Sole Source Quotes

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I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
Are you happy in your misery? Resting peaceful in desolation? It’s the final tie that binds us The sole source of my consolation" “blue
Gayle Forman (Where She Went (If I Stay, #2))
There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another.
Ivan Turgenev (First Love)
He values my understanding and talents more highly than my heart, but I am proud of the latter only. It is the sole source of everything of our strength, happiness, and misery. All the knowledge I possess every one else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.
Henri Poincaré (Science and Hypothesis)
The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or…ideologies…all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.
C.S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man)
I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the principal source of success in life. Since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. The key is to develop inner peace.
Dalai Lama XIV
The psyche cannot tolerate a vacuum of love. In the severely abused or deprived child, pain, dis-ease, and violance rush in to fill the void. In the average person in our culture, who has been only "normally" deprived of touch, anxiety and an insatiable hunger for posessions replace the missing eros. The child lacking a sense of welcome, joyous belonging, gratuitous security, will learn to hoard the limited supply of affection. According to the law of psychic compensation, not being held leads to holding on, grasping, addiction, posessiveness. Gradually, things replace people as a source of pleasure and security. When the gift of belonging with is denied, the child learns that love means belongin to. To the degree we are arrested at this stage of development, the needy child will dominate our motivations. Other people and things (and there is fundamentally no difference) will be seen as existing solely for the purpose of "my" survival and satisfaction. "Mine" will become the most important word.
Sam Keen (The Passionate Life: Stages of Loving)
you have not been placed on this earth to be the sole source of comfort for the black man's fragile ego. Page 221
Deborrah Cooper (The Black Church - Where Women Pray And Men Prey)
Why does a young Muslim, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up in a bus full of innocent passengers? In our countries, religion is the sole source of education, and this is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched. He was not born a terrorist, and did not become a terrorist overnight. Islamic teachings played a role in weaving his ideological fabric, thread by thread, and did not allow other sources—I am referring to scientific sources—to play a role. It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist, and killed his humanity; it was not [the terrorist] who distorted the religious teachings, and misunderstood them, as some ignorant people claim. When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse 'They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternative sides cut off,' regardless of this verse's interpretation, and regardless of the reasons it was conveyed, or its time, you have made the first step towards creating a great terrorist.
Wafa Sultan
He'd end up back in his room again, moodily smoking whatever he could get his hands on, the sole source of light in the room the faint radioactive glow coming from the commemorative chunk of Earth in its crystal cube, inscribed with the famous quote from the Administration. AT LEAST WE GOT THE TERRORISTS, it said.
Michael Rubens (The Sheriff of Yrnameer)
He values my understanding and talents more highly than my heart, but I am proud of the latter only. It is the sole source of everything of our strength, happiness, and misery. All the knowledge I possess every one else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
He values my understanding and talents more highly than my heart, but I am proud of the latter only. It is the sole source of everything of our strength, happiness, and misery. All the knowledge I possess every one else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own. May
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
There is a sweetness in being the sole source, the autocratic and irresponsible cause of the greatest joy and profoundest pain to another, and I was like wax in Zinaïda's hands; though, indeed, I was not the only one in love with her. All the men who visited the house were crazy over her, and she kept them all in leading-strings at her feet. It amused her to arouse their hopes and then their fears, to turn them round her finger (she used to call it knocking their heads together), while they never dreamed of offering resistance and eagerly submitted to her. About her whole being, so full of life and beauty, there was a peculiarly bewitching mixture of slyness and carelessness, of artificiality and simplicity, of composure and frolicsomeness; about everything she did or said, about every action of hers, there clung a delicate, fine charm, in which an individual power was manifest at work. And her face was ever changing, working too; it expressed, almost at the same time, irony, dreaminess, and passion. Various emotions, delicate and quick-changing as the shadows of clouds on a sunny day of wind, chased one another continually over her lips and eyes.
Ivan Turgenev (First Love)
At school, he enacted a major piece of treachery against his parents. His right hand was Evil Dad, and his left was Righteous Mom. Evil Dad blustered and theorized and dished out pompous bullshit. Righteous Mom complained and accused. In Righteous Mom's cosmology, Evil Dad was the sole source of hemmoroids, kleptomania, global conflict, bad breath, tectonic-plate fault lines, and clogged drains, as well as every migraine headache and menstrual cramp Righteous Mom had ever suffered.
Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1))
I recall how miserable I was, and how one day you brought me to a realization of my miserable state. I was preparing to deliver a eulogy upon the emperor in which I would tell plenty of lies with the object of winning favor with the well-informed by my lying; so my heart was panting with anxiety and seething with feverish, corruptive thoughts. As I passed through a certain district in Milan I noticed a poor beggar, drunk, as I believe, and making merry. I groaned and pointed out to the friends who were with me how many hardships our idiotic enterprises entailed. Goaded by greed, I was dragging my load of unhappiness along, and feeling it all the heavier for being dragged. Yet while all our efforts were directed solely to the attainment of unclouded joy, it appeared that this beggar had already beaten us to the goal, a goal which we would perhaps never reach ourselves. With the help of the few paltry coins he had collected by begging this man was enjoying the temporal happiness for which I strove by so bitter, devious and roundabout a contrivance. His joy was no true joy, to be sure, but what I was seeking in my ambition was a joy far more unreal; and he was undeniably happy while I was full of foreboding; he was carefree, I apprehensive. If anyone had questioned me as to whether I would rather be exhilarated or afraid, I would of course have replied, "Exhilarated"; but if the questioner had pressed me further, asking whether I preferred to be like the beggar, or to be as I was then, I would have chosen to be myself, laden with anxieties and fears. Surely that would have been no right choice, but a perverse one? I could not have preferred my condition to his on the grounds that I was better educated, because that fact was not for me a source of joy but only the means by which I sought to curry favor with human beings: I was not aiming to teach them but only to win their favor.
Augustine of Hippo (Confessions)
You are hardwired for the pleasure of God. And this works for marriage. Imagine sole sourcing your pleasure receptors to be conditioned habitually to find satisfaction in one person. You build deep-seated emotional, spiritual even biological connection to that one person — this is what you are designed for. Do not build deviant behaviors that cause destruction. Porn is like crack. We can lie to ourselves about it – that we can casually dabble around with it. If you think you are not addicted, try going three weeks without it. You
John Crowder (Money. Sex. Beer. God.: Ditching Religion for the Joy of Incarnation)
If the sole source of one's knowledge or assurance of the truth of the Lord's work comes from reason, or logic, or persuasive argument,...it is not a testimony of the gospel
Bruce R. McConkie (Mormon Doctrine)
Somehow the very event that caused them so much pain had also become their sole source of meaning.
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
the fact of not being understood by others had been my sole source of pride since my early youth, and I had not the slightest impulse to express myself in such a way that I might be understood. When I did try to clarify my thoughts and actions, I did so with no consideration whatsoever. I do not know whether or not this was because I wanted to understand myself. Such a motive is in accord with a person's real character and comes automatically to form a bridge between himself and others
Yukio Mishima (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion)
6. You are the sum total of everything that has happened to you up until that last slurp of that cup of tea you just put down. How your parents hugged you, that thing your first boyfriend once said about your thighs – these are all bricks that have been laid from the soles of your feet up. Your eccentricities, foibles and fuck-ups are a butterfly effect of things you saw on telly, things teachers said to you and the way people have looked at you since the first moment you opened your eyes. Being a detective for your past – tracing back through all of it to get to the source with the help of a professional – can be incredibly useful and freeing.
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)
My passion amused her. She made fun of me, played with me, and tormented me. It is sweet to be the sole source, the arbitrary and irresponsible source of the greatest joys and profoundest miseries to someone else.
Ivan Turgenev (First Love)
Not wanting the girls to endure the shame of a crazy mother, I spent my days acting as normal as possible. I walked through life, an actor in a Leave it to Beaver episode, determined to disguise all clues of my real condition until... well, until I could find an appropriate moment to do away with myself." [...] "Yet even as my depression spiraled into ever more precarious territory, I retained an uncanny ability to disguise my true mental condition from everyone except Tom. He was my sole source of strength and he never stopped encouraging me.
Suzie Burke (Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse)
At a mere five feet seven inches, Dan was a head shorter than most of the boys. His body sagged slightly where their muscles rippled, his teeth were crooked where theirs gleamed, and his brown hair was thick and unruly where theirs shone. To judge solely from appearances, it was difficult to believe he’d been accepted into this prestigious little clique. But to judge from appearances was to ignore Dan’s quick wit and effortless charm. These were the characteristics that each of the boys aspired to, and the fact that Dan possessed them in such abundance was a constant source of fascination to them. No matter that he looked so freakishly average. His sense of humour and charisma were the benchmarks toward which the entire group was working, and few within the circle were held in higher esteem.
Andy Marr (Hunger for Life)
It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among many other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition - or the hope - that on this score our position is ever likely to be revised. There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one.
