The Great Quotes thread

[Raskolnikov]

[Eva2]

Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.

Henry Thoreau

[Bill Ryan]

Copying this from Sue's post back in 2021, when covid was starting to frighten everyone. The source is here, published in 1899.



Transcribed to text:

FEAR AND DEATH
(AN ARAB LEGEND)
BY R. R. BOWKER

The Spirit of the Plague entered the gate.
One, watching, asked, "How many wilt thou slay?"
"A thousand," spake the Spirit, "is my quest."
The Plague made end. The Spirit left the gate.
The watcher cried, " Ten thousand didst thou slay."
"Nay, one," the Spirit said; "Fear killed the rest."

[Raskolnikov]

[kfm27917]

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world - few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds - justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

- The Vampire Lestat, pp. 332-333, Anne Rice

[HopSan]

1. A man shows his character
in the way in which he deals with trifles - for then he is off his guard.

2. To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

3. A sense of humor is the only divine quality of man.

-- Schopenhauer

[kfm27917]

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quo...ouvenel?page=2

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."
~ Plutarch

[rgray222]

[Raskolnikov]

"Watch every man and see whether, hiding hatred in his heart, he speaks with friendly countenance, and his tongue rings with double speech from a dark soul."

“He (Pisistratus) found more credit when he flattered the people than I when I told them the truth. I . . . told the people that I was wiser than those who did not see that Pisistratus was aiming at tyranny, and more courageous than those who shrank from resisting him. They, however, denounced Solon as mad.”

"And at last I protested: 'My country, I, Solon, am ready to defend thee by word and deed; but some of my countrymen think me mad. Wherefore I will go forth out of their midst as the sole opponent of Pisistratus; and let them, if they like, become his bodyguard.’ For you must know, my friend, that he was beyond measure ambitious to be tyrant. He began by being a popular leader; his next step was to inflict wounds on himself and appear before the court of the Heliaea, crying out that these wounds had been inflicted by his enemies; and he requested them to give him a guard of 400 young men. And the people without listening to me granted him the men, who were armed with clubs. And after that he destroyed the democracy. It was in vain that I sought to free the poor amongst the Athenians from their condition of serfdom, if now they are all the slaves of one master, Pisistratus.”

Solon

[edina]

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through
you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this
expression is unique.
—MARTHA GRAHAM, DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER
(Quoted in Your Brain on Art)

[Bluegreen]

“To finish first, first you must finish.”

– Dick Trickle

[Eva2]

"The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly. It's not the shattering itself that breaks you—it’s the silence that follows, the quiet space where you realize there’s nothing left to salvage. And in that moment, you know that you’ll never be the same again. You’ll build something new, perhaps, but it will never be what you lost."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

[RMF808]

Be not as you are, be as you can be.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

Whether you think you can, or you can’t, you’re usually right

[Eva2]

'We have always been caught up in the anticipation of the unspeakable. The human adventure has always been a flirtation with these gigantic forces in an unseen dimension. This is what sets our religions going, this is what creates gurus and messiahs and scientific breakthroughs, it's that somehow we are in resonance with something much larger than ourselves, something which you could call the great attractor, the transcendental object at the end of time, the Gaian mind, whatever it is, we, out of all of nature, seem to have a special relationship to it and seem to be somehow both under its care and somehow involved in the manifesting of it in 3-dimensional space. It's that as we make our way across the historical landscape toward the sensed presence of this transcendental other, so it is making its way toward us through the content of dreams, psychedelic experiences, the careers of spiritually advanced people, -- the idea being that history, which is a state of extreme instability and disequilibrium which only lasts 15 or 20 thousand years, that history is about to be transformed or ended, that the factors that shaped history -- phonetic alphabets, male dominance, materialism, scientific method, empiricism -- these factors are about to be made obsolete by discoveries in the human and natural realm.'
Terence McKenna

[kfm27917]

[Tintin]

[Bill Ryan]

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

Hosea 8:7

[Vicus]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

Hosea 8:7

This apply perfect to the colonial West and the Messianic Israhell...

[kfm27917]

“Everything that humans are doing now – gathering, analyzing and processing data – will be done by AI. Ten years from now, consciousness (chitta) will be valued over knowledge. This is the time human beings can focus on consciousness.”

– Indian spiritual teacher Sadhguru