“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” ― Osho
Spoiler: love for Osho... Love me some Osho. It was his books I read on Eastern philosophy, beginning in '07, that was a crucial part to sorting out my shit. I don't always agree with his thoughts, but I do rez deeply with how he expresses himself and the insights he has about life, the universe and everything.
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult." - Seneca "That grief is light which can take counsel." - Seneca
"You were given a choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and you will have war." -Winston Churchill, speaking to Neville Chamberlain after the latter's signing of the Munich Agreement.
"People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them." - George Bernard Shaw "If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security." - Gail Sheehy "Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown." - George Shinn
"Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind." - Seneca "The question isn't who is going to let me; the question is who is going to stop me." - Ayn Rand
"We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path." - Paulo Coelho "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. - Oscar Wilde
This is the very worst wickedness, that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten. - D. H. Lawrence When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are. ― Ram Dass
[This one's for @jannert. I don't know the author, so I don't know how much is sarcasm.] But I do like Scotland. I like the miserable weather. I like the miserable people, the fatalism, the negativity, the violence that's always just below the surface. And I like the way you deal with religion. One century you're up to your lugs in it, the next you're trading the whole apparatus in for Sunday superstores. Praise the Lord and thrash the bairns. Ask and ye shall have the door shut in your face. Blessed are they that shop on the Sabbath, for they shall get the best bargains. Oh yes, this is a very fine country. - James Robertson
I've met him on several occasions, if that's James Robertson the author. He's a fantastic guy. And yes, he can be very gently sarcastic. He was the honorary president of the Ullapool Book Festival for several years, and I attended all of those. I've not read all his books, but the ones I have read I really liked ...and you've just inspired me to order one of the ones I've not read on Kindle.
"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." - Rumi
There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist. - Terry Pratchett
"Eating greens is a special treat. It makes long ears, and great big feet... but it sure is awful stuff ta eat. I made that last part up myself." - Thumper
I returned to New Orleans and my problems with pari-mutuel windows and a dark-haired, milk-skinned wife from Martinique who went home with men from the Garden District while I was passed out in a houseboat on Lake Pontchartrain, the downdraft of U.S. Army helicopters flattening a plain of elephant grass in my dreams. - James Lee Burke
"Only one who devotes themself to a cause with their whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person." - Albert Einstein
[This one hit home.] To misuse one's talent, to be cavalier about it, to set it aside because of fear or sloth, is unpardonable. - James Lee Burke
