When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.
I do not mean that you should submit your belief to me without reason, neither do I aim at your subjection by tyranny. I do not aim at giving you a reason for everything. And to reconcile these contradictions, I wish to make you see by convincing proofs, those divine tokens in me, which will assure you who I am and will verify my authority by wonders and proofs which you cannot reject; so that you may then have a reasonable belief in what I teach you, when you find no other ground for refusing it, but that you cannot know of yourselves whether it is true or not.
I know who I am" he says, " that's enough for me" -Warner-
I’m a professional gamer. And a woman. You know what that’s like? I get told I’m gonna get raped, that I’m ruining the game, that I should go back to playing with Barbies, that my hair is too masculine or that my boobs are too big or small or whatever, and all kinds of stupid shit. All the time. It sucks. But I don’t let it break me and I don’t let it stop me from doing what I love, from being who I am.
I'm saying that I'm a moody, insecure, narrow-minded, jealous, borderline homicidal bitch, and I want you to promise me that you're okay with that, because it's who I am, and you're what I need.
Things are changing, but this time I'm not afraid. This time I know who I am. This time I've made the right choice and fighting for the right team. I feel safe. Confident
She was my dream. She made me who I am, and holding her in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat. I think about her all the time. Even now, when I'm sitting here, I think about her. There could never have been another.
I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.
"My sense of purpose is gone! I have no idea who I AM!"
I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.
There's no escape, flashes may blind me, can't pull away I'll get sucked back in. It's my life, where I must stand, it's who I am.
I find out a lot about myself by sleeping. Dreams, they are who I am when I’m too tired to be me.
Dear Freshman, You don't know who I am and frankly shouldn't care, but unknown to you we have something in common. We are both rather prone to mistakes. I was elected Student Government President by mistake, and you came to school here by mistake.
"My sense of purpose is gone! I have no idea who I AM!" "Oh, my God... You've.. You've turned him into a DEMOCRAT!" -- Doonesbury
"Oh sure, this costume may look silly, but it lets me get in and out of dangerous situations -- I work for a federal task force doing a survey on urban crime. Look, here's my ID, and here's a number you can call, that will put you through to our central base in Atlanta. Go ahead, call -- they'll confirm who I am. "Unless, of course, the Astro-Zombies have destroyed it." -- Captain Freedom
Christ's yoke is simply His secret for the alleviation of human life, His prescription for the best and happiest method of living. Men harness themselves to the work and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural ways. The harness they put on is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar at the best, they make its strain and friction past enduring, by placing it where the neck is most sensitive; and by mere continuous irritation this sensitiveness increases until the whole nature is quick and sore. Pax Vobiscum, p. 45.
Our Lord God commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom He gives nothing else.
Terrible penalty, with the ass-ears or without them, inevitable as death, written for ever in heaven, against all who, like Midas, misjudge the inner and the upper melodies, and prefer gold to goodness, desire to duty, falsehood to fact, wild nature to God, and a sensual piping Pan to a high-souled, wise-hearted, and spirit-breathing Apollo.
Jucundum et carum sterilis facit uxor amicum=--A wife who has no children makes (to her husband's heirs) a dear and engaging friend.
Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you: it is your murderer, and the murderer of the whole world. Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used; kill it before it kills you; and though it bring you to the grave, it shall not be able to keep you there.
I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.
The motive of the drama of human life is the necessity, laid upon every man who comes into the world, of discovering the mean between self-assertion and self-restraint suited to his character and his circumstances. And the eternally tragic aspect of the drama lies in this: that the problem set before us is one the elements of which can be but imperfectly known, and of which even an approximately right solution rarely presents itself, until that stern critic, aged experience, has been furnished with ample justification for venting his sarcastic humour upon the irreparable blunders we have already made.
Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity.
Such souls, Whose sudden visitations daze the world, Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind A voice that in the distance far away Wakens the slumbering ages.
Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.--_Ben Jonson._
We would commend a faith that even seems audacious, like that of the sturdy Covenanter Robert Bruce, who requested, as he was dying, that his finger might be placed on one of God's strong promises, as though to challenge the Judge of all with it as he should enter his presence.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.
There is a God within us who breathes that divine fire by which we are animated.
Perfect life is not merely the possessing of perfect functions, but of perfect functions perfectly adjusted to each other, and all conspiring to a single result, the perfect working of the whole organism. It is not said that the character will develop in all its fulness in this life. That were a time too short for an Evolution so magnificent. In this world only the cornless ear is seen: sometimes only the small yet still prophetic blade. Natural Law, p. 129.
Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other.
So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do?” If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. If the answer is yes, you have a more difficult road ahead of you. I suggest you model your strategy after the old Sesame Street film piece “Over! Under! Through!” (If you’re under forty you might not remember this film. It taught the concepts of “over,” “under,” and “through” by filming toddlers crawling around an abandoned construction site. They don’t show it anymore because someone has since realized that’s nuts.) If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk
Mercury has cast aside The signs of intellectual pride, Freely offers thee the soul: Art thou noble to receive? Canst thou give or take the whole, Nobly promise and believe? Then thou wholly human art, A spotless, radiant, ruby heart, And the golden chain of love Has bound thee to the realm above.
Silence is a wise thing, but they who observe it are few.
Parents we can have but once; and he promises himself too much who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends.
The prophecies must be unintelligible to the wicked, Dan. xii., Hos. xiv. 10, but intelligible to those who are well instructed.
Quiconque rougit est deja coupable; la vraie innocence n'a honte de rien=--Whoever blushes confesses guilt; true innocence feels no shame.
Chi si trova senz' amici, e come un corpo senz' anima=--He who is without friends is like a body without a soul.
Few things are less understood than the conditions of the spiritual life. The distressing incompetence of which most of us are conscious in trying to work out our spiritual experience is due perhaps less to the diseased will which we commonly blame for it than to imperfect knowledge of the right conditions. It does not occur to us how natural the spiritual is. We still strive for some strange transcendent thing; we seek to promote life by methods as unnatural as they prove unsuccessful; and only the utter incomprehensibility of the whole region prevents us seeing fully--what we already half-suspect--how completely we are missing the road. Natural Law, Environment, p. 256.
I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
Rien n'est plus rare que la veritable bonte; ceux meme qui croient en avoir n'ont d'ordinaire que de la complaisance ou de la faiblesse=--Nothing is rarer than real goodness; those even who think they possess it are generally only good-natured and weak.
Every individual, regardless of his age or occupation or state of life, is directly responsible for the Common Good, because the Common Good is built up in a hierarchical order . That is, every great human institution consists of subordinate institutions, which themselves consist of subordinate institutions, on down to the individuals who compose the lowest and most fleeting of human institutions. Since every one of these institutions is directly responsible for the general welfare of the one above it, it follows that every individual is directly responsible for the lower institutions which immediately surround his life, and indirectly (that is, through these and other intermediate institutions) responsible for the general welfare of his whole country and the whole world. [“Each is Directly Responsible,” Chapter VI, Introduction to Social Justice. ]
The perfection of spiritual virtue lies in being always all there, a whole man present in every movement and moment.
Cromwell was about to ravage the whole of Christendom, the royal family had been brought to nought, and his own dynasty for ever established, but for a little grain of sand in his bladder. Rome herself began to tremble under him, but this scrap of gravel having got there, he dies, his family falls from power, peace is established, and the king restored.
My joy is death;--/ Death, at whose name I oft have been afeared, / Because I wish'd this world's eternity.= 2
Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender consciences, who would retain all the advantages of the slave system, without the expense, trouble, and odium of being slave-holders. [ Boston Quarterly , July, 1840.]
