"Be not the slave of your own past, plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim fast, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain and overlook the old." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors." - African Proverb "Glorious is the tumult of the waves that crash against a vessel, preparing it for the seas of life." - Don Williams, Jr "A man should learn to sail in all winds." - Italian Proverb "The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, the realist adjusts the sails." - William Arthur Ward "I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship." - Louisa May Alcott " 'Tis the set of the sail that decides the goal, and not the storms of life." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
Favorite Quotes: Metal Song Lyrics Edition "We are the diamonds that choose to stay coal." - Wild Eyes by Parkway Drive "Can we beat this if we all tear the borders, break the walls together as one?" - Silence Speaks by While She Sleeps "Shine on, shine on, young love. You lit the fires in my heart, and I won't give that up." - Shine On by The Amity Affliction "If ignorance is happiness please steal me from my head." - Broken Youth by Bad Omens "Just a little spark will guide your way. You can be anything you want, just break free from these chains." - Lights by Forever In Combat I will probably add more later as they come to me.
"What has not been examined impartially, has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step toward truth." - Denis Diderot "See what a man does. Mark his motives. Examine in which things he rests. How can a man conceal his character?" - Confucius "In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue, but have taken them at second hand from other non-examiners, whose opinion about them were not worth a brass farthing." - Mark Twain "You most likely believe that your experiences have taught you what is real and what is true, at least for you. However, what you may not know is that your beliefs, conscious and unconscious, have determined what you would experience. Experiences do not determine what you believe. What you first of all believe is what you will experience. It follows, then, that if you wish to experience life in new ways, you need to examine your belief systems. Change your consciousness and you'll change your life." - Richard Bach "Examine what is said, not him who speaks." - Arab Proverb "An unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates "When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them, when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves." - Confucius
“The past can not change. We hold, and briefly live in the moment. The future is no promise." - Master Kei "The past did change. It couldn't change itself, but it could change the moment. Let the moment promise a changing future." - Daniel
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." - Carl Jung "Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble." - Carl Jung "We deem those happy who from the experiences of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them." - Carl Jung "Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience, a still small voice says to us, 'Something is out of tune.' " - Carl Jung "Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." - Carl Jung "We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses." - Carl Jung "Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people." - Carl Jung "There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." - Carl Jung
“What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.” - Sylvia Plath (In case you can't tell, I adore Sylvia Plath)
"Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way." - Edward de Bono "Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom - the power to choose, to respond, to change." - Stephen R. Covey "If a man devotes himself to the instructions of his own unconscious, it can bestow this gift [of renewal], so that suddenly, life, which has been stale and dull, turns into a rich unending inner adventure, full of creative possibilities. " - Marie-Louise von Franz "The creative individual has the capacity to free themself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. They are capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept." - John W. Gardner "Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted." - Martin Luther King, Jr. "To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength." - Lawrence Clark Powell "Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better." - John Updike
"Confusion is the welcome mat at the door of creativity." - Michael J. Gelb "Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving." - Michael J. Gelb "Everyone makes mistakes. In fact, highly successful, creative people make more mistakes than the rest of us because they're always trying new things and searching for better ways to do them. The difference is, they look their mistakes squarely in the eye, learn from them, and move on. So, cut yourself some slack and accept you are not perfect." - Harry Bloomfield "Many of us have made agreements with littleness. We've agreed to settle for compressed versions of who we really are. We've settled in our relationships or our creativity, only because we let a present or past condition define our boundary. The wonder is that as we begin to make agreements with our real identity, those conditions we thought were so important have no more power than what we attached to them." - Mary Manin Morrissey "Psychologists tell us that every one of us thinks an average of between 65,000 and 70,000 thoughts a day and 90 to 95% of those thoughts are