A Substitute for Wit

Jack Kerouac

2011-03-28T20:03:00.002-04:00

"It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born." — Jack Kerouac

Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet

2011-03-12T17:27:00.000-05:00

"Your solitude will be a support and a home for you." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

Love

2011-03-12T09:41:00.001-05:00

"Take love as an illustration. The one who truly loves does not love once and for all. Nor does he use a part of his love, and then again another part. For to change it into small coins is not to use it rightly. No, he loves with all of his love. It is wholly present in each expression. He continues to give it away as a whole, and yet he keeps it intact as a whole, in his heart. Wonderful riches! When the miser has gathered all the world's gold in sordidness—then he has become poor. When the lover gives away his whole love, he keeps it entire—in the purity of the heart." - Sören Kierkegaard (Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing)

Wisdom

2010-12-11T12:23:00.001-05:00

‘We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us.’ – Marcel Proust

Work

2010-07-17T18:52:00.002-04:00

We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!- Henry David Thoreau, Economy, Walden.

Fate

2010-06-20T07:32:00.004-04:00

"There ought to be no such thing as Fate. As long as we use this word, it is a sign of our impotence and that we are not yet ourselves." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (Journal Entry, April 1842)

Imagination

2010-04-26T08:51:00.005-04:00

The great successful men of the world have used their imagination . . . they think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building – steadily building. – Robert Collier

To let it go

2010-01-07T12:23:00.004-05:00

Have so many favorites when it comes to Mary Oliver.. but because of the lines excerpted below, In Blackwater Woods has to be one of my favorite poems of Mary Oliver!

Art and Existence

2009-09-30T16:03:00.008-04:00

An entertainment is something which distracts us or diverts us from the routine of daily life. It makes us for the time being forget our cares and worries; it interrupts our conscious thoughts and habits, rests our nerves and minds, though it may incidentally exhaust our bodies. Art, on the other hand, though it may divert us from the normal routine of our existence, causes us in some way or other to become conscious of that existence. - Sir Herbert Read, British critic and poet in To Hell with Culture, ch. 13 (1963).

The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal. - George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher and poet in Reason in Art, ch. 8, The Life of Reason (1905-1906, rev. edition 1953)

Possibilities

2009-09-21T07:52:00.004-04:00

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoicating as possibility?

- Soren Kierkegaard, the famous Danish philosopher wrote in his book Either/Or:

Open your eyes

2009-09-04T12:49:00.005-04:00

The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are --Anon

Henry Ford

2009-05-12T14:36:00.002-04:00

"You can't build up a reputation on what you are going to do." - Henry Ford

T. E. Lawrence

2009-05-06T18:53:00.003-04:00

“All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out otheir dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” - T. E. Lawrence

Sigmund Freud

2009-03-24T07:52:00.003-04:00

It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression. - Sigmund Freud

Albert Camus

2009-03-19T12:44:00.003-04:00

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." -- Albert Camus

Three more quotes from Camus:

"Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it."

"Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth"

"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."

T. S. Eliot

2009-03-17T19:51:00.004-04:00

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” - T. S. Eliot

Blaise Pascal

2008-10-06T21:55:00.008-04:00

Pascal said a lot of amazing things... but here are a few illustrative quotes.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

Jack Kerouac

2008-09-24T08:37:00.006-04:00

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” -- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Other Kerouac quotes that I like:

“Maybe that's what life is...a wink of the eye and winking stars.”

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”

“Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.”

Anais Nin

2008-09-19T12:59:00.004-04:00

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. - Anais Nin.

Nin certainly led a full life, as outlined by her in her diaries - Vol 1 through Vol 7 - and a recent biography.

Randy Pausch

2008-07-27T16:55:00.004-04:00

"Time is all you have, and you might have less than you think!”

"Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things."

Those two quotes are by Randy Pausch, the "dying man who taught America how to live". He died on July 25, 2008.

Enjoy his "Last Lecture" and more of his musings from the last few years of his life at his blog.

Viktor Frankl

2008-07-10T08:55:00.003-04:00

We needed to stop asking ourselves about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. . . . Therefore, it was necessary for us to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. - Viktor Frankl

Maupassant

2008-06-16T15:15:00.004-04:00

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare. — Guy de Maupassant

F. Scott Fitzgerald

2008-06-13T16:51:00.004-04:00

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past - The final sentence of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Gertrude Stein

2008-06-13T16:43:00.003-04:00

"A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears". - Gertrude Stein

Einstein

2008-03-12T11:35:00.002-04:00

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” - Albert Einstein

Goethe

2008-03-12T11:34:00.005-04:00

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Decisions

2008-03-12T11:11:00.004-04:00

"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.” - Anon

Lewis Carroll

2008-03-12T10:54:00.004-04:00

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
- Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

New beginnings

2008-03-12T10:53:00.006-04:00

The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -Anon

Waiting for the right moment

2007-04-09T10:41:00.001-04:00

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it"- W M Lewis

“How much of human life is lost in waiting.” - Ralph Waldom Emerson

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you." - Aldous Huxley

T. S. Eliot

2007-02-21T17:31:00.003-05:00

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden   ...

From one of my favorite poems, Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. The above lines are the amazing first lines of the "first quartet" Burnt Norton. You can read the entire poem -- and remember to read it aloud - at http://bit.ly/FourQuartets

Buddha

2006-11-03T17:31:00.001-05:00

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

2006-11-02T17:29:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-18T18:27:00.001-04:00

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

2006-10-12T15:42:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-10T15:32:00.000-04:00

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

2006-10-01T15:34:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-16T15:35:00.000-04:00

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

Patrick Henry

2006-09-12T15:38:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-03T15:39:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-26T12:49:00.000-04:00

..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

2006-08-18T17:00:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-12T17:01:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-11T07:23:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-10T13:24:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-09T17:43:00.000-04:00

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
sayeth Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Sandra Dee

2006-08-07T08:55:00.000-04:00

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

The Good Woman

2006-08-06T20:04:00.000-04:00

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