The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen's skin.
Custom is a tyrant.
Proverb
Danger past, God forgotten.
Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?
Simone Weil
One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.
To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century; without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.
The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.
With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.
We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits -- and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.
In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself -- only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.
Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Harry Weinberger
When you are down and out something always turns up -- and it is usually the noses of your friends.
Orson Welles
Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.
The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.
Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one!
The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.
Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four unless there are three other people.
The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.
I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human is the woman, and all that we're doing is trying to brighten up the place. That's why all the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers -- because males have got to try and justify their existence.
A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.
I hate it when people pray on the screen. It's not because I hate praying, but whenever I see an actor fold his hands and look up in the spotlight, I'm lost. There's only one other thing in the movies I hate as much, and that's sex. You just can't get in bed or pray to God and convince me on the screen.
Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.
The traveler, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he asks himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the characteristic, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. He is disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited.
Arnold Bennett
Our words, our thoughts, and our feelings all contribute to the creation of our reality. Our word is a two-edged sword, it can create or it can destroy. To be impeccable is to create with conscious awareness and love. Ruiz also makes the point that our perceptions of others are merely reflections of ourselves. Therefore, to put another down or project negative words or energy towards another person, is to lash out at the other person because of our own insecurities. The human mind is fertile ground for the seeds that are our word. So plant the seeds of love, not fear. Judging, blaming, shaming, and especially gossiping create poison in ourselves and others. This agreement alone is enough to break all of your old agreements and change the dream of your life.
Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreem
There is an awful lot of negative energy out there and some of it is directed at us by other people. But other people’s reactions and opinions are simply other people’s reactions and opinions. They are having their own experience and none of it has anything to do with you – it does not make you wrong, guilty, bad, unworthy, famous, loveable, or important. If you take it personally and take on the poison of another’s words, it becomes a very negative agreement you have with yourself. What anybody thinks about you, or says about you, is really about them. Not taking it personally allows you to be in relationship with anyone and not get trapped in their stuff. This agreement can also pertain to things that we take personally that cause us to go into upset.
Our minds have the need to know. When we dont know we make assumptions - they make us feel safer than not knowing. And we are pretty much always making assumptions.
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