Quotations

 

QUOTATIONS

1. Principle of Life.

Anon.:

Be Good and Do Good.

Leave the rest to God.

John Wesley:

Do all the good you can,

In all the ways you can.

In all the places you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can.

Longfellow:

Our ingress into the world

Was naked and bare;

Our progress through the world 

Is trouble and care;

Our ingress from the world

Will be nobody knows where;

But if we do well here

We will do well there. 

G.L.Banks:

I live for those who love me, for those who know me true;

For the heaven that smiles above me, and awaits my spirit too.

For the cause that lacks assistance, for the wrong that needs resistance,

For the future in the distance, and the good that I can do.

Leo Rosten:

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you have lived at all.

Aristotle:

Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities. 

Democritus:

Happiness resides not in posessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.

  

Marcus Aurelius:

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts; therefore guard accordingly.

Aldous Huxley:

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

David Burns:

There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.

Euripides: 

The man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of life.

John M. Good:

Happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature; it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool. 

Margaret Lee Runbeck:  

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling. 

William Shakespeare: 

A light heart lives long.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own. 

Arnold Bennett: 

The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realizing that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles. 

Alice Meynell:

Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.

Epictetus:

There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying things which are beyond the power of our will. 

John Stuart Mills:  

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them.

Robert F. Kennedy:  

You're happiest while you're making the greatest contribution.

Benjamin Disraeli: 

Action may not always bring happiness;

but there is no happiness without action.

Sydney Smith:

Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than anything.

Shaw:

You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

Anon.:

If there's light in the soul

There'll be beauty in the person.

If there's beauty in the person

There'll be harmony in the house.

If there's harmony in the house

There will be order in the nation.

If there's order in the nation

There'll be peace in the world.

Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all around you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all others doubt you

And make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired of waiting

Or being lied about don’t deal in lies

Or being hated don’t give way to hating

And yet don’t look too good, or talk too wise;

If you can dream and not make dreams your master,

If you can think and make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same,

If you can bear to hear the truth you have spoken 

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken

And stop and build them up with worn out tools;

If you can make a heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss

And lose and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss,

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone 

And so hold on when there is nothing in you,

Except the will which says to them ‘Hold on’;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue

Or walk with kings and not lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run,

Yours is the world and everything there’s in it

And which is more, you’ll be a man my son.

Ernest Hemingway:

… what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after …

Blake:

Life is mostly froth and bubble.

Two things stand like stone,

Kindness in another’s trouble

Courage in your own. 

Plautus: 

Practise yourself what you preach.

Theodore Roosevelt:

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

Longfellow:

Act- act in the living Present.

David Crocket:

Be sure you are right and then go ahead.

2. Outlook of life.

Branch Cabell:

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. 

Oscar Wilde:

Cynic: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Pope:

Whatever is is right. 

Anon.:

All is for the best in the best of possible worlds.   

McL. Wilson:

The optimist sees the doughnut,

The pessimist the hole.

Robert Browning:

All’s right with the world.

Shakespeare:

If it were done when it’s done, then ‘twere well

It were done quickly. 

The better part of valour is discretion.

Pope:

To err is human, to forgive divine. 

Twain:

There are two times when in a man’s life he should not speculate; when he can’t afford it, and when he can. 

Madame De Stael:

To understand is to pardon. 

N.T.:

He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.

Anon.:

Life is about peace and calm, not pace and pomp. 

Anon.:

The more we live against truth, the more we agonise. Truth is the only protection and the only happiness. 

Longfellow:

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

Brings us farther than today.

N.T.:

Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.

Richard Cumberland:

It is better to wear out than rust out.

WH Auden:

We are here on earth to do good unto others.  What the others are here for, I have no idea.    

 Confucius: 

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” 

Anusha’s Pongal Quote (2008)

“Life laughs at you when you are unhappy.

Life smiles at you when you are happy.

Life salutes you when you make others happy.” 

Idiot’s Prayers:

“To love without wanting to be loved back,

  To give gladly without keeping account,

     To trust in the goodness of others,

        Despite being wronged –

        Dear god, make me able.

        

        But living is in the trying

        My God, my God

You will never forsake me,

   But give me strength always

      To show up for my life.” 

Swami Ranganathananda.

"Viveka Choodamani says, ‘Absolutely poor, but full of happiness; no army behind but infinitely strong; no experience of sense satisfaction, but always happy; none equal to him, but feels all to be his equals.’ Ramana Maharishi fits in this description.” 

Anon.

“Life is too short to wake up with regrets.. So love the people who treat you right.. Forget about the ones who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.”

Ambassador

Sir Henry Wotton:

An ambassador is a man of virtue sent to lie abroad for his country; a news-writer is a man without virtue who lies at home for himself.

 

Aristotle:

1. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

2. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

3. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”

4. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

5. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

6. “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”

7. “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”

8. “The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.”

9. “There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.”

10. “What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”

11. “We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.”

12. “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”

13. “Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.”

14. “To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.”

15. “Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”

Bank

Robert Frost: A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back again when it begins to rain.

Charity

New Testament:

God loveth a cheerful giver.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Children

Oscar Wilde:

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. 

Civilisation

Prof. Toynbee

“The most lasting of human civilisations emerged as a response to the changing environment. The strongest civilisations have been developed in the peoples in the border regions who have been the most exposed.” 

Customer

Mahatma Gandhi: 

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us, we are dependent on him. he is not an interruption on our work. He is the purpose of it. he is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it. we are not doing him a favour by serving him. he is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so.

Democracy 

Lincoln:

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. 

Dharma

Dharma (as Bhishma tells Yudhishtira):

It is difficult to say what Dharma is accurately. Dharma was declared for the advancement and growth of all creatures. Therefore, that which leads to advancement and growth is Dharma. Dharma was declared for restraining creatures from injuring one another. Therefore, that is Dharma which prevents injury to creatures. Dharma is so called because it upholds all creatures. In fact, all creatures are upheld by Dharma . Therefore, that is Dharma which is capable of upholding all creatures. Some say that Dharma consists in what has been inculcated in the Srutis. Everything has not been laid down in the Srutis.

Divinity

Shakespeare:

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends

Rough-hew them how we will.

