XII. What I want to achieve is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha.
XIII. Truth is the sovereign principle. This truth is not only truthfulness in word, but truthfulness in thought also, and not only the relative truth of our conception, but the Absolute Truth, the Eternal Principle, that is God.
16. A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform. True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. Only between like natures can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring. Friends react on one another. Hence in friendship there is very little scope for reform.
75. Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, Ruskin's Unto this Last.
123. The very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise.
129. It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
145. Such service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
151. We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
161. It is idle to adjudicate upon the right and wrong of incidents that have already happened. It is useful to understand them and, if possible, to learn a lesson from them for the future. It is difficult to say for certain how a particular man would act in a particular set of circumstances. We can also see that judging a man from his outward act is no more than a doubtful inference, inasmuch as it is not based on sufficient data.
176. Let no one think that it is impossible because it is difficult.
209. I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world, where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty., All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient.
218. All good action is bound to bear fruit in the end.
230. Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed disapprobation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked, always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. 'Hate the sin and not the sinner.'
249. To allow a man to believe a thing which one has not fully verified is to compromise truth.
250. The teachings of Ruskin's Unto this Last:
1. That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all.
2. That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's, inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work.
3. That a life of labor, the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman, is the life worth living.
254. I have found by experience that man makes his plans to be often upset by God, but at the same time where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, no matter how a man's plans are frustrated, the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated.
332. This was not the first time I had been faced with such a trial. On all such occasions God has sent help at the last moment.
364. Civility does not here mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good.
381. You can wake a man only if he is really asleep; no effort that you may make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Friday, August 9, 2013
Benjamin Franklin- Autobiography: 2013. 8. 9
3. Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good.
4. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
90. 1. Temperance- Eat not to dulness. Drink not to elevation.
2. Silence- Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order- Let all your things have their places. Leat each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution- Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality- Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. Waste nothing.
6. Industry- Lose no time- Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity- Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice- Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation- Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness- Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. Tranquility- Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity- Rarely use venery but for health or offspring. Never to dulness, weakness or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. Humility- Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
100. It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
105. He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
122. I advised you to apply to all those whom you know will give something; next to those whom you are uncertain whether they will give any thing or not; and show them the List of those who have given: and lastly, do not neglect those who you are sure will give nothing; for in some of them you may be mistaken.
4. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
90. 1. Temperance- Eat not to dulness. Drink not to elevation.
2. Silence- Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order- Let all your things have their places. Leat each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution- Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality- Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. Waste nothing.
6. Industry- Lose no time- Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity- Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice- Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation- Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness- Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. Tranquility- Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity- Rarely use venery but for health or offspring. Never to dulness, weakness or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. Humility- Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
100. It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
105. He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
122. I advised you to apply to all those whom you know will give something; next to those whom you are uncertain whether they will give any thing or not; and show them the List of those who have given: and lastly, do not neglect those who you are sure will give nothing; for in some of them you may be mistaken.
Friday, August 2, 2013
C. G. Jung- Memories, Dreams, Reflections: 2013. 8. 2
40. In God's omnipotence He will see to it that nothing really evil comes of such tests of courage. If one fulfills the will of God one can be sure of going the right way.
It was obedience which brought me grace, and after that experience I knew what God's grace was. One must be utterly abandoned to God; nothing matters but fulfilling His will.
47. I must take the responsibility, it is up to me how my fate turns out. I had been confronted with a problem to which I had to find the answer. I knew that I had to find the answer out of my deepest self, that I was alone before God, and that God alone asked me these terrible things.
103. I realized that one gets nowhere unless one talks to people about the things they know.
113. In the end, man is an event which cannot judge itself, but, for better or worse, is left to the judgment of others.
117. Therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. If I know the secret story, I have a key to the treatment. The doctor's task is to find out how to gain that knowledge. - association test, dream interpretation, long and patient human contact. In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.
123. For one who commits such a crime (murder) destroys his own soul.
131. Psychotherapy and analysis are as varied as are human individuals.
He must guard against falling into any specific, routine approach. In general one must guard against theoretical assumptions.
