Here are some great quotes I have come across recently and a few thoughts to go along with them.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein
Wow, there’s a lot I don’t understand and I think this blog proves that point.
“To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.” – G.K. Chesterton
No comment.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
I love to ponder this idea when it comes to spiritual things.
“There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.” – Daniel Dennett
Anyone else ever feel like this at church, or on facebook during a major election?
“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anais Nin
One of the odd paradoxes about life, relativity, and perception. Is it possible to see something as it really is and if so, what would that mean?
“You never know who you really are, so any definition I might give you might be wrong.” – Ettore Sottsass
If defining ourselves can be this difficult, how much more difficult if not impossible to define or judge another. Joseph Smith is often quoted as saying, “No man knows my history,” and I think that’s true for all of us.
“Deep experience is never peaceful.” – Henry James
How true this is, how valuable and precious deep experience is.
“If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It’s a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the mystery.” – Tom Robbins
Often I wonder if anything is more bizarre than reality.
“What weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.” – Carlos Castaneda
I feel like saying something political, but I won’t.
“Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I’ve understood the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick.” – Bruce Lee
I’ve noticed this when studying the gospel. I’ve taken a simple thing and dissected it only to have it branch out into a vast web of complexity. I’ve then arrived at the end and found that I was right back to where I started. The message was the same, but I wasn’t. Perhaps that’s the point.
“To forgive is to give up all hope for a better past.” – Buddhist saying
Interesting way of thinking about it but it is a valid point. We resent that the past didn’t go the way we wanted and we insist that someone has to be held accountable. LDS theology seems to suggest that forgiveness is more than just letting go, it is getting to a point where love can extinguish all resentment.
“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.” – Rabindrananth Tagore
I love this idea. We hold such a tight grip on our mortality when it is such a small flicker of our existence.
“A society whose whole idea is to eliminate suffering and bring its members the greatest amount of comfort and pleasure is doomed to be destroyed.” – Thomas Merton
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I’ve always loved, “A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” — John A. Shedd.
Oh, yeah, that’s a good one.