Flattery

C.C.Colton:

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

Plutarch 

“Those that are greedy of praise prove that they are poor in merit.” 

Fortune

Virgil:

Fortune favours the bold.

Shakespeare:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Genius

Oscar Wilde:

Genius lasts longer than beauty.

Beauty is a form of genius, higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

God

Marcus Aurelius: 

Live a good life. 

If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.

If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. 

If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

Greatness

P.J.Proudhon:

The great only are great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!

But be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.

Happiness

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.

Health

Mary Baker Eddy:

Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind.

Franklin:

Early to bed and early to rise 

Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Illusion

Ernst Mach: 

There is no physical reality at all and all the phenomena we perceive are only due to our subjective sensations.

Ludwig Boltzman: 

What we have to do is not to deduce natural phenomena from our notions but, on the contrary, to adjust these latter to natural phenomena.

India and Vedanta

Niels Bohr:

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.

If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet."

Werner Heisenberg:

After the conversations about the Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had appeared so crazy suddenly made more sense. 

J.Robert Oppenheimer:

Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century ma claim over all previous centuries. 

Albert Einstein:

I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and alays tempts its owners irresisitibly to abuse it. 

Can anyne imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie? 

The more success the quantum theory has the sillier it looks.

Dr. Carl Sagan 

The Hinduism is the only one of the world’s greatest faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos iself undergoes an immense, and indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the ony religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology.

Max Muller:

"If it seems strange to you that the old Indian Philosophers should have known more about the soul than Greek, medieval or modern philosophers."  

"It is surely astounding that such a system as the Vedanta should have been elaborated by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us feel giddy, as in mounting last steps of the swaying spire of a Gothic cathedral. None of our philosophers, including Heraclitus, Plato, Kant or Hegel, have ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lighting. Stone follows on stone in regular succession once the first step has been made, after it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can be One, and there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman."    

Henry David Thoreau:

“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and, cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.”

Romain Rolland: 

The Western world, abandoning itself utterly to its search of individual and social happiness, maims and disfigures life by the very frenzy of its haste, and kills in the shell, the happiness, which it pursues. Like a runaway horse who from between his blinkers sees only the blinding road before him, the average European cannot see beyond the boundaries of his individual life, or of the life of his class, or his country, or his party. In the great philosophy of Brahma, such violent turns of the scale are quite unknown.  It embraces vast stretches of time, cycles of human ages, whose successive lives gravitate in concentric circles, and travel ever slowly towards the center...." 

"Of course, this entire fabric of Indian life stands solidly on faith, that is to say, on a slender and emotional hypothesis.  But amid all the beliefs of Europe, and of Asia, that of the Indian Brahmins seems to me infinitely the most alluring. And the reason why I love the Brahmin more than the other schools of Asiatic thought is because it seems to me to contain them all. Greater than all European philosophies, it is even capable of adjusting itself to the vast hypotheses of modern science."

Aldous Huxley:

“The Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. Also Gita is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity."

"The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism (conversions) which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people."

Arthur Schopenhauer:

‘‘In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life; and it will be the solace of my death. They are the product of the highest wisdom.’’ 

"How entirely does the Oupnekhat (Upanishad) breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas!”

"From every sentence (of the Upanishads) deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit...."In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. They are destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

 ‘‘haunted’’ by the Vedas. 

‘‘In the Vedas, I have found eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken peace.’’ 

The genius of the Hindus was unsurpassed "in the grandeur of their ethical statement." 

The "Largeness" or sweep of the Indian vision is a vital part of the Transcendental wisdom. 

A "magnificent day to the reading of the Bhagavat-Gita" 

'England could not produce such a book as the Gita'. 

Indian books are "excellent gymnastic for the mind as showing treatment, imagination, volatility, etc." 

"When India was explored and the wonderful riches of Indian theological literature found, it dispelled once and for all the dream about Christianity being the sole revelation."

"The Avatars of Brahman will presently be the text-books of natural history." 

Mark Twain: 

‘India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured in India only.’ 

“Varanasi" or Banaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” 

"India has two million gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire." 

Though a week had only seven days, Indians would celebrate eight festivals every week.

"India had the start (pioneer) of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellect and a fruitful soul."

"Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India." 

"This one land that all men desire to see, and having once seen, by even a glimpse, would not give up that glimpse for all the shows of the rest of the globe combined."

Will Durant:

India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she ws the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the arabs, of much of our Mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother I dia is in many ways the mother of us all.” 

Will Durant: America philosopher:"It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to us such unquestionable  gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all our numerals, Pi and our decimal system. But these are not the essence of her spirit; they are trifles compared to what we may learn from her in the future." “India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all”. 

"Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the nonacquisitive soul, the calm understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love for all living things." 

Francois M Voltaire:

“I am convinced that everything has com down to us from the Ganga – astronomy, astrology, spiritualism, etc. It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went to the banks of the Ganga to learn geometry.. drawn by the reputation of the Brahminical sciences which had been long established in Euorpe. 

"If the Indians had remained unknown to the Tartars and to us, they would have been the happiest people in the world."

Lord Warren Hastings: 

"I pronounce the Gita a performance of great originality, of sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled; and a single exception, amongst all the known religions of mankind." 

"The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive, when the British dominion in India shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrances." 

Wilhelm von Humboldt: 

(About Gita) "The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ... perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show."

“I read the Indian poem for the first time and while doing so, I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having let me live to be acquainted with this work. It must be the most profound and sublime thing to be found in the world.”

Dr. Arnold Joseph Toynbee:

"It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history, the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family." 

“In India, the spiritual gift, that makes a man human, is still alive in their souls. Go on giving the world Indian examples of it. Nothing else can do so much to help mankind to save itself from destruction.”

(1952) “In fifty years, the world would be under the hegemony of the USA, but in the 21st century, as religion captures the place of technology, it is possible that India, the conquered, will conquer its conquerors.” 

Sir Monier-Williams:

"The strength of Hinduism lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human character and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the philosopher, its practical to the man of the world, its aesthetic and ceremonial side attuned to the man of the poetic feeling and imagination; and its quiescent contemplative aspect that has its appeal for the man of peace and the lover of seclusion." 