Religion is so great a thing, that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek if it be obscure should be deprived of it. Why then should any complain, if it be such as to be found by seeking?
About Pontus there are some creatures of such an extempore being that the whole term of their life is confined within the space of a day; for they are brought forth in the morning, are in the prime of their existence at noon, grow old at night, and then die.
He always wins who sides with God.
Magni refert quibuscum vixeris=--It matters a great deal with whom you live.
Kings who affect to be familiar with their companions make use of men as they do of oranges, which, when they have well sucked, they throw away.
I 'll warrant him heart-whole.
Our senses can perceive no extreme. Too much noise deafens us, excess of light blinds us, too great distance or nearness equally interfere with our vision, prolixity or brevity equally obscure a discourse, too much truth overwhelms us. I know even those who cannot understand that if four be taken from nothing nothing remains. First principles are too plain for us, superfluous pleasure troubles us. Too many concords are unpleasing in music, and too many benefits annoy, we wish to have wherewithal to overpay our debt. _Beneficia eo usque læta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur._
War does not decide who is right but who is left.
For who hath despised the day of small things?
Happiness is like the statue of Isis, whose veil no mortal ever raised.
You need someone a little dirty, honey, with a heart of gold,” she whispered in my ear as she patted my back. “I don’t think you’re going to find it in this century. We don’t make honest men who are that strong in their convictions anymore. Society seems to just…twist them bad.
Those who dwell in fear dwell next door to hate; and I think it is the cowardice of women that makes them such intense haters.
Equity is a roguish thing; for law we have a measure ... (but) equity is according to the conscience of him who is chancellor, and, as that is larger or narrower, so is equity.
The first-recorded judicial murder of a scientific thinker was compassed and effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but was brought about by eloquent demagogues, to whom, of all men, thorough search-ings of the intellect are most dangerous and therefore most hateful.
Wer lange bedenkt, der wahlt nicht immer das Beste=--He who is long in making up his mind does not always choose the best.
Chi sa la strada, puo andar di trotto=--He who knows the road can go at a trot.
By such methods, the A.A. intends to make occult science as systematic and scientific as chemistry; to rescue it from the ill repute which, thanks both to the ignorant and dishonest quacks that have prosituted its name, and to the fanatical and narrow-minded enthusiasts that have turned it into a fetish, has made it an object of aversion to those very minds whose enthusiasm and integrity make them most in needs of its benefits, and most fit to obtain them.
O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.
Quicken yourself up to duty by the remembrance of your station, who you are, and what you have obliged yourself to be.
He lies there who never feared the face of man.
Quien da la suyo antes de morir aparajese a bien sufrir=--Who parts with his own before he dies, let him prepare for death.
You’re moved by love. That means everything. Take it from one who’s lost all and then gained more.
I shall reserve the reasons of its size and power for later. But I greatly marvel that Socrates should have depreciated such a body, and that he should have said that it resembled an incandescent stone; and he who opposed him as regards this error acted rightly. But I wish I had words to blame those who seek to exalt the worship of men more than that of the sun, since in the universe there is no body of greater magnitude and power to be seen than the sun. And its light illumines all the celestial bodies which are distributed throughout the universe; and the vital spark descends from it, because the heat which is in living beings comes from the soul, and there is no other centre of heat and light in the universe, as will be shown later; and it is certain that those who have elected to worship men as gods--as Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, &c.--have fallen into a profound error, since even if a man were as great as our earth, he would have the appearance of a little star, which appears like a dot in the universe; and moreover these men are mortal, and decay and corrupt in their sepulchres.
Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare.
The best test for Life is just LIVING. And living consists, as we have formerly seen, in corresponding with Environment. Those therefore who find within themselves, and regularly exercise, the faculties for corresponding with the Divine Environment, may be said to live the Spiritual Life. Natural Law, p. 390.
He bids fair to grow wise who has discovered that he is not so.
The best loneliness is when no human eye has rested on our face for a whole day.
