Friday, December 31, 2010

Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of Nicholas Charles Sparks (born December 31, 1965), novelist and screenwriter.

“I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.”
- Nicholas Sparks

"We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox."
- Nicholas Sparks

"Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile."
- Nicholas Sparks

"Passion is passion. It's the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn't matter where it's directed...It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith...the saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all."
- Nicholas Sparks

"When you're struggling with something, look at all the people around you and realize that every single person you see is struggling with something, and to them, it's just as hard as what you're going through."
- Nicholas Sparks

Sparks image source (1)

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Meandering we go . . .

Today is the birthday of Paul Frederic Bowles (December 30, 1910 – November 18, 1999), composer, author, and translator. He is best known for his first novel The Sheltering Sky.

"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
- Paul Bowles

"Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another."
- Paul Bowles

"Another important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking."
- Paul Bowles

"If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another."
- Paul Bowles

"There is a way to master silence
Control its curves, inhabit its dark corners
And listen to the hiss of time outside."
- Paul Bowles

Bowles image source (1)

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Meandering in the spheres . . .

Today is the birthday of Pau Casals i Defilló (December 29, 1876 – October 22, 1973), cellist and conductor. He is best known by his professional name, Pablo Casals.

"To live is not enough; we must take part."
- Pablo Casals

"I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance."
- Pablo Casals

"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children."
- Pablo Casals

"Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it."
- Pablo Casals

"Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?"
- Pablo Casals

"To the whole world you might be just one person, but to one person you might just be the whole world."
- Pablo Casals

"The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?"
- Pablo Casals

"Music will save the world."
- Pablo Casals

Casals image source (1)

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Meandering in ideas . . .

Today is the birthday of Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001), philosopher, educator, and author.

Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins founded the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. Mortimer Adler founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952 and was co-founder of The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas with Max Weismann.

"Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life."
- Mortimer J. Adler

"You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think." - Mortimer J. Adler

"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you."
- Mortimer J. Adler

"Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature."
- Mortimer J. Adler

"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live."
- Mortimer J. Adler

"Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men."
- Mortimer J. Adler

Adler image source (1)

Monday, December 27, 2010

Meandering about . . .

Today is the birthday of Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 – September 28, 1895), microbiologist, chemist, pioneer of the "Germ theory of disease", and inventor of the process of Pasteurization.

"In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."
- Louis Pasteur

"After death, life reappears in a different form and with different laws. It is inscribed in the laws of the permanence of life on the surface of the earth and everything that has been a plant and an animal will be destroyed and transformed into a gaseous, volatile and mineral substance."
- Louis Pasteur

"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity."
- Louis Pasteur

"I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner."
- Louis Pasteur

"The role of the infinitely small in nature is infinitely great."
- Louis Pasteur

Pasteur image source (1)

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980), novelist and painter. He is best known for his novels, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring.

"Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery."
- Henry Miller

"A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold."
- Henry Miller

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
- Henry Miller

"Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves."
- Henry Miller

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself"
- Henry Miller

"Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy."
- Henry Miller

"Everything hinges on how you look at things"
- Henry Miller

Miller image source (1)

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Meandering on the path . . .

Today is the birthday of Carlos Castaneda (December 25, 1925 – April 27, 1998) anthropologist and author. He is best known for the book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.

"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."
- Carlos Castaneda

"A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use."
- Carlos Castaneda

"For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it."
- Carlos Castaneda

"We are men and our lot in life is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds."
- Carlos Castaneda

"We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye."
- Carlos Castaneda

"A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. "
- Carlos Castaneda

Castaneda image source (1)

Friday, December 24, 2010

Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888), poet and literary critic. He is best known for his poem, Dover Beach.

"Art still has truth. Take refuge there."
- Matthew Arnold

"We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I do not know."
- Matthew Arnold

"One must, I think, be struck more and more the longer one lives, to find how much in our present society a man's life of each day depends for its solidity and value upon whether he reads during that day, and far more still on what he reads during it."
- Matthew Arnold

"Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge."
- Matthew Arnold

"The free thinking of one age is the common sense of the next."
- Matthew Arnold

"Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming."
- Matthew Arnold

“The beginning is always today.”
- Matthew Arnold

Arnold image source (1)

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Meander with me . . .

Today is the birthday of Robert Bly (born December 23, 1926), poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement. His best known work is Iron John: A Book About Men.