The Hindus were Spinozists more than 2,000 years before the advent of Spinoza, and Darwinians many centuries before Darwin and Evolutionists many centuries before the doctrine of Evolution was accepted by scientists of the present age.  

"The Panini grammar reflects the wondrous capacity of the human brain, which till today no other country has been able to produce except India."

J.D. Salinger:

"I've been reading a miscellany of Vedanta all day. Marriage partners are to serve each other. Elevate, help, teach, strengthen each other, but above all, serve. Raise their children honorably, lovingly, and with detachment. A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and respected-never possessed, since he belongs to God. How wonderful, how sane, how beautifully difficult, and therefore true. The joy of responsibility for the first time in my life.”

Justice

From The Trial of Socrates by I.F.Stone

”The law must be preserved, but justice must be done. And the two are not always the same.”

Knowledge

Nicholas M. Butller:

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.

Edison:

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. 

Gray:

Where ignorance is bliss,

‘Tis folly to be wise. 

Arabian proverb:

There are four sorts of men:

    He who knows not and knows not he knows not; he is a fool-shun him.

    He who knows not and knows he knows not; he is simple-teach him.

    He who knows and knows not he knows; he is asleep-wake him.

    He who knows and knows he knows; he is wise-follow him.

Socrates: 

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

Miguel de Unamuno:

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.

Pope:

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 

Anon.:

A little nonsense now and then 

Is relished by the best of men.

Anon.

Awareness of our ignorance is true knowledge.

Liberty

Lovelace:

Stone walls do not a prison make

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

Love

N.T.:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres.

Anna Louis Strong:

To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult. But it is a hard quest to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes the person one desires to be.

Shakespeare:

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

The petty follies that themselves commit.

Tolstoy:

To say that you can love one person all your life is just like saying that one candle will continue burning as long as you live.

S.T.Coleridge:

To meet, to know, to love- and then to part 

Is the sad tale of many a heart.

Anon.:

For all those times you stood by me

For all the truth that you made me see

For all the joy you brought to my life

For all the wrong that you made right

For every dream you made come true

For all the love I found in you

I'll be forever thankful baby

You're the one who helped me up

Never let me fall...

You're the one who saw me prove thro it all

 

You were my strength when I was weak

You were my thoughts when I couldn't speak

You were my eyes when I couldn't see

You saw the best there was in me

Lifted me up when I couldn't reach

You gave me faith cos you believed

I'm everything I am because you loved me

 

You gave me wings and made me fly

You touched my hand I could touch the sky

I lost my faith you gave it back to me

You said no star was out of reach

You stood by me and I stood tall

I had your love I had it all

I'm grateful for each day you gave me

Baby I don't know that much but I know this much is true

I was blessed because I was loved by you

You were always there for me

The tender wind that carried me

Light in the dark shining with love into my life

You build my inspiration thro the years you were the truth

My world is a better place because of you 

You were my strength....

I'm everything I am because you loved me....

Addison:

Certain it is that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as the love of a father to a daughter. He beholds her both with and without reference to sex. In love to our wives, there is desire; to our sons there is ambition; but in that to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

Oscar Wilde:

True love suffers, and is silent.

Shaw's parody on love:

"..she is an enchantingly beautiful woman, in whose presence the world becomes transfigured, and the puny limits of individual consciousness are suddenly made infinite by a mystic memory of the whole life of the race to its beginnings in the east, or even back to the paradise from which it fell. She is to him the reality of romance, the inner good sense of nonsense, the unveiling of his eyes, the freeing of his soul, the abolition of time, place and circumstance, the etherealization of his blood into rapturous rivers of the very water of life itself, the revelation of all the mysteries and the sanctification of all the dogmas.'

I CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU

Ray Charles

(I can’t stop loving you)

I’ve made up my mind

To live in memory of the lonesome times

(I can’t stop wanting you)

It’s useless to say 

So I’ll just live my life in dreams of yesterday

(Dreams of yesterday)

Those happy hours that we once knew

Tho’ long ago, they still make me blue

They say that time heals a broken heart

But time has stood still since we’ve been apart

(I can’t stop loving you)

I’ve made up my mind

To live in memory of the lonesome times

(I can’t stop wanting you)

It’s useless to say 

So I’ll just live my life in dreams of yesterday

(Those happy hours)

Those happy hours

(That we once knew)

That we once knew

(Tho’ long ago)

Tho’ long ago

(Still make me blue)

Stillnma-a-ake me blue

(They say that time)

They say that time

(Heals a broken heart)

Heals a broken heart

(But time has stood still)

Time has stood still

(Since we’ve been apart)

Since we’ve been apart

(I can’t stop loving you)

I said I made up my mind

To live in memory of the lonesome times

(I can’t stop loving you)

It’s useless to say 

So I’ll just live my life of dreams of yesterday

(Of yesterday)

Loyalty

N.T.:

No man can serve two masters. 

Management

Peter Drucker

"Men of very high intellectual calibre are often strikingly ineffectual. They often fail to realise that a single insight is not in itself achievement and performance." 

"Many people who don't have extraordinary intelligence do extraordinary things." Henry Singleton

Marriage

Old Testament:

It is not good that a man should be alone.

New Testament:

It is better to marry than to burn.

Oscar Wilde:

The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious: both are disappointed.

Kalki:

Be there as many pitfalls in married life, to be married is the natural thing. One's life attains completeness only in married life. Even those who had ever so many complaints in it would have appreciated its blessings. That is why most parents show concern in getting their wards married. One need not plunge into it blindfolded. My suggestion is to get into it fully aware of, and prepared to experience, the good and bad that it entails.

Marxism

Marx and Engels:

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!

Maxims

1. 'Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.'

2. A sharp tongue can cut your own throat. 

3. If you want your dreams to come true, you mustn't oversleep.

4. Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important. 

5. The best vitamin for making friends..... B1.

6. The heaviest thing you can carry is a grudge.

7. One thing you can give and still keep....is your word.

8. You lie the loudest when you lie to yourself.

9. If you lack the courage to start, you have already finished. 

10. One thing you can't recycle is wasted time.

11. Ideas won't work unless ' You' do.

12. Your mind is like a parachute...it functions only when open. 

13. The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a lifetime! It is never too late to become what you might have been.

14. ‘Nature, time and patience are the greatest physicians.’