In dealing with individuals, only individual understanding will do. We need a different language for every patient.
I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analyst and patient sit facing one another, eye to eye; the doctor has something to say, but so has the patient.
132. It is equally important that he should understand himself. Only if the doctor knows how to cope with himself and his own problems will he be able to teach the patient to do the same.
133. When important matters are at stake, it makes all the difference whether the doctor sees himself as a part of the drama, or cloaks himself in his authority.
We must always be asking ourselves: How is our unconscious experiencing this situation(therapy)? We must therefore observe our dreams, pay the closest attention and study ourselves just as carefully as we do the patient.
137. The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love.
141. Resistances- especially when they are stubborn- merit attention, for they are often warnings which must not be overlooked. The cure may e a poison that not everyone can take, or an operation which, when it is contraindicated, can prove fatal.
166. People who know nothing about nature are of course neurotic, for they are not adapted to reality. They are too naive, like children, and it is necessary to tell them the facts of life, so to speak- to make it plain to them that they are human beings like all others.
One form of life cannot simply be abandoned unless it is exchanged for another.
186. Give away all that thou hast, then shalt thou receive.
192. I took great care to try to understand every single image, every item of my psychic inventory, and to classify them scientifically and, above all, to realize them in actual life. That is what we usually neglect to do. We allow the images to rise up, and maybe we wonder about them, but that is all. We do not take the trouble to understand them, let alone draw ethical conclusions from them. This stopping-short conjures up the negative effects of the unconscious. It is equally a grave mistake to think that it is enough to gain some understanding of the images and that knowledge can here make a halt. Insight into them must be converted into an ethical obligation. Not to so is to fall prey to the power principle, and this produces dangerous effects which are destructive not only to others but even to the knower. The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.
197. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the center. This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned.
215. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
Blind acceptance never leads to a solution.
233. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.
A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche.
234. The cause of disturbance is not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.
236. It is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness which has given rise to the 'discontents' of civilization.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise. We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse.
248. They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless.
256. On determinism: This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, without considering that in so doing we view life as a machine calculated down to the last detail, which ,along with the human psyche, runs on senselessly, obeying foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world and God.
Man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence.
269. The moment in which light comes is God. That moment brings redemption, release. To say that the sun is God is to blur and forget the archetypal experience of that moment.
The longing for light is the longing for consciousness.
275. I studiously avoided all so-called 'holy men'. I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own.
I must shape my life out of myself- out of what my inner being tells me, or what nature brings to me.
277. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.
291. I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished.
297. Illness has brought acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and understand them, acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to be. At the beginning of the illness I had the feeling that there was something wrong with my attitude, and that I was to some extent responsible for the mishap. But when one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one's own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee-not for a single moment-that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.
311. Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised.
318. The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me.
325. Self-knowledge is the road to knowledge of God.
Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.
The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy.
341. Everything through which the 'other will' is expressed proceeds from man-his thinking, his words, his images, and even his limitations. Consequently he has the tendency to refer everything to himself, when he begins to think in clumsy psychological terms, and decides that everything proceeds out of his intentions and out of himself. With childlike naivete he assumes that he knows all his own reaches and knows what he is 'in himself'. Yet all the while he is fatally handicapped by the weakness of his consciousness and the corresponding fear of the unconscious. Therefore he is utterly unable to separate what he has carefully reasoned out from what has spontaneously flowed to him from another source.
343. In fact, he will be at odds with himself, and will find great difficulty in uniting his own multiplicity for purposes of common action. Even if he is outwardly protected by the social forms of the intermediary stage, he will have no defense against his inner multiplicity. The disunion within himself may cause him to give up, to lapse into identity with his surroundings.
They are the neurotics, who necessarily play hide-and-seek with others as well as with themselves, without being able to take the game really seriously. As a rule they end by surrendering their individual goal to their craving for collective conformity- a procedure which all the opinions, beliefs, and ideals of their environment encourage.
356. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others.
One must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable.
395. Individuation means becoming a single, homogenous being, and in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self.
It was obedience which brought me grace, and after that experience I knew what God's grace was. One must be utterly abandoned to God; nothing matters but fulfilling His will.
