Favorite Quotations

[annabenedetti]

On the evening when I left the factory for the last time, I heard in the streets the usual cry of murders, accidents and suicides: the mental food of the overworked. It is Saturday night. I mingle with a crowd of labourers homeward bound, and with women and girls returning from a Saturday sale in the big shops. They hurry along delighted at the cheapness of a bargain, little dreaming of the human effort that has produced it, the cost of life and energy it represents. As they pass, they draw their skirts aside from us, the labourers who have made their bargains cheap; from us, the cooperators who enable them to have the luxuries they do; from us, the multitude who stand between them and the monster Toil that must be fed with human lives. Think of us, as we herd to our work in the winter dawn; think of us as we bend over our task all the daylight without rest; think of us at the end of the day as we resume suffering and anxiety in homes of squalour and ugliness; think of us as we make our wretched try for merriment; think of us as we stand protectors between you and the labour that must be done to satisfy your material demands; think of us—be merciful.

Bessie Van Vorst, 1903

 

[Selaphiel]

"The cross reveals that understanding the phenomenon of sin solely as individual self-relatedness and individual self-glorification dangerously downplays it, since it is on the cross that the ghastly violence of the powers of the world is revealed , powers that compromise religion, law, politics, and public morality and opinion in opposing and even veiling God's presence. It becomes clear in light of the cross of Jesus Christ that even God's "good law" can turn into an instrument of lies and deception under the power of sin. Jesus Christ in crucified in the name of religion, of global power politics, with reference to both Jewish and Roman law, and with the approval or even under the pressure of public opinion. [...] The cross reveals how human beings distance themselves both individually and collectively from God's loving presence, or even oppose that presence with violence while yet giving the appearance of justice, being pleasing to God, political necessity, and public consensus."

-Michael Welker

Some words on the power of sin that the "Judge Dredd Christians" needs to take to heart.

 

[bybee]

"The cross reveals that understanding the phenomenon of sin solely as individual self-relatedness and individual self-glorification dangerously downplays it, since it is on the cross that the ghastly violence of the powers of the world is revealed , powers that compromise religion, law, politics, and public morality and opinion in opposing and even veiling God's presence. It becomes clear in light of the cross of Jesus Christ that even God's "good law" can turn into an instrument of lies and deception under the power of sin. Jesus Christ in crucified in the name of religion, of global power politics, with reference to both Jewish and Roman law, and with the approval or even under the pressure of public opinion. [...] The cross reveals how human beings distance themselves both individually and collectively from God's loving presence, or even oppose that presence with violence while yet giving the appearance of justice, being pleasing to God, political necessity, and public consensus."

-Michael Welker

Some words on the power of sin that the "Judge Dredd Christians" needs to take to heart.

Heart- breakingly true! I think of Billy Budd.

 

[Buzzword]

"Of the traits of the brotherhood of writers, savants, musicians, inventors, and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, mechanism, science behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native grand-opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is greatest forever and forever who contributes the greatest original practical example. The cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one."
-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass


“When people tell us to be quiet and accept the conventional answers we’ve been given in the past, many of us groan like the ancient Hebrews when they were forced to produce bricks without straw.”
-Brian McLaren

 

[Buzzword]

"By saving others, you save yourself. If you think only of yourself, you'll only destroy yourself."
-Akira Kurosawa, "Seven Samurai"

 

[annabenedetti]

On doors:

If you haven't been able to be happy, maybe it's because you're holding firmly to your idea of happiness. Release that idea, and happiness can come more easily. Imagine that there are many doors that open to happiness. If you open every door, then happiness has many ways to come to you. But the situation is that you have closed all the doors except one, and that is why happiness can't come. So don't close any doors. Open all the doors. Don't commit yourself to one idea of happiness. Release the idea of happiness that you have, and then happiness can come today. Many of us are caught in an idea about how we can truly be happy... sit down and reexamine your idea of happiness.