Jacques Monod (Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology)
Since the dawn of education, the student considered as normal has been the student who puts up the least resistance to teaching, the one who doesn't call our knowledge into question or put our competency to the test, a student who already knows a lot, who is gifted with instant comprehension, who spares us searching for the access roads to his grey matter, a student with a natural urge to learn, who can stop being a kid in turmoil or a teenager with problems during our lessons, a student convinced from the cradle that he has to curb his appetites and emotions by exercising his reason if he doesn't want to live in a jungle filled with predators, a student confident that the intellectual life is a source of infinite pleasures that can be refined to the extreme when most other pleasures are doomed to monotonous repetition - in short, a student who has understod that knowledge is the only answer: the answer to the slavery in which ignorance wants to keep us, the sole consolation for our ontological loneliness.
Daniel Pennac (Chagrin d'école)
Whether the trauma had occurred ten years in the past or more than forty, my patients could not bridge the gap between their wartime experiences and their current lives. Somehow the very event that caused them so much pain had also become their sole source of meaning. They felt fully alive only when they were revisiting their traumatic past.
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
The sole source of wisdom is suffering.
Terry Ray
It is sweet to be the sole source, the arbitrary and irresponsible source of the greatest joys and profoundest miseries to someone else.
Ivan Turgenev (First Love)
Is this the only way she makes her money?” I asked Officer McCaffrey. As far as he knew, deceit was her sole source of income.
Rachel DeLoache Williams (My Friend Anna)
The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill--which is no small talent in itself, true, but neither is it as rare as gold. No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men's lack of courage. There is even less courage in this world than here is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
James Carlos Blake (The Friends of Pancho Villa)
A Wild Woman Is Not A Girlfriend. She Is A Relationship With Nature. But can you love me in the deep? In the dark? In the thick of it? Can you love me when I drink from the wrong bottle and slip through the crack in the floorboard? Can you love me when I’m bigger than you, when my presence blazes like the sun does, when it hurts to look directly at me? Can you love me then too? Can you love me under the starry sky, shaved and smooth, my skin like liquid moonlight? Can you love me when I am howling and furry, standing on my haunches, my lower lip stained with the blood of my last kill? When I call down the lightning, when the sidewalks are singed by the soles of my feet, can you still love me then? What happens when I freeze the land, and cause the dirt to harden over all the pomegranate seeds we’ve planted? Will you trust that Spring will return? Will you still believe me when I tell you I will become a raging river, and spill myself upon your dreams and call them to the surface of your life? Can you trust me, even though you cannot tame me? Can you love me, even though I am all that you fear and admire? Will you fear my shifting shape? Does it frighten you, when my eyes flash like your camera does? Do you fear they will capture your soul? Are you afraid to step into me? The meat-eating plants and flowers armed with poisonous darts are not in my jungle to stop you from coming. Not you. So do not worry. They belong to me, and I have invited you here. Stay to the path revealed in the moonlight and arrive safely to the hut of Baba Yaga: the wild old wise one… she will not lead you astray if you are pure of heart. You cannot be with the wild one if you fear the rumbling of the ground, the roar of a cascading river, the startling clap of thunder in the sky. If you want to be safe, go back to your tiny room — the night sky is not for you. If you want to be torn apart, come in. Be broken open and devoured. Be set ablaze in my fire. I will not leave you as you have come: well dressed, in finely-threaded sweaters that keep out the cold. I will leave you naked and biting. Leave you clawing at the sheets. Leave you surrounded by owls and hawks and flowers that only bloom when no one is watching. So, come to me, and be healed in the unbearable lightness and darkness of all that you are. There is nothing in you that can scare me. Nothing in you I will not use to make you great. A wild woman is not a girlfriend. She is a relationship with nature. She is the source of all your primal desires, and she is the wild whipping wind that uproots the poisonous corn stalks on your neatly tilled farm. She will plant pear trees in the wake of your disaster. She will see to it that you shall rise again. She is the lover who restores you to your own wild nature.
Alison Nappi
The lesson is that thriving is not actually about the leader, it’s about the whole flock. Everyone has the potential to lead, and leadership is about listening and being attuned to everyone else. It’s about flexibility. It’s about humility. It’s about trust. It’s about having fun along the way. It is more about holding space for others’ brilliance than being the sole source of answers, more about flexible shape-shifting to meet the oncoming challenges than holding fast to a five-year strategic plan.
Edgar Villanueva (Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance)
Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans – there are several of us – are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States – that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1995 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God himself.
Gore Vidal (The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000)
The world is sharp. So sharply in focus that my eyes see everything—in fact, beyond everything, if one can suspend the logic of that sentence. If you show me a painting of a bowl with citrons and figs and plums and pears, I can describe the woman who picked the fruit off the tree, and can describe her with such tenderness that I can see myself reflected in her iris, like a candle, the sole source of light. Show me a painting of a ray fish, dripping sea off a kitchen table, and I'll tell you about the man who caught it.
Sarah Winman (Still Life)
Thinking that the sole source of your stress is external is an illusion, one that we all fall for until we turn our awareness inward and pay close attention to the way our mind moves. People can certainly do mean or harmful things to us, but the way we perceive and react to what is happening lies within our own mind.
Yung Pueblo (Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future)
The modern conflicts that occur on Irish soil today are symptoms of the horrors of the past, the record of which is embedded in the subconscious minds of Ireland’s traumatized inhabitants. The Irish people (like many in the world) are for the most part infirm in mind and spirit. Those who have brought such infirmity about, dance on their desks and revel at their success. The Irish people have suffered untold misery through no fault of their own, but because they had what Rome coveted for her own power, a Savior, a Bible, and a spiritual sovereignty...England was but a tool used by Rome in her striving to attain her end, namely, recognition as the sole source of the Divine Authority on earth – Conor MacDari
Michael Tsarion (The Irish Origins of Civilization, Volume One: The Servants of Truth: Druidic Traditions & Influence Explored)
Unlike Descartes, who had proved the existence of the self, God and the natural world in that order, Newton began with an attempt to explain the physical universe, with God as an essential part of the system. In Newton’s physics, nature was entirely passive: God was the sole source of activity. Thus, as in Aristotle, God was simply a continuation of the natural, physical order.
Karen Armstrong (A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam)
A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions. Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment. They are inevitably displayed by those who believe themselves in the possession of the secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind. The Jacobins of the Reign of Terror were at bottom as religious as the Catholics of the Inquisition, and their cruel ardour proceeded from the same source.
Gustave Le Bon (The Crowd)
In Mary this petition has been granted: she is, as it were, the open vessel of longing, in which life becomes prayer and prayer becomes life. Saint John wonderfully conveys this process by never mentioning Mary’s name in his Gospel. She no longer has any name except “the Mother of Jesus”.1 It is as if she had handed over her personal dimension, in order now to be solely at his disposal, and precisely thereby had become a person.
Hans Urs von Balthasar (Mary: The Church at the Source)
At the center of Zoroastrian theology was a unique monotheistic system based on the sole god, Ahura Mazda (“the Wise Lord”). Like most ancients, Zarathustra could not easily conceive of his god as being the source of both good and evil. He therefore developed an ethical dualism in which two opposing spirits, Spenta Mainyu (“the beneficent spirit”) and Angra Mainyu (“the hostile spirit”), were responsible for good and evil, respectively.
Reza Aslan (No god but God: The Origins and Evolution of Islam)
The purpose of today’s civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power for blacks in American life based on the presumption that they are still, in a thousand subtle ways, victimized by white racism,” wrote Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution in the aftermath of the Zimmerman verdict. The civil-rights leadership rallied to Trayvon’s cause (and not to the cause of those hundreds of black kids slain in America’s inner cities this very year) to keep alive a certain cultural “truth” that is the sole source of the leadership’s dwindling power. Put bluntly, this leadership rather easily tolerates black kids killing other black kids. But it cannot abide a white person (and Mr. Zimmerman, with his Hispanic background, was pushed into a white identity by the media over his objections) getting away with killing a black person without undermining the leadership’s very reason for being.33
Jason L. Riley (Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed)
Jesus’ mission wasn’t to improve the old; his mission, and the mission he gave his disciples, was to embody the new—an entirely new way of doing life. It is life lived within the reign of God; life centered on God as the sole source of one’s security, worth, and significance; life lived free from self-protective fear; and life manifested in Calvary-like service to others. His promise is that as his disciples manifest the unique beauty and power of this life, it will slowly and inconspicuously—like a mustard seed—grow and take over the garden.
Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)
2.​Of course religion is not the sole source of dogma in the world. There’s political dogma, as well as cultural & ethnic dogma. There’s even, on occasion, scientific dogma. But science contains the methods and tools within itself to ferret it out, so dogma in science doesn’t last long when it arises. Consider also that scientists hardly ever wield power. So when science becomes dogma in a country, it’s usually because a political system that is itself dogma has adopted it. Nazi Germany and communist Lysenko Russia are, perhaps, the best example of this.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Letters from an Astrophysicist)
Democrats expressed outrage, and justifiably so, at the sole-source contracts the Bush administration gave to Halliburton after the invasion of Iraq, but what do they say now about the loan guarantees the Obama administration granted to Solyndra, a now defunct solar power company whose campaign donations flowed to the Democratic Party?