47. I must take the responsibility, it is up to me how my fate turns out. I had been confronted with a problem to which I had to find the answer. I knew that I had to find the answer out of my deepest self, that I was alone before God, and that God alone asked me these terrible things.
103. I realized that one gets nowhere unless one talks to people about the things they know.
113. In the end, man is an event which cannot judge itself, but, for better or worse, is left to the judgment of others.
117. Therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. If I know the secret story, I have a key to the treatment. The doctor's task is to find out how to gain that knowledge. - association test, dream interpretation, long and patient human contact. In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.
123. For one who commits such a crime (murder) destroys his own soul.
131. Psychotherapy and analysis are as varied as are human individuals.
He must guard against falling into any specific, routine approach. In general one must guard against theoretical assumptions.
In dealing with individuals, only individual understanding will do. We need a different language for every patient.
I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analyst and patient sit facing one another, eye to eye; the doctor has something to say, but so has the patient.
132. It is equally important that he should understand himself. Only if the doctor knows how to cope with himself and his own problems will he be able to teach the patient to do the same.
133. When important matters are at stake, it makes all the difference whether the doctor sees himself as a part of the drama, or cloaks himself in his authority.
We must always be asking ourselves: How is our unconscious experiencing this situation(therapy)? We must therefore observe our dreams, pay the closest attention and study ourselves just as carefully as we do the patient.
137. The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love.
141. Resistances- especially when they are stubborn- merit attention, for they are often warnings which must not be overlooked. The cure may e a poison that not everyone can take, or an operation which, when it is contraindicated, can prove fatal.
166. People who know nothing about nature are of course neurotic, for they are not adapted to reality. They are too naive, like children, and it is necessary to tell them the facts of life, so to speak- to make it plain to them that they are human beings like all others.
One form of life cannot simply be abandoned unless it is exchanged for another.
186. Give away all that thou hast, then shalt thou receive.
192. I took great care to try to understand every single image, every item of my psychic inventory, and to classify them scientifically and, above all, to realize them in actual life. That is what we usually neglect to do. We allow the images to rise up, and maybe we wonder about them, but that is all. We do not take the trouble to understand them, let alone draw ethical conclusions from them. This stopping-short conjures up the negative effects of the unconscious. It is equally a grave mistake to think that it is enough to gain some understanding of the images and that knowledge can here make a halt. Insight into them must be converted into an ethical obligation. Not to so is to fall prey to the power principle, and this produces dangerous effects which are destructive not only to others but even to the knower. The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.
197. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the center. This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned.
215. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
Blind acceptance never leads to a solution.
233. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.
A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche.
234. The cause of disturbance is not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation.
236. It is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness which has given rise to the 'discontents' of civilization.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise. We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse.
248. They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless.
256. On determinism: This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, without considering that in so doing we view life as a machine calculated down to the last detail, which ,along with the human psyche, runs on senselessly, obeying foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world and God.
Man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence.
269. The moment in which light comes is God. That moment brings redemption, release. To say that the sun is God is to blur and forget the archetypal experience of that moment.
The longing for light is the longing for consciousness.
275. I studiously avoided all so-called 'holy men'. I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own.
I must shape my life out of myself- out of what my inner being tells me, or what nature brings to me.
277. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.
291. I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished.
297. Illness has brought acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and understand them, acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to be. At the beginning of the illness I had the feeling that there was something wrong with my attitude, and that I was to some extent responsible for the mishap. But when one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one's own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee-not for a single moment-that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.
311. Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised.
318. The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me.
325. Self-knowledge is the road to knowledge of God.
Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance.
The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy.
341. Everything through which the 'other will' is expressed proceeds from man-his thinking, his words, his images, and even his limitations. Consequently he has the tendency to refer everything to himself, when he begins to think in clumsy psychological terms, and decides that everything proceeds out of his intentions and out of himself. With childlike naivete he assumes that he knows all his own reaches and knows what he is 'in himself'. Yet all the while he is fatally handicapped by the weakness of his consciousness and the corresponding fear of the unconscious. Therefore he is utterly unable to separate what he has carefully reasoned out from what has spontaneously flowed to him from another source.