"The candle is not lit to give light, but to testify to the night."
- Robert Bly

“Don't go outside your house to see flowers. My friend, don't bother with that excursion. Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals. That will do for a place to sit. Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it, before gardens and after gardens.”
- Robert Bly

"Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry."
- Robert Bly

"It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions."
- Robert Bly

"Wherever there is water there is someone drowning."
- Robert Bly

"It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down."
- Robert Bly

Bly image source (1)

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Magically meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Charles de Lint (born December 22, 1951), fantasy author and Celtic folk musician.

"While you live . . . you have a duty to life . . . The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them.. . . Otherwise they fade away."
- Charles de Lint

"I love this world ... That is what rules my life. When I die, I want to have done all in my power to leave it in a better state than it was in when I found it. At the same time I know that this can never be. The world has grown so complex that one voice can do little to alter it any longer. That doesn't stop me from doing what I can but it makes the task hard. The successes are so small, the failures so large and many. It's like trying to stem a storm with one's bare hands."
- Charles de Lint

"A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what's real and what's not and most of us have been going along with it ever since."
- Charles de Lint

"It's the questions we ask, the journey we take to get to where we are going that is more important than the actual answer."
- Charles de Lint

"The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can actually trick yourself into feeling better."
- Charles de Lint

"That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you."
- Charles de Lint

"Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?"
- Charles de Lint

"I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile."
- Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint image source (1)

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of Anthony Dymoke Powell (December 21, 1905 – March 28, 2000), novelist. He is best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975.

"Books do furnish a room."
- Anthony Powell

"People think because a novel's invented, it isn't true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Because a novel's invented, it is true. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they can't include every conceivable.. circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. The novelist himself lays it down. His decision is binding."
- Anthony Powell

"Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already."
- Anthony Powell

"He fell in love with himself at first sight, and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Self-love seems so often unrequited."
- Anthony Powell

"It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them."
- Anthony Powell

" Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed."
- Anthony Powell

Powell image source (1)

Monday, December 20, 2010

Meandering in the matrix . . .

Today is the birthday of Edwin Abbott Abbott (December 20, 1838 – October 12, 1926), schoolmaster and theologian. He is best known as the author of the mathematical satire and religious allegory Flatland (1884).

"I see a fulfilment of the great Law of all worlds, that while the wisdom of Man thinks it is working one thing, the wisdom of Nature constrains it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing."
- Edwin Abbott Abbott

"My volition shrinks from the painful task of recalling my humiliation; yet, like a second Prometheus, I will endure this and worse, if by any means I may arouse in the interiors of Plane and Solid Humanity a spirit of rebellion against the Conceit which would limit our Dimensions to Two or Three or any number short of Infinity."
- Edwin Abbott Abbott

"Although popularly everyone called a Circle is deemed a Circle, yet among the better educated Classes it is known that no Circle is really a Circle, but only a Polygon with a very large number of very small sides. . ."
- Edwin Abbott Abbott

"Men are divided in opinion as to the facts. And even granting the facts, they explain them in different ways."
- Edwin Abbott Abbott

Abbott image source (1)



Today is the birthday of David Joseph Bohm (December 20, 1917 – October 27, 1992), quantum physicist and philosopher. He is oft referred to as a maverick physicist who stepped far outside the mainstream.

"Then there is the further question of what is the relationship of thinking to reality. As careful attention shows, thought itself is in an actual process of movement. That is to say, one can feel a sense of flow in the stream of consciousness not dissimilar to the sense of flow in the movement of matter in general. May not thought itself thus be a part of reality as a whole? But then, what could it mean for one part of reality to know another, and to what extent would this be possible?"
-David Bohm

"If man thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole."
- David Bohm

"Dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. We haven't really paid much attention to thought as a process. we have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process. Why does thought require attention? Every thinking requires attention, really. If we ran machines withinout paying attention to them, they would break down. Our thought, too, is a process, and it requires attention, otherwise its going to go wrong."
-David Bohm

"During the past few decades, modern technology, with radio, TV, air travel, and satellites, has woven a network of communication which puts each part of the world in to almost instant contact with all the other parts. Yet, in spite of this world-wide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale. . . "
-David Bohm

"If I am right in saying that thought is the ultimate origin or source, it follows that if we don't do anything about thought, we won't get anywhere. We may momentarily relieve the population problem, the ecological problem, and so on, but they will come back in another way."
-David Bohm

Bohm image source (1)

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Meandering freely . . .

