The Second Musings Archive
This site is dedicated to all who seek knowledge, because knowledge
banishes fear.
The Fifth Musings Archive
*These
quotes are meant to provoke thought and discussion; not all are ideas
which I totally agree with,
but they all have caused me to think about life and reality.

"Education is not preparation for life. education is life
itself." - John Dewey
"Silence is the element in which great things are formed for them
to finally emerge, perfect and majestic, in the light of the life they
will dominate."
"Le silence est l'élément dans lequel se forme les grandes
choses, pour qu'enfin elles puissent émerger, parfaites et majestueuses,
à la lumière de la vie qu'elles vont dominer." - Maurice
Maëterlinck. Le Trésor des Humbles
"Not to know is bad.
Not to want to know is worse
Not to hope is unthinkable.
Not to dare is unforgivable." - Ibo (S.E.Nigerian) Proverb
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no
path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The spirit of man communes with Heaven;
the omnipotence of Heaven resides in man.
Is the distance between Heaven and man very great?" - Hung Tzu-ch'eng
(1593-1665)
"Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it...
or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it.
Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the
teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to
be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings -- that
doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide." - Gautama
Buddha, The Dhammapada
"Success" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man
can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." - Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a
man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln
"Man is still in his childhood; for he cannot respect an ideal
which is not imposed on him against his will, nor can he find satisfaction
in a good created by his own action. He is afraid of a universe that
leaves him alone. Freedom appalls him." - George Santayana, Reason
in Religion
"In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place."
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
"We will be known by the tracks we leave behind." - Dakota
proverb
"Vermont's Virtues" - Sinclair
Lewis
"Since spontaneity is difficult, most people can be called the
"human impersonators", i.e., they are "trying"
to be what they think is human, rather than just being what they
are." - Abraham Maslow
"When a man is walking through the jungle and is confronted by a
tiger, he should put fear aside, become one with the tiger and he will be
safe, for what beast would attack itself?" - Taoist saying
"There is darkness all around us; but if the darkness is,
and the darkness is of the forest, then the darkness must be good." -
Pygmy saying
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is
because we do not dare that they are difficult." - Unknown
Spiritual Responsibility - Buddha
"And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The cure of the part should not be attempted without treatment of
the whole. No attempt should be made to cure the body without the soul
and, if the head and body are to be healthy you must begin by curing the
mind." - Plato
"My first teacher in the craft told me, and I have since found it
to be true, that elders are not defined by age nor accumulation of
knowledge nor level of degree obtained. Elders are defined solely by how
often they get called at 3am to help with a personal crisis." - Walking
Stick
"Those healers who are attentive to the needs of the patient, who
are self-confident and have faith in the effectiveness of their treatment,
are much more likely to cause the placebo effect to come into play."
- Dr. Herbert Benson
"The placebo effect, which is defined as the positive response of
the patient to a treatment or medication which has no known efficacy, used
to be referred to disparagingly as a passive result of treatment. An
example would be sugar pills. It is now also viewed positively, as the
positive response of a patient elicited directly and actively by a
practitioner, knowing that there is no known efficacy to the
treatment or medication itself, but counting on the placebo effect to
utilize the tendency in the patient to return to health. The placebo
effect is always noticeably greater than mere chance. An example would be
Therapeutic Touch. Western medicine, as a result of the trend towards
holistic medicine, sees this as the prime factor in "faith"
healing, or the healing by "laying-on of hands", such as by
Therapeutic Touch and Reiki." - Comment by Lawton R. Smith
"Some patients, though conscious that their condition is
precarious, recover their health simply through their contentment with the
goodness of the physician." - Hippocrates
"Namaste (nah-mah-STAY) - I honor the place in you
in which the entire universe dwells. I honor the love, the truth, the
light and the peace in you. When you are in that place in you and I am in
that place in me, we are one...Namaste" [Also, the god in me
recognizes the god in you - we are one].
"Disillusioned words like bullets bark, as human gods aim for
their mark.
Made everything from toy guns that spark, to flesh colored christs that
glow in the dark.
It's easy to see without lookin' too far, that not much is really
sacred." - Bob Dylan
"May all beings have happiness
and the causes of happiness,
May all be free from sorrow
and from the causes of sorrow,
May all never be separated from the sacred
happiness which is sorrowless,
And may all live in equanimity
without too much attachment
and too much aversion,
And live believing in the equality
of all that lives.
May whatever merit comes from this practice go towards the
enlightenment of all beings:
May it become a drop in the ocean of the activity of all the
Buddhas in their tireless work for the liberation of all beings." - From
The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying
"You are body/mind/spirit,
Not body and mind and spirit.