Mike Lofgren (The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted)
The Christian message does not begin with "accept Christ as your Savior"; it begins with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". The Bible teaches that God is the sole source of the entire created order. No other gods compare with Him; no natural forces exist on their own; nothing receives its nature or existence from another source. Thus, His Word, or laws, or creation ordinances give the world its order and structure. God's creative world is the source of the laws of physical nature (natural sciences), human nature (ethics, politics, economics, aesthetics) and even logic. That's why Psalm 119:91 says, "all things are your servants". There is no philosophically or spiritually neutral subject matter.
Nancy R. Pearcey (Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity)
Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.” But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations—to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess. This imagining process is so difficult that there is a division of labor in physics: there are theoretical physicists who imagine, deduce, and guess at new laws, but do not experiment; and then there are experimental physicists who experiment, imagine, deduce, and guess.
Richard P. Feynman (Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher)
Rice Greyness masks the giving sun, Cool air snakes between my thighs, Dragonflies alight in heeded flight, As monsoon floods the paddy's eyes. I step barefoot on the spongy mud Which tugs back upon my sole My journey etched in reddish clay Mapped out from source to goal. Winds murmur of a change of plan And unveil the playful sun. I put new footprints in my footprints And begin again where I've begun.
Beryl Dov
Yet, if the phrase “separation of church and state” appears in no official founding document, then what is the source of that phrase? And how did it become so closely associated with the First Amendment? On October 7, 1801, the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, sent a letter to President Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that protection for religion had been written into the laws and constitutions. Believing strongly that freedom of religion was an inalienable right given by God, the fact that it appeared in civil documents suggested that the government viewed it as a government-granted rather than a God-granted right. Apprehensive that the government might someday wrongly believe that it did have the power to regulate public religious activities, the Danbury Baptists communicated their anxiety to President Jefferson.36 On January 1, 1802, Jefferson responded to their letter. He understood their concerns and agreed with them that man accounted only to God and not to government for his faith and religious practice. Jefferson emphasized to the Danbury Baptists that none of man’s natural (i.e., inalienable) rights – including the right to exercise one’s faith publicly – would ever place him in a situation where the government would interfere with his religious expressions.37 He assured them that because of the wall of separation, they need not fear government interference with religious expressions: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, . . . I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.38 In his letter, Jefferson made clear that the “wall of separation” was erected not to limit public religious expressions but rather to provide security against governmental interference with those expressions, whether private or public.
David Barton (Separation of Church and State: What the Founders Meant)
that rotten feeling of antlike industry. There is really no need to belabor the point, since it is obvious to most of us these days that mathematics has taken possession, like a demon, of every aspect of our lives. Most of us may not believe in the story of a Devil to whom one can sell one’s soul, but those who must know something about the soul (considering that as clergymen, historians, and artists they draw a good income from it) all testify that the soul has been destroyed by mathematics and that mathematics is the source of an evil intelligence that while making man the lord of the earth has also made him the slave of his machines. The inner drought, the dreadful blend of acuity in matters of detail and indifference toward the whole, man’s monstrous abandonment in a desert of details, his restlessness, malice, unsurpassed callousness, money-grubbing, coldness, and violence, all so characteristic of our times, are by these accounts solely the consequence of damage done to the soul by keen logical thinking! Even back when Ulrich first turned to mathematics there were already those who predicted the collapse of European civilization because no human faith, no love, no simplicity, no goodness, dwelt any longer in man.
Robert Musil (The Man Without Qualities)
Contemplative and philosophical traditions, Eastern and Western, insist on this: that the source and ground of the mind’s unity is the transcendent reality of unity as such, the simplicity of God, the one ground of both consciousness and being. For Plotinus, the oneness of nous, the intellective apex of the self, is a participation in the One, the divine origin of all things and the ground of the openness of mind and world one to another. For Sufi thought, God is the Self of all selves, the One—al-Ahad—who is the sole true 'I' underlying the consciousness of every dependent 'me.' According to the Kena Upanishad, Brahman is not that which the mind knows like an object, or that the eye sees or the ear hears, but is that by which the mind comprehends, by which the eye sees, by which the ear hears; atman—the self in its divine depth—is the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear, the ground of all knowing.
David Bentley Hart (The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss)
Why God sometimes allows people who are genuinely good to be hindered in the good that they do. God, who is faithful, allows his friends to fall frequently into weakness only in order to remove from them any prop on which they might lean. For a loving person it would be a great joy to be able to achieve many great feats, whether keeping vigils, fasting, performing other ascetical practices or doing major, difficult and unusual works. For them this is a great joy, support and source of hope so that their works become a prop and a support upon which they can lean. But it is precisely this which our Lord wishes to take from them so that he alone will be their help and support. This he does solely on account of his pure goodness and mercy, for God is prompted to act only by his goodness, and in no way do our works serve to make God give us anything or do anything for us. Our Lord wishes his friends to be freed from such an attitude, and thus he removes their support from them so that they must henceforth find their support only in him. For he desires to give them great gifts, solely on account of his goodness, and he shall be their comfort and support while they discover themselves to be and regard themselves as being a pure nothingness in all the great gifts of God. The more essentially and simply the mind rests on God and is sustained by him, the more deeply we are established in God and the more receptive we are to him in all his precious gifts – for human kind should build on God alone.
Meister Eckhart (Selected Writings)
A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not survive because of any ethical reason it does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would kill it. It survived because it is a source of pleasure and because the passionate few can no more neglect it then a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the horse "the right things" are the right things solely because the passionate few like reading them … Nobody at all is quite in a position to choose with certainty among modern works. To sift the wheat from the chaff is a process that takes an exceedingly long time. Modern works have to pass before the bar of the taste of successive Generations; whereas, with Classics, which have been through the ordeal, almost the reverse is the case. Your taste has to pass before the bar of the classics. That is the point. If you differ with a classic, it is you who are wrong, and not the book. If you differ with a modern work, you may be wrong or you may be right, but no judge is authoritative to decide your taste is unformed. It needs guidance and it needs authoritative guidance. Arnold Bennett, Literary Taste: How to Form It, as quoted by S. I. Hayakawa
S.I. Hayakawa (Language in Thought and Action)
A kiss with Lenore is a scenario in which Iskate with buttered soles over the moist rink of lower lip, sheltered from weathers by the wet warm overhang of upper, finally to crawl between lip and gum and pull the lip to me like a child’s blanket and stare over it with beady, unfriendly eyes out at the world external to Lenore, of which I no longer wish to be part. That I must in the final analysis remain part of the world that is external to and other from Lenore Beadsman is to me a source of profound grief. That others may dwell deep, deep within the ones they love, drink from the soft cup at the creamy lake at the center of the Object of Passion, while I am fated forever only to intuit the presence of deep recesses while I poke my nose, as it were, merely into the foyer of the Great House of Love, agitate briefly, and make a small mess onthe doormat, pisses me off to no small degree. But that Lenore finds such tiny frenzies, such conversations just inside the Screen Door of Union, to be not only pleasant and briefly diverting but somehow apparently right, fulfilling, significant, in some sense wonderful, quite simply and not at all surprisingly makes me feel the same way, enlarges my sense of it and me, sends me hurrying up the walk to that Screen Door in my best sportjacket and flower in lapel as excited as any schoolboy, time after time, brings me charging to the cave entrance in leopardskin shirt, avec club, bellowing for admittance and promising general kickings of ass if I am impeded in any way.
David Foster Wallace (The Broom of the System)
By comparing various sources of data, moreover, it is possible to estimate that the average income of the parents of Harvard students is currently about $450,000, which corresponds to the average income of the top 2 percent of the US income hierarchy.32 Such a finding does not seem entirely compatible with the idea of selection based solely on merit. The contrast between the official meritocratic discourse and the reality seems particularly extreme in this case. The total absence of transparency regarding selection procedures should also be noted.33
Thomas Piketty (Capital in the Twenty-First Century)
The mummy Amennakht was over three thousand years old and on his third set of replacement fingers, but this didn't severely impact his typing speed. On a good day, he was capable of about sixty-five words per minute. It was useful to be able to work from home -- he hated the word telecommute, he wasn't commuting at all, that was the point -- when you couldn't exactly go out in public without people noticing certain peculiarities in your personal appearance. Nobody cared what you looked like when you existed solely as a source of e-mails and completed assignments.