So dear a life your arms enfold, Whose crying is a cry for gold.
Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former deficits and makes all even.--_Erasmus._
It is the Law of Influence that WE BECOME LIKE THOSE WHOM WE HABITUALLY ADMIRE. Through all the range of literature, of history, and biography this law presides. Men are all mosaics of other men. There was a savour of David about Jonathan and a savour of Jonathan about David. Jean Valjean, in the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, is Bishop Bienvenu risen from the dead. Metempsychosis is a fact. The Changed Life, p. 31.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one.
You may depend upon it that he is a good man whose intimate friends are all good.
When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.--_Joubert._
He who imitates what is evil always exceeds; he who imitates what is good always falls short.
Memorem immemorem facit, qui monet quod memor meminit=--He who reminds a man with a good memory of what he remembers, makes him forget.
Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
It is the veiled angel of sorrow who plucks away one thing and another that bound us here in ease and security, and, in the vanishing of these dear objects, indicates the true home of our affections and our peace.--_Chapin._
The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space.
Ibit eo quo vis, qui zonam perdidit=--He who has lost his purse (_lit._ girdle) will go wherever you wish.
The love of God is commanded in the whole of Deuteronomy, Deut. xxx. 19: "I call heaven and earth to witness that I have set before you death and life, that you may choose life, and that you may love God, and obey him, for God is your life."
Foolish I deem him who, thinking that his state is blest, rejoices in security; for Fortune, like a man distempered in his senses, leaps now this way, now that, and no man is always fortunate.--_Euripides._
The greatest achievements of men, were at first, nothing but dreams of the minds of men who knew that dreams are the seedlings of all achievements. A burning desire, to be and to do, is the starting point, from which the dreamer must take off.
In my deepest contacts with individuals in therapy, even those whose troubles are most disturbing, whose behavior has been most anti-social, whose feelings seem most abnormal, I find this to be true. When I can sensitively understand the feelings which they are expressing, when I am able to accept them as separate persons in their own right, then I find that they tend to move in certain directions. And what are these directions in which they tend to move? The words which I believe are most truly descriptive are words such as positive, constructive, moving toward self-actualization, growing toward maturity, growing toward socialization.
Now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home to one's former state is like the desire of the moth for the light, and the man who, with constant yearning and joyful expectancy, awaits the new spring and the new summer, and every new month and the new year, and thinks that what he longs for is ever too late in coming, and does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. But this desire is the quintessence, the spirit, of the elements, which, finding itself captive in the soul of the human body, desires always to return to its giver. And I would have you know that this same desire is the quintessence which is inseparable from nature, and that man is the model of the world. And such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more, and life flies from him while he forever hopes to enjoy the goods which he has acquired at the price of great labour.
_The arrangement._--To see what is clear and indisputable in the whole state of the Jews.
Wohl ungluckselig ist der Mann, / Der unterlasst das, was er kann, / Und unterfangt sich, was er nicht versteht; / Kein Wunder, dass er zu Grunde geht=--Unhappy indeed is the man who leaves off doing what he can do, and undertakes to do what he does not understand; no wonder he comes to no good.
The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
He who seems not to himself more than he is, is more than he seems.--_Goethe._
Mountains interposed / Make enemies of nations, who had else / Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Wer ist machtiger als der Tod? / Wer da kann lachen, wenn er droht=--Who is mightier than death? He who can smile when death threatens.
O most blessed Virgin, who declarest in thy Canticle that it is owing to thy humility that God hath done great things in thee, obtain for me the grace to imitate thee, that is, to be obedient; because to obey is to practise humility.--ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.
Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
~Dandy.~--A dandy is a clothes-wearing man,--a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, person, and purse is heroically consecrated to this one object,--the wearing of clothes wisely and well; so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress.--_Carlyle._
Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired.
There is a reaper whose name is Death, And with his sickle keen He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, And the flowers that grow between.