Quotes4study

I like being single.  I'm always there when I need me.

        -- Art Leo

Fortune Cookie

Every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.

Hermann Hesse

Every effort therefore must be made to perpetuate prosperity. And, since that is to the advantage of the rich as well as the poor, all that accrues from the revenues should be collected into a single fund and distributed in block grants to those in need, if possible in lump sums large enough for the acquisition of a small piece of land, but if not, enough to start a business, or work in agriculture. And if that cannot be done for all, the distribution might be by tribes or some other division each in turn. The rich meanwhile will contribute funds sufficient to provide pay for the necessary meetings, being themselves relieved of all frivolous public services. It has been by running their constitution on some such lines that the Carthaginians have secured the goodwill of their people. From time to time they send some of them to live in the outlying districts and turn them into men of substance. When the notables are wise and considerate, they also split up the poor into groups and make it their business to provide them with a start in some occupation. [ The Politics , Book VI, Chapter v, §1320a35.]

Aristotle.

Nonetheless, gazing out the train window at a random sample of the the Western world, I could not avoid noticing a kind of separation between human beings and all other species. We cut ourselves off by living in cement blocks, moving around in glass-and-metal bubbles, and spending a good part of our time watching other human beings on television. Outside, the pale light of an April sun was shining down on a suburb. I opened a newspaper and all I could find were pictures of human beings and articles about their activities. There was not a single article about another species.

Jeremy Narby

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel … the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

E. E. Cummings

She continues to chatter my ear off as we go back to the living room, but I don’t hear a single word. I’m too busy dealing with the truth bomb that’s just been dropped on my head. Yes, Hannah and I are friends. In fact, she’s the only female friend I’ve ever had. And yes, I want to keep being Hannah’s friend. But… I also want to sleep with her.

Elle Kennedy

There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the “Welfare State.” The slave states of Western world are an outgrowth of monopolistic capitalism — an economic system which is opposed to the wide distribution of private property in many hands. Instead, monopolistic capitalism concentrates productive wealth among a few men, allowing the rest to become a vast proletariat. Some representatives of monopolistic capitalism, sensing this evil in their system, have tried to silence criticism by pointing to the diffused ownership in the great corporations. They advertise, “No one owns more than 4 percent of the stock of this great company.” Or they print lists of stockholders, showing that these include farmers, schoolteachers, baseball players, taxi drivers, and even babies. But there is a catch to this argument, and it is this: although it is true that individuals of small means own shares in the company, it is not true that they run the company. Their responsibility for its policies is nil. Possession properly has two faces, two aspects: we all have a right to private property, but this is accompanied by our responsibility for its righteous use. These two things (which should be inseparable) are frequently divided today. Everyone admits that the farmer who own a horse is obligated to feed and care for it, but in the case of stocks and bonds, we often forget that the same principle should prevail. Monopolistic capitalism is to blame for this; it sunders the right to own property from responsibility that owning property involves. Those who own only a few stocks have no practical control of any industry. They vote by postcard proxy, but they have rarely even seen “their” company. The two elements which ought to be inextricably joined in any true conception of private property — ownership and responsibility — are separated. Those who own do not manage; those who manage; those who manage and work do not control or own. The workmen in a factory may have a shadowy, unknown absentee “employer” — the thousands of individual owners of stock — whom “management” represents and tries to please by extra dividends. The workman’s livelihood is at the disposition of strangers who make a single demand of their representatives: higher profits. Faced with such insecurity, labor unions seek a solution in demands for higher wages, shorter hours, pensions, and such things. But this approach takes monopolistic capitalism for granted, and accepts the unnatural division between property and responsibility as permanent. A much more radical solution is apt to come, and this may take either of two forms. One way of remedying the situation would be through a profound alternative of our political and economic life, with the aim of distributing the means of production more widely by giving every workman a share in profits, management, and ownership, all three. The other alternative which is not a constructive solution is confiscation: this may take the violent form of communism, or the less noticeable form of bureaucratic encroachment through taxation, as favored by the welfare state. [and/or outright confiscation likened to General Motors, AIG, and Banks, etc. etc. etc.] Confiscation in any form is an unhealthy solution for a real disease. It amounts to telling men that because they are economically crippled, they must abandon all efforts to get well and allow the state to provide them with free wheelchairs. The denial of the right of ownership to a man is a denial of his basic freedom: freedom without property is always incomplete. To be “secured” — but with no accompanying responsibility – is to be the slave of whatever group provides the security. A democracy flirts with the danger of becoming a slave in direct ratio to the numbers of its citizens who work, but do not own / or who own, but do not work; or who distribute, as politicians do, but do not produce. The danger of the “slave state” disappears in ratio to the numbers of people who own property and admit its attendant responsibilities under God. They can call their souls their own because they own and administer something other than their souls. Thus they are free. [“New Slavery: Freedom without Property is Incomplete,” originally published in On Being Human: Reflections, On Life and Living , New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982.]