Today is the birthday of Édith Giovanna Gassion (19 December 1915 – 11 October 1963), singer and cultural icon. She is best known as Édith Piaf and is one of France's most beloved singers.

"All I've done all my life is disobey." - Édith Piaf

"For me, singing is a way of escaping. It's another world. I'm no longer on earth."
- Edith Piaf

"I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had."
- Edith Piaf

"I want to make people cry even when they don't understand my words."
- Edith Piaf


"No, I regret nothing . . . neither the good or the bad. It's all the same to me."
- Edith Piaf



Trivia bit: As a small child she experienced blindness as the result of a virus. She allegedly recovered her sight after taken on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Saint Therese de Lisieue in Paris.

Piaf image source (1)

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Meandering up the mountain . . .

Today is the birthday of Peter Wessel Zapffe (December 18, 1899 - October 12, 1990), meta-physician, author and mountaineer. He is oft referred to as a cheerfully pessimistic, mountain-climbing existentialist.

"Each new generation asks – What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be – Why does man need a meaning to life?"
- Peter Wessel Zapffe

"Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world."
- Peter Wessel Zapffe

"I myself am no longer very much afflicted by the thought of my own death. The synthesis, "Peter Wessel Zapffe", did not originate until 1899. It was spared from immediate participation in the horrors of the previous years, and it will not miss what awaits mankind at the end of its vertiginous madness".
- Peter Wessel Zapffe

"If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains peace of mind."
- Peter Wessel Zapffe

Zapffe image source (1)

Friday, December 17, 2010

Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Ford Madox Ford (December 17, 1873 – June 26, 1939), novelist, poet, critic and editor. He is oft referred to as one of the founding fathers of English Modernism.

"We are almost always in one place with our minds somewhere quite other."
- Ford Madox Ford

"It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me."
- Ford Madox Ford

"If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?"
- Ford Madox Ford

"Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and to madness."
- Ford Madox Ford

"What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself."
- Ford Madox Ford

Ford image source (1)

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana

"An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world."
- George Santayana

"A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted."
- George Santayana

"We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible."
- George Santayana

"To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say."
- George Santayana

"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
- George Santayana

"The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it."
- George Santayana

Santayana image source (1)


Today is the birthday of Arthur Charles Clarke (December 16, 1917 – March 19, 2008), science fiction author, inventor, and futurist. He is best known for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
- Arthur C. Clarke

"Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future."
- Arthur C. Clarke

"Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all."
- Arthur C. Clarke

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible."
- Arthur C. Clarke

"One cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying."
- Arthur C. Clarke

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke

"Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal."
- Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke image source (1)

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Meandering we go . . .

Today is the birthday of Elisabeth Lillian Wehner (December 15, 1896 - January 17, 1972), author. She is best known by her pen name, Betty Smith and her first novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943).

“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”
- Betty Smith

"Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."
-Betty Smith

"I came to a clear conclusion, and it is a universal one: To live, to struggle, to be in love with life--in love with all life holds, joyful or sorrowful--is fulfillment. The fullness of life is open to all of us."
- Betty Smith

“Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.”
- Betty Smith

Smith image source (1)

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Meandering on the path . . .

Today is the birthday of Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar (Born December 14, 1918), founder of Iyengar Yoga. He is best known as B. K. S. Iyengar.

"The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in."
- B.K.S. Iyengar

"Yoga, an ancient but perfect science, deals with the evolution of humanity. This evolution includes all aspects of one's being, from bodily health to self-realization. Yoga means union - the union of body with consciousness and consciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skill in the performance of one's actions."
- B.K.S. Iyengar

"Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open."
- B.K.S. Iyengar

"Illuminated emancipation, freedom, unalloyed and untainted bliss await you, but you have to choose to embark on the Inward Journey to discover it."
- B.K.S. Iyengar

"Change leads to disappointment if it is not sustained. Transformation is sustained change, and it is achieved through practice."
- B.K.S. Iyengar

"Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured."
- B.K.S. Iyengar

"It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity."
- B.K.S. Iyengar

Iyengar image source (1)

Monday, December 13, 2010

Meandering to and fro . . .

Today is the birthday of Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (December 13, 1797 – February 17, 1856), journalist, essayist, literary critic and poet.

