties and always in a manner that favours our personal desires. It is not on this plane. It does not mean that when we do not want it to rain, it will not rain! that when we want something to happen in the world, it will happen immediately; that all difficulties will be done away with and everything will be as it is in fairy-tales. It is not that. It is something much deeper: Nature, in her play of forces, has accepted the new Force which has manifested and included it in her movements. And as always, the movements of Nature are on a scale which is infinitely beyond the human scale and not visible to an ordinary human consciousness. It is an inner, psychological possibility which has come into the world rather than a spectacular change in earthly events.
I am saying this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy-tales were going to be realised on earth. It is not yet time for that.
1958-01-15 - The only unshakable point of support, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So there is only one thing to do: to proceed on ones way keeping ones own faith and certitude, and to pay no heed to contradictions and denials.
There are people who need the support and trust and certitude of others to feel comfortable and to be at easethey are always unhappy because, of course, they will always come across people who do not believe, and so they will be upset and it will trouble them. One must find ones certitude within oneself, keep it in spite of everything and go ones way whatever the cost, to the very end. The Victory is for the most enduring.
1964 02 05 - 98, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Things of this sort come to me more and more often and I jot them down on a piece of paper. It is always the same process, always. First of all, a kind of explosion, an explosion of truth-powerit is like a great, white fireworks display (Mother smiles), much more than a fireworks display! And it spins round and round (gesture above the head), it churns and churns; then there is the impression of an idea but the idea is lower, it is like a covering; the idea contains its own sensation, it also brings a sensation thesensation was there before, but without the idea, and so the sensation could not be defined. There is only one thing, it is always an explosion of luminous Power. And then, afterwards, if you look at it and remain very quiet the head, especially, should keep quieteverything becomes silent (motionless, upward gesture), then suddenly someone speaks inside the headsomeone speaks. It is this explosion speaking. Then I take a pencil and paper and I write. But between what speaks and what writes there is still a little space to be crossed, so that when it is written down something up there is not satisfied. So I remain quiet a little longerNo, not that word, this one sometimes it takes two days to become quite final. But those who are satisfied with the power of the experience make short work of this, and send out into the world sensational revelations that are distortions of the Truth.
You must be very steady, very quiet, very criticalespecially very quiet, silent, silent, silent, without trying to seize hold of the experienceOh! What is it, what is it?that spoils everything. But watchwatch very closely. In the words there is something left, something that remains of the original vibrationso little! But there is something, something that makes you smile, that is pleasant, like a sparkling wine, and here (Mother indicates a word or a passage in an imaginary note), here it is dull. Then you look with your knowledge of the language, or with your sense of word-rhythm: Look, theres a pebble. You must remove the pebble; and then you wait and suddenly it comes, plop! it falls into place: the right word. If you are patient, after a day or two, it becomes absolutely accurate.
1f.lovecraft - The Shadow out of Time, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
only one thing consoled methe fact that the myths were of such early
existence. What lost knowledge could have brought pictures of the
1f.lovecraft - Through the Gates of the Silver Key, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Integral Yoga
good purpose. Theres only one thing to dohave this faker arrested. De
Marigny, will you telephone for the police?
1.jlb - Everness (& interpretation), #Borges - Poems, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
There is only one thing. It is oblivion.
God, who saves the metal, saves the slag
2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"To know many things is ajnna, ignorance. To know only one thing is jnna, Knowledge-the realization that God alone is real and that He dwells in all. And to talk to Him is vijnna, a fuller Knowledge. To love God in different ways, after realizing Him, is vijnna.
"It is also said that God is beyond one and two. He is beyond speech and mind. To go up from the Lila to the Nitya and come down again from the Nitya to the Lila is mature bhakti.
2.07 - The Supreme Word of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Divine Infinite naturally approachable to man and most easily, widely, intimately seizable. This seeing is not after all the largest or the truest truth that the Supreme is without any relations with the mental, vital, physical existence of man in the universe, avyavaharyam, nor that what is described as the empirical truth of things, the truth of relations, vyavahara, is altogether the opposite of the highest spiritual truth, paramartha. On the contrary there are a thousand relations by which the supreme Eternal is secretly in contact and union with our human existence and by all essential ways of our nature and of the world's nature, sarvabhavena, can that contact be made sensible and that union made real to our soul, heart, will, intelligence, spirit. Therefore is this other way natural and easy for man, sukham aptum. God does not make himself difficult of approach to us: only one thing is needed, one demand made on us, the single indomitable will to break through the veil of our ignorance and the whole, the persistent seeking of the mind and heart and life for that which is all the time near to it, within it, its own soul of being and spiritual essence and the secret of its personality and its impersonality, its self and its nature. This is our one difficulty; the rest the Master of our existence will himself see to and accomplish, aham tvam moks.ayis.yami ma sucah..