repetitive. They're the same thoughts we've always thought and they become the patterns of our thinking. Thought patterns create the experiences of our lives. Listen to your thoughts today. Are they negative, self-limiting, self-diminishing? Or are they radiant with joy and life and creativity? We can change our thinking, and we can change the pattern of our lives. Herein lies the secret to authentic power." - Mary Manin Morrissey "When we take care of ourselves first, then we can give freely and generously of ourselves without resentment. With our own needs met through self-acknowledgment we can lovingly help others. However, the very thought of putting ourselves first usually produces major guilt. How dare we? Get over it. Take good care of yourself. Show the world how much you value you. Learn to say no. Set healthy boundaries. Protect yourself. Tell the truth. Be honest with yourself. Live your life with integrity. Take care of your emotional, mental and physical well being. Take care of your finances. Acknowledge your feelings. Trust your intuition. Follow your heart. Honor your creativity." - Susan Ann Darley "Go play. Yes, take a break and go play. When your head starts to pound and your back starts to ache, stop. Do something you want to do. Do something that feels good, feels fun. Leave your worries behind. Put them in a box, then close it and go play. We make sure that our children take time for recess every day. But we forget that we need recess, too. The lingering threads of work and worry can tie us to tasks done and undone. They can block our connection to joy, creativity, and the vital life-giving force that courses through us all. We no longer need to slump with tension and fatigue. It isn't necessary and doesn't help a thing. Most often, it hurts. Your fatigue may be from lack of play as much as lack of sleep. You might begin to see that you don't need a rest, a nap, or more vitamin C. You need play. Play as much as you can. Find time - take time - to play. It may give you the energy you need." - Melody Beattie "Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created." - Brenda Ueland "Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act." - Ram Dass
"If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words." - Chinese Proverb "Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity can cause to be set in motion. Be outrageous in forgiving. Be dramatic in reconciling. Mistakes? Back up and make them as right as you can, then move on. Be off the charts in kindness. In whatever you are called to, strive to be devoted to it in all aspects large and small. Fall short? Try again. Mastery is made in increments, not in leaps. Be brave, be fierce, be visionary. Mend the parts of the world that are 'within your reach'. To strive to live this way is the most dramatic gift you can ever give to the world." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes "It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese." - Carl Sagan "It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship." - Henry Ward Beecher "Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking." - John Maynard Keynes "Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults." - Socrates "A word to the wise is enough." - Miguel De Cervantes
"Everybody believes in something, and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence." - Frank Zappa "If anything affects your eye, you hasten to have it removed; if anything affects your mind, you postpone the cure for a year." - Horace "Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. You're able to benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgment." - Ralph Marston "Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire." - Jean de la Fontaine "The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." - John Kenneth Galbraith "Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both." - John Andrew Holmes "Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature." - George Bernard Shaw
"The person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20% traitor." -Ronald Reagan
This is 100% my favourite thread "Why else are we here if not to live with unreasonable passion for things?" - I don't know who said this! "If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, of what then, is an empty desk a sign?" - Albert Einstein "The question isn't who is going to let me; the question is who is going to stop me." - Ayn Rand "Be kind. Be on time. Take the work seriously. But don't take yourself too seriously!" - Tom Hiddleston "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." - William Shakespeare "Love me when I least deserve it because that is when I really need it." - Swedish Proverb "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me: 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' " - Fred Rogers
I try to stay out of the religious fray here (and it's not very frayed, well done folks!) but my aunt posted this, unattributed, on Facebook and it made me smile. Not aimed at any present company, just funny: "Remember...Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."
True love stays the same, unaltered by the change of the seasons, of the years, of the changes in one's life. As I see it, at some point it might be an option, but once this option is conceived it ceases being a choice.
As in love is not subject to or swayed by conditions? If so, as I've never read Sheakespeare and find his sentence structure very confusing, please explain how you get that out of what he said. Love is not love which alters......when it alteration finds. I get the first bit, love is not real love if it changes. Can't figure out the second bit.