Vivian Shaw (Grave Importance (Dr. Greta Helsing #3))
As I pondered over the facts that the light of reason is not only despised, but by many even execrated as a source of impiety, that human commentaries are accepted as divine records, and that credulity is extolled as faith; as I marked the fierce controversies of philosophers raging in Church and State, the source of bitter hatred and dissension, the ready instruments of sedition and other ills innumerable, I determined to examine the Bible afresh in a careful, impartial, and unfettered spirit, making no assumptions concerning it, and attributing to it no doctrines, which I do not find clearly therein set down. With these precautions I constructed a method of Scriptural interpretation, and thus equipped proceeded to inquire—What is prophecy? in what sense did God reveal Himself to the prophets, and why were these particular men chosen by Him? Was it on account of the sublimity of their thoughts about the Deity and nature, or was it solely on account of their piety? These questions being answered, I was easily able to conclude, that the authority of the prophets has weight only in matters of morality, and that their speculative doctrines affect us little.
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
If the original ink proved tenacious, it could still be possible to make out the traces of the texts that were written over: a unique fourth-century copy of Cicero’s On the Republic remained visible beneath a seventh-century copy of St. Augustine’s meditation on the Psalms; the sole surviving copy of Seneca’s book on friendship was deciphered beneath an Old Testament inscribed in the late sixth century. These strange, layered manuscripts—called palimpsests; from the Greek for “scraped again”—have served as the source of several major works from the ancient past that would not otherwise be known.
Stephen Greenblatt (The Swerve: How the World Became Modern)
We make ourselves out to be innocent victims of attack. It’s true that in August the attackers were Arabs. Since they have no army, they cannot observe the rules of the game. They availed themselves of all the barbaric means typical of an anticolonialist rebellion. But we need to look at the deepest sources of the uprising. We have spent twelve years in Palestine without having even once asked the Arabs’ consent, without conducting any sort of discussion with the people living in this land. We have trusted solely to British power. We have set ourselves goals that must inevitably lead to conflict. (Lavsky 1990, 204)
Hillel Cohen (Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929 (The Schusterman Series in Israel Studies))
First, given what is known about the chemical basis of biology and genetics, what is the likelihood that self-reproducing life forms should have come into existence spontaneously on the early earth, solely through the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry? The second question is about the sources of variation in the evolutionary process that was set in motion once life began: In the available geological time since the first life forms appeared on earth, what is the likelihood that, as a result of physical accident, a sequence of viable genetic mutations should have occurred that was sufficient to permit natural selection to produce the organisms that actually exist?
Thomas Nagel (Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False)
The office of Gender is solely that of creating, producing, generating, etc., and its manifestations are visible on every plane of phenomena. It is somewhat difficult to produce proofs of this along scientific lines, for the reason that science has not as yet recognized this Principle as of universal application. But still some proofs are forthcoming from scientific sources. In the first place, we find a distinct manifestation of the Principle of Gender among the corpuscles, ions, or electrons, which constitute the basis of Matter as science now knows the latter, and which by forming certain combinations form the Atom, which until lately was regarded as final and indivisible.
Three Initiates (Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece)
Since I can see no answer to these questions, I draw the following conclusions. This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) ‘ideologies’, all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.
C.S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man)
A kiss with Lenore is a scenario in which I skate with buttered soles over the moist rink of lower lip, sheltered from weathers by the wet warm overhang of upper, finally to crawl between lip and gum and pull the lip to me like a child’s blanket and stare over it with beady, unfriendly eyes out at the world external to Lenore, of which I no longer wish to be part. That I must in the final analysis remain part of the world that is external to and other from Lenore Beadsman is to me a source of profound grief. That others may dwell deep, deep within the ones they love, drink from the soft cup at the creamy lake at the center of the Object of Passion, while I am fated forever only to intuit the presence of deep recesses while I poke my nose, as it were, merely into the foyer of the Great House of Love, agitate briefly, and make a small mess on the doormat, pisses me off to no small degree. But that Lenore finds such tiny frenzies, such conversations just inside the Screen Door of Union, to be not only pleasant and briefly diverting but somehow apparently right, fulfilling, significant, in some sense wonderful, quite simply and not at all surprisingly makes me feel the same way, enlarges my sense of it and me, sends me hurrying up the walk to that Screen Door in my best sportjacket and flower in lapel as excited as any schoolboy, time after time, brings me charging to the cave entrance in leopardskin shirt, avec club, bellowing for admittance and promising general kickings of ass if I am impeded in any way.
David Foster Wallace (The Broom of the System)
When we look at the sun we wish to know [135]something about the sun itself, which is ninety-three million miles away; but what we see is dependent upon our eyes, and it is difficult to suppose that our eyes can affect what happens at a distance of ninety-three million miles. Physics tells us that certain electromagnetic waves start from the sun, and reach our eyes after about eight minutes. They there produce disturbances in the rods and cones, thence in the optic nerve, thence in the brain. At the end of this purely physical series, by some odd miracle, comes the experience which we call "seeing the sun," and it is such experiences which form the whole and sole reason for our belief in the optic nerve, the rods and cones, the ninety-three million miles, the electromagnetic waves, and the sun itself. It is this curious oppositeness of direction between the order of causation as affirmed by physics, and the order of evidence as revealed by theory of knowledge, that causes the most serious perplexities in regard to the nature of physical reality. Anything that invalidates our seeing, as a source of knowledge concerning physical reality, invalidates also the whole of physics and physiology. And yet, starting from a common-sense acceptance of our seeing, physics has been led step by step to the construction of the causal chain in which our seeing is the last link, and the immediate object which we see cannot be regarded as that initial cause which we believe to be ninety-three million miles away, and which we are inclined to regard as the "real" sun.
Bertrand Russell (Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Exploring Mysticism and Logic: A Fresh Perspective on Truth and Knowledge)
Groupies and hangers-on somehow fancy themselves entitled to the narcissist’s favour and largesse, his time, attention, and other resources. They convince themselves that they are exempt from the narcissist’s rage and wrath and immune to his vagaries andabuse . This self-imputed and self-conferred status irritates the narcissist no end as it challenges and encroaches on his standing as the only source of preferential treatment and the sole decision-maker when it comes to the allocation of his precious and cosmically significant wherewithal. The narcissist is the guru at the centre of a cult. Like other gurus, he demands complete obedience from his flock: his spouse, his offspring, other family  members, friends, and colleagues. He feels entitled to adulation and special treatment by his followers. He punishes the wayward and the straying lambs. He enforces discipline, adherence to his teachings, and common goals. The less accomplished he is in reality – the more stringent his mastery and the more pervasive the brainwashing. Cult leaders are narcissists who failed in their mission to "be someone", to become famous, and to impress the world with their uniqueness, talents, traits, and skills. Such disgruntled narcissists withdraw into a "zone of comfort" (known as the "Pathological Narcissistic Space") that assumes the hallmarks of a cult. The – often involuntary – members of the narcissist's mini-cult inhabit a twilight zone of his own construction. He imposes on them an exclusionary or inclusionary shared psychosis, replete with persecutory delusions, "enemies", mythical-grandiose narratives, and apocalyptic scenarios if he is flouted. Exclusionary shared psychosis involves the physical and emotional isolation of the narcissist and his “flock” (spouse, children, fans, friends) from the outside world in order to better shield them from imminent threats and hostile intentions. Inclusionary shared psychosis revolves around attempts to spread the narcissist’s message in a missionary fashion among friends, colleagues, co-workers, fans, churchgoers, and anyone else who comes across the mini-cult. The narcissist's control is based on ambiguity, unpredictability, fuzziness, and ambientabuse . His ever-shifting whims exclusively define right versus wrong, desirable and unwanted, what is to be pursued and what to be avoided. He alone determines the rights and obligations of his disciples and alters them at will.
Sam Vaknin
The Blue Mind Rx Statement Our wild waters provide vast cognitive, emotional, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual values for people from birth, through adolescence, adulthood, older age, and in death; wild waters provide a useful, widely available, and affordable range of treatments healthcare practitioners can incorporate into treatment plans. The world ocean and all waterways, including lakes, rivers, and wetlands (collectively, blue space), cover over 71% of our planet. Keeping them healthy, clean, accessible, and biodiverse is critical to human health and well-being. In addition to fostering more widely documented ecological, economic, and cultural diversities, our mental well-being, emotional diversity, and resiliency also rely on the global ecological integrity of our waters. Blue space gives us half of our oxygen, provides billions of people with jobs and food, holds the majority of Earth's biodiversity including species and ecosystems, drives climate and weather, regulates temperature, and is the sole source of hydration and hygiene for humanity throughout history. Neuroscientists and psychologists add that the ocean and wild waterways are a wellspring of happiness and relaxation, sociality and romance, peace and freedom, play and creativity, learning and memory, innovation and insight, elation and nostalgia, confidence and solitude, wonder and awe, empathy and compassion, reverence and beauty — and help manage trauma, anxiety, sleep, autism, addiction, fitness, attention/focus, stress, grief, PTSD, build personal resilience, and much more. Chronic stress and anxiety cause or intensify a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. Being on, in, and near water can be among the most cost-effective ways of reducing stress and anxiety. We encourage healthcare professionals and advocates for the ocean, seas, lakes, and rivers to go deeper and incorporate the latest findings, research, and insights into their treatment plans, communications, reports, mission statements, strategies, grant proposals, media, exhibits, keynotes, and educational programs and to consider the following simple talking points: •Water is the essence of life: The ocean, healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands are good for our minds and bodies. •Research shows that nature is therapeutic, promotes general health and well-being, and blue space in both urban and rural settings further enhances and broadens cognitive, emotional, psychological, social, physical, and spiritual benefits. •All people should have safe access to salubrious, wild, biodiverse waters for well-being, healing, and therapy. •Aquatic biodiversity has been directly correlated with the therapeutic potency of blue space. Immersive human interactions with healthy aquatic ecosystems can benefit both. •Wild waters can serve as medicine for caregivers, patient families, and all who are part of patients’ circles of support. •Realization of the full range and potential magnitude of ecological, economic, physical, intrinsic, and emotional values of wild places requires us to understand, appreciate, maintain, and improve the integrity and purity of one of our most vital of medicines — water.