In the very part of its teaching in which the Gita's synthesis leans most towards the side of pure knowledge, we have
2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Hem used to come to the temple garden at Dakshineswar. Whenever he chanced to meet me, he would say: 'Well, priest, there is only one thing worth having in this world, and that is honour. Isn't that so?' Very few indeed say that the goal of human life is the realization of God."
SHYAM: "We hear a great deal about the subtle body. Can anyone show it to us? Can anyone demonstrate that the subtle body, when a man dies, leaves the gross body and goes away?"
2.3.02 - Opening, Sincerity and the Mother's Grace, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing needed to make anyone fit for the
Mother's grace - it is a perfect sincerity and a truthful openness
2.3.08 - The Mother's Help in Difficulties, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Once one has entered the path of Yoga, there is only one thing to do, to fix oneself in the resolution to go to the end whatever happens, whatever difficulties arise. None really gets the fulfilment in Yoga by his own capacity - it is by the greater Force that stands over you that it will come - and it is the call, persistent through all vicissitudes, to that Force, by which the fulfilment will come. Even when you cannot aspire actively, keep yourself turned to the Mother for the help to come - that is the one thing to do always.
3 January 1934
--
These suggestions are what we call hostile suggestions - they come from a Force which is wandering about in the atmosphere trying to do harm to the sadhana. Its suggestions are always the same, to whomever they come - the suggestion of going away, the suggestion of unfitness and failure, this suggestion of madness, and a certain fixed number of others with the same purpose. There is only one thing to do with them - never to
The Mother's Help in Difficulties
2.3.1 - Ego and Its Forms, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All attachment and ego must disappear. No temptation of power, for power is given only to do the Divines work and the power itself is the Divines. No attachment to work, for the work is not the egos, but the Divines. No attachment or insistence on the fruits, for that too belongs to the Divine and will come when mind and circumstances are ready. It is the same with sadhana. only one thing is to be the aim, to be in union and contact with the Divine through love and surrender,the rest will come out of that, whatever is needed for the manifestation.
***
3.04 - On Thought - III, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Buddha always categorically refused to answer any metaphysical question on the origin or the end of the universe, saying that only one thing matters: to advance on the Way, that is, to purify oneself inwardly, to destroy in oneself all egoistic desire.
88
3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is only one thing to do for those on whom it comesto break off the habit entirely, uncompromisingly and for ever and never to touch the sex-centre.
***
40.02 - The Two Chains Of The Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Integral Yoga
I wanted to tell you only one thing: you are going out but wherever you go, you carry something within you, something that is permanent and eternal since the beginning of the world. I have sometimes spoken of the golden chain of the Mother; I have said too that Mother had two chains, one of gold and the other of iron. These two chains are your eternal companions; wherever you may go, you will carry these two with you. You are bound to the Mother forever - forever, be sure of that. It's the prop of your life, it's your aspiration. These are not chains of bondage but of freedom and entire satisfaction. You may ask: what are these chains of gold and of iron? The golden chain is in your soul and the iron one is in your body. The body, your body, is also bound to the Mother, to her Presence and Influence. Body means not only the material body, but the physical body, the inner body. Now, the imprint of the Mother's Presence, you carry that in this physical body. You may not be always aware of that, but this makes no difference, nothing at all. Here I may refer to something pertinentOne day someone went to see the Mother on his birthday; it was our Prithwi Singh. Now, Prithwi Singh plaintively said to the Mother: "Mother, here I am, so near to you; it's my birthday, a day so nice and precious to me, but I cannot see you, for I am blind in both of my eyes." Then the Mother answered: "What does that matter? You cannot see me but I am seeing you."
And this is always so. You cannot see with your physical eyes but the Mother's look is always upon you, her look of love and protection: be sure and certain of that. You carry that within you for all time and wherever you go, wherever in the entire world. You carry in you a portion, a spark of her Love; and that will save you from many difficulties, from much danger. If you can keep that in your active memory, it will be still more beneficial. That's all.
4.02 - Autobiographical Evidence, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
of activation. This can mean only one thing, that it is in that
direction that the human must inevitably incline, there,
4.04 - Weaknesses, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have only one thing to say: Depression is a bad adviser.
My love is always with you. Have faith and you will be all right.
--
Of course, X told me the story in a very different way but I am used to the fact that each one tells me things from a particular angle, the one which is most favourable to him and I do not give much importance to that. There is only one thing
I always regret: the useless quarrels that make life so difficult when, with a little mutual goodwill, everything could be settled harmoniously.
