β
The only time you fail is when you fall down and stay down.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
β
Minds are like flowers, they only open when the time is right.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
When you connect to the silence within you, that is when you can make sense of the disturbance going on around you.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
The discontent and frustration that you feel is entirely your own creation.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.
β
β
H.P. Lovecraft
β
As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.
β
β
Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie)
β
There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
Reality is a projection of your thoughts or the things you habitually think about.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Our way of thinking creates good or bad outcomes.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Happy people produce. Bored people consume.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Judgment is a negative frequency.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
You don't have to be good at something to be liked.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
When your back is to the wall and you are facing fear head on, the only way is forward and through it.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Releasing You from Fear (CD))
β
The struggles we endure today will be the βgood old daysβ we laugh about tomorrow.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
Stand out from the crowd, be yourself.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
When you concentrate your energy purposely on the future possibility that you aspire to realize, your energy is passed on to it and makes it attracted to you with a force stronger than the one you directed towards it.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Success will be within your reach only when you start reaching out for it.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
You willed yourself to where you are today, so will yourself out of it.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Before you can successfully make friends with others, first you have to become your own friend.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
No matter how small you start, always dream big.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
No matter whether you believe in luck or chance, the final decision is from yourself.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
It sometimes takes a state of solitude to bring to mind the real power of companionship.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
β
β
H.P. Lovecraft
β
Nothing captures the biological argument better than the famous New Age slogan: βHappiness begins within.β Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions β none of these will bring you happiness. Lasting happiness comes only from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.
β
β
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
β
If the great internet connects us all ... then why are so many of us becoming increasingly isolated?
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Happiness is something we reap from the seeds we sow. Plant misery seeds and that us what you reap.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Every sunrise is priceless and you can experience the richness that life holds only when you live life to the full instead of just being an onlooker.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Without desires and dreams, your thoughts do not matter and you can think whatever you want to.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Exhaust your worries and they will soon leave you.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
When you fail, that is when you get closer to success.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Doing the tough things sets winners apart from losers.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
β
Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but donβt let them change who you are.β
~ Aaron Lauritsen, β100 Days Drive
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
The realisation that limitations are imaginary will make you strong and overpowering.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
If you think you can then you can.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Never allow your mind to wander untamed like a wild animal that exists on the basis of survival of the fittest. Tame your mind with consistent focus on your goals and desires.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Grateful souls focus on the happiness and abundance present in their lives and this in turn attracts more abundance and joy towards them.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
I have my own theory: ignorance is bliss. The less you know, the more confident you can be in tackling things.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
We are exactly what our history made us to be.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
β
True friends don't come with conditions.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
A thought is a Cosmic Order waiting to happen.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
β
β
H.P. Lovecraft
β
Positive belief in yourself will give you the energy needed to conquer the world and this belief is the power behind all creation.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Manifesting is a lot like making a cake. The things needed are supplied by you, the mixing is done by your mind and the baking is done in the oven of the universe.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Inaction creates nothing. Action creates success.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
What we perceive about ourselves is greatly a reflection of how we will end up living our lives.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
β
From this point forward, you donβt even know how to quit in life.β
~ Aaron Lauritsen, β100 Days Drive
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen
β
Even though your thinking might not be right for others, just so long as it's right for you then that's all what matters.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Itβs very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, youβd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. Itβs growth. Itβs more than the negative that youβre going to die, itβs also the positive that you understand youβre going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.
β
β
Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie)
β
Always have an air of expectancy.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINS
Laugh, I tell you
And you will turn back
The hands of time.
Smile, I tell you
And you will reflect
The face of the divine.
Sing, I tell you
And all the angels will sing with you!
Cry, I tell you
And the reflections found in your pool of tears -
Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterday
To guide you through the fears of tomorrow.
β
β
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
β
We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences β be they positive or negative β make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person we become. None of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.
β
β
B.J. Neblett
β
Next time you hit a speed bump otherwise known as the age-old question βWhy are you still single?β look βem in the eye and say: βBecause Iβm too fabulous to settle.