343. In fact, he will be at odds with himself, and will find great difficulty in uniting his own multiplicity for purposes of common action. Even if he is outwardly protected by the social forms of the intermediary stage, he will have no defense against his inner multiplicity. The disunion within himself may cause him to give up, to lapse into identity with his surroundings.
They are the neurotics, who necessarily play hide-and-seek with others as well as with themselves, without being able to take the game really seriously. As a rule they end by surrendering their individual goal to their craving for collective conformity- a procedure which all the opinions, beliefs, and ideals of their environment encourage.
356. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others.
One must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable.
395. Individuation means becoming a single, homogenous being, and in so far as 'individuality' embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one's own self.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Helen Keller- The Story of My Life: 2013. 7.20
ix. Whenever people write they cannot help putting something of their personality-their very selves- into what they say.
After all, what does it matter what we are? The important thing is what we are able to do.
7. They tell me I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just taken me out of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor. I slipped from my mother's lap and almost ran toward them. The impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms.
60. My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished, spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.
89. In a word, every study had its obstacles. Sometimes I lost all courage and betrayed my feelings in a way I am ashamed to remember.
97. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.
One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures- solitude, books and imagination- outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.
115. German puts strength before beauty, and truth before convention, both in life and in literature.
129. Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
195. The eyes of the mind are stronger, more penetrating, and more reliable than our physical eyes. We can see a lot of things with a little common-sense light to aid our perceptions.
After all, what does it matter what we are? The important thing is what we are able to do.
7. They tell me I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just taken me out of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor. I slipped from my mother's lap and almost ran toward them. The impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms.
60. My work was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I had accomplished, spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward to their pleasure in my achievement.
89. In a word, every study had its obstacles. Sometimes I lost all courage and betrayed my feelings in a way I am ashamed to remember.
97. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.
One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures- solitude, books and imagination- outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.
115. German puts strength before beauty, and truth before convention, both in life and in literature.
129. Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
195. The eyes of the mind are stronger, more penetrating, and more reliable than our physical eyes. We can see a lot of things with a little common-sense light to aid our perceptions.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Daniel Keyes- Flowers For Algernon: 2013. 7. 19
50. Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.
136. Nothing in our minds is ever really gone.
140. What I mean to say is that Charlie Gordon exists in the past, and the past is real. You can't put up a new building on a site until you destroy the old one, and the old Charlie can't be destroyed.
153. The meaning of my total existence involves knowing the possibilities of my future as well as my past, where I'm going as well as where I've been. Although we know the end of the maze holds death, I see now that the path Ic hoose through that maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being-one of many ways-and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.
136. Nothing in our minds is ever really gone.
140. What I mean to say is that Charlie Gordon exists in the past, and the past is real. You can't put up a new building on a site until you destroy the old one, and the old Charlie can't be destroyed.
153. The meaning of my total existence involves knowing the possibilities of my future as well as my past, where I'm going as well as where I've been. Although we know the end of the maze holds death, I see now that the path Ic hoose through that maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being-one of many ways-and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Mother Teresa- In My Own Words: 2013. 7. 17
IX. Abandoning Loreto was an even harder sacrifice for me than leaving my family that first time in order to follow my vocation. But I had to do it. It was a calling. I knew where I had to go.
3. Holiness is not the luxury of a few. It is everyone's duty: yours and mine.
7. There are some people who, in order not to pray, use as an excuse the fact that life is so hectic that it prevents them from praying. This cannot be. Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer.
It is not necessary to always be meditating nor to consciously experience the sensation that we are talking to God, no matter how nice this would be. What matters is being with him, living in him, in his will. To love with a pure heart, to love everybody, especially to love the poor, is a twenty-four-hour prayer.
8. Lord, may I not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
Because it is in giving that we receive,
in pardoning that we are pardoned.
9. Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at his disposition, and listening to his voice in the depths of our hearts.
11. Praying the Our Father and living it will lead us toward saintliness. The our Father contains everything: God, ourselves, our neighbors..
