The great book

The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.

Robertson Davies

Moving stars

Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.

Paul Dirac

Jean Cocteau

1. "A film is a petrifying fountain of thought. A film revives lifeless deeds. A film permits one to give the appearance of reality to that which is unreal."
2. ”Allow the power of the soul to grow as flagrant as the power of sex.”
3. "An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original."
4. ”Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.”
5. “Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.”
6. “A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.”
7. ”Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.”
8. ”Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value. A work, therefore, is never perceived. It is received. If I am not mistaken, this was a remark made by Eugene Delacroix: "One is never perceived, one is received." It is a maxim frequently repeated by Matisse. Those who actually saw the accident hasten away, overwhelmed, unable to describe it. Those who did not see it are left to bear witness. This opportunity to make themselves seem important pro-vides the medium through which they express their stupidity The accident remains in the road, bloodied, petrified, awful in its solitude, a prey to gossip and police reports.”
9. ”Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.”
10. ”Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical.”
11. “Do not close the circle. Leave it open. Descartes closes the circle. Pascal leaves it open. Rousseau's triumph over the encyclopedists is to have left his circle open when they closed theirs.”
12. ”Do not confuse progressive science with intuitive science, the only one that counts.”
13. ”Find first, seek later.”
14. ”Hate only hatred.”
15. ”He who is affected by an insult is infected by it.”
16. "I am a lie who always speaks the truth."
17. “I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?”
18. “I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am constantly shocking.”
19. ”Journalists know this, or at least sense it. The inaccuracies of the press, and the banner headlines by which they are trumpeted, are soothing draughts to this thirst for the unreal. Sadly, no authority presides in this case over the model's metamorphosis into a work of art. But it is this bland metamorphosis that demonstrates the need for myth. Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term "escapism," when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow oneself to be invaded?”
20. ”Know that your work speaks only to those on the same wavelength as you.”
21. "Life is a horizontal fall."
22. “Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.”
23. "Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."
24. “Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.”
25. "Murderers have been known to find that young girls give them more trouble than anybody else."
26. "Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity."
27. “Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.”
28. "One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends."
29. ”Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does not prevent it from being an outrage to modesty, though its exhibitionism is squandered on the blind. It is enough for poetry to express a personal ethic, which can then break away in the form of a work. It insists on living its own life. It becomes the pretext for a thousand misunderstandings that go by the name of glory.”
30. “Silence moves faster when it's going backward.”
31. "Style is a simple way of saying complicated things."
32. “Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”
33. ”Tact in audacity consists in knowing how far we may go too far.”
34. "Take care not to shave your antennae of a morning.”
35. "Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature."
36. “The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.”
37. "The extreme limit of wisdom --that's what the public calls madness."
38. “The greatest masterpiece of literature is only a dictionary out of order.”
39. ”The inaccuracy of such gossip and such reports is not exclusively the result of distraction. It has more solid roots. It is closely related to the genesis of myth. Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal (…). unnable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort, the trifling feeling of escape experienced at a masked ball. He distances himself from that which he feels and sees. He invents. He transfigures. He mythifies. He creates. He fancies himself an artist. He imitates, in his small way, the painters he claims are mad.”
40. “The poet doesn't invent. He listens.”
41. ”The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.”
42. "The true tomb of the dead is the heart of the living."
43. “The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.”
44. "True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing."
45. "We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?"
46. "We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel."
47. "What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist's presence makes itself felt above that of the model. With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul's style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies."
48. "What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you."
49. "When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work."

Surroundings

Just as a picture is drawn by an artist, surroundings arecreated by the activities of the mind.

Buddha

Shadow of a tree

This learned I from the shadow of a tree,
That to and fro did sway against a wall,
Our shadow selves, our influence, may fall
Where we ourselves can never be.

Anita E. Hamilton (1843-1876)

The limits of the universe

Theoretical thinking has never completely lost the
imagistic, puzzlelike qualities of the earliest
riddles. For example Archytas, the fourth-century-
B.C. philosopher and commander-in-chief of the city-
state of Tarentum (now in southern Italy), proved
that the universe had no limits by asking himself:
"Suppose that I came to the outer limits of the
universe. If I now thrust out a stick, what would
I find?"

Archytas thought that the stick must have projected
out into space. But in that case there was space
beyond the limits of the universe, which means that
the universe had no bounds. If Archytas's reasoning
appears primitive, it is useful to recall that the
intellectual experiments Einstein used to clarify to
himself how relativity worked, concerning clocks
seen from trains moving at different speeds, were
not that different.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience_ [1990], Chapter 6

The trick

Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull
ever so carefully. "To fly as fast as thought,
to anywhere that is," he said, "you must begin
by knowing that you have already arrived . . . "

The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to
stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body
that had a forty-two-inch wingspan and performance
that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was to
know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an
unwritten number, everywhere at once across space
and time.

Richard Bach (1936- )
_Jonathan Livingston Seagull_ [1970]

Words and deeds

Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: The Poet.