β
β
Mandy Hale (The Single WomanβLife, Love, and a Dash of Sass: Embracing Singleness with Confidence)
β
Those who achieve the extraordinary are usually the most ordinary because they have nothing to prove to anybody. Be Humble.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don't have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events cause grief and sadness, but grief and sadness pass, like everything else, and are replaced with other experiences. The ego, however, clings to negative thoughts and feelings and, as a result, magnifies, intensifies, and sustains those emotions while the ego overlooks the subtle feelings of joy, gratitude, excitement, adventure, love, and peace that come from Essence. If we dwelt on these positive states as much as we generally dwell on our negative thoughts and painful emotions, our lives would be transformed.
β
β
Gina Lake (What About Now?: Reminders for Being in the Moment)
β
Poverty: a temporary financial low, curable by money.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Be yourself and become wealthy!
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
When you stop blaming others for where you are in life, that is when you can start to manifest your dream life!
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
The first place where self-esteem begins its journey is within us.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
β
The difference between being mediocre and achieving excellence is you.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Hard work is what you do to make ends meet, easy work is getting others to do the hard work for you.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
A failure is always in the passenger seat in his or her life.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
β
The mind is the strongest tool we have to help us secure the riches within the universe.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
Each person has got a voice inside them. Communicate with it and take hold of it. Do not let it push and shove you around β you are its master!
β
β
Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
β
I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde)
β
A barrier is a limitation only when you perceive it as one.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Though money cannot acquire you happiness, it does not mean that both money and happiness cannot exist together.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
It is not enough if you just live life as it comes to you like a floating leaf in a pond. Make use of the powers bestowed in you and soar like an eagle.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
A good self-esteem level is mostly dependant on how we value ourselves without any bias.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
β
How we relate with other people is dependent on how we rate ourselves and what we think about ourselves.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
β
You tap in to this oneness and become part of the universe as a whole.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
There is nothing around me but money, money, money.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
β
β
H.P. Lovecraft (The Call of Cthulhu)
β
Just let go of the need to care about whether it happens or not, then you are free from fear and can then concentrate on focusing.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
The basic idea is that all things in the universe are intertwined.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
Plato defined good as threefold in character: good in the soul, expressed through the virtues; good in the body, expressed through the symmetry and endurance of the parts; and good in the external world, expressed through social position and companionship.
β
β
Manly P. Hall (The Secret Teachings of All Ages)
β
If you take any step, no matter how small it is, towards achieving your dreams then you will surely find the right path and reach the abundance that lies in store for you.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow.
Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.
β
β
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
β
Janice suddenly flopped her body down on the dusty, musty train seat and pulled herself into a fetal position. Libby stroked her shoulder, trying to comfort her. Maggie and I looked at each other. We knew Janice had more to tell us.
β
β
Karen Hinton (Penis Politics: A Memoir of Women, Men and Power)
β
Did you ... touch me right after you called me brat?"
He shakes his head.
"Why not?" I ask.
"You were too intoxicated to give your consent."
"And?"
He frowns. "If, while you were drugged, I had touched you like I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to call myself a real man.
β
β
Mya Robarts (The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story)
β
I told Ella Mae Cheeks Johnson, then age 105, that she was the only person over 80 who I'd ever met who never referred to her physical infirmities or health problems. To which she replied, "I have my difficulties; I do not rejoice in them.
β
β
Patricia Mulcahy (It Is Well with My Soul: The Extraordinary Life of a 106-Year-Old Woman)
β
β¦You see, my dear friend, I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven's gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living
β
β
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
β
Thrill me, chill me I went in search of money and success, all I got was a bellyful of excess! Now that I've realigned myself Iβm on my tip-toes because life is sweet! I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for all the blessings that are manifesting in my life β¦ neat!
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Attitude Is Everything
We live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happenedβas if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations.
The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), βthere are no victims.β How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances?
When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.
β
β
Sandra Lee Dennis
β
As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.