Mind

T.H.Key

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. 

Blake:

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. 

Shakespeare:

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

George Wither:

Thoughts too deep to be expressed,

And too strong to be suppressed.

Misfortune

Shakespeare:

When sorrows come, they come not in single spies,

But in battalions.

Ireland: 

Luck comes in small stream; bad luck in wild spate. 

Old Testament:

Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble.

Miscellaneous

Virgil:

E pluribus unum.

One from many.

J.R.Lowell:

From lower to the higher next,

Not to the top, is Nature’s text;

And embryo Good, to reach its stature,

Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

Pascal:

Cleopatra’s nose: had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been altered. 

Manly: 

Logic is systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Cervantes:

Rome was not built in a day.

Shakespeare:

Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.

The patient dies while the physician sleeps;

The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;

Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;

Avarice is sporting while infection breeds.

There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Cowper:

Absence of occupation is not rest

A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. 

S.T.Coleridge:

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

Oscar Wilde:

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.

Anon.:

It is stupid to be elated of what we are (or what we have) as it is to worry about what we are not (or what we do not have). 

All are created unequal. Inequality is the essence of existence, as we know.

Fate is what overwhelms best efforts, an adverse blow from unexpected quarters and an irreversible event.

The world will eventually adopt Gandhian economy. We are consuming power at an unsustainable rate. Bio-power will have to come in vogue once more. It will moderate the mindless multiplication of human population.

Myths:  An ad in newspaper ensures transparency.

           The longer we take to decide on an issue or deliberate upon it, the more

           perfect our decision will be.

This world depends on our assumptions and ideas. Even a seemingly absurd idea may be translated to reality given the will. There is no absolute law. All laws are valid in a given environment.

You don’t miss a thing until you know about it.

The more unpredictable you are to yourself, the more miserable you will be.

You can’t predict a man’s behaviour until he is dead.

The only choice in life is not having it.

Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It is not a day when you lounge around doing nothing. It’s when you had everything to do, and you’ve done it. 

The Trial of Socrates: I F Stone

The law must be preserved, but justice must be done. And they are not always the same.

Human affairs cannot find perfect masters nor wait for perfect solutions.

Bulgarian proverb: If your children are bad, you ought not to leave them any estate; if they are good, they will not need any.

Chinese: A man who finds crimes when not in office, commits the same when in office.

Jaya Row:

When you see unity with another person, you have power over him. When you see difference, he has power over you.

Oscar Wilde:

Real beauty ends where an intellectual expression begins.

The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. … the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires or his prejudices. 

There is nothing that art cannot express.

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

The body sins once and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure or luxury of a regret.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Prayer should never be answered; if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.

"Other than sensuality and beauty, there has to be respect, sharing and granting space to each other, in a relationship." Malavika Sarukkai (Dancer).

"Austerities confuse the mind. In the exhaustion and mental stupor they cause, one cannot understand the ordinary aspects of life." Buddha.

 This is also brought out in the teaching of Uddalaka Aruni to Swetaketu in Chandogya Upanishad. 

Nochur Sri Venakataraman: 

“Behaviour is not spirituality. Behaviour is adjusting yourself according to society.”

“Human affairs cannot find perfect masters nor wait for perfect solutions.”

Somerset Maugham on Bridge:

“The essentials for playing a good game of bridge are to be truthful, clear-headed, and considerate, prudent but not averse to taking a risk, and not to cry over spilt milk. And incidentally, those are perhaps also the essentials for playing the game of life.”

“..much in bridge depended on ‘horse sense’ more than cluttering of your brain with great number of precepts.”

Christopher Isherwood:

"A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. It’s as though it had all just come into existence.

I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be." 

St. Francis of Assisi:

“O Divine Master, grant that I may not

Seek to be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love:

For it is in giving that we receive,

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

Oscar Wilde:

Travel improves the mind wondefully, and does away with all one's prejudices.

Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.

Nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering the least of all.

Those who are rich are often greedy. Those who have little always share

It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind... To reject one's own experience is to arrest one's own development. .. It is no less than denial of the soul.

..to Humility there is nothing impossible, and to Love all things are easy.

Mahatma Gandhi 

SEVEN SOCIAL SINS

  1. Politics without Principle.

  2. Wealth without Work.

  3. Pleasure without Conscience.

  4. Knowledge without Character.

  5. Commerce without Morality.

  6. Science without Humanity.

  7. Worship without Sacrifice.

           

Bharathiyar:

மனதில் ச்ரமம் தோன்றிய பிறகுதான் உடம்பில் ச்ரமம் தோன்றுகிறது. 

அசைக்க முடியாத பொறுமையுடன் தொழில் செய்தால் மேன்மேலும் ஒஉதிய ரத்தம் பெருகி, உடம்பில் மேன்மேலும் ஒளியும், வழியும் வ்ருத்தியடைந்து கொண்டுவரும்.

காதலை எதிர்த்து யாராலும் ஒன்றும் செய்யமுடியாது.

உண்மையான காதல் ஜீவன் முக்திக்குப் பெரிய சாதனமாகும். 

நோய்க்கு முக்கியமான காரணம் ஜீவேர்களின் மனதில் தோன்றும் பயம், கவலை, கோபம், சம்சயம், பொறாமை, வெறுப்பு, அத்ருப்தி முதலிய விஷகுணங்களேயாம். 

ஒருவனுக்கு எத்தனைக்கெத்தனை பொறுமை மிகுதிப்படுகிறதோ அத்தனைக்கத்தனை அவனுக்கு உலக விவகாரங்களில் வெற்றியுண்டாகிறது.

 

Money

T.E.Brown:

Money is honey, my little sonny,

And a rich man’s jokes are always funny.

O.W.Holmes:

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

New Testament:

For the love of money is the root of all evil.

Anon.:

When it is a question of money, everyone is of the same religion.

Goldsmith:

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. 

William Cobbett:

To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.

Anon.:

Richness is not 

Earning, Spending

Or, Saving more,

Richness is 

When you need

No More. 

Warren buffet:

 1. Never depend on single income. Make investment to create a second source.

 2. If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.

 3. Don't save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after savings.

 4. Never test the depth of a river with both feet.

 5. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Four aspects of what he will buy

 a) one that we can understand

 b) with favourable long term prospects

 c) operated by honest and competent people

 d) available at a very attractive price

Mouth 

Bierce:

Mouth: In man the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the heart.