4.1.01 - The Intellect and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Still less can it be spiritually satisfying to remain with shadowy reflections; a search imposes itself for the Light which they strive to figure. But since this Reality and this Light are in ourselves no less than in some high region above the mortal plane, we can in the seeking for it use many of the figures and activities of Life; as one offers a flower, a prayer, an act to the Divine, one can offer too a created form of beauty, a song, a poem, an image, a strain of music, and gain through it a contact, a response or an experience. And when that divine Consciousness has been entered or when it grows within, then too its expression in life through these things is not excluded from Yoga; these creative activities can still have their place, though not intrinsically a greater place than any other that can be put to divine use and service. Art, poetry, music, as they are in their ordinary functioning, create mental and vital, not spiritual values; but they can be turned to a higher end, and then, like all things that are capable of linking our consciousness to the Divine, they are transmuted and become spiritual and can be admitted as part of a life of Yoga. All takes new values not from itself, but from the consciousness that uses it; for there is only one thing essential, needful, indispensable, to grow conscious of the Divine Reality and live in it and live it always.
The Intellect and Yoga
4.12 - The Way of Equality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The third way is that of submission, which may be the Christian resignation founded on submission to the will of God, or an unegoistic acceptance of things and happenings as a manifestation of the universal Will in time, or a complete surrender of the person to the Divine, to the supreme Purusha. As the first was a way of the will and the second a way of knowledge, of the understanding reason, so this is a way of the temperament and heart and very intimately connected with the principle of Bhakti. If it is pushed to the end, it arrives at the same result of a perfect equality. For the knot of the ego is loosened and the personal claim begins to disappear, we find that we are no longer bound to joy in things pleasant or sorrow over the unpleasant; we bear them without either eager acceptance or troubled rejection, refer them to the Master of our being, concern ourselves less and less with their personal result to us and hold only one thing of importance, to approach God, or to be in touch and tune with the universal and infinite Existence, or to be united with the Divine, his channel, instrument, servant, lover, rejoicing in him and in our relation with him and having no other object or cause of joy or sorrow. Here too there may be for some time a division between the lower mind of habitual emotions and the higher psychical mind of love and self-giving, but eventually the former yields, changes, transforms itself, is swallowed up in the love, joy, delight of the Divine and has no other interests or attractions. Then all within is the equal peace and bliss of that union, the one silent bliss that passes understanding, the peace that abides untouched by the solicitation of lower things in the depths of our spiritual existence.
These three ways coincide in spite of their separate starting-points, first, by their inhibition of the normal reactions of the mind to the touches of outward things, bahya-sparsan, secondly, by their separation of the self or spirit from the outward action of Nature. Bat it is evident that our perfection will be greater and more ernbracingly complete, if we can have a more active equality which will enable us not only to draw back from or confront the world in a detached and separated calm, but to return upon it and possess it in the power of the calm and equal Spirit. This is possible because the world, Nature, action are not in fact a quite separate thing, but a manifestation of the Self, the All-Soul, the Divine. The reactions of the normal mind are a degradation of the divine values which would but for this degradation make this truth evident to us, --a falsification, an ignorance which alters their workings, an ignorance which starts from the involution of Self in a blind material nescience. Once we return to the full consciousness of Self, of God, we can then put a true divine value on things and receive and act on them with the calm, joy, knowledge, seeing will of the Spirit. When we begin to do that, then the soul begins to have an equal joy in the universe, an equal will dealing with all energies, an equal knowledge which takes possession of the spiritual truth behind all the phenomena of this divine manifestation. It possesses the world as the Divine possesses it, in a fullness of the infinite light, power and Ananda.
4.3.3 - Dealing with Hostile Attacks, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
You ought to realise that these things [negative thoughts and feelings] are attacks which come on you from an adverse Force to which your nature was responsive because of vital desire and the vital egowhat you call selfishness. When it comes, you have to realise that it is an attack and refuse instead of accepting itand in order to be able to do that you must always discourage desire and selfishness in you and all that comes from them such as jealousy, claim, anger etc. It is no use alleging that there are good reasons for their risingeven if all the alleged reasons were true, they would not justify your indulging them, for in a sadhak nothing can justify that. There is no need to understand for there is only one thing that it is necessary to understand that, reason or no reason, desire, selfishness, jealousy, demand, anger have no place in the spiritual life.
If you keep to what you have resolved, then all will be rightand the right knowledge will come not from the mind and its reasonings but from the soul and its true vision of things.