19. Our poor do not need your condescending attitude nor your pity. The poor need your love and your kindness.
20. If we worry too much about ourselves, we won't have time for others.
23. I have the feeling that we are in such a hurry that we do not even have time to look at one another and smile.
27. Are we equally sure that none of them feels alone, abandoned, neglected, needing some affection? That, too, is poverty.
29. The important thing is not to do a lot or to do everything. The important thing is to be ready for anything, at all times.
33. True love causes pain. If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices.
37. What we say does not matter, only what God says to souls through us.
42. When I speak of joy, I do not identify it with loud laughter or with noise. This is not true happiness. Sometimes it hides other things. when I speak of happiness, I refer to an inner and deep peace, which shows itself in our eyes, on our faces, in our attitudes, in our gestures, in our promptness.
49. To better understand those we live with, it is imperative that we understand ourselves first.
50. It was a home where tenderness, understanding, and mutual respect abounded.
Everybody today seems to be in a hurry. No one has any time to give to others: children to their parents, parents to their children, spouses to each other.
52. Love begins by taking care of the closest ones- the ones at home. Let us ask ourselves if we are aware that maybe our husband, our wife, our children, or our parents live isolated from others, do not feel loved enough, even though they may live with us. Do we realize this? Where are the old people today? They are in nursing homes. Why? Because they are not wanted, because they are too much trouble, because...
53. If we were humble, nothing would change us-neither praise nor discouragement. If someone were to criticize us, we would not feel discouraged. If someone were to praise us, we also would not feel proud.
55. Before we judge the poor, we have the duty to look inside ourselves.
65. At the moment of death we will not be judged according to the number of good deeds we have done or by the diplomas we have received in our lifetime. We will be judged according to the love we have put into our work.
75. When suffering comes into our lives, we should accept it with a smile. This is the greatest gift from God: to have the courage to accept everything he gives us and asks of us with a smile.
79. Whoever is dependent on his or her money or worries about it, is truly a poor person. If that person places his or her money at the service of others, then the person becomes rich, very rich indeed.
84. It is very possible that you will find human beings, surely very near you, needing affection and love. Do not deny them these. Show them, above all, that you sincerely recognize that they are human beings, that they are important to you.
91. As far as I am concerned, the greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted, unloved. The greatest suffering is also having no one, forgetting what an intimate, truly human relationship is, not knowing what it means to be loved, not having a family or friends.
93. Loneliness was an expression of their poverty, the poverty of seeing themselves abandoned by relatives and friends. The poverty of having no one coming to visit them is the poverty that older people feel the most.
94. To listen to someone who has no one to listen to him is a very beautiful thing.
109. I very often tell the Sisters to approach the poor with joy, knowing that they have plenty of reasons to be sad. They don't need us to confirm their sadness for them.
If our work were just to wash and feed and give medicines to the sick, the center would have closed a long time ago. The most important thing in our centers is the opportunity we are offered to reach souls.
3. Holiness is not the luxury of a few. It is everyone's duty: yours and mine.
7. There are some people who, in order not to pray, use as an excuse the fact that life is so hectic that it prevents them from praying. This cannot be. Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer.
It is not necessary to always be meditating nor to consciously experience the sensation that we are talking to God, no matter how nice this would be. What matters is being with him, living in him, in his will. To love with a pure heart, to love everybody, especially to love the poor, is a twenty-four-hour prayer.
8. Lord, may I not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
Because it is in giving that we receive,
in pardoning that we are pardoned.
9. Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at his disposition, and listening to his voice in the depths of our hearts.
11. Praying the Our Father and living it will lead us toward saintliness. The our Father contains everything: God, ourselves, our neighbors..
19. Our poor do not need your condescending attitude nor your pity. The poor need your love and your kindness.
20. If we worry too much about ourselves, we won't have time for others.
23. I have the feeling that we are in such a hurry that we do not even have time to look at one another and smile.
27. Are we equally sure that none of them feels alone, abandoned, neglected, needing some affection? That, too, is poverty.
29. The important thing is not to do a lot or to do everything. The important thing is to be ready for anything, at all times.