Music

Byron:

There’s music in the sighing of the reed;

There’s music in the gushing of a rill;

There’s music in all things, if men had ears;

Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.

Keats:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

Shelley:

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory.  

Todd M. Comb:

Why Carnatic Music? I value Carnatic Music for the effectiveness with which it can build positive mental discipline. It helps me to focus and organise my thoughts, and it helps to eliminate negative mental habits.

Shoba Narayan in The Hindu 

"All music originated in the sacred, no matter what religion. Listen to Gregorian or Mozarabic chants with your eyes closed and they will remind you of a temple in Haridwar. Listen to Baroque Jewish music from a Portuguese synagogue, available on YouTube, and it will take you back to a church in Goa. Listen to Islamic Anasheeds or Sufi music and you will feel the pull of a mosque and also that of a Buddhist monastery. The chants and singing all sound similar. When people say that music is universal, this is what they mean."

Name

Shakespeare:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet. 

Nature

Byron:

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar;

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews.

Emerson:

I do not count the hours I spend 

In wandering by the sea;

The forest is my loyal friend,

Like God it useth me.

Gray:

The meanest floweret of the vale,

The simplest note that swells the gale,

The common sun, the air, the skies,

To him are opening paradise.

Linnaeus:

Nature does not proceed by leaps. 

Shakespeare:

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Wordsworth:

Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her.

Shakespeare:

To hold as ‘twere, the mirror to nature.

Pope:

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in Night:

God said, Let Newton be! And all was Light.

Thoreau:

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.

Necessity

Anon.

Necessity is the mother of invention. 

St. Augustine:

Necessity knows no law. 

New Year

Tennyson:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow;

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Old Age

Shakespeare: 

And that which should accompany old age,

As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends.

Patience

Patience is the virtue of an ass.

Shakespeare:

For there was never yet philosopher

That could endure the toothache patiently. 

Patriotism

W.C.Brann:

No man can be patriot on an empty stomach. 

S. Johnson:

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. 

Peace

George Washington:

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

Philosophy

Shakespeare :

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Poetry

Wordsworth:

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollectes in tranquillity.

Politics

Dr. Arbunhot:

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

Henry George:

We cannot safely leave politics to politicians, or political economy to college professors.

Possession

Thomas fuller:

Possession is nine points of law.

Problems

Albert Einstein: 

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. Without changing our pattern of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current patterns of thought.

Procrastination

Anon.:

Procrastination is the thief of time.

Progress

Wendell Phillips:

Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold and from stake to stake.

Promise and Performance

La Rochefoucauld:

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

Property

P.J.Proudhon:

Property is theft.

Ruskin:

Whether we force the man’s property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically; morally, none whatsoever.

Prudent

G.Crabbe:

Observe the prudent; they in silence sit,

Display no learning, and affect no wit;

They hazard nothing, nothing they assume,

But know the useful art of acting dumb.

Punishment

Jeremy Benthem:

All punishment is mischief. All punishment in itself is evil.

O.T.:

He that spareth the rod hateth his son.

Religion

New Testament:

Faith without works is dead.

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Come unto me, all ye that labour are heavy laden.

I am the light of the world.

Every one that asketh receiveth; he that seeketh findeth. 

The peace of God which passeth all understanding.

What things soever ye desire, when you pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye receive them.

Quran:

There is no god but God (La illah illa allah). 

 

Anon.:

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Thomas A. Kempis:

Man proposes, but God disposes.

Voltaire:

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

S.T.Coleridge:

He prayeth well who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God, who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

Anon:

We have to prove ourselves before God, not the other way about.

Kanchi Mahaperiyava:

  ..it is not the thread, it is not the clothes that make a man learned or a monk. True religion is the deep spirit of humility, renunciation and service.

Mogul Throne:

The gods have been kind to this unbeliever.

Tennyson:

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

George Meredith:

Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.

(as attributed to a sufi in a story);

"Reality is one, available within every human being. The one-ness that the Hindu mystics refer to is conveyed by the mystics and saints of all religions. Christ has said ‘if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light’, and elaborated saying that this ‘singularity’ becomes evident as we purify our mind of all the evils or selfishness lying within it. By doing so, we don’t change our religion, but become a better human being, whatever religion we have been born in. Our own Jalaluddin Rumi conveyed this so beautifully:

The lamps are different, but the light is the same-

it comes from beyond. 

If you keep looking at the lamp, thou are lost –

For thence arises number and plurality. 

Fix your gaze upon the light."

Right to strike

Calvin Coolidge:

There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.

Saint

Oscar Wilde:

 … every saint had a past and every sinner has a future.

Sacrifice

Shaw:

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Science

1.From The Story of Physics by Anne Rooney: 

 

 ..light seems to know how to behave to experiments. When an experiment is designed to test the behaviour of light as a wave, light acts as a wave. When an experiment tests the behaviour of light as a particle, light behaves as a particle. It's not possible to catch it out. (..uhm, we know where sychophancy originated.)

 

 'You never understand quantum Mechanics, you just get used to it.' (..like God perhaps).

 

 ..the very act of making a measurement changes the situation (or system) being examined. This casts doubt on the whole premise of scientific method. There can be no objective observer if the act of measurement or observation itself affects the outcome. (Cf. Goodhart's law : "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.")

Stephen Hawking:

Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question 'Why does the universe bother to exist?'

One cannot base one's conduct on the idea that everything is determined, because one does not know what has been determined. Instead, one has to adopt the effective theory that one has free will and that one is responsible for one's actions.. Is everything determined? The answer is yes, it is. But, it might as well not be, because we can never know what is determined.

David Hume:

Mathematical propositions must pay a price for yielding absolute truth about anything which exists, about any matters of fact.  Mathematics is only empty, abstract, formal truth, which tells you nothing about existence. No proposition which states a relation between ideas (the propositions of arithmetic, geometry, algebra or logic) can establish any truth about existence. Thus there is a trade off. Statements about formal relations of ideas, like 2+2=4, give us knowledge which has certainty, but on the other hand it is merely formal truth, empty, abstract, it gives no information about existence. Statements about matters of fact, on the other hand, give us information about facts, about existence, but they provide no certainty, not even a basis for probability.