Tom Stoppard

1. "A Chinaman of the T´ang dinasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security." From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
2. "Age is a high price to pay for maturity."
3. “A lesson in folly is worth two in wisedom.” rom Arcadia.
4. “All mystical experience is coincidence; and vice versa, of course.”
5. “Atheism is a crutch for those who can't bear the reality of God.”
6. “Carnal knowledge. It´s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh, but through the flesh, knowledge of the self, the real him, the real her, ´in extremis´, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What´s left? What else is there that hasn´t been dealt out like a deck of cards? A sort of knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what´s shared – she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes, and dances on the tables, she´s everybody and it don´t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it´s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it´s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil,a tangerine,a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain, where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.” From The Real Thing.
7. “… don´t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need.” From Arcadia.
8. “Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? “ From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
9. ”I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.”
10. "I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion."
11. “I don´t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you´re dead.” From The Real Thing.
12. “If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.”
13. “If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, the history of music would have been different. As would the history of aviation, of course.” From The Real Thing.
14. “If knowledge isn´t self-knowledge it isn´t doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing `When Father Painted the Parlour´? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. `She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that´s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.´ There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party.” From Arcadia.
15. ”If you took away everything in the world that had to be invented, there'd be nothing left except a lot of people getting rained on.”
16. “I love love. I love having a lover and being one. The insularity of passion. I love it. I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn´t one´s lover. Only two kinds of presence in the world. There´s you and there´s them. I love you so.” From The Real Thing.
17. “I make notes, of course, I order my thoughts, and finally, when all is ready, and I am `calm in my mind´…” From Arcadia.
18. "It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing."
19. “It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.”
20. “It is wanting to know that makes us matter.” From Arcadia.
21. "Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it."
22. “Loving and being loved is unliterary. It´s happiness expressed in banality and lust.” From The Real Thing.~
23. "No commitments. Only bargains. The trouble is I don´t really believe it. I´d rather be an idiot. It´s a kind of idiocy I like. "I use you because you love me. I love you so use me. Be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual... your credit is infinite. I´m yours, I´m commited..." It´s no trick loving somebody at their "best". Love is loving them at their worst. Is that romantic? Well, good. Everything should be romantic. Love, work, music, literature, virginity, loss of virginity..." From The Real Thing.
24. "Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them."
25. "Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering."
26. “(…) Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripedes, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr. Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide, was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow.” From Arcadia.
27. “Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It´s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you´ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top of a bottle of of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly… (…) What we´re trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up and idea and give it a little knock, it might… travel… (…) Now, what we´ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting “Ouch!” with your hands stuck into your armpits. (…) This isn´t better because someone says it´s better, or because there´s a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It´s better because it´s better. You don´t believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on.” From The Real Thing.
28. "Since we cannot hope for order let us withdraw with style from the chaos."
29. "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art."
30. "The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means."
31. “The hard part is getting to the top of page 1.”
32. "The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists."
33. “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said---no. But somehow we missed it.”
34. “The truth is always a compound of two half-truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.”
35. “You can´t stick Byron´s head in your laptop!” From Arcadia.
36. “We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
37. "We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance to somewhere else." From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
38. “When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.” From Arcadia.
39. “Words don´t deserve that kind of malarkey. They´re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos.” From The Real Thing.

Bubbles

Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.

Alexander Pope

New lands

In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

Andre Gide (1869–1951)

Tolerance

To understand everything makes one tolerant.

Madame Anne Louise Germaine de Stael, Corinne, 1807

I am hidden

I am the Spirit Moon
with no place.
You do not see me for I am hidden
inside the soul.
Others want you for themselves but I call you
back to yourself.
You give me many names but I am
beyond all names.
Sometimes you say I am deceitful
but as long as you are
I will be too.
Until you remain blind and deaf
I will be invisible.
I am the garden of all gardens
I speak as the King of all flowers
I am the spring of all waters.
My words are like a ship and the sea
is their meaning.
Come to me and I will take you
to the depths of spirit.

Rumi
Ghazal (Ode) 1518
Translated by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
Rumi: Hidden Music
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

Humor - Famous last words

Famous last words

* I'll get a world record for this..

* It's fireproof.

* He's probably just hibernating.

* What does this button do?

* It's probably just a rash.

* Are you sure the power is off?

* Yeah, I made the deciding vote on the jury, so what of it?

* The odds of that happening have to be a million to one!

* Pull the pin and count to what?

* Which wire was I supposed to cut?

* I wonder where the mother bear is.

* I've seen this done on TV.

* These are the good kind of mushrooms.

* I'll hold it and you light the fuse.

* Let it down slowly.

* Rat poison only kills rats.

* It's strong enough for both of us.

* This doesn't taste right.

* I can make this light before it changes.

* Nice doggie.

* I can do that with my eyes closed.

* I've done this before.

* Well, we've made it this far.

* That's odd.

* You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses on, would you?

* Don't be so superstitious.

* Now watch this.


From www.jokester.net

Exquisite pictures

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Goethe

Not really

To be or not to be. That's not really a question.

Jean Luc Godard

Impossible monsters

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.

Goya

Terrestrial matters

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

Stephen Hawking

Interplay

Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.

Werner Heisenberg

One basic human right

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Hypatia of Alexandria