Stolen Child
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.
-- The Stolen Child, W.B.Yeats
[ 26 July 2004 4:02 pm submitted by Unknown
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Quote of the Week: Pale Blue Dot
Pale Blue Dot is the name of a book by cosmologist Carl Sagan. It is his reflection on a photograph taken by Voyager 1, showing Earth as nothing more than a pale blue dot. Another beautiful photo of Earth can be found here.
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
[ 24 July 2004 10:05 pm submitted by Unknown
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Anger
My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration: set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes, cry, rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go about business as usual.
-- Phyllis Diller
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Frustration
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
-- Elizabeth Drew
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It Works!
Jonathan made a scree of delight, the first
sound he had made since he had left Earth. "IT WORKS!"
"Well, of course, it works, Jon." said Chiang. "It
always works, when you know what you're doing. Now about your control..."
-- Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
[ 21 July 2004 7:56 pm submitted by Unknown
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Friendship
A friend is one
To whom one may pour out all
The contents of one's heart
Chaff and grain, together,
Knowing that the gentlest of hands
Will take and sift it,
Keep what's worth
And blow the rest away
-- Anonymous
[ 20 July 2004 11:49 pm submitted by Unknown
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Loneliness
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
-- Maya Angelou
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Looking Around
Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
-- James Thurber
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Others and Ourselves
The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
-- Eric Hoffer
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Change
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
-- Alvin Toffler
[ 19 July 2004 10:56 pm submitted by Unknown
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Angst
Wondering if you're attached is great food for existential angst.
-- Theophilus
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Past, Perfect
Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream?
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
[ 18 July 2004 4:39 pm submitted by Unknown
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Beginning
Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
-- St. Francis of Assisi
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Depression
Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.
Jean Baudrillard
[ 17 July 2004 8:32 pm submitted by Unknown
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Success
What exactly is success? For me it is to be found not in applause, but in the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one's ideal.
-- Anna Pavlova
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Optimism
Some things in life are bad.
They can really make you mad.
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle,
Don't grumble. Give a whistle.
And this'll help things turn out for the best,
And ...
Always look on the bright side of life!
-- Eric Idle, Monty Python's Life of Brian
[ 16 July 2004 5:28 am submitted by Unknown
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Making Up Your Mind
Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping
-- Piet Hein
[ 14 July 2004 10:53 am submitted by Unknown
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Love
... for Love, that indestructible, all-encompassing, cruel thing that afflicts your heart like an incurable malady, appearing at inopportune moments, available in various flavours (not to mention songs and movies) and successfully manifests itself in bizarre ways, usually outrageous and impulsive behaviour ...
-- Kaberi Chowdhury
[ 09 July 2004 10:33 pm submitted by Unknown
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Airports
There's nothing like an airport for bringing you down to earth.
-- Richard Gordon
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Memories
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
-- Edward de Bono
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Motto
To love, to live, to learn.
-- Gaurav Vaidya
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Quotations
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
[ 08 July 2004 2:05 am submitted by Unknown
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Reason
The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy (science); for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and disgested. Therefore, from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never been made), much may be hoped.
-- Francis Bacon
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Love
Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important.
-- Lisa Hoffman
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Pain
When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
-- Toni Morrison
[ 07 July 2004 12:53 am submitted by Unknown
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Right here, right now
I can see the humorous side of things and enjoy the fun when it comes; but look where I will, there seems to me always more sadness than joy in life.
-- Jerome K. Jerome
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Fate
Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.
-- George Santayana
[ 06 July 2004 8:48 pm submitted by Unknown
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Time
For everything there is a season, And a time for every matter under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; A time to seek, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to throw away; A time to tear, and a time to sew; A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate, A time for war, and a time for peace.
-- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, the Bible
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Cancer
Cancer is so limited. It cannot corrode faith. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot kill friendships. It cannot cripple love. It cannot destroy peace. It cannot silence courage. It cannot suppress memories. It cannot conquer the spirit.
-- Anonymous
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Loneliness/Solitude
Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.
-- Paul Tillich
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Futures
When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla.
-- Anne, "Anne of Green Gables", Lucy Maud Montgomery
[ 04 July 2004 9:46 am submitted by Unknown
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Tomorrow
To-morrow you will live, you always cry; In what fair country does this morrow lie, That 'tis so mighty long ere it arrive? Beyond the Indies does this morrow live? 'Tis so far-fetched, this morrow, that I fear 'Twill be both very old and very dear. "To-morrow I will live," the fool does say: To-day itself's too late; -- the wise lived yesterday.
-- Marcus Valerius Martial
[ 03 July 2004 1:57 am submitted by Unknown
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Beauty
The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own -- even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being
-- Katherine Anne Porter
[ 02 July 2004 2:59 am submitted by Unknown
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Today
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
-- Kalidasa
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Life
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
-- Mahatma Gandhi
[ 01 July 2004 3:50 am submitted by Unknown
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