Self-love

William Hazlitt:

The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness, than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.

Silence

Carlyle:

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.

Sydney Smith:

He had occasional flashes of silence, that made his conversation perfectly delightful.

Wilde:

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

Sin

Shakespeare:

I am more sinned against than sinning.

Smile

Shakespeare:

One may smile, and smile, and yet be a villain.

Socialism

Winston Churchill 

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Solitude

S.T.Coleridge:

Alone, alone, all, all alone, 

Alone on a wide wide sea.

Son

O.T.:

A wise son maketh a glad father.

Mogul Throne:

Akbar: Tell me, if you please, what is the greatest consolation that man has in this world?

Birbal: Ah, sire, it is when a father finds himself embraced by his son.

Statistics

B.Disraeli:

There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Style

Buffon:

The style is the man himself.

Teaching

Shaw:

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

Temptation

Wilde:

I can resist everything except temptation.

Tiger

Blake:

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Time

Einstein:

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

Henry Ford:

History is bunk. 

Robert Mannyng:

He that will not when he may,

He shall not when he will. 

Longfellow:

Let the dead Past bury its dead. 

Santayana:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. 

R. Browning:

He said, What’s time? Leave now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever.

Tongue-twister

Anon.:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

A peck of pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick;

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

Where’s the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked? 

Tragedy 

Shaw:

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

Troubles

Shakespeare:

To take arms against a sea of troubles.

Truth

Blake:

A truth that’s told with bad intent

Beats all the lies you can invent.

Byron:

‘Tis strange but true; for truth is always strange,-

Stranger than fiction.

N.T.

Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.

Shakespeare:

To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

That thou canst not then be false to any man.

Shaw:

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world. 

Twain:

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economise it.

“The truth has never been of any real value to any human being. In human relations, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.” Graham Greene.

Virtue 

La Rothefoucauld:

Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue. 

Shakespeare:

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;

And vice sometimes by action dignified.

Cicero:

Virtue is its own reward.

John Fletcher:

‘Tis virtue, not birth, that makes us noble;

great actions speak great minds, and such should govern.

Subbu Arumugam Avarkal:

வாழ்க வாழ்க என்று வாழ்த்துபவன் வாழ்வான் - காஞ்சி பரமாசார்யார் சொன்னது.

One who wishes others well will live well.

Vision

O.T.

Where there is no vision, people perish.

Where the Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depths of truth,

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clesr stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever widening thought and action, -

Into that heaven of freedom my Father, let my country awake. 

Wisdom

Shakespeare:

Better a witty fool than foolish wit.

Shakespeare - As You Like It (Act V, Scene I)

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows

 himself to be a fool."

Anon.

Wiser men know that it is awareness of our being which is the source of happiness. The more aware we become, the more our sense of belonging and the sense of longing. To what or whom do we belong? ‘God’ is the name we apply.

(Vidura Niti)

Characteristics of a Wise Man

1. A wise man is not served from the high ends of life, with the aid of self-knowledge, exertion, forbearance and steadiness in virtue.

2. Adherence to acts, worthy of praise, and rejection of what is blameworthy; faith, and reverence. 

3. He whom anger, joy, pride, false modesty, stupefaction or vanity cannot draw away from the high ends of life.

4. He whose intended acts and proposed counsels remain concealed from foes, and whose acts become known only after they have been done.

5. He whose proposed actions are never obstructed by heat or cold, fear of attachment, prosperity or adversity.

6. He whose judgment, dissociated from desire, follows both virtue and profit, and who, disregarding pleasure, chooses such ends as are appropriate to both worlds.

7. They that exert to the best of their might and disregard nothing as insignificant.

8. He that understands quickly, listens patiently, pursues his objects with judgment and not from desire and does not spend his breath on the affairs of others without being asked.

9. They that do not strive for objects that are unattainable, that do not grieve for what is lost and gone, that do not suffer their minds to be clouded amid calamities.

10. He who strives, having commenced anything, till it is completed. 

11. Who never wastes his time, and who has his soul under control.

12. They that are wise always delight in honest deeds, do what tends to their happiness and prosperity, and never sneer at what is good. 

13. He who exults not at honours, and grieves not at slights, and remains cool and unagitated.

14. That man who knows the nature of all creatures (viz., that everything is subject to destruction), who is cognisant also of the connections of all acts, and who is proficient in the knowledge of the means that man may resort to for attaining their objects.

15. He who speaks boldly, can converse on various subjects, knows the science of argumentation, possesses genius, and can interpret the meaning of what is writ in books

16. He whose studies are regulated by reason, and whose reason follows the scriptures, and who never abstains from paying respect to those that are good.

The Foolish

He, on the other hand, who is ignorant of scriptures yet vain, poor yet proud, and who resorts to unfair means for the acquisition of his objects, is a fool. He who, forsaking his own, concerns himself with the objects of others, and who practises deceitful means for serving his friends, is called a fool. He, who wishes for those things that should not be desired, and forsakes those that may legitimately be desired, and who bears malice to those that are powerful, is regarded to be a foolish soul.

He who regards his foe as his friend, who hates and bears malice to his friend, and who commits wicked deeds, is said to be a person of foolish soul. O bull of the Bharata race, he who divulges his projects, doubts in all things, and spends a long time in doing what requires a short time, is a fool. He who does not perform the Sraddha for the Pitris (oblations offered to the manes), nor worships the deities, nor acquires noble-minded friends, is said to be a person of foolish soul. That worst of men who enters a place uninvited, and talks much without being asked, and reposes trust on untrustworthy wights, is a fool.

That man who being himself guilty casts the blame on others, and who though impotent gives vent to anger, is the most foolish of men. That man, without knowing his own strength and dissociated from both virtue and profit, desires an object difficult of acquisition, without again adopting adequate means, is said to be destitute of intelligence. O king, he who punishes one that is undeserving of punishment, pays homage to persons without their knowledge, and waits upon misers, is said to be of little sense.

But he that, having attained immense wealth and prosperity or acquired (vast) learning, does not bear himself haughtily, is reckoned as wise.

Oscar Wilde:

The real fool is he who does not know himself.