What your mind doesn't handle,
Your body will try to resolve,
Draining spiritual energy in the process. - J. L. Berri
"First, they came for the labor unions but I wasn't a labor
unionist, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Communists but I
wasn't a Communist, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Jews but
I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the Catholics but
I wasn't a Catholic, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me, and
there was no one left to speak up." - Pastor Martin Niemoller
"Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the
tip of a leaf." - Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
"Work as if you don't need the money
Love as if you have never been hurt,
And dance as if nobody is watching!" - Unknown
"A simple word,
A smile,
A touch of kindness,
A moment taken,
Shared;
These are our gift to you." - Joseph Running Wolf
"The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth
in the present moment, to appreciate
the peace and beauty that are available now....
It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice." - Thich
Nhat Hanh
The Law of Life - Unknown
"One of the characteristics of wisdom is not how much you know,
but how you use that knowledge." - Janet Olimpo
"Youth is not a time of life, it's a state of mind. Youth means a
temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, the appetite for
adventure over the love of ease. Nobody grows old by merely living a
number of years. We grow old, when we have more old memories than we have
young dreams...." - Unknown
"Nature says few words." - Tao Te Ching
"The Consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself
and reflecting upon itself." - Teilhard de Chardin
"Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated
are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in
nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow
that action or generation or anything invisible can have real
existence." - Plato "Theaetetus"
"A person in danger should not try to escape at one stroke. He
should first calmly hold his own, then be satisfied with small gains,
which will come by creative adaptations." - I Ching (B.C. 1150?)
"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." - Indira
Gandhi
"The velocity with which time flies is infinite, as is most
apparent to those who look back." - Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.)
"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your
life in such a manner that when you die, the world cries and you
rejoice." - Native American Proverb
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find
in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all
hostility." - Longfellow
"What I've Learned in Life" - Unknown
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do
not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your
religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of
your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have
been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis,
when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the
good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." -
Buddha
"We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of
the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart." - Martin Luther King,
Jr.
"Most people actually crave love, as we tend to resist the very
thing we crave the most. We resist love, because we have to open our
hearts to receive it. This openness or vulnerability we need to cultivate
in order to receive, threatens the protective wall that ego has built. The
clutching neediness which results when we block love's flow, only acts to
push it further away. Because of the terrible sense of separation that
results, we then tend to put up even more blocks to protect our
vulnerability, and our neediness increases once again." - Paula
Horan, Abundance Through Reiki
"I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall
out." - "Judge Harry Stone"
"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us
with our fellow men; and along these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our
actions run as causes, and they come back as effects." - Herman
Melville
"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages
to pick himself up, walk over or round it, and carry on." -
Winston S. Churchill
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - From Children
of God by Mary Doria Russell
"Liberty, according to my metaphysics...is a self-determining
power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and
power." - John Adams (1735-1826)
"The University of Massachusetts has just (recently), after a
lengthy investigative study, discovered that the EARTH IS ALIVE:
It has substance and form.
It has mass and weight.
It moves and responds within its environment (the Universe).
It can be damaged.
It heals when hurt.
It defends itself when attacked.
It uses oxygen (without which it would die and become barren).
It reproduces itself.
It has intelligence (in knowing WHAT to reproduce, and HOW to heal
itself).
It 'rests'.
It 'wakes'.
It responds to a time cycle.
It can be endangered.
If this is so, why then couldn't the entire UNIVERSE be sentient (in a
similar fashion) ???
And IF this is so, GOD, then, would have had LOTS to 'communicate'
to/with." - Unknown Web Source
"The point of the teachings is to control your own mind. Restrain
your mind from greed, and you will keep your body right, your mind pure
and your words faithful. Always thinking of the transience of your life,
you will be able to desist from greed and anger and will be able to avoid
all evils." - Buddha (B.C. 568-488)
"A Free Society is a place where it is safe to be unpopular."
-- Adlai Stevenson
"As humans, we tend to define reality by what we can perceive.
This perception not only includes all the normal human perceptions, but
also the extensions of those perceptions through the instruments we have
built like the microscope and the telescope. Everything inside our cone of
perception we accept as real, and everything outside that cone isn't real.
If we can't perceive it, then it doesn't exist. Every time we build a new
instrument we increase our cone of perception, and more things are
perceived and therefore become real." - Barbara Brennan - Hands
of Light
"Some are absolutely convinced that the path to God can be found
through avoidance of all enjoyable things. Therefore, they believe that
they have to outgrow "fun and games", sensuality and sex, food
and drink, dance and celebration. But does a human being not approach the
status of a machine if he denies and suppresses all pleasure? In this way,
does he not move further away from God, who is him/herself the
personification of vitality, joy and love?" - Walter Lübeck - The
Complete Reiki Handbook
"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical
universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond
logic." - Frank Herbert Dune
"Since time is not a person we can overtake when he is past, let
us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is
passing." - Goethe (1749-1832)
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