Love is not love which alters......when it alteration finds. 1. Which I think is related to the first part, yes? Same as I asked, flawed personality, what does the second part mean, or is the second part an element of your interpretation? 2. I agree, if I'm interpreting correctly, that once you realise there's a difference in your relationship, the change in your love for them has to follow? And along those lines, I don't understand how love is only real love if it remains unchanged, for can't someone's genuine love increase and decrease due to the attitude and behaviour of the other person in the relationship, or is Sheakespeare speaking of some other element of love that cannot change? Perhaps it's simply a matter of different opinions, that I don't share Shakespeare's thoughts on the matter.
'Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.' Whilst I am no expert on Shakespearean sonnets, I believe this refers to an acceptance of the fact that no one is perfect. There are always things about one another that could be changed (the 'alteration' to be found) but when you love someone, those are not things you consider. The 'love' Shakespeare refers to is not something that changes with the wind. It is a constant acceptance of the person, the acceptance that there will be an 'alteration' to be found. He seems to say that acting on this alteration is not love. But accepting the good things alongside the not-so-good things is his definition of true love. I love talking about Shakespeare I don't know if I am right though - anyone else have different interpretations?
"Looking for external solutions to our problems doesn't work. If we don't change our thinking, we will bring that thinking right along with us to the next job or the next marriage or the new house in the country. Our experience of life is the creation of our own thinking > perception > emotion > behavior. This doesn't mean that people should never change jobs or careers, move to a better location, or even find a new significant other. It simply means that nothing changes on the outside if nothing changes on the inside, where your experience is created - our mind." - Joseph Bailey "We human beings have many prevailing perceptions we share as a culture. These perceptions are the prevalent beliefs our society accepts as true, generally without question. Many of these shared perceptions form the basis of our human awareness. If we do not make the effort to question whether or not a perception is actually true, it will automatically become part of our belief system and, consequently our experience, whether they are true or not." - Victoria Loveland-Coen "As soon as you start to tell yourself in your perception that you can't do something anymore, then your biological system will adjust to prove you right. You will not do what you think you can't do." - Bruce Lipton "Stop trying so hard to control the things over which you have no power and start controlling those things over which you do have power...mostly yourself. Recognize that it is how you perceive events that is threatening, usually not the events themselves. One person's threat is another's challenge. You can control your perceptions. Remember it is the meaning you attribute to circumstances outside yourself to which your body responds. You have the power to change that meaning. Is a lemon so sour a fruit it's useless? Is it a glorious source of lemonade? Is it a beautiful object of a painting? You decide how you want to see it." - Lloyd J. Thomas "A cardinal principle of the Spiritual Warrior is: It is not what is happening that is important; what is important is what you are doing with it. Thus the Spiritual Warrior says, "Regardless of what it looks like, regardless of my perception, I will use everything for my advancement, upliftment, and growth." - John Roger
In my humble and probably inaccurate opinion, I feel that Shakespeare is referring to a constant element of love, the grass-roots of it. Perhaps you would have arguments and a particular aspect of the person's personality infuriates you, but you love them with all your heart and wouldn't change that about them for the world. Loving someone doesn't just stop, but maybe the outward perception is more complicated. Finding the 'alteration' or thing that you dislike isn't the problem, changing it is what (according to Shakespeare) makes it cease to be true love.
I googled when I first read the quote, and came across the full sonnet. Still pondering as I slowly walked out of that web site nursing a sore head. Your interpretation does demystify the last part of the quote, and it rezes with flawed personality's useage of 'unconditional love'. I've come to understand we're all imperfect, and how love works best with the least amount of conditions set upon it, or to put it another way, the flow of love is disproportional to the amount of conditions it has to work through. I was unconsciously saturated in self-hatred, then I learnt that compassionate love and acceptance of my imperfections was far more beneficial to my well-being, my healing and development...thus it makes sense it's not love if one's attitude changes toward oneself when an imperfection is discovered, or it begins to lean into the negative spectrum.
