Unhappiness

"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity." - Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

The soul marching on

His body mouldering in the grave, his soul marching on.
- from a poem about John Brown, lines added over the years but one version is by William W. Patton

John Brown was an American abolitionist who believed that an armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow slavery in the United States. "On October 16, 1859, he led 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan to arm slaves with the weapons he and his men seized from the arsenal was thwarted, however, by local farmers, militiamen, and Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Within 36 hours of the attack, most of Brown's men had been killed or captured." 

He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five men and inciting a slave insurrection, found guilty on all counts, and was hanged.

If you are interesting in finding out more, try to find this PBS documentary about his war against slavery.

Everything is ecstasy, inside

"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

Solitude

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

"What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours — that is what you must be able to attain." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter 6, Letters To A Young Poet

Love

"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

‘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

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

"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

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

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

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).

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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

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

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

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

  

T. E. Lawrence

  “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

 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

"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

“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

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

“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

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

"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

"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

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

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.