Thich Nhat Hanh


And a meme I came across recently:

Believe it or not, I never thought about it quite that way before. I needed to see that meme. :chuckle:

 

[chrysostom]

So don't close any doors. Open all the doors.

freelight would like this
-the jury is still out
-it is a hung jury

 

[Rusha]

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." Isaac Asimov

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." William Hazlitt

"Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor." Elizabeth I

"Pride is a powerful narcotic, but it doesn’t do much for the auto-immune system." Stuart Stevens, Northern Exposure,Brains,Know-how, and Native Intelligence, 1990

"Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest of violence." Francis Jeffrey

"The highest result of education is tolerance." Helen Keller

 

[annabenedetti]

It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards.

Søren Kierkegaard

 

[Selaphiel]

"One of the Trinity is a Palestinian Jew, who came eating and drinking, forgave sin, and prophesied implausible glory."

-Robert W. Jenson

 

[steko]

"One of the Trinity is a Palestinian Jew, who came eating and drinking, forgave sin, and prophesied implausible glory."

-Robert W. Jenson

There was no Palestine in Jesus' day.

The Roman Emperor Hadrian mislabeled the land of Israel, Palestine, in 135 AD, a hundred years after the earthly life of Christ.


But indeed, Jesus Christ is one essence with the Father and Holy Spirit.

 

[Rusha]

If you haven't any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble. ~ Bob Hope

Don't be yourself — be someone a little nicer. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

If we should deal out justice only, in this world, who would escape? No, it is better to be generous, and in the end more profitable, for it gains gratitude for us, and love.
~ Mark Twain

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. ~ James Baldwin

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. ~ Faith Whittlesey

Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths. ~Lois Wyse

All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished. ~ Marshall Rosenberg

The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out. ~ Chinese Proverb
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[Tambora]

[h=1]“Fairy tales do not tell our children that monsters exist. Our children already know that monsters exist. Fairy tales tell our children that the monsters can be killed.”[/h]

 

[annabenedetti]

Every life is just a little bit of noise between two silences.

Noah Haidle (Smokefall)



I haven't seen the play, I just read that line of dialogue quoted in a review and it's really stuck with me. Okay, it bothers me.

 

[annabenedetti]

I read an interesting interview in Time Magazine with Eddie S. Glaude Jr., chair of Princeton's African-American Studies dept., in which he's suggesting that black voters to write in "none of the above." What caught my attention even more, though, was this:

"As long as we view equality as a kind of charitable enterprise, something white folks give to other folks, we're always going to be behind the eight ball. The goal is for every human being to be afforded dignity and standing. And white people aren't the measure for that."

 

[annabenedetti]

The Hawthorn

The crossed knot
in the hawthorn bark
and the stump
of the sawn off branch
hemmed by the roughened
trunk. In that
omniscient black eye
of witness
I see the dark no-growth
of what has passed
grown round by
what has come to pass,
looking at me
as if I could speak.

So much that was
good in her,
so much in me,
cut off now
from the future
in which we
grew together.

Now
through the window
of my new house
the hawthorn’s
crooked faithful
trunk round
an old and broken
growth,
my mouth dumb

and
Dante’s voice
instead of mine
from the open book

Brother, our love
has laid our wills to rest.
Making us long
only for what is ours
and by no other thirst
possessed.

Our life not lived
together
must still
live on apart,
longing only
for what is ours
alone,
each grow
round the missed branch
as best we can,
claim what is ours
separately,
though not forget
loved memories,
nor that life
still loved by memory,
nor the hurts
through which we
hesitantly
tried to learn
affection.

Our pilgrim journey
apart or together,
like the thirst
of everything
to find its true form,
the grain of the wood
round the hatched knot
still
straightening
toward the light.

David Whyte, The House of Belonging

I have his book of poetry on my table and read from it often. Over a year ago I posted another of his poems here.

 

[Angel4Truth]

Psalm 74:18
Remember this, O LORD, that the enemy has reviled, And a foolish people has spurned Your name.

 

[annabenedetti]

I think about my father every day – and my mother. I talk to them both all the time. I feel they’re around me at different times. If I need courage, I call upon my mother. If I need creativity, I call upon my father. If I’m scared, I call them both.

Lucy Dahl

Reminiscing about her father

 

[annabenedetti]

If I were to advise any young woman, I’d say keep your name purely to keep your identity. It is important women keep their own identity.

Lucy Dahl

 

[theophilus]

'The most valuable thing in the world is truth. You need to decide whether or not it matters to YOU." ~Ravi Z.