β
β
Morrie Schwartz (Morrie: In His Own Words)
β
Still in my coat and hat, I sank onto the stair to read the letter. (I never read without making sure I am in a secure position. I have been like this ever since the age of seven when, sitting on a high wall and reading The Water Babies, I was so seduced by the descriptions of underwater life that I unconsciously relaxed my muscles. Instead of being held buoyant by the water that so vividly surrounded me in my mind, I plummeted to the ground and knocked myself out. I can still feel the scar under my fringe now. Reading can be dangerous.)
β
β
Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)
β
So many people think that they are not gifted because they donβt have an obvious talent that people can recognize because it doesnβt fall under the creative arts categoryβwriting, dancing, music, acting, art or singing. Sadly, they let their real talents go undeveloped, while they chase after fame. I am grateful for the people with obscure unremarked talents because they make our lives easier---inventors, organizers, planners, peacemakers, communicators, activists, scientists, and so forth. However, there is one gift that trumps all other talentsβbeing an excellent parent. If you can successfully raise a child in this day in age to have integrity then you have left a legacy that future generations will benefit from.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
2. Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.
3. Death ends a life, not a relationship.
4. Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.
5. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them too-even when you are in the dark. Even when you're falling.
6. As you grow old, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.
β
β
Morrie Schwartz
β
As the pair turned to leave they were taken by surprise by the shop owner. He was middle-aged and did not look as though he could overpower Arvid, although the large club he wielded showed his intention.
Raimund instinctively made a run for the door, only to be floored by a blow from the club. From his dazed prone position Raimund watched in horror as his uncle thrust his knife into the shopkeeperβs chest. With blood pumping from the fatal wound, the shopkeeper fell across Raimund.
β
β
Robert Reid (The Emperor (The Emperor, the Son and the Thief, #1))
β
Jesus Christ came not to condemn you but to save you, knowing your name, knowing all about you, knowing your weight right now, knowing your age, knowing what you do, knowing where you live, knowing what you ate for supper and what you will eat for breakfast, where you will sleep tonight, how much your clothing cost, who your parents were. He knows you individually as though there were not another person in the entire world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only lost one. He knows the worst about you and is the One who loves you the most.
If you are out of the fold and away from God, put your name in the words of John 3:16 and say, βLord, it is I. Iβm the cause and reason why Thou didst on earth come to die.β That kind of positive, personal faith and a personal Redeemer is what saves you. If you will just rush in there, you do not have to know all the theology and all the right words. You can say, βI am the one He came to die for.β Write it down in your heart and say, βJesus, this is meβThee and me,β as though there were no others. Have that kind of personalized belief in a personal Lord and Savior.
β
β
A.W. Tozer (And He Dwelt Among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John)
β
In our day and age, global society has been saturated with the wrong teaching of false positivity. The denial of darkness never equates the abundance of light. And the denial of your actual character never equates to the reality of your best character. People today are afraid to work on themselves and on their actual realities, they believe that outward appearances are enough. Outward appearances have become everything in our current day and age. People don't see what they are actually like, nor who they actually are, in reality. They live in a phantasmic version of reality. It has to stop. In the phantasmic version of reality, there is no chance to experience true love, true goodness, and true metamorphosis. The caterpillar does not become a butterfly by telling everybody it has wings. It actually buries itself in darkness and grows those wings.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Today the danger of the pro-life position, which I vigorously support, is that it can be frighteningly selective. The rights of the unborn and the dignity of the age-worn are pieces of the same pro-life fabric. We weep at the unjustified destruction of the unborn. Did we also weep when the evening news reported from Arkansas that a black family had been shotgunned out of a white neighborhood.
When we laud life and blast abortionists, our credibility as Christians is questionable. On one hand we proclaim the love and anguish, the pain and joy that goes into fashioning a single child. We proclaim how precious each life is to God and should be to us. On the other hand, when it is the enemy that shrieks to heaven with his flesh in flames, we do not weep, we are not shamed; we call for more
β
β
Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel)
β
From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie.