Wallace J. Nichols (Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do)
Whereas new genes arise solely by chance through random mutations, humans often generate cultural variations intentionally. Inventions like farming, computers, and Marxism were created through ingenuity and for a purpose. In addition, memes are transmitted not just from parents to offspring, but from multiple sources. Reading this book is just one of your many horizontal exchanges of information today. Finally, although cultural evolution can occur randomly (think of fashions like tie width or skirt length), cultural change often happens through an agent of change, such as a persuasive leader, television, or a community’s collective desire to solve a challenge like hunger, disease, or the threat of Russians on the moon. Together, these differences make cultural evolution a faster and often more potent cause of change than biological evolution.
Daniel E. Lieberman (The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease)
cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and anonymous online markets such as the Silk Road. Digital cryptocurrencies provide an individual with an array of benefits unlike anything the market actor has ever experienced. They provide a means by which one may transfer wealth securely, anonymously, and with virtually zero transaction costs. Naturally, this allows one to safely avoid taxes in the course of a transaction as there is no means by which said transaction may be traced backed to him. More importantly however, the use of such digital currencies normalizes the idea of using private currencies to the general public. The State's status as the sole producer of money is one of its greatest sources of legitimacy and power; thus, the proliferation and expanding use of private currencies constitute effective means by which State rule may be peacefully undermined.
Christopher Chase Rachels (A Spontaneous Order: The Capitalist Case For A Stateless Society)
One has but to consider the phenomenon of fashion, which has never been satisfactorily explained. Fashion is the despair of sociology and aesthetics: a prodigious contagion of forms in which chain reactions struggle for supremacy over the logic of distinctions. The pleasure of fashion is undeniably cultural in origin, but does it not stem even more clearly from a flaring, unmediated consensus generated by the interplay of signs? Moreover, fashions fade away like epidemics once they have ravaged the imagination, once the virus has run its course. The price to be paid in terms of waste is always exorbitant, yet everyone consents. The marvellous in our societies resides in this ultra-rapid circulation of signs at a surface level (as opposed to the ultra-slow circulation of meanings). We love being contaminated by this process, and not having to think about it. This is a viral onslaught as noxious as the plague, yet no moral sociology, no philosophical reason, will ever extirpate it. Fashion is an irreducible phenomenon because it partakes of a crazy, viral, mediationless form of communication which operates so fast for the sole reason that it never passes via the mediation of meaning. Anything that bypasses mediation is a source of pleasure. In seduction there is a movement from the one to the other which does not pass via the same. (In cloning, it is the opposite: the movement is from the same to the same without passage via the other; and cloning holds great fascination for us.) In metamorphosis, the shift is from one form to another without passing via meaning. In poetry, from one sign to another without passing via the reference. The collapsing of distances, of intervening spaces, always produces a kind of intoxication. What does speed itself mean to us if not the fact of going from one place to another without traversing time, from one moment to another without passing via duration and movement? Speed is marvellous: time alone is wearisome.
Jean Baudrillard
Arjuna, I will now enumerate the marks of the devotee I most dearly love. I love the one who harbors no ill will toward any living being, who returns love for hatred, who is friendly and compassionate toward all. I love the devotee who is beyond ‘I’ and ‘mine,’ unperturbed by pain and not elated by pleasure, who possesses firm faith, is forgiving, ever contented and ever meditating on Me. “I love the peaceful devotee who is neither a source of agitation in the world nor agitated by the world. I love those who are free of fear, envy, and other annoyances that the world brings, who accept the knocks that come their way as blessings in disguise. “I love those who do their worldly duties unconcerned and untroubled by life. I love those who expect absolutely nothing. Those who are pure both internally and externally are also very dear to Me. I love the devotees who are ready to be My instrument, meet any demands I make on them, and yet ask nothing of Me. “I love those who do not rejoice or feel revulsion, who do not grieve, do not yearn for possessions, are not affected by the bad or good things that happen to and around them and yet are full of devotion to Me. They are dear to Me because they live in the Self (Atma), not in the commotion of the world. “I love devotees whose attitudes are the same toward friend or foe, who are indifferent to honor or ignominy, heat or cold, praise or criticism—who not only control their talking but are silent within. Also very dear to Me are those generally content with life and unattached to things of the world, even to home. I love those whose sole concern in life is to love Me. Indeed, these and all the others I mentioned are very, very dear to Me. “Hold Me as your highest goal. Live your life in accordance with the immortal wisdom I have taught you here, and practice this wisdom with great faith and deep devotion. Surrender your mind and heart completely to Me. Then I will love you dearly, and you will go beyond death to immortality.
Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
The novelty of our era is that man's deepest experience is no longer with nature. For most practical purposes it no longer relates to it. From the moment of his birth, man lives knowing only an artificial world. The dangers which confront him are in the domain of the artificial. Obligations are imposed not by contact with nature but solely by contact with the group. It is not for reasons of survival in the natural milieu that the group formulates its rules, its structures, and its commands. The reasons are entirely intrinsic. The relations of the group with other groups have become more unremitting and imperious than formerly and in any case more imperious than the relations with nature had been. Nature now is subdued, subjugated, framed, and utilized. No longer is it the threat and the source, the mystery and the intrusion, the face and the darkness of the world-either for the individual or for the group. Hence it is no longer the inciter and the place of the sacred. Man's fundamental experience today is with the technical milieu (technology having ceased to be mediation and having become man's milieu) and with society. That is why the sacred now being elaborated in the individual and in the collective consciousness is tied to society and technique, not to nature. The sacralized reality will have less and less reference to natural images and relation ships. Formerly, when power participated in the sacred it was always in a sacred of nature (having to do with the power of fertility, Lupercalia, destructive powers, and revelatory powers, etc.). It was with reference to nature that the social power was exercised. Today, however, there is no longer any reason to make use of that reference. It simply has no meaning or content. It is the political power in itself which becomes the source and the instigation of the new sacred. Society now becomes the ground and the place of the forces which man discerns or feels as sacred, but it is a society turned technician, because technique has become the life milieu of man.
Jacques Ellul (The New Demons)
The seeming power of a unified minority in Washington with just enough votes to thwart Obama was also a source of strength and, arguably, arrogance and self-importance. Even after Brown's election, the Democrats held 59 percent of the U.S. Senate, 59 percent of the House of Representatives, and 100 percent of the White House. But the GOP's forty-one Senate votes—representing, it must be noted, no more than 37 percent of the American public (thanks to Republican popularity in smaller states)—seemed paramount, because it offered just enough votes to kill any piece of legislation through the delaying tactic known as the filibuster. These representatives of 37 percent of the country wielded unprecedented powers because of something the likes of which this nation had never seen before: their ability to stick together on every single issue with the sole purpose of obstructing Barack Obama and his Democratic allies. It was an 'I Hope He Fails' strategy hatched in the ratings-driven studios of talk radio, but now rigid legislative fealty to the on-air musings of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck had ground Washington to a total halt.
Will Bunch (The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama)
A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not survive for any ethical reason. It does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would not kill it. It survives because it is a source of pleasure, and because the passionate few can no more neglect it than a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the horse. "The right things" are the right things solely because the passionate few like reading them. Hence—and I now arrive at my point— the one primary essential to literary taste is a hot interest in literature. If you have that, all the rest will come. It matters nothing that at present you fail to find pleasure in certain classics. The driving impulse of your interest will force you to acquire experience, and experience will teach you the use of the means of pleasure. You do not know the secret ways of yourself: that is all. A continuance of interest must inevitably bring you to the keenest joys.
Arnold Bennett
The Vishnu Purana states that, the Kali Yuga will be characterized by: “Kings of churlish spirit, violent temper, and ever addicted to falsehood and wickedness. They will inflict death on women, children, and cows; they will seize upon the property of their subjects; they will be of limited power, and will for the most part rapidly rise and fall; their lives will be short, their desires insatiable, and they will display but little piety. Wealth and piety will decrease day by day, until the world will be wholly depraved. Then property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification. Earth will be venerated but for its mineral treasures. Dishonesty will be the universal means of subsistence; menace and presumption will be substituted for learning. The people, unable to bear the heavy burdens imposed upon them by their avaricious sovereigns, will take refuge amongst the valleys of the mountains, and will be glad to feed upon wild honey, herbs, roots, fruits, flowers, and leaves. Thus in the Kali age shall decay constantly proceed, until the human race approaches its annihilation.
Bibhu Dev Misra (YUGA SHIFT: THE END OF THE KALI YUGA & THE IMPENDING PLANETARY TRANSFORMATION)
You're alone. You can develop only when you're alone; you always will be alone, your consciousness of the fact that you can't come up with anything on your own… Everything else is a delusion, is dubious. Nothing ever changes… You talk to other people; you are alone. You have opinions, other people's opinions, your own opinions, you are always alone. And when you write a book, or books if you are like me, you are even more alone. Making yourself understood is impossible; there's no such thing as doing that. Out of solitude, out of aloneness grows an even more intense aloneness, apartness. Eventually, you change scenes at ever-briefer intervals. You believe that ever-larger cities—your small home town is no longer enough for you, Vienna is no longer enough, London is no longer enough. You're forced to go to another continent; you try going here and there, speaking foreign languages—is Brussels perchance the right place? Is it perchance Rome? And you travel to every place in the world, and you are always alone with yourself and with your ever-more abominable work. You go back to your native country, you withdraw back into your farmhouse, you shut the doors if you are like me—and this is often for days at a time—you stay shut up indoors and then your sole pleasure and on the other hand your ever-increasing source of delight is your work
Thomas Bernhard
One of the most important of these truths—a new ethic of interaction—began to surface in various places around the globe, but ultimately found clear expression in the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. Instantly I could see the Birth Visions of hundreds of individuals born into the Greek culture, each hoping to remember this timely insight. For generations they had seen the waste and injustice of mankind’s unending violence upon itself, and knew that humans could transcend the habit of fighting and conquering others and implement a new system for the exchange and comparison of ideas, a system that protected the sovereign right of every individual to hold his unique view, regardless of physical strength—a system that was already known and followed in the Afterlife. As I watched, this new way of interaction began to emerge and take form on Earth, finally becoming known as democracy. In this method of exchanging ideas, communication between humans still often degenerated into an insecure power struggle, but at least now, for the first time ever, the process was in place to pursue the evolution of human reality at the verbal rather than the physical level. At the same time, another watershed idea, one destined to completely transform the human understanding of spiritual reality, was surfacing in the written histories of a small tribe in the Middle East. Similarly I could also see the Birth Visions of many of the proponents of this idea as well. These individuals, born into the Judaic culture, knew before birth that while we were correct to intuit a divine source, our description of this source was flawed and distorted. Our concept of many gods was merely a fragmented picture of a larger whole. In truth, they realized, there was only one God, a God, in their view, that was still demanding and threatening and patriarchal—and still existing outside of ourselves—but for the first time, personal and responsive, and the sole creator of all humans. As I continued to watch, I saw this intuition of one divine source emerging and being clarified in cultures all over the world. In China and India, long the leaders in technology, trade, and social development, Hinduism and Buddhism, along with other Eastern religions, moved the East toward a more contemplative focus. Those who created these religions intuited that God was more than a personage. God was a force, a consciousness, that could only be completely found by attaining what they described as an enlightenment experience. Rather than just pleasing God by obeying certain laws or rituals, the Eastern religions sought connection with God on the inside, as a shift in awareness, an opening up of one’s consciousness to a harmony and security that was constantly available.
James Redfield (The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (Celestine Prophecy #2))
The Netherlands capital of Amsterdam amsterdam cruise is a thriving metropolis and one from the world's popular cities. If you are planning a trip to the metropolis, but are unclear about what you should do presently there, why not possess a little fun and spend time learning about how it's stereotypically known for? How come they put on clogs? When was the wind mill first utilised there? In addition, be sure to include all your feels on your journey and taste the phenomenal cheeses along with smell the stunning tulips. It's really recommended that you stay in a city motel, Amsterdam is quite spread out and residing in hotels close to the city-centre allows for the easiest access to public transportation. Beyond the clichés So that you can know precisely why a stereotype exists it usually is important to discover its source. Clogs: The Dutch have already been wearing solid wood shoes, as well as "Klompen" as they are referred to, for approximately 700 years. They were originally made out of a timber sole along with a leather top or band tacked for the wood. Nevertheless, the shoes had been eventually created completely from wood to safeguard the whole base. Wooden shoe wearers state the shoes are usually warm during the cold months and cool during the warm months. The first guild associated with clog designers dates back to a number exceeding 1570 in Holland. When making blockages, both shoes of a set must be created from the same kind of timber, even the same side of a tree, in order that the wood will certainly shrink in the same charge. While most blocks today are produced by equipment, a few shoemakers are left and they normally set up store in vacationer areas near any city hotel. Amsterdam also offers a clog-making museum, Klompenmakerij De Zaanse Schans, that highlights your shoe's history and significance. Windmills: The first windmills have been demonstrated to have existed in Netherlands from about the year 1200. Today, there are eight leftover windmills in the capital. The most effective to visit is De Gooyer, which has been built in 1725 over the Nieuwevaart Canal. Their location in the east involving city's downtown area signifies it is readily available from any metropolis hotel. Amsterdam enjoys its beer and it actually has a brewery right on the doorstep to the wind generator. So if you are enjoying a historic site it's also possible to enjoy a scrumptious ice-cold beer - what more would you ask for? Mozerella: It's impossible to vacation to Amsterdam without sampling several of its wonderful cheeses. In accordance with the locals, probably the most flavourful cheeses are available at the Wegewijs Emporium. With over 50 international cheese and A hundred domestic parmesan cheesse, you will surely have a wide-variety to pick from.
Step Into the Stereotypes of Amsterdam
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Line of AuNor, dragon bold Flows to me from days of old, And through years lost in the mist My blood names a famous list. By Air, by Water, by Fire, by Earth In pride I claim a noble birth. From EmLar Gray, a deadly deed By his flame Urlant was freed, Of fearsome hosts of blighters dark And took his reward: a golden ark! My Mother’s sire knew battle well Before him nine-score villages fell. When AuRye Red coursed the sky Elven arrows in vain would fly, He broke the ranks of men at will In glittering mines dwarves he’d kill. Grandsire he is through Father’s blood A river of strength in fullest flood. My egg was one of Irelia’s Clutch Her wisdom passed in mental touch. Mother took up before ever I woke The parent dragon’s heavy yoke; For me, her son, she lost her life Murderous dwarves brought blackened knife. A father I had in the Bronze AuRel Hunter of renown upon wood and fell He gave his clutch through lessons hard A chance at life beyond his guard. Father taught me where, and when, and how To fight or flee, so I sing now. Wistala, sibling, brilliant green Escaped with me the axes keen We hunted as pair, made our kill From stormy raindrops drank our fill When elves and dwarves took after us I told her “Run,” and lost her thus. Bound by ropes; by Hazeleye freed And dolphin-rescued in time of need I hid among men with fishing boats On island thick with blown sea-oats I became a drake and breathed first fire When dolphin-slaughter aroused my ire. I ran with wolves of Blackhard’s pack Killed three hunters on my track The Dragonblade’s men sought my hide But I escaped through a fangèd tide Of canine friends, assembled Thing Then met young Djer, who cut collar-ring. I crossed the steppes with dwarves of trade On the banks of the Vhydic Ironriders slayed Then sought out NooMoahk, dragon black And took my Hieba daughter back To find her kind; then took first flight Saw NooMoahk buried in honor right. When war came to friends I long had known My path was set, my heart was stone I sought the source of dreadful hate And on this Isle I met my fate Found Natasatch in a cavern deep So I had one more promise to keep. To claim this day my life’s sole mate In future years to share my fate A dragon’s troth is this day pledged To she who’ll see me fully fledged. Through this dragon’s life, as dragon-dame shall add your blood to my family’s fame.
