Inspiring Thoughts

Casual conversation between friends. Anything goes (almost).
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Choice

I'd rather have the thought of you
To hold against my heart,
My spirit to be taught of you
With west winds blowing,
Than all the warm caresses
Of another love's bestowing,
Or all the glories of the world
In which you had no part.

I'd rather have the theme of you
To thread my nights and days,
I'd rather have the dream of you
With faint stars glowing,
I'd rather have the want of you,
The rich, elusive taunt of you
Forever and forever and forever unconfessed
Than claim the alien comfort
Of any other's breast.

O lover! O my lover,
That this should come to me!
I'd rather have the hope for you,
Ah, Love, I'd rather grope for you
Within the great abyss
Than claim another's kiss --
Alone I'd rather go my way
Throughout eternity.
Angela Morgan
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled.
—G.K. Chesterton, on his relationship with his brother, Cecil.
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

There is one thing I learned when I was a boy, and I learned it well, and it has been one of my best friends
ever since. It is that I can learn from everything, and that if I allow a single day to pass without increasing my
store of wisdom, without enlarging and enriching my inner life, by however small an increment, that day is a
lost day in my life. Too many of us are asleep; we sleep and dream. We dream dreams, and all too often these
dreams are evil dreams, for they are the upsurgings of the lower, personal, easily self-satisfied ego of ours.

But others of us dream visions of incomparable beauty — and I mean not merely physical beauty, but beauty
of any kind: spiritual beauty, intellectual beauty, ay, even beauty of wondrous nature around us. And every
such new envisioning of a marvel awakens us by just so much. Oh, how we sleep, and are forgetful of what
we are and of the richness around us which is ours for the taking, ours if we will take it! For there is naught
that stands in the way of taking except oneself. There are none so blind as they who refuse to see; none so
deaf as they who refuse to hear; and, on the other hand, none so wise as they who meet every new experience
in life's wondrous adventure with the feeling: there is an angel behind this for me. I must discover him; learn
what that angelic messenger is trying to tell me. Every experience is such.
G. de Purucker
May all seek, find & follow the Path of Buddhas.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats,
scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists,
teachers, journalists, and professional politicians.

As compared with their opposite numbers in past ages, they were less
avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all,
more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing
opposition. This last difference was cardinal. By comparison with that existing
today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient. The ruling
groups were always infected to some extent by liberal ideas, and were content to
leave loose ends everywhere, to regard only the overt act and to be uninterested in
what their subjects were thinking.
George Orwell, 1984
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
Pascal
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge—and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves—how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” [Matthew 6:21]; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honey-gatherers of the spirit...
Nietzsche
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Jesse
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Jesse »

Pascal said, "All history is one immortal man who continually learns."
Image
Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

There is in man a higher than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach forth this same higher that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom?
Thomas Carlyle
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

To whom do I speak today?
Brothers are evil,
Friends of today are not of love. . . .
To whom do I speak today?
There are no righteous,
The land is left to those who do iniquity.
Egyptian papyrus from 2000 bce
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

My belief in the use of a course on philosophy is that the student shall learn to appreciate the miracle of the mind; shall learn its subtle but immense power, or shall begin to learn it; shall come to know that in seeing and in no tradition, he must find what truth is; that he shall see in it the source of all traditions, and shall see each one of them as better or worse statement of its revelations; shall come to trust it entirely, as the only true; to cleave to God against the name of God. When he has once known the oracle he will need no priest.
From Emerson's Natural History Of Intellect
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tingdzin
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by tingdzin »

Nicholas Weeks wrote:To whom do I speak today?
Brothers are evil,
Friends of today are not of love. . . .
To whom do I speak today?
There are no righteous,
The land is left to those who do iniquity.


Egyptian papyrus from 2000 bce
What is the context of this? I ask because I've heard a lot of heiroglyphic readings are said to be heavily interpretive, to say the least.
veggiepeace
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by veggiepeace »

Kunga Lhadzom wrote:There is more to this , than meets the eye.........

( Houdini )

?
Yes... and something similar was also said by Hamlet to Horatio (Shakespeare):

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" :reading:

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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

tingdzin wrote:
Nicholas Weeks wrote:To whom do I speak today?
Brothers are evil,
Friends of today are not of love. . . .
To whom do I speak today?
There are no righteous,
The land is left to those who do iniquity.


Egyptian papyrus from 2000 bce
What is the context of this? I ask because I've heard a lot of heiroglyphic readings are said to be heavily interpretive, to say the least.
I do not know, found it in some old book of quotations (Bartlett's 14th ed.). The author is unknown and it was found in the second poem of this papyrus kept in the Berlin Museum.
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Old Stan
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Old Stan »

A lot of inspiring thoughts!! I am reading a book about Steve Jobs, also find many inspiring ideas...
Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a form,—in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons who answer to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of a common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call passion; of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence come conversation, competition, persuasion, cities and war. Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the world in them.

But the larger experience of man discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. In all conversation between two persons tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it is impersonal; is God.

And so in groups where debate is earnest, and especially on high questions, the company become aware that the thought rises to an equal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual property in what was said, as well as the sayer. They all become wiser than they were. It arches over them like a temple, this unity of thought in which every heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious of attaining to a higher self-possession. It shines for all. There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest, and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and obstruct.

The mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for its own sake, think much less of property in truth. They accept it thankfully everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with any man’s name, for it is theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many valuable observations to people who are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort which we want and have long been hunting in vain.

The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more. I feel the same truth how often in my trivial conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us.
From the famous 1841 Essay by Emerson on the "Oversoul."
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

The philosophy of six thousand years has not
searched the chambers and magazines of the soul.
In its experiments there has always remained, in
the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve.
Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being
is descending into us from we know not whence.
The most exact calculator has no prescience that
somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next
moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge
a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.

As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I
watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see
not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see
that I am a pensioner; not a cause but a surprised
spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and
look up and put myself in the attitude of reception,
but from some alien energy the visions come.
From RW Emerson's 1841 essay The Over-Soul
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

The central aim of Vedanta is to bring all to one unifying understanding, yet to let each one follow his own particular form of faith. When we try to force sameness of thought, it bars spiritual progress; but when we admit the possibility of perfect unity in variety, then each one is able to advance in his own way.

Vedanta realizes that as long as there are such differences in human temperament and mind, we cannot expect all to worship in the same manner. To destroy diversity in life would be to destroy much of its beauty and sublimity. Therefore Vedanta includes in its scope all forms of thought.


From Emerson and Vedanta by Swami Paramananda
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Lucas Oliveira
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Lucas Oliveira »

If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.

Thomas the Apostle


https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle


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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, II. 133)
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Nicholas Weeks
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Re: Inspiring Thoughts

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Evil appears as good in the minds of those the gods lead to destruction.
Sophocles
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