Sheen, Fulton J.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Siddhartha (Buddha)

The wonder of the life in Jesus is this--and you will find it so, and you have found it so, if you have ever taken your New Testament and tried to make it the rule of your daily life--that there is not a single action that you are called upon to do of which you need be, of which you will be, in any serious doubt for ten minutes as to what Jesus Christ, if He were here, Jesus Christ being here, would have you do under those circumstances and with the material upon which you are called to act. The soul that takes in Jesus' word, the soul that through the words of Jesus enters into the very person of Jesus, the soul that knows Him as its daily presence and its daily law--it never hesitates.--_Phillips Brooks._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

Angels are those beings who have been on an earth like this, and have passed through the same ordeals that we are now passing through. They have kept their first estate far enough to preserve themselves in the Priesthood. They did not so violate the law of the Priesthood and condemn themselves to the sin against the Holy Ghost as to be finally lost. They are not crowned with the celestial ones. They are persons who have lived upon an earth, but did not magnify the Priesthood in that high degree that many others have done who have become Gods, even the sons of God. Human beings that pertain to this world, who do not magnify or are not capable of magnifying their high calling in the Priesthood and receive crowns of glory, immortality, and eternal lives, will also, when they again receive their bodies, become angels and will receive a glory. They are single, without families or kingdoms to reign over. All the difference between men and angels is, men are passing through the day of trial that angels have already passed through.

Brigham Young

But the sacrifice has not been in vain. It is now certain that this devastating, cholera-like Pébrine is the effect of the growth and multiplication of the _Panhistophyton_ in the silkworm. It is contagious and infectious, because the corpuscles of the _Panhistophyton_ pass away from the bodies of the diseased caterpillars, directly or indirectly, to the alimentary canal of healthy silkworms in their neighbourhood; it is hereditary because the corpuscles enter into the eggs while they are being formed, and consequently are carried within them when they are laid; and for this reason, also? it presents the very singular peculiarity of being inherited only on the mother's side. There is not a single one of all the apparently capricious and unaccountable phenomena presented by the Pébrine, but has received its explanation from the fact that the disease is the result of the presence of the microscopic organism, _Panhistophyton_.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

SAMUEL JOHNSON. 1709-1784.     _Life of Johnson_ (Boswell). _Vol. vii. Chap. x._

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Gautama Buddha

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony and even justice.

Saul Bellow (born 10 June 1915

It has been my conviction ever since reading Rauschenbusch that any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. [“Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” excerpted from Stride Toward Freedom , 1958.] I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice. Although I came from a home of economic security and relative comfort, I could never get out of my mind the economic insecurity of many of my playmates and the tragic poverty of those living around me. During my late teens I worked two summers, against my father’s wishes–he never wanted my brother and me to work around white people because of the oppressive conditions–in a plant that hired both Negroes and whites. Here I saw economic injustice firsthand, and realized that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro. Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society. [ Ibid. ] Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself. [ Ibid. ] T]ruth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see the truth in collective enterprise, and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. Nineteenth century capitalism failed to see that life is social and Marxism failed and still fails to see that life is individual and personal. The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both. [ Ibid. ] With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice. [ Ibid. ] [C]apitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity-thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism. [ Ibid. ] Personalism’s insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality. [ Ibid. ] A sixth basic fact about nonviolent resistance is that it is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. It is true that there are devout believers in nonviolence who find it difficult to believe in a personal God. But even these persons believe in the existence of some creative force that works for universal wholeness. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force in this universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole. [ Ibid. ] [A]gape means recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated. All humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he is doing to me, to that extent I am harming myself. [ Ibid. ]

King Jr., Martin Luther.

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and the last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled and oceans bounded by the slender force of human beings.

Samuel Johnson

A single word is often a concentrated poem, a little grain of pure gold, capable of being beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf.