"Where they burn books, they will also burn people."
- Heinrich Heine

"He who will establish himself on a certain height must yield according to circumstances, like the weather-cock on a church-spire, which, though it be made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it remained obstinately immovable, and did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind."
- Heinrich Heine

"Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance."
- Heinrich Heine

"Experience is a good school. But the fees are high."
- Heinrich Heine

"Ask me not what I have, but what I am."
- Heinrich Heine

"God will forgive me. It's his job."
- Heinrich Heine said this on his deathbed (1856).

Heine image source (1)

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880), novelist. He is best known for his novel, Madame Bovary (1857).

"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."
- Gustave Flaubert

"What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?"
- Gustave Flaubert

"The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments."
- Gustave Flaubert

"Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough."
- Gustave Flaubert

"I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings."
- Gustave Flaubert

"Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory."
- Gustave Flaubert

"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe."
- Gustave Flaubert

Flaubert image source (1)

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Meandering in the matrix . . .

Today is the birthday of Max Born (December 11, 1882 – January 5, 1970), physicist and mathematician. He was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics and won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared with Walther Bothe).

"I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics."
- Max Born

"The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world."
- Max Born

"It is odd to think that there is a word for something which, strictly speaking, does not exist, namely, 'rest'. We distinguish between living and dead matter; between moving bodies and bodies at rest. This is a primitive point of view. What seems dead, a stone or the proverbial 'door-nail', say, is actually forever in motion. We have merely become accustomed to judge by outward appearances; by the deceptive impressions we get through our senses."
- Max Born

"Intellect distinguishes between the possible and the impossible reason distinguishes between the sensible and the senseless. Even the possible can be senseless."
- Max Born

Born image source (1)

Friday, December 10, 2010

Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of George MacDonald (December 10, 1824 – September 18, 1905), author, poet, and clergyman.

"We are often unable to tell people what they need to know because they want to know something else."
- George MacDonald

"It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over over any soul be loved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in the realms of lofty Death."
- George MacDonald

"Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil."
- George MacDonald

"If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give."
- George MacDonald

"The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself."
- George MacDonald

"A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast, the less he knows it.
- George MacDonald

"Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes."
- George MacDonald

"Seeing is not believing--it is only seeing."
- George MacDonald

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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Meandering on and on . . .

Today is the birthday of John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674), poet, polemicist, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
- John Milton

"For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."
- John Milton

"He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well."
- John Milton

"He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king."
- John Milton

"Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity."
- John Milton

"Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind."
- John Milton

"Innocence, Once Lost, Can Never Be Regained. Darkness, Once Gazed Upon, Can Never Be Lost."
- John Milton

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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Meandering along . . .

Today is the birthday of James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 – November 2, 1961) was an American author, cartoonist and humorist.

"It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers."
- James Thurber

"The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature."
- James Thurber

"The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth."
- James Thurber

"All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
- James Thurber

"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."
- James Thurber

"Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness."
- James Thurber

"There are two kinds of light — the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures."
- James Thurber

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Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947), author. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her work, One of Ours (1922).

"Where there is great love, there are always miracles!"
- Willa Cather

"When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless."
- Willa Cather

"There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm."
- Willa Cather

"Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement."
- Willa Cather

"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."
- Willa Cather

"It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of."
- Willa Cather

"That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."
- Willa Cather

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Monday, December 6, 2010

Meandering on the path . . .

Today is the birthday of Violet Mary Firth (December 6, 1890 – January 8, 1946), occultist and author. She is better known by her pseudonym Dion Fortune, which was inspired by her family motto "Deo, non fortuna" (Latin for "by God, not fate").

"Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will."
- Dion Fortune

"To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect."
- Dion Fortune

"There is a life behind the personality that uses personalities as masks. There are times when life puts off the mask and deep answers unto deep."
- Dion Fortune

"We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive. We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them."
- Dion Fortune

"Symbols are to the mind what tools are to the hand--an extended application of its powers."
- Dion Fortune

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Sunday, December 5, 2010

Meandering . . .

Today is the birthday of Rose Wilder Lane (December 5, 1886 – October 30, 1968), journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist. She is oft referred to as one of the founding mothers (with Ayn Rand and Isabel Paterson) of the American libertarian movement.