Woman

No woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

Work

M.K.Gandhi:

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is important that you do it.

Carlyle:

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Your Passport to Successful Self-management

By Robert Heller

1. Improve your physical writing speed,

2. Write as you talk,

3. Plan your writing before you start to write,

4. Use as few words as you need,

5. Avoid (a) circumlocutions, (b) long words when short ones will do, (c) archaisms ‘it is’, (c) passives instead of actives, (d) double negatives, (e) jargon, i. e. anything which demands more words and obscures meaning, 

6. Make sure that your meaning is absolutely clear,

7. Keep the construction of your sentences simple,

8. Do not revise until you have finished,

9. Mouth your words silently to your mind,

10. Preserve a logical, smooth flow, and

11. Never strive for effect.

 

 

 

Quotes:

Struggle is the indispensable accompaniment of progress. (WD)

“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we can 't solve at the same level as the level we created them at.”

Einstein.

Kalidasa: “Yesterday is but a dream. Tomorrow is only a vision. But, today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.”

*

There are multiple realities phenomenally speaking, but one Reality in itself. (noumenon).

*

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."

~Mark Twain (1866)

"No man of science ever has in view the utility of his work,’ said Liebig; indeed, he is too much absorbed by science itself to consider any ulterior aim.”

J H W Stuckenberg

“A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the constant pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”

“The means to knowledge of this world cannot help us really in understanding if there is a reality behind it.”

Albert Einstein.

Will Durant:

Time sanctifies everything; even the most arrant theft, in the hands of the robber’s grandchildren, becomes sacred and inviolable property.

Power, like taxes, succeeds best when it is invisible and indirect.

*

Buddha:

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is free, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

However many holy works you read, however many you speak, what good will they do if you do not act upon them?

Foolish people are idle; wise people are diligent.

Vanity Fair

I wonder how many people would read such classics. First of all, reading a book is a forgotten habit. Add to it the Victorian prose where minute description impedes progress of the plot. 

But, they hold a key to understanding human life and commonality across countries even when people were not so interconnected.  

Some passages I find worth reproducing:

• “Like many wealthy people, it was Miss Crawley’s habit to accept as muc service as she could get from her inferiors; and good-naturedly to take leave of them when she no lnger found them useful. Gratitude among certain ricj folks is scarcely natural, or to be thought of. They take needy people’s service as their due.”

• “a little of that secret talking and conspiring wich forms the delight of female life.” “Women order everything for everybody, and know so much better than any person concerned what is good for their neighbours.” “She generally succeeded in making her husband share all her opinions. Whether melancholy or cheerful.” (That was all two hundred years ago; not now.)

• “Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.”

• “If a man’s character is to be abused, say what you will, there’s nobody like a relation to do the business.” 

• “Ours is a ready-money society.”

• “Those who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds.” (I am reminded of bank borrowers.)

• “In the affairs of the world and under the magnetism of friendship, the modest man becomes bold, the shy confident, the lazy active, or the impetuous prudent and peaceful.”

• “In determining to make everybody else happy, she found herself so.”

• “What a prize it will be for the French when they come! – the carriage and the diamonds I mean; not the lady!”

• “The novelist who knows everything knows this also.” (Typical British humour.)

• “Little Cackleby went to seven evening parties, and told the story with comments and emendations at each place.”

• “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?”

Pyotr Chaadaev:

"Our memories reach back no further than yesterday, as it were, strangers to ourselves. ... That is but a natural consequence of a culture that consists entirely of imports and imitation.  ... We absorb all our ideas ready-made, and therefore the indelible trace left in the mind by a progressive movement of ideas, which gives it strength, does not shape our intellect. ... We are like children who have not been taught to think for themselves; when they become adults, they have nothing of their own - all the knowledge is on the surface of their being, their soul is not within them."

Found in old St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore:

Go placidly among the noise and haste, remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly, clearly and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant they too have their story.

Avoid loud aggressive persons. They are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is so full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is, many people strive for high ideals. Be yourself, esp. do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all avidity and disenchantment it transcends time and space. Take kindly the counsel of years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of Spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not disturb yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you there is no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery broken dreams, it is sill a beautiful world. Be careful! Take care. Strive to be Happy.

Prince Rama Varma quoted this as a parallel to Guru-Sishya relationship:

"Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."

Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

"The only real valuable thing is intuition."

"A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."

"I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."

"God is subtle but he is not malicious."

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."

"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."

"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."

"If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

"In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"

"No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?"

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

"Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

"One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."

"...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."

"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

Somerset Maugham quotations

2010

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both

sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to

face it.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love.

It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed

person.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one

knows what they are.

It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but

the best, you very often get it.

It is not wealth one asks for but just enough to preserve one's

dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

(Amritavahini) 

24 Gurus:

(This is the list spoken of by Dattatreya, an incarnation of Vishnu):

1. Mother earth is my first guru. She taught me to hold those who trample me, scratch me, and hurt me lovingly in my heart, just as she does. She taught me to give them my best, remembering that their acts are normal and natural from their standpoint.

2. Water it is a force that contains life and purity. It cleanses whatever it touches and provides life to whoever drinks it. Water

flows unceasingly. If it stops, it becomes stagnant. Keep moving is the lesson I learned from water.

3. Fire. It burns everything, transforming it into flame. By consuming dead logs, it produces warmth and light. Thus, I learnt how to absorb everything that life brings and how to turn it into flame. This flame enlightens my life and in that light, others can walk safely.

4. Wind is my fourth guru. The wind moves unceasingly, touching flowers and thorns alike, but never attaches itself to the objects it touches. Like the wind, I learned not to prefer flowers over thorns or friends over foes. Like the wind, my goal is to provide freshness to all without becoming attached.

5. Space: This all-pervading and all-embracing space is my fifth guru. Space has room for the sun, moon, and stars and yet, it remains untouched and unconfined. I, too, must have room for all the diversities, and still remain unaffected by what I contain. All visible and invisible objects may have their rightful place within me, but they have no power to confine my consciousness.

6. The moon. The moon waxes and wanes and yet never loses its essence, totality, or shape. From watching the moon, I learned that waxing and waning-rising and falling, pleasure and pain, loss and gain-are simply phases of life. While passing through these phases, I never lose awareness of my true Self.