5.06 - THE TRANSFORMATION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[616] For a naive-minded person the imperfect, corrupt old Adam is simply contrasted with the perfect Primordial Man, and the dark Eve with an illuminated and altogether nobler being. The modern viewpoint is much more realistic, as it withdraws the archetypal schema, which referred originally to a mythological situation, back from projection, and peoples the stage not with mythical lay-figures but with real human beings and their psyches. The man, or the masculine ego-consciousness, is then contrasted with an animus, the masculine figure in a womans unconscious, who compels her either to overvalue him or to protest against him. The corresponding figure that contrasts with the woman and her feminine ego-consciousness is the anima, the source of all the illusions, over- and under-valuations of which a man makes himself guilty in regard to a woman. There is nothing to indicate in this schema that the man is better than the animus or vice versa, or that the anima is a higher being than the woman. Nor does it indicate in which direction the line of development is moving. only one thing is clear, that when, as a result of a long, technical and moral procedure the patient obtains a knowledge of this structure, based on experience, and accepts the responsibility entailed by this knowledge, there follows an integration or completeness of the individual, who in this way approaches wholeness but not perfection, which is the ideal of certain world philosophies. In the Middle Ages philosophy prevailed over fact to such an extent that the base metal lead was credited with the power to turn into gold under certain conditions, and the dark, psychic man with the capacity to turn himself into the higher pneumatic man. But just as lead, which theoretically could become gold, never did so in practice, so the sober-minded man of our own day looks round in vain for the possibility of final perfection. Therefore, on an objective view of the facts, which alone is worthy of the name of science, he sees himself obliged to lower his pretensions a little, and instead of striving after the ideal of perfection to content himself with the more accessible goal of approximate completeness. The progress thereby made possible does not lead to an exalted state of spiritualization, but rather to a wise self-limitation and modesty, thus balancing the disadvantages of the lesser good with the advantage of the lesser evil.
[617] What prevents us from setting up a psychological schema fully corresponding to the alchemical one is ultimately, therefore, the difference between the old and the modern view of the world, between medieval romanticism and scientific objectivity.
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
factorily. only one thing continued to give difficulty: she had
to put the snake, she said, "One hundred per cent at the top, in
7.15 - The Family, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
An old negress approached the great captain. "Master," she said, "my heart grieves at the thought that I shall be separated from you. I am very old and I have nothing more to live for. I wish only one thing: forgive me, I beg you, for all the faults I have committed.
Husain, the warrior in his coat of mail, who in a few short hours would lie martyred on the plain of Karbala, looked gently at the old negress and said:
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
there is only one thing which is true, the Divine Con-
sciousness, the Divine Union. Each time you put ma-
Talks 225-239, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
If it is there it can be checked. But it is not. Understand this truth by search. Search for unreality is fruitless. Therefore seek the reality, i.e., the Self. That is the way to rule over the mind. There is only one thing Real!
D.: What is the one Real thing?
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
music, philosophy, etc. How can anything develop where there is no freedom? People in Germany have to admire only one thing: Nazism! I hope
Mussolini has still kept some freedom for art.
--
that, it means only one thing. It is a sign of great respect.
SATYENDRA: It is done commonly among Sadhus.
The Anapanasati Sutta A Practical Guide to Mindfullness of Breathing and Tranquil Wisdom Meditation, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
concentration is to have mind stay on only one thing as if it
were glued to it (to the exclusion of anything else), the
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
that it was only one thing: style.
7
--
realizing "by these things the miracle of only one thing". As a matter of fact, the word Danae
comes from the Dorian Greek [*303-1] (Dan), earth, and [*303-2] (ae), breath, spirit.
--
when they say that the Work is accomplished by only one thing. Contrary to the chemists and
spagyrists, who have a collection of various acids at their disposal, the alchemists only
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
14) The young generations study numberless subjects, the constitution of the stars, of the earth, the origin of organisms etc. They omit only one thing and that is to know what is the sense of human life, how one ought to live, what the great sages of all times have thought of this question and how they have resolved it. ~ Tolstoi
15) For life cannot subsist without science and science exposes us to this peril that it does not walk towards the light of the true life. ~ Epistle to Diognetus
--
16) There is only one thing to do in order to be sure of being happy: it is to love the good and the wicked. Love always and thou wilt be happy always. ~ Tolstoi
17) Wilt thou that thy heart should be free from sorrow ? Forget not the hearts that sorrow devours. ~ Saadi
The Shadow Out Of Time, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
left me utterly dazed. only one thing consoled me, the fact that the myths were of such
early existence. What lost knowledge could have brought pictures of the Palaeozoic or
Dangerous Women (1991 - 1992) - They are six women who have only one thing in common :They're all ex-cons. After her parole, Faith Cronin gets plastic surgery, a new identity, revenge on her brutal, mob-connected husband, and a beautiful, rustic, lake-front inn to run. One by one, her former prison mates (Cissie Johnson, Rita Jone...
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