E.E. Knight (Dragon Champion (Age of Fire, #1))
Archangel Raphael This is the realm of healing Love. As natural healers from the heart, you who carry this realm innately project blue healing rays through your hands. As a Raphaelite, the way your Soul emanates its gifts is through this healing energy. You don’t need to do anything outwardly for healing Love to be radiated to others. Raphaelites have a tendency to overexert this healing influence unnecessarily. It works on the level of being, not doing. In essence, healing naturally occurs wherever the frequency of Love is present. You Raphaelites can overextend yourselves based on your feeling that everything needs healing, feeling that it’s your job to bring that healing Love wherever it is lacking. That is an endless, exhausting, fruitless task. Love is the same energy as life force. You are here to help us to return to the natural state of wholeness through the power of healing Love. You are always present with understanding and care. You are loving individuals who have a tendency to deplete yourselves by attempting to fill the seemingly endless needs of others. Your challenge is to discern who is part of your Soul plan to extend your energy toward and how to do it in a way that does not leave you depleted. You are here to show people that Love is an infinite commodity universally available. It is not yours to personally give to others. When a Raphaelite feels the need to personally give the divine Love they inherently feel connected to, to another, as though it belongs solely to them, it can become a caretaking exchange, which is disempowering to both people. This caretaking level of love is different than the frequency of divine Love. Healing as Love is not meant to be at the level of caretaking. It is not for you to say, “I’ll give all I have to you, because it feels so natural to do so, and it doesn’t matter if I get anything in return.” This state can lead to the expectation for others that you are here to fill their needs for Love. The Raphaelite is here to remind us that divine Love is the healing force moving through everyone. You must visualize or feel an umbilical cord from your heart to the source of divine Love. This is how Love, in fact, feeds us all. The channel from our Creator to our heart is filled with divine Love. When we feel thanksgiving for the eternal presence of Love, it ignites the miracle of healing that hasn’t held a place for Love. We can co-create as Love with those around us freely and appropriately from this place and this place alone. Remember, healer, to heal yourself first in this way and you will have much to give and will be rewarded joyously in return for that gift. The Raphael realm can be tapped into any time by anyone requesting the healing balm of Love that is vital to our life nourishment. We are designed to know this healing Love as a natural flow of our heart’s expression.
Susann Taylor Shier (Soul Mastery: Accessing the Gifts of Your Soul (The Soul Mastery Trilogy))
with this line of reasoning. If it makes you feel better, you are free to go on calling Communism an ideology rather than a religion. It makes no difference. We can divide creeds into god-centred religions and godless ideologies that claim to be based on natural laws. But then, to be consistent, we would need to catalogue at least some Buddhist, Daoist and Stoic sects as ideologies rather than religions. Conversely, we should note that belief in gods persists within many modern ideologies, and that some of them, most notably liberalism, make little sense without this belief. It would be impossible to survey here the history of all the new modern creeds, especially because there are no clear boundaries between them. They are no less syncretic than monotheism and popular Buddhism. Just as a Buddhist could worship Hindu deities, and just as a monotheist could believe in the existence of Satan, so the typical American nowadays is simultaneously a nationalist (she believes in the existence of an American nation with a special role to play in history), a free-market capitalist (she believes that open competition and the pursuit of self-interest are the best ways to create a prosperous society), and a liberal humanist (she believes that humans have been endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights). Nationalism will be discussed in Chapter 18. Capitalism – the most successful of the modern religions – gets a whole chapter, Chapter 16, which expounds its principal beliefs and rituals. In the remaining pages of this chapter I will address the humanist religions. Theist religions focus on the worship of gods. Humanist religions worship humanity, or more correctly, Homo sapiens. Humanism is a belief that Homo sapiens has a unique and sacred nature, which is fundamentally different from the nature of all other animals and of all other phenomena. Humanists believe that the unique nature of Homo sapiens is the most important thing in the world, and it determines the meaning of everything that happens in the universe. The supreme good is the good of Homo sapiens. The rest of the world and all other beings exist solely for the benefit of this species. All humanists worship humanity, but they do not agree on its definition. Humanism has split into three rival sects that fight over the exact definition of ‘humanity’, just as rival Christian sects fought over the exact definition of God. Today, the most important humanist sect is liberal humanism, which believes that ‘humanity’ is a quality of individual humans, and that the liberty of individuals is therefore sacrosanct. According to liberals, the sacred nature of humanity resides within each and every individual Homo sapiens. The inner core of individual humans gives meaning to the world, and is the source for all ethical and political authority. If we encounter an ethical or political dilemma, we should look inside and listen to our inner voice – the voice of humanity. The chief commandments of liberal humanism are meant to protect the liberty of this inner voice against intrusion or harm. These commandments are collectively known as ‘human rights’. This, for example, is why liberals object to torture and the death penalty. In early modern Europe, murderers were thought to violate and destabilise the cosmic order. To bring the cosmos back to balance, it was necessary to torture and publicly execute the criminal, so that everyone could see the order re-established. Attending gruesome executions was a favourite pastime for Londoners and Parisians in the era of Shakespeare and Molière. In today’s Europe, murder is seen as a violation of the sacred nature of humanity. In order to restore order, present-day Europeans do not torture and execute criminals. Instead, they punish a murderer in what they see as the most ‘humane
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Water. Drinking water, water purification system (or tablets), and a water bottle or canteen. Food. Anything that is long lasting, lightweight, and nutritious such as protein bars, dehydrated meals, MREs24, certain canned goods, rice, and beans. Clothing. Assure it’s appropriate to a wide range of temperatures and environments, including gloves, raingear, and multiple layers that can be taken on or off as needed. Shelter. This may include a tarp or tent, sleeping bag or survival blanket, and ground pad or yoga mat. A camper or trailer is a fantastic, portable shelter, with many of the comforts of home. If you own one keep it stocked with supplies to facilitate leaving in a hurry, as it can take several hours load up and move out if you’re not ready. In certain circumstances that might mean having to leave it behind. Heat source. Lighter or other reliable ignition source (e.g., magnesium striker), tinder, and waterproof storage. Include a rocket stove or biomass burner if possible, they’re inexpensive, take very little fuel, and incredibly useful in an emergency. Self-defense/hunting gear. Firearm(s) and ammunition, fishing gear, multi-tool/knife, maps, and compass, and GPS (it’s not a good idea to rely solely on a GPS as you may find yourself operating without a battery or charger). First aid. First aid kit, first aid book, insect repellant, suntan lotion, and any needed medicines you have been prescribed. If possible add potassium iodide (for radiation emergencies) and antibiotics (for bio attacks) to your kit. Hygiene. Hand soap, sanitizer, toilet paper, towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and garbage bags. Tools. Hatchet (preferably) or machete, can opener, cooking tools (e.g., portable stove, pot, frying pan, utensils, and fuel), rope, duct tape, sunglasses, rubber tubing, and sewing kit. Lighting and communications. LED headlamp, glow sticks, candles, cell phone, charger (preferably hand crank or solar), emergency radio (preferably with hand crank that covers AM, FM, and Marine frequencies) and extra batteries, writing implements, and paper. Cash or barter. You never know how long an emergency will last. Extensive power outages mean no cash machines, so keep a few hundred dollars in small bills, gold or silver coins, or other valuables on hand.
Kris Wilder (The Big Bloody Book of Violence: The Smart Person's Guide for Surviving Dangerous Times: What Every Person Must Know About Self-Defense)
Stupid dog, do you realize you have actually LITERALLY bitten the hand that feeds you?" Schatzi looks at me with a withering stare, arching her bushy eyebrows haughtily, and then turns her back to me. I stick out my tongue at her back, and go to the kitchen to freshen her water bowl. Damnable creature requires fresh water a zillion times a day. God forbid a fleck of dust is dancing on the surface, or it has gone two degrees beyond cool, I get the laser look of death. Once there was a dead fly in it, and she looked in the bowl, crossed the room, looked me dead in the eye, and squatted and peed on my shoes. I usually call her Shitzi or Nazi. I suppose I'm lucky she deigns to drink tap water. Our bare tolerance of each other is mutual, and affection between us is nil. The haughty little hellbeast was my sole inheritance from my grandmother who passed away two years ago. A cold, exacting woman who raised me in my mother's near-complete absence, Annelyn Stroudt insisted on my calling her Grand-mère, despite the fact that she put the manic in Germanic, ancestry-wise. But apparently when her grandparents schlepped here mother from Berlin to Chicago, they took a year in Paris first, and adopted many things Française. So Grand-mère it was. Grand-mère Annelyn also insisted on dressing for dinner, formal manners in every situation, letterpress stationary, and physical affection saved for the endless string of purebred miniature schnauzers she bought one after the other, and never offered to the granddaughter who also lived under her roof. Her clear disappointment in me must have rubbed off on Schatzi, who, despite having lived with me since Grand-mère died neatly and quietly in her sleep at the respectable age of eighty-nine, has never seen me as anything but a source of food, and a firm hand at the end of the leash. She dotes on Grant, but he sneaks her nibbles when he cooks, and coos to her in flawless French. Sometimes I wonder if the spirit of Grand-mère transferred into the dog upon death, and if the chilly indifference to me is just a manifestation of my grandmother's continued disapproval from beyond the grave. Schatzi wanders over to her bowl, sniffs it, sneers at me one last time for good measure, shakes her head to ensure her ears are in place, like a society matron checking her coif, and settles down to drink.
Stacey Ballis (Recipe for Disaster)
The feeling of gratitude coupled with the mental concept of appreciation is expressed like an invisible message in all directions and at all times. In this particular context, gratitude to the Universal Entity is the overarching motive behind all forms of expression that the human instrument aspires to. Every breath, every word, every touch, every thought, every thing is centered on expressing this sense of gratitude. A gratitude that the individual is sovereign and supported by a Universal Entity that expresses itself through all forms and manifestations of intelligence with the sole objective of creating the ideal reality to activate the individual's Source Codes and transform the human instrument and entity in to the Sovereign Integral. It is this specific form of gratitude that accelerates the activation of the Source Codes and their peculiar ability to integrate the disparate componentry of the human instrument and the entity, and transform them to the state of perception and expression of the Sovereign Integral.
