Buddha

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting. - Buddha (cited in)

Chogyam Trungpa

There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are. - Chogyam Trungpa

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light ....

I must have heard about this poem by Dylan Marlais Thomas before but ever since I heard these lines in the movie, Dangerous Minds, last Friday, these lines have been percolating in my head... You can read more poems by the famous Welsh poet here and here.

Oscar Wilde

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us - poet & playright Oscar Wilde

Wilde said a lot of witty and intelligent things and I could quote him daily for a year and still not exhaust the quotable quotes!

Scott Adams

People can often tell the difference between a run-of-the-mill "GOOD" idea and a bad idea. But GREAT ideas often look identical to stupid ones right up until the moment they work. – Scott Adams of Dilbert fame.

Coleridge

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of love,
And feed his sacred flame.

- Love by Samuel T. Coleridge (Prefaced in Preludes 1921-1922 by John Drinkwater)

David Hume

Be a philosopher, but amid all your philosophy be still a man - the famous philosopher, David Hume

Patrick Henry

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! – Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

Santayana

Art, like life, should be free, since both are experimental. - Philosopher, poet, literary and cultural critic, George Santayana

He is perhaps best known for his oft-quoted

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it," from Reason in Common Sense, the first volume of his The Life of Reason.

Also like this one:

"To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be. The poets and philosophers who express this aesthetic experience and stimulate the same function in us by their example, do a greater service to mankind and deserve higher honor than the discoveries of historical truths." - from The Sense of Beauty

More quotes from him here.

Frank O'Hara

..it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery
images..
- Frank O'Hara in a poem called, Ave Maria

The context of the poem is given by the first two lines..

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies

...but I liked the meaning of the above lines, taken out of the context of the poem.

Albert Einstein

I believe that the horrifying deterioration in the ethical conduct of people today stems from the mechanization and dehumanization of our lives - the disastrous by-product of the scientific and technical mentality. Nostra culpa. Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits. - Albert Einstein

Other quotes from the great scientist that reflect his lifelong involvement & position on pacifism:

He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.

My pacificism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of people is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternative service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.

It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human material"

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

Nationalism, on my opinion, is nothing more than an idealistic rationalization for militarism and aggression.

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

Learn more about Einstein through this wiki entry.

Democracy & Freedom

Three Cheers for Democracy & Freedom..

The punishment we suffer, if we refuse to take an interest in matters of government, is to live under the government of worse men. - Plato

So Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. – Edward Morgan Forster

Freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from self-pity; freedom from the fear of doing something that would help someone else more than it does me; freedom from the kind of pride that makes me feel I am better than my brother. - Duke Ellington quoting the four freedoms by which his composing colleague Billy Strayhorn had lived - from notes on CD “1969 All-Star White House Tribute to Duke Ellington, Blue Note, c 2002 Capital Records Inc. (April 29, 1969 70th birthday party for Duke Ellington at the White House – celebrations at which Nixon gave him the Medal of Freedom.)

Robert Creeley

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet

with a decent happiness

- The Rain, by Robert Creeley(1962)

Read the above in the Norton's Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, where I learned that Creeley was born in Arlington, MA (the current place of abode for yours truly.) Then, I flipped the book to another random page and ran into a poet called Eileen Myles, who apparently was born in Cambridge, MA (the current place of vocation for yours truly.) What a coincidence...randomly arrived at two pages this morning of poets born in this area. Divine sign that I should read/write poetry today... but alas... work beckons!

The coincidences continue. I read the following poem by Myles.. New England Wind, in which she writes about rain too!

the other night
under the eaves
in a rain at 4 o'clock
U woke up it was
so sexy;

Read more poems by Creeley and by Myles and if further interested, read these interviews with Creeley and Myles.

Mary Oliver

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

– Mary Oliver

To read more of her poetry, read:
New and Selected Poems : Volume One by Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems : Volume Two by Mary Oliver

Also:
Rules for the Dance : A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse by Mary Oliver
A webpage with her poems
Academy of American Poets profile

Nietzsche

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

sayeth Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Sandra Dee

Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was
- Actress Sandra Dee told The Newark Evening News, 1967.

Thoughts

If you're always guided by other people's thoughts, whats the point of having our own - Helen Hunt's character in the movie, The Good Woman, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan