Inspiring Words

[rowboat]

"The particular myth that's been organizing this talk, and in a way the whole series, is the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible. The civilization we live in at present is a gigantic technological structure, a skyscraper almost high enough to reach the moon. It looks like a single world-wide effort, but it's really a deadlock of rivalries; it looks very impressive, except that it has no genuine human dignity. For all its wonderful machinery, we know it's really a crazy ramshackle building, and at any time may crash around our ears. What the myth tells us is that the Tower of Babel is a work of human imagination, that its main elements are words, and that what will make it collapse is a confusion of tongues. All had originally one language, the myth says. The language is not English or Russian or Chinese or any common ancestor, if there was one. It is the language that makes Shakespeare and Pushkin authentic poets, that gives a social vision to both Lincoln and Gandhi. It never speaks unless we take the time to listen in leisure, and it speaks only in a voice too quiet for panic to hear. And then all it has to tell us, when we look over the edge of our leaning tower, is that we are not getting any nearer heaven, and that it is time to return to earth." ― Northrop Frye

“The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.” ― Northrop Frye

"Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come." ― Victor Hugo

[Justsit]

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

THOUGH leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.

William Butler Yeats

[Nicholas Weeks]

By mutual confidence and mutual aid,
Great deeds are done, and great discoveries made;
The wise new prudence from the wise acquire,
And one brave hero fans another's fire.

The Iliad, Book X, trans. Pope.

[Lombardi4]

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[Nicholas Weeks]

The grandest forms of active force
Come from the Supreme, their only source.

All things depend for life on the Great Supreme;
and It rejects them not.
Its task accomplished, It takes no credit.

The Supreme lies hid and cannot be named,
yet It has the power
of transmuting and perfecting all things.

The meshes of the net of Heaven are large, far apart,
but letting nothing escape.

The Heavenly Reason strives not; but It is sure to conquer.
It speaks not; but It is sure to respond.
It summons not; but It comes of itself.
It works patiently; but is sure in Its designs.

It is the Supreme that overspreads, and sustains, all things.
How great is It in Its overflowing influence!

Taoism

[Nicholas Weeks]

I asked the leaf whether it was frightened because it was

autumn and the other leaves were falling. The leaf told me,

“No. During the whole spring and summer I was completely

alive. I worked hard to help nourish the tree, and now much

of me is in the tree. I am not limited by this form. I am also

the whole tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue

to nourish the tree. So I don’t worry at all. As I leave this

branch and float to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell

her, ‘I will see you again very soon.’"

Suddenly I saw a kind of wisdom very much like the Wisdom contained in the Heart Sutra. You have to see life. You should not say, life of the leaf, you should only speak of life in the leaf and life in the tree. My life is just Life, and you can see it in me and in the tree. That day there was a wind blowing and, after a while, I saw the leaf leave the branch and float down to the soil, dancing joyfully, because as it floated it saw itself already there in the tree. It was so happy. I bowed my head, knowing that I have a lot to learn from the leaf because it is not afraid - it knew nothing can be born and nothing can die.

From Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary on the Heart Sutra.

[chownah]

Just do it.

Nike Corportion






chownah

[Nicholas Weeks]

Isolation from the surrounding culture is the price that philosophers have paid for their obsession with valid argument—for validity is most easily achieved by saying nothing.... Analytical philosophy is clever. But it is also blind — blind to what matters in human experience, and blind to the realms of culture, art, and religion. Hence it is easy to learn and easy to apply.

Roger Scruton

[Nicholas Weeks]

This one thing, therefore, must be deemed absolutely true, viz that to a good man neither in life nor after death will any evil come, nor are his affairs neglected by the gods; so that to him will be given all the good qualities which contribute to felicity, and he who closely follows the path leading to virtue will live most happily.

Iamblichus, Exhortation to Philosophy

[Nicholas Weeks]

We are forever united with God, and can never be separated.... If man can live his life today in harmony and peace with all, he will automatically reach the goal of Perfect Realization. This message does not lay special emphasis on the attainment of the Absolute Goal of Realization, but on living today's life by creating higher qualities regarding oneself and all with whom one associates.

A.K. Mozumdar

[Nicholas Weeks]

Even Marxist ideologues virtually have ceased to predict the approach of a Golden Age. To most observers, T. S. Eliot among them, it has seemed far more probable that we are stumbling into a new Dark Age, inhumane, merciless, a totalist political domination in which the life of spirit and the inquiring intellect will be denounced, harassed, and propagandized against: Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, rather than Huxley’s Brave New World of cloying sensuality. Or perhaps Tolkien’s blasted and servile land of Mordor may serve as symbol of the human condition in the twenty-first century...

Excerpt From: George A. Panichas. Essential Russell Kirk; "Civilization Without Religion"

[Nicholas Weeks]

To understand the divine philosophy of life, there is very
little need of academic education. The education which we receive in the
Almighty’s kindergarten by the simple trust and self-surrender is
sufficient for that purpose. The secret of work in the field of truth is the
simple trust in the All-providing power within us.

A.K. Mozumdar

[Nicholas Weeks]

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Hamlet

[rowboat]

inspire (v.)
mid-14c., enspiren, "to fill (the mind, heart, etc., with grace, etc.);" also "to prompt or induce (someone to do something)," from Old French enspirer (13c.), from Latin inspirare "blow into, breathe upon," figuratively "inspire, excite, inflame," from in- "in" (see in- (2)) + spirare "to breathe" (see spirit (n.)).
The Latin word was used as a loan-translation of Greek pnein in the Bible. General sense of "influence or animate with an idea or purpose" is from late 14c. Also sometimes used in literal sense in Middle English.


Relief. Ben Nicholson

It is this durability which gives the things of the world their relative independence from
men who produced and use them, their "objectivity" which makes them withstand, "stand
against" and endure, at least for a time, the voracious needs and wants of their living makers and
users. From this viewpoint, the things of the world have the function of stabilizing human life,
and their objectivity lies in the fact that—in contradiction to the Heraclitean saying that the same
man can never enter the same stream—men, their ever-changing nature notwithstanding, can
retrieve their sameness, that is, their identity, by being related to the same chair and the same table.
- Hannah Arendt The Human Condition

[Nicholas Weeks]

The scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the media of his own age.

C.S. Lewis