"Making the best of things is... a damn poor way of dealing with them. My whole life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand."
- Rose Wilder Lane

"Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-granted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we—because we don’t question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted."
- Rose Wilder Lane

"As novices, we think we're entirely responsible for the way people treat us. I have long since learned that we are responsible only for the way we treat people."
- Rose Wilder Lane

"Writing fiction is... an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it."
- Rose Wilder Lane

"Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open."
- Rose Wilder Lane

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Saturday, December 4, 2010

Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881), essayist, historian and philosopher.

"A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder."
- Thomas Carlyle

"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge."
- Thomas Carlyle

"Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will."
- Thomas Carlyle

"Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment."
- Thomas Carlyle

"Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious."
- Thomas Carlyle

"Go as far as you can see; when you get there you'll be able to see farther."
- Thomas Carlyle

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Friday, December 3, 2010

Meandering in a dream . . .

Today is the birthday of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski (December 3, 1857 – August 3, 1924), novelist and short-story writer. He is best known as Joseph Conrad.

"A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth."
- Joseph Conrad

"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask."
- Joseph Conrad

"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone..."
- Joseph Conrad

"He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense."
- Joseph Conrad

"A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns."
- Joseph Conrad

"A man's most open actions have a secret side to them."
- Joseph Conrad

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Thursday, December 2, 2010

Meandering in thought . . .

Today is the birthday of Sissela Bok (born 2 December 1934), philosopher and ethicist. Sissela Bok is best known for her book, Lying: Moral Choice in Private and Public Life (1978) and as the daughter of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, both Nobel Prize winners.

"Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived."
- Sissela Bok

"Confidentiality refers to the boundaries surrounding shared secrets and to the process of guarding these boundaries. While confidentiality protects much that is not in fact secret, personal secrets lie at its core. The innermost, the vulnerable, often the shameful: these aspects of self-disclosure help explain why one name for professional confidentiality has been "the professional secret." Such secrecy is sometimes mistakenly confused with privacy; yet it can concern many matters in no way private, but that someone wishes to keep from the knowledge of third parties."
- Sissela Bok

"While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive."
- Sissela Bok

"White lies are at the other end of the spectrum of deception from lies in a serious crisis. They are the most common and the most trivial forms that duplicity can take. The fact that they are so common provides their protective coloring. And their very triviality, when compared to more threatening lies, makes it seem unnecessary or even absurd to condemn them. Some consider all well-intentioned lies, however momentous, to be white; I shall adhere to the narrower usage: a white lie, in this sense, is a falsehood not meant to injure anyone, and of little moral import."
- Sissela Bok

“We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.”
- Sissela Bok

“Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared.”
- Sissela Bok

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Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Meandering here, meandering there, meandering all around . . .

Today is the birthday of Rex Todhunter Stout (December 1, 1886 – October 27, 1975), mystery novelist and publisher. He is best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe.

"The only difference between me and most people is that I'm perfectly aware that all my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made."
- Rex Stout

"A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them."
- Rex Stout

"Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth."
- Rex Stout

"The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books."
- Rex Stout

“There are two kinds of statistics: the kind you look up and the kind you make up.”
- Rex Stout

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Today is the birthday of Daniel Pennacchioni (born December 1st, 1944*), writer. He is best known by his pen name, Daniel Pennac and for his humorous, imaginative writing style.

"A well-chosen book saves you from everything, including yourself."
- Daniel Pennac

"Since the dawn of education, the student considered as normal has been the student who puts up the least resistance to teaching, the one who doesn't call our knowledge into question or put our competency to the test, a student who already knows a lot, who is gifted with instant comprehension, who spares us searching for the access roads to his grey matter, a student with a natural urge to learn, who can stop being a kid in turmoil or a teenager with problems during our lessons, a student convinced from the cradle that he has to curb his appetites and emotions by exercising his reason if he doesn't want to live in a jungle filled with predators, a student confident that the intellectual life is a source of infinite pleasures that can be refined to the extreme when most other pleasures are doomed to monotonous repetition - in short, a student who has understood that knowledge is the only answer: the answer to the slavery in which ignorance wants to keep us, the sole consolation for our ontological loneliness."
- Daniel Pennac

"We human being build houses because we`re alive but we write books because we` re mortal. We live in groups because we`re sociable but we read because we know we`re alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one`s place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.”
- Daniel Pennac

"Time spent reading, like time spent loving, increases our lifetime."
- Daniel Pennac

* Question of actual date
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