7. The sun is my seventh guru. With its bright rays, the sun draws water from everything, transforms it into clouds, and then distributes it as rain without favor. Rain falls on forests, mountains, valleys, deserts, oceans, and cities. Like the sun, I learned how to gather knowledge from all sources, transform that knowledge into practical wisdom, and share it with all without preferring some recipients and excluding others.

8. Pigeon: My eighth guru is a flock of pigeons. One pigeon fell into a hunter's net and cried in despair. Other pigeons tried to rescue it and got caught, too. From these pigeons, I learned that even a positive reaction, if it springs from attachment and emotion, can entangle and ensure.

9. Python: My ninth guru is the python who catches and eats its prey, and then doesn't hunt again for a long time. It taught me that once my need has been met, I must be satisfied and not make myself miserable running after the objects of my desire.

10. The ocean, which is the abode of the waters. It receives and assimilates water from all the rivers in the world and never overflows its boundaries. It taught me that no matter what experiences I go through in life, no matter how many kicks and blows I receive, I must maintain my discipline.

11. The moth is my eleventh guru. Drawn by light, it flies from its dwelling to sacrifice itself in the flame. It taught me that once I see the dawn, I must overcome my fear, soar at full speed, and plunge into the flame of knowledge to be consumed and transformed.

12. Bumblebee: My twelfth guru is a bumblebee who takes only the tiniest drops of nectar from the flowers. Before accepting even that much, it hums and hovers and dances, creating an atmosphere of joy around the flower. It not only sings the song of cheerfulness; it also gives more to the flowers than it takes. It pollinates the plants and helps them prosper by flying from one flower to another. I learned from the bumblebee that I should take only a little from nature and that I should do so cheerfully, enriching the source from which I receive sustenance.

13. Honeybee: My thirteenth guru is the honeybee who collects more nectar than it needs. It gathers nectar from different sources, swallows it, transforms it into honey, and brings it to the hive. It consumes only a bit of what it gathers, sharing the rest with others. Thus I should gather wisdom from the teachers of all disciplines and process the knowledge that I gain. I must apply the knowledge that is conducive to my growth, but I must be ready to share everything I know with others.

14. Elephant: Once I saw a wild elephant being trapped. A tame female elephant in season was the bait. Sensing her presence, the wild male emerged from its domain and fell into a pit that had been cleverly concealed with branches and heaps of leaves. Once caught, the wild elephant was tamed to be used by others. This elephant is my fourteenth guru because he taught me to be careful with my passions and desires. Worldly charms arouse our sensory impulses and, while chasing after the sense cravings, the mind gets trapped and enslaved, even though it is powerful.

15. Deer: It listens intently and is wary of all noises, but is lured to its doom by the melody of the deer hunter's flute. Like the deer, we keep our ears alert for every bit of news, rumour and gossip, and are skeptical about much that we hear. But we become spellbound by certain words, which, due to our desires, attachments, cravings, and vasanas (subtle impressions from the past), we delight to hear. This tendency creates misery for others and ourselves.

!6. The fish who swallows a baited hook and is caught by the fisherman. This world is like bait. As long as I remember the episode of the fish, I remain free of the hook.

17. A prostitute who knows that she doesn't love her customers, nor do they love her. Yet she waits for them and, when they come, enacts the drama of love. She isn't satisfied with the artificial love she gives and receives, nor with the payment she is given. I realized that all humans are like prostitutes and the world, like the customers, is enjoying us. The payment is always inadequate and we feel dissatisfied. Thus, I became determined not to live like a prostitute. Instead, I will live with dignity and self-respect, not expecting this world to give me either material or internal satisfaction, but to find it myself by going within.

18. A bird: My eighteenth guru is a little bird who was flying with a worm in its beak. Larger birds flew after him and began pecking him. They stopped only when the little bird dropped the worm. Thus, I learned that the secret of survival lies in renunciation, not in possession.

19. Baby: My nineteenth guru is the baby that cries when it is hungry and stops when it suckles at its mother's breast. When the baby is full, it stops feeding and nothing its mother does can induce it to take more milk. I learned from this baby to demand only when I really need. When it's provided, I must take only what I require and then turn my face away. 

20. A young woman whom I met when I was begging for alms. She told me to wait while she prepared a meal. Her bracelets jangled as she cooked, so she removed one. But the noise continued, so she took off all her bracelets, one by one, until only one remained. Then there was silence. Thus, I learned that wherever there is a crowd, there is noise, disagreement, and dissension. Peace can be expected only in solitude.

21. A snake that makes no hole for itself, but who rests in holes other creatures have abandoned, or curls up in the hollow of a tree for a while, and then moves on. From this snake, I learned to adjust myself to my environment and enjoy the resources of nature without encumbering myself with a permanent home. Creatures in nature move constantly, continually abandoning their previous dwellings. Therefore, while floating along the current of nature, I find plenty of places to rest. Once I am rested, I move on.

22. My twenty-second guru is an arrow maker who was so absorbed in shaping his arrowheads that the king and his entire army passed without attracting his attention. Thus I learned from the arrow makes to be absorbed in the task at hand, no matter how big or small. The more one-pointed my focus, the greater my absorption, and the greater my absorption, the more subtle my awareness. The goal is subtle, and can only be grasped by subtle awareness.

23. My twenty-third guru is a little spider who built itself a nice cozy web. When a larger spider chased it, it rushed to take refuge in its web. But it ran so fast that it got entangled and was swallowed by the bigger spider. Thus, I learned that we create webs for ourselves by trying to build a safe haven, and as we race along the threads of these webs, we become entangled and are consumed. There is no safety to be found in the complicated webs of our actions.

24. My twenty-fourth guru is a worm who was caught by a songbird and placed in its nest. As the bird began singing, the worm became so absorbed in the song that it lost all awareness of its peril. Watching this little creature become absorbed in a song in the face of death reminded me that I, too, must develop the art of listening so that I my become absorbed in the eternal sound (Aum), Naad, that is always within me.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

"Life is like a merry-go-round. You travel a long time, but get off where you got in."

 

Sri Parthasarathi, A Vedantha exponent:

"It is vain to hope that if you get 'x' you will be happy."