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

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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).

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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

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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)

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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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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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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