33. True love causes pain. If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices.
37. What we say does not matter, only what God says to souls through us.
42. When I speak of joy, I do not identify it with loud laughter or with noise. This is not true happiness. Sometimes it hides other things. when I speak of happiness, I refer to an inner and deep peace, which shows itself in our eyes, on our faces, in our attitudes, in our gestures, in our promptness.
49. To better understand those we live with, it is imperative that we understand ourselves first.
50. It was a home where tenderness, understanding, and mutual respect abounded.
Everybody today seems to be in a hurry. No one has any time to give to others: children to their parents, parents to their children, spouses to each other.
52. Love begins by taking care of the closest ones- the ones at home. Let us ask ourselves if we are aware that maybe our husband, our wife, our children, or our parents live isolated from others, do not feel loved enough, even though they may live with us. Do we realize this? Where are the old people today? They are in nursing homes. Why? Because they are not wanted, because they are too much trouble, because...
53. If we were humble, nothing would change us-neither praise nor discouragement. If someone were to criticize us, we would not feel discouraged. If someone were to praise us, we also would not feel proud.
55. Before we judge the poor, we have the duty to look inside ourselves.
65. At the moment of death we will not be judged according to the number of good deeds we have done or by the diplomas we have received in our lifetime. We will be judged according to the love we have put into our work.
75. When suffering comes into our lives, we should accept it with a smile. This is the greatest gift from God: to have the courage to accept everything he gives us and asks of us with a smile.
79. Whoever is dependent on his or her money or worries about it, is truly a poor person. If that person places his or her money at the service of others, then the person becomes rich, very rich indeed.
84. It is very possible that you will find human beings, surely very near you, needing affection and love. Do not deny them these. Show them, above all, that you sincerely recognize that they are human beings, that they are important to you.
91. As far as I am concerned, the greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted, unloved. The greatest suffering is also having no one, forgetting what an intimate, truly human relationship is, not knowing what it means to be loved, not having a family or friends.
93. Loneliness was an expression of their poverty, the poverty of seeing themselves abandoned by relatives and friends. The poverty of having no one coming to visit them is the poverty that older people feel the most.
94. To listen to someone who has no one to listen to him is a very beautiful thing.
109. I very often tell the Sisters to approach the poor with joy, knowing that they have plenty of reasons to be sad. They don't need us to confirm their sadness for them.
If our work were just to wash and feed and give medicines to the sick, the center would have closed a long time ago. The most important thing in our centers is the opportunity we are offered to reach souls.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Murakami Haruki- 1Q84: 2013. 7. 15
266. What did it mean for a person to be free? Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger cage?
307. Things are so convenient for us these days, our perceptions are probably that much duller. Four hundred years ago, we might have had richer spirits that were closer to nature.
374. Gilyaks do not recognize that anybody has power over them.
420. The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things that don't want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can't turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That's what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.
582. Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.
626. Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning.
658. Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about 'the Shadow' in one of his books: 'It is as evil as we are positive... the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive...The fact is that if one tries beyond one's capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.'
903. Nobody's easier to fool than the person who is convinced that he is right.
990. Most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.
1041. Most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. Subject and object are not as distinct as most people think.
1064. The time slowly chips away at life. People don't just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside. And finally the day comes when you have to settle accounts. Nobody can escape it. People have to pay the price for what they've received.
307. Things are so convenient for us these days, our perceptions are probably that much duller. Four hundred years ago, we might have had richer spirits that were closer to nature.
374. Gilyaks do not recognize that anybody has power over them.
420. The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things that don't want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can't turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That's what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.
582. Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.
626. Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning.
658. Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about 'the Shadow' in one of his books: 'It is as evil as we are positive... the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive...The fact is that if one tries beyond one's capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.'
903. Nobody's easier to fool than the person who is convinced that he is right.
990. Most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.
1041. Most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. Subject and object are not as distinct as most people think.
1064. The time slowly chips away at life. People don't just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside. And finally the day comes when you have to settle accounts. Nobody can escape it. People have to pay the price for what they've received.
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