At the edge of understanding, on the threshold of tomorrow
I'm learning how to stick my head out and admit failure. I'm going back to the drawing board, I'm risking practically everything I have to obey a vision that will not go away. I've abandoned everything familiar and cannot go back. [...]
It takes a human to will -- I am not going to be a robot. I'm going to allow my passion to hang out, and not freeze up in fear -- decisions made in fear have never done anyone any good.
[ 30 August 2006 8:38 pm submitted by Unknown
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Death: can't even get things done
It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.
-- Wislawa Szymborska, "On Death, without Exaggeration"
[ 7:39 pm submitted by Unknown
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Messengers
God, again and again through the ages you have sent messengers
To this pitiless world
They have said, 'Forgive everyone', they have said, 'Love one another --
Rid your hearts of evil.'
They are revered and remembered, yet still in these dark days
We turn them away with hollow greetings, from outside the doors of our houses.
-- Rabindranath Tagore, Question
[ 26 August 2006 6:40 pm submitted by Unknown
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When I Was A Boy
When I was a boy,
My belly was my sundial -- one surer,
Truer, and more exact than any of them.
This dial told me when 'twas proper time
To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat;
But nowadays, why even when I have,
I can't fall to unless the sun gives leave.
-- Plautus, Against Sundials
[ 5:58 pm submitted by Unknown
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Five or six more things
Anyone who has had a bull by the tail knows five or six more things than someone who hasn't.
-- Mark Twain
[ 4:50 pm submitted by Unknown
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The heat!
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The smallest Malay rabbit deplores this foolish habit.
In Hong Kong they strike a gong and fire off a noonday gun,
To reprimand each inmate who's in late.
In the mangrove swamps where the python romps
There is peace from twelve till two.
Even caribous lie around and snooze, for there's nothing else to do.
In Bengal to move at all is seldom ever done,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
[ 3:28 pm submitted by Unknown
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All the Unreasonable People
Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
-- George Bernard Shaw
[ 24 August 2006 1:44 am submitted by Unknown
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Viva voce
"The time has come," the Vulture said,
"To talk of many things,
Of Accidence and Adjectives,
And names of Jewish kings,
How many notes a sackbut has,
And whether shawms have strings."
"Please, Sir," the Undergraduates said,
Turning a little blue,
"We did not know that was the sort
Of thing we had to do."
"We thank you much," the Vulture said,
"Send up another two."
[ 20 August 2006 11:49 am submitted by Unknown
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The Company of Immortals
Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.
-- David Ogilvy
[ 16 August 2006 2:40 am submitted by Unknown
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The grandeur of her successes and her failures
At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her successes, and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?
-- Jawaharlal Nehru, speech to the constituent assembly, August 15, 1947
Happy Independence Day, India!
[ 14 August 2006 10:42 pm submitted by Unknown
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Not to run away
Life only demands from you the strength you possess.
Only one feat is possible -- not to have run away.
-- Dag Hammarskjold
[ 13 August 2006 8:53 pm submitted by Unknown
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What if you're made-up?
May you have
cotton-candy dreams
that whisk you
away into lands of
blissful nothings
mild suns
that twinkle
wink blink
like the stars
and drench you in
moonlight.
I will hold you,
rock you,
lull you,
to sleep.
what if my lullaby is made-up.
what if you are.
[ 12 August 2006 1:51 am submitted by Unknown
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What Matters Most
What matters most in life is the right of human beings to live fully in
the context of their own genius. In one word, perhaps, to fight for human
justice. I once said humanity's cry for human justice reverberates down
the
corridors of the centuries, and it is still crying for human justice.
[ 11 August 2006 1:18 am submitted by Unknown
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Isn't Simply A Test
- House (talking about himself and visions he had)
- The patient was technically dead for over a minute....
- Wilson (from the back of the classroom)
- Do you think he was dead? Do you think those experiences were real?
-
House
- Define real. They were real experiences. What they meant, personally, I choose to believe that the white light people sometimes see, visions, this patient saw: they're all just chemical reactions that take place when the brain shuts down.
-
Foreman
- You choose to believe that?
-
House
-
There's no conclusive science. My choice has no practical relevance to my life, I choose the outcome I find more comforting.
-
Cameron
- You find it more comforting to believe that this is it?
-
House
- I find it more comforting to believe that this isn't simply a test.
-- From the TV series, "House"
[ 08 August 2006 3:54 pm submitted by Unknown
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Dreaming Big
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.
-- David Ogilvy
[ 07 August 2006 12:12 am submitted by Unknown
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I'll miss you.
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true
And then while I'm away
I'll write home every day
And I'll send all my loving to you
-- Paul McCartney, All My Loving
Goodbye, atya. We'll miss you.
[ 03 August 2006 2:19 pm submitted by Unknown
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Know you are alone
Reach into the thoughts of friends,
And find they do not know your name.
Squeeze the teddy bear too tight,
And watch the feathers burst the seams.
Touch the stained glass with your cheek,
And feel its chill upon your blood.
Hold a candle to the night,
And see the darkness bend the flame.
Tear the mask of peace from God,
And hear the roar of souls in hell.
Pluck a rose in name of love,
And watch the petals curl and wilt.
Lean upon the western wind,
And know you are alone.
-- Dru Mims
[ 4:10 am submitted by Unknown
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I will render you / Useless
You have a large heart, don't you?
Good.
So much the better to feel each
needle-point
knife-edge
cork-screw
Stab.
I will kill you,
But slowly.
I am merciful,
After all.
[ 2:08 am submitted by Unknown
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The Tollway Belle's For Thee
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there
was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song
at a French restaurant. [...]
I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her
milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had
punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told
him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean
and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought
me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men
must do. [...]
"Stop the car," the girl said.
There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about
the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she
raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
tollway belle's for thee."
The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a
lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured
whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
Competition
[ 02 August 2006 11:50 pm submitted by Unknown
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You'll Know
You go slow, be gentle. It's no one-way street -- you know how you
feel and that's all. It's how the girl feels too. Don't press. If
the girl feels anything for you at all, you'll know.
-- Kirk, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8
[ 11:43 pm submitted by Unknown
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Do you get to choose? I choose fire, but I'd prefer ice.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-- Robert Frost
[ 4:21 pm submitted by Unknown
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Cats who Walk by Themselves
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned.
-- First lines of
a poem by A. S. J. Tessimond.
[ 3:13 pm submitted by Unknown
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Heartbreak Special
Drumsound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.
A voice inside the beat
says, "I know you're tired,
but come. This is the way."
-- Jeláluddín Rúmí
Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
-- Confucius
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
-- Ellen Parr
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
-- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms
When the heart grieves over what is has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.
-- Sufi epigram
All our young lives we search for someone to love. Someone who makes us complete. We chose partners and change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak and hope all the while, wondering if somewhere and somehow, there is someone searching for us.
-- said by Kevin Arnold, from The Wonder Years
When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
-- Toni Morrison
Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.
-- Kahlil Gibran
But pain ... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
-- Lois McMaster Bujold
[ 01 August 2006 11:47 pm submitted by Unknown
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