WingMakers
...sola Scriptura was never meant as a denial of the usefulness of the Christian tradition as a subordinate norm in theology and as a significant point of reference for doctrinal formulas and argumentation. The views of the Reformers developed out of a debate in the late medieval theology over the relation of Scripture and tradition, on the side of the debate viewing the two as coequal norms, the other side of the debate taking Scripture as the sole source of necessary doctrine, albeit as read in the church's interoperative tradition. The Reformers and the Protestant orthodox followed the latter understanding, defining Scripture as the absolute and therefore prior norm, but allowing the theological tradition, particularly the earlier tradition of the fathers and ecumenical councils, to have a derivative but important secondary role in doctrinal statements. They accepted the ancient tradition as a useful guide, allowing that the trinitarian and Christological statements of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon were expressions of biblical truth, and that the great teachers of the church provided valuable instruction in theology that always needed to be evaluated in the light of Scripture. At the same time, they rejected recent human traditions as problematic deviations from the biblical norm. What the Reformers and orthodox explicitly denied was coequality of Scripture and tradition and, in particular, the claim of unwritten traditions as normative for practice. We encounter, especially in the scholastic era of Protestantism, a profound interest in the patristic period and a critical but often substantive use of ideas and patterns enunciated by the medieval doctors.
Richard A. Muller
...sola Scriptura was never meant as a denial of the usefulness of the Christian tradition as a subordinate norm in theology and as a significant point of reference for doctrinal formulas and argumentation. The views of the Reformers developed out of a debate in the late medieval theology over the relation of Scripture and tradition, on the side of the debate viewing the two as coequal norms, the other side of the debate taking Scripture as the sole source of necessary doctrine, albeit as read in the church's interoperative tradition. The Reformers and the Protestant orthodox followed the latter understanding, defining Scripture as the absolute and therefore prior norm, but allowing the theological tradition, particularly the earlier tradition of the fathers and ecumenical councils, to have a derivative but important secondary role in doctrinal statements. They accepted the ancient tradition as a useful guide, allowing that the trinitarian and Christological statements of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon were expressions of biblical truth, and that the great teachers of the church provided valuable instruction in theology that always needed to be evaluated in the light of Scripture. At the same time, they rejected recent human traditions as problematic deviations from the biblical norm. What the Reformers and orthodox explicitly denied was coequality of Scripture and tradition and, in particular, the claim of unwritten traditions as normative for practice. We encounter, especially in the scholastic era of Protestantism, a profound interest in the patristic period and a critical but often substantive use of ideas and patterns enunciated by the medieval doctors.
Richard A. Muller (Editor)
At last the revenants became so troublesome the peasants abandoned the village and it fell solely into the possession of subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presences by shadows that fall almost imperceptibly awry, too many shadows, even at midday, shadows that have no source in anything visible; by the sound, sometimes, of sobbing in a derelict bedroom where a cracked mirror suspended from a wall does not reflect a presence; by a sense of unease that will afflict the traveller unwise enough to pause to drink from the fountain in the square that still gushes spring water from a faucet stuck in a stone lion's mouth. A cat prowls in a weedy garden; he grins and spits, arches his back, bounces away from an intangible on four fear-stiffened legs. Now all shun the village below the château in which the beautiful somnambulist helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes.
Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories)
There was Train Number 193, she thought. Six weeks ago, Train Number 193 had been sent with a load of steel, not to Faulkton, Nebraska, where the Spencer Machine Tool Company, the best machine tool concern still in existence, had been idle for two weeks, waiting for the shipment—but to Sand Creek, Illinois, where Confederated Machine had been wallowing in debt for over a year, producing unreliable goods at unpredictable times. The steel had been allocated by a directive which explained that the Spencer Machine Tool Company was a rich concern, able to wait, while Confederated Machines was bankrupt and could not be allowed to collapse, being the sole source of livelihood of the community of Sand Creek, Illinois. The Spencer Machine Tool Company had closed a month ago. Confederated Machines had closed two weeks later.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
True blindness occurs when a person disregards the sole source of light within the cave.
Kwesi Eyiah
Alarm bells should be going off in your ahead as soon as you start living for the weekend as the sole source of reprieve and relaxation.
Jay D'Cee
The thing that should leap off the page at you from this definition is when you are dependent on the government as the sole-source provider of your basic human needs, you have become a slave to the government.
Oliver L. North (We Didn't Fight for Socialism: America's Veterans Speak Up)
It is difficult for people raised in the free world to grasp the breadth and the depth of lying required simply to exist under communism. All the lies, and lies about lies, that formed the communist order were built on the basis of this foundational lie: the communist state is the sole source of truth. Orwell said in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”5
Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
When we view living in the european mode only as a problem to be solved, we rely solely upon our ideas to make us free, for these were what the white fathers told us were precious. But as we coe more into touch with our own ancient, non-european consciousness of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action comes.
Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches)
The Church has been accused of claiming religious freedom when se is in the minority and refusing it when she is in the majority. The reply is easy. Truth is the source of virtue and justice, and of peace. Where Truth is, these benefits are visible in society. The Church asks that it should be recognized that she brings these precious gifts to States and that she should therefore be allowed freedom to dispense them. Wise statesmen, concerned for the welfare of their fellow-citizens, willingly admit the value of the cultural and social benefits brought by the Catholic Church and freely grant her a liberty sometimes refused to others. The Church has the right to claim this liberty of existence and action because it brings with it the precious gifts which flow from the Truth of which in its fullness, she is the sole custodian.
Marcel Lefebvre (A bishop speaks)
It’s not sustainable to have the person you’re evolving a relationship with be your sole source of support, and I highly recommend having the professional support of a therapist and friends.
Rae McDaniel (Gender Magic: Live Shamelessly, Reclaim Your Joy, & Step into Your Most Authentic Self)
Men are more likely to regret passing up an opportunity for casual sex. And men are much more likely to view their virginity as a source of embarrassment and an albatross around their necks to be cast off as soon as humanly possible. The social category “reluctant virgin” is populated almost solely by men, as is the category “involuntary celibate” (or “incel”).
Steve Stewart-Williams (The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve)
The Latin reference is to the “argument from authority,” the fallacy according to which a conclusion is declared to be right solely because it accords with an authoritative source. In
Greg Weiner (Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence)
Many people do interpret "black men loving black men" solely in terms of a sexual, romantic affinity, and love. But what I meant was love in the sense of friendship, community, family, and fraternity, which was far more important, in nurturing me as a black gay man, than the love of a particular lover who is white. It's more important because for black people in this country it's difficult to exist, to flourish, to find sustenance and spiritual strength when you're totally surrounded by whites, or when the source of your support is solely from whites. There are things that white people can't understand, don't feel, and don't know no matter how much they love you. (Marlon Riggs, in an interview with Ron Simmons)
Essex Hemphill (Brother to Brother: New Writing by Black Gay Men)
We could name this tableau LAND AS TEACHER, LAND AS HEALER. With plants and natural processes in sole command, the role of land as a renewable source of knowledge
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
What is wrong with modern civilization which produces at the roots these signs of sterility and racial decadence? But this is nothing new, it has happened before and history is full of examples of it. Imperial Rome in its decline was far worse. Is there a cycle governing this inner decay and can we seek out the causes and eliminate them? Modern industrialism and the capitalist structure of society cannot be the sole causes, for decadence has often occurred without them. It is probable, however, that in their present forms they do create an environment, a physical and mental climate, which is favourable for the functioning of those causes. If the basic cause is something spiritual, something affecting the mind and spirit of man, it is difficult to grasp though we may try to understand it or intuitively feel it. But one fact seems to stand out: that a divorce from the soil, from the good earth, is bad for the individual and the race. The earth and the sun are the sources of life and if we keep away from them for long life begins to ebb away. Modern industrialized communities have lost touch with the soil and do not experience that joy which nature gives and the rich glow of health which comes from contact with mother earth. They talk of nature’s beauty and go to seek it in occasional week-ends, littering the countryside with the product of their own artificial lives, but they cannot commune with nature or feel part of it. It is something to look at and admire, because they are told to do so, and then return with a sigh of relief to their normal haunts; just as they might try to admire some classic poet or writer and then, wearied by the attempt, return to their favourite novel or detective story, where no effort of mind is necessary. They are not children of nature, like the old Greeks or Indians, but strangers paying an embarrassing call on a scarce-known distant relative. And so they do not experience that joy in nature’s rich life and infinite variety and that feeling of being intensely alive which came so naturally to our forefathers. Is it surprising then that nature treats them as unwanted step-children?
Jawaharlal Nehru (Discovery of India)