_Trench._

This "brain-damaged" epithet is getting sorely overworked.  When we can

speak of someone or something being flawed, impaired, marred, spoiled;

batty, bedlamite, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, daft, demented,

deranged, loco, lunatic, mad, maniac, mindless, non compos mentis, nuts,

Reaganite, screwy, teched, unbalanced, unsound, witless, wrong;  senseless,

spastic, spasmodic, convulsive; doped, spaced-out, stoned, zonked;  {beef,

>beetle,block,dung,thick}headed, dense, doltish, dull, duncical, numskulled,

pinhead;  asinine, fatuous, foolish, silly, simple;  brute, lumbering, oafish;

half-assed, incompetent; backward, retarded, imbecilic, moronic; when we have

a whole precisely nuanced vocabulary of intellectual abuse to draw upon,

individually and in combination, isn't it a little <fill in the blank> to be</p>

limited to a single, now quite trite, adjective?

Fortune Cookie

>being single valued in the latter semicircle. By means of a transformation t = ([zeta] + 1)²/([zeta] - 1)², the semicircle in the plane of [zeta] can further be conformably represented upon the upper half of the whole plane of t. Entry: A

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 3 "Frost" to "Fyzabad"     1910-1911

Fortune's Guide to Freshman Notetaking:

WHEN THE PROFESSOR SAYS:            YOU WRITE:

Probably the greatest quality of the poetry    John Milton -- born 1608

of John Milton, who was born in 1608, is the

combination of beauty and power.  Few have

excelled him in the use of the English language,

or for that matter, in lucidity of verse form,

'Paradise Lost' being said to be the greatest

>single poem ever written."

Current historians have come to            Most of the problems that now

doubt the complete advantageousness        face the United States are

of some of Roosevelt's policies...        directly traceable to the

                        bungling and greed of President

                        Roosevelt.

... it is possible that we simply do        Professor Mitchell is a

not understand the Russian viewpoint...        communist.

Fortune Cookie

ARTIODACTYLA (from Gr. [Greek: artios], even, and [Greek: daktylos], a finger or toe, "even-toed"), the suborder of ungulate mammals in which the central (and in some cases the only) pair of toes in each foot are arranged symmetrically on each side of a vertical line running through the axes of the limbs. As contrasted with the Perissodactyla living, and in a great degree extinct, Artiodactyla are characterized by the following structural features. The upper premolar and molar teeth are not alike, the former being single and the latter two-lobed; and the last lower molar of both first and second dentition is almost invariably three-lobed. Nasal bones not expanded posteriorly. No alisphenoid canal. Dorsal and lumbar vertebrae together always nineteen, though the former may vary from twelve to fifteen. Femur without third trochanter. Third and fourth digits of both feet almost equally developed, and their terminal phalanges flattened on their inner or contiguous surfaces, so that each is not symmetrical in itself, but when the two are placed together they form a figure symmetrically disposed to a line drawn between them. Or, in other words, the axis or median line of the whole foot is a line drawn between the third and fourth digits (fig. 1). Lower articular surface of the astragalus divided into two nearly equal facets, one for the navicular and a second for the cuboid bone. The calcaneum with an articular facet for the lower end of the fibula. Stomach almost always more or less complex. Colon convoluted. Caecum small. Placenta diffused or cotyledonary. Teats either few and inguinal, or numerous and abdominal. Entry: ARTIODACTYLA

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Slice 6 "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of"     1910-1911

    Price Wang's programmer was coding software.  His fingers danced upon

the keyboard.  The program compiled without an error message, and the program

ran like a gentle wind.

    Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!"

    "Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I

follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique.  When I first began to program I

would see before me the whole program in one mass.  After three years I no

longer saw this mass.  Instead, I used subroutines.  But now I see nothing.

My whole being exists in a formless void.  My senses are idle.  My spirit,

free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct.  In short, my program

writes itself.  True, sometimes there are difficult problems.  I see them

coming, I slow down, I watch silently.  Then I change a single line of code

and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke.  I then compile the

program.  I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being.  I close my

eyes for a moment and then log off."

    Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!"

        -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

Fortune Cookie

The mandoline is a derivative of the mandola or mandore, which was smaller than the lute but larger than either of the mandolines described above. It had from four to eight courses of strings, the _chanterelle_ or melody string being single and the others in pairs of unisons. The mandore is mentioned in Robert de Calenson (12th cent.), and elsewhere; it may be identified with the pandura. Entry: MANDOLINE

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 17, Slice 5 "Malta" to "Map, Walter"     1910-1911

The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations, and at a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On returning home at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary, Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and a rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the words being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a single armed Frenchman remained on Russian soil.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard, arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous, and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole being. Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went laughing out of the room. "Uncle" continued to play correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers over the strings, something seemed to snap.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

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