β
β
Katsushika Hokusai
β
I urge you to find a way to immerse yourself fully in the life that youβve been given. To stop running from whatever youβre trying to escape, and instead to stop, and turn, and face whatever it is. Then I dare you to walk toward it. In this way, the world may reveal itself to you as something magical and awe-inspiring that does not require escape. Instead, the world may become something worth paying attention to. The rewards of finding and maintaining balance are neither immediate nor permanent. They require patience and maintenance. We must be willing to move forward despite being uncertain of what lies ahead. We must have faith that actions today that seem to have no impact in the present moment are in fact accumulating in a positive direction, which will be revealed to us only at some unknown time in the future. Healthy practices happen day by day. My patient Maria said to me, βRecovery is like that scene in Harry Potter when Dumbledore walks down a darkened alley lighting lampposts along the way. Only when he gets to the end of the alley and stops to look back does he see the whole alley illuminated, the light of his progress.
β
β
Anna Lembke (Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence)
β
It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary 'working' men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. Working men 'work', beggars do not 'work'; they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable.
Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no ESSENTIAL difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course--but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout--in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him.
Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?--for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modem talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.
β
β
George Orwell (Down and Out in Paris and London)
β
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturerβs horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughelβs Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
β
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W.H. Auden
β
What - what - what are you doing?" he demanded.
"I am almost six hundred years old," Magnus claimed, and Ragnor snorted, since Magnus changed his age to suit himself every few weeks. Magnus swept on. "It does seem about time to learn a musical instrument." He flourished his new prize, a little stringed instrument that looked like a cousin of the lute that the lute was embarrassed to be related to. "It's called a charango. I am planning to become a charanguista!"
"I wouldn't call that an instrument of music," Ragnor observed sourly. "An instrument of torture, perhaps."
Magnus cradled the charango in his arms as if it were an easily offended baby. "It's a beautiful and very unique instrument! The sound box is made from an armadillo. Well, a dried armadillo shell."
"That explains the sound you're making," said Ragnor. "Like a lost, hungry armadillo."
"You are just jealous," Magnus remarked calmly. "Because you do not have the soul of a true artiste like myself."
"Oh, I am positively green with envy," Ragnor snapped.
"Come now, Ragnor. That's not fair," said Magnus. "You know I love it when you make jokes about your complexion."
Magnus refused to be affected by Ragnor's cruel judgments. He regarded his fellow warlock with a lofty stare of superb indifference, raised his charango, and began to play again his defiant, beautiful tune.
They both heard the staccato thump of frantically running feet from within the house, the swish of skirts, and then Catarina came rushing out into the courtyard. Her white hair was falling loose about her shoulders, and her face was the picture of alarm.
"Magnus, Ragnor, I heard a cat making a most unearthly noise," she exclaimed. "From the sound of it, the poor creature must be direly sick. You have to help me find it!"
Ragnor immediately collapsed with hysterical laughter on his windowsill. Magnus stared at Catarina for a moment, until he saw her lips twitch.
"You are conspiring against me and my art," he declared. "You are a pack of conspirators."
He began to play again. Catarina stopped him by putting a hand on his arm.
"No, but seriously, Magnus," she said. "That noise is appalling."
Magnus sighed. "Every warlock's a critic."
"Why are you doing this?"
"I have already explained myself to Ragnor. I wish to become proficient with a musical instrument. I have decided to devote myself to the art of the charanguista, and I wish to hear no more petty objections."
"If we are all making lists of things we wish to hear no more . . . ," Ragnor murmured.
Catarina, however, was smiling.
"I see," she said.
"Madam, you do not see."
"I do. I see it all most clearly," Catarina assured him. "What is her name?"
"I resent your implication," Magnus said. "There is no woman in the case. I am married to my music!"
"Oh, all right," Catarina said. "What's his name, then?"
His name was Imasu Morales, and he was gorgeous.
β
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Cassandra Clare (The Bane Chronicles)
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It was she made me acquainted with love. She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps the name was Edith. She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put, my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all? She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand, on purpose to avoid it. She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don't know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life. She had no time to lose, I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. This idyll was of short duration. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick between my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that would have given me a higher opinion of love it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose.
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Samuel Beckett (Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable)