more quotes/i'm turning into leah

I read a lot while I’m here. It’s wonderful.  I’ve never been a big quote person, but Leah has inspired me, and, well, maybe quotes aren’t so bad.  Here’s what stood out to me from a few of the books I read recently:

“There is a basin in the mind where words gloat around thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feeling untouched by thought.” –Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is like da sea. It’s ah movin’ thing, bit still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”—Their Eyes Were Watching God

“The polar Eskimos of Northwest Greenland call the polar bear pisugtoag, the great wanderer…the bear is a great wanderer not solely because it travels far, but because it travels with curiosity and tirelessly.”—Arctic Dreams

“They [the Eskimo’s] have a quality of muannarpaq, of taking extravagant pleasure in being alive; and they delight in finding it in other people.”—Arctic Dreams

“This is a timeless wisdom that survives failed human economies. It survives wars. It survives [some word I can’t read because I have messy handwriting]. It is a nameless wisdom esteemed by all people. It is understanding how to live a decent life, how to behave properly toward other people and toward the land.”—Arctic Dreams. 

“I thought about the great desire among friends and colleagues and travelers who meet on the road, to share what they know, what they have seen and imagined.  Not to have shared understanding, but to share what one has come to understand.”—Arctic Dreams

“What every culture must eventually decide, actively debate and decide, is what of all that surrounds it, tangible and intangible, it will dismantle and turn into material wealth. And what of its cultural wealth, from the tradition of finding peace in the vision of an undisturbed hillside to a knowledge of how to finance a corporate merger, it will fight to preserve.”—Arctic Dreams. 

These next are form a book about Bliss. I forget if the name is Atlas of Bliss or Geography of Bliss or what, but it’s something along those lines. 

“You see. Everything is a dream. Nothing is real. You will realize that one day.”—Bliss

“Happiness is relationships, and people in the West think money is needed for relationships.  But its it’s not. It comes down to trustworthiness.”—Bliss

“I would not have done anything differently. A;; of the moments in my life, everyone I have met, every trip I have taken, every success I have enjoyed, every blunder I have made, every loss I have endured has been just right. I’m not saying they were all good or that they happened for a reason—I don’t buy that brand of pop fatalism—but they have been right”—Bliss.

“in transit. If two sweeter words exist in the English language I have yet to hear them.  Suspended between coming and going, neither here not there, my mind slows, and, amid the duty-free shops and PA announcements, I achieve something approaching calm.”—Bliss

“Perhaps it’s true that you can’t go back in time, but you can return to the scene of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fateful decision; the places are what remains, are what you can possess, are what is immortal.”—Bliss

“”Necessity may be the mother of invention, but interdependence is the mother of affection. We humans need one another, so we cooperate for purely selfish reasons at first. At some point, though, the needing fades and all that remains is the cooperation.”—Bliss

“Your imagination must, to some extent, be found in a realm beyond reason because it begins with imagining a future reality: the self that you might become.”—Bliss

“Hope is sheer anchor of every man when hope is destroyed, great grief follows, which is almost equal to death itself.”—Bliss

“Everyone is swaddled in the inevitable present moment.”—Bliss

The next series of quotes are from For the Sake of Peace: Seven Paths to Global harmony—a Buddhist Perspective By: Daisaku Ikeda

“What cruel demands nationalism makes on the lives of ordinary people!”

“…with the hope and conviction that as citizens of the world, we can discover our common humanity.. that, of course, is the basis for all efforts for peace.”

“What is needed to advance human history, to move from darkness to light, from despair to hope, from killing to coexistence? What light can dispel the gloom and illuminate the expanses of the next thousand years? These are questions we must ask ourselves in all earnestness.”

“In light of the globalization of financial, environmental and health issues, domestic problems cannot be solved without addressing international ones.  People must be interested, he (Boutros Boutros-Ghali) said, not only in their own countries but also in international conditions.”

“The central issue of the current era is crushing poverty. There can be no peace where hunger reigns.”

“War has held humankind in its irrevocable grip throughout history; it is the source of all evil. War normalizes insanity—the kind that does not hesitate to destroy human beings like so many insects and tears all that is human and humane to shreds, producing an unending stream of refugees.”

“Peace cannot be a mere stillness, a quiet interlude between wars. It must be a vital and energetic arena of life activity, won through our own volitional, proactive efforts.  Peace must be a living drama—in Spinoza’s words, ‘a virtue that springs from force of character.; Eternal peace is a continuum consciously maintained through the interactions of self-restraining individuals within a self-restraining society.”

“Communist regimes toppled because for too long they sought enemies outside of themselves, not attempting to see the evils they harbored within.”

“But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.”—Pasternak

“The greater self of Mahayana Buddhism is another way of expressing the openness and expansiveness f character that embrace the sufferings of all people as one’s own.  This self always seeks ways of alleviating the pain and augmenting the happiness of others, here, amid the realities of everyday life.  only the solidarity brought about by such natural human nobility will break down the isolation of the modern self and lead to the dawning of new hope for civilization.”  

“The real seeds of peace lie not in lofty ideas but in human understanding and the empathy of ordinary people.”

“Whether at war or not, people are not so easily drawn into committing violence against others if they sense the others’ concrete, personal existence. This is especially true among people who know well and live near one another.”

“Overcoming negative attachments to difference—discrimination—and bringing about a true flowering of human diversity are the keys to generating a lasting culture of peace. And dialogue is the means to achieve this active tolerance.”

“If more people were to pursue dialogue in an equally unrelenting manner, the inevitable conflicts of human life would surely find easier resolution. Prejudice would yield to empathy, and war would give way to peace.  Genuine dialogue results in the transformation of opposing viewpoints, changing them from wedges that drive people apart into bridges that link them together.” 

“Tolerance is more than just a mental attitude; it must grow out of a sense of larger order and coexistence, a cosmic sensibility that issues up from the deepest wellsprings of life.”

“According to a United nations’ report, roughly 5% of the world’s annual expenditures on defense would be sufficient to ensure enough good, water, health and education for all the people on the planet during the same period.”

“I believe strongly in the latent power of people. To awaken people to their own power, education is necessary.  People need teachers. Today, it seems to me, we are hearing the call for education in global form. In more concrete terms, the course of education must include such currently vital problems as environment, development, peace and human rights…in all four of these essential categories, education must go beyond national boundaries and seek values applicable to all humanity.”

“The essence of goodness is the aspiration toward unity, while evil directs itself toward division or sundering.”

“Only through learning can we open the spiritual windows of humanity…”

“The inherent role of religion can be defined as taking human hearts that are divided and connecting them through a universal human spirit.  Arnold Toynbee addressed that goal when he wrote, ‘At a time when people with very different traditions, faiths, and ideals have come into sudden and close contact with one another, the survival of humankind requires that people be willing to live with one another and to accept that there is more than one path to truth and salvation.’”

“ ‘The meaning of the imperial past is not totally contained within it, but has entered the reality of hundreds of millions of people, where its existence as shared memory and as a highly conflictual texture of culture, ideology, and policy still exercises tremendous force.’”—Edward Said

“To be maximally effective, legal and structural reforms must be supported by a corresponding revolution in consciousness—the development of the kind of universal humanity that transcends differences from within.” 

“ ‘There are no ‘homeless’ words. Humans are the homes of words, their sovereign masters…words live within us. They leave and return to us. They serve us devotedly from the moment we are born until we die. Words carry the burden of the world of soul and the vastness o the cosmos.’”—Chingiz Aitmatov

“ ‘[the true aspect of life] cannot be burned by the fires at the end of a kalpa, nor swept away by floods, not cut by swords or pierced by arrows. It can fit into a mustard seed, and althug the mustard seed does ot expand, there is no need for life to shrink.  It can fill the entire universe. The cosmos is neither too vast nor life too small to fill it.’”—Nichiren

“the symbol for the third millennium…should rather be that of a constellation—a society based on respect for the value of cultural pluralism. The image of a constellation is apt. it evokes the brilliance of many individual stars. Their grouping creates a beautiful constellation, and yet each star’s beauty is unimpaired, on the contrary, the contrary, the splendor of the night scy lies in their diversity.”

“Each living thing, in other words, has a distinct character, individuality and purpose in this world. accordingly, people should develop their own unique capabilities as they work to build a world of cooperation where all people acknowledge both their differences and their fundamental equality, a world where diversity of peoples and cultures is nourished, each enjoying respect and harmony.” 

“Art is the irrepressible expression of human spirituality. So it is now, and so it has always been. Into each of the myriad concrete forms of art is ompressed the symbol of ultimate reality. The creation of a work of art essentially takes place within spatial boundaries, but through the process of creating, the soul of the artist seeks union with the ultimate reality, what might be called the cosmic life. a living work of art is life itself, born form the dynamic fusion of the self (the microcosm) and the universe )the macrocosm).”

“As a young Christian man I conceived of God as a rather fatherly figure, one who was paternal and watched over all of us down here on earth. Maybe he pulled a string or two to make things happen and kind of guided our lives. After having seen space, I was impressed by the great universal order of things. Today, I think that order of things in the universe is what we call God, or what other religions call something else.  God is the understanding we have that there is order to all things in the universe. It is from this feeling of religion that I believe there is a common universality of all men. I think that is the basis for an understanding of the world community.” 

“It goes without saying that effective assistance from industrialized countries is essential if developing countries are to escape form poverty. Ultimately, however, success depends on the internal efforts of the poorer countries to develop themselves, and the key to this lies in education.”

“A vicious cycle plagues nations of the South, our close neighbors on this one-and-only earth, linking poverty, population growth, and environmental destruction.”

“What Berdjaev calls existential time is experienced when we break free of the fallen time of daily inertia. It is the experience of joy and sense of fulfillment that comes from seizing the moment and fulfilling one’s innate human mission.”

“The existence of world citizens and national independence, of course, are not opposed to each other. In today’s world it is fully possible to deepen one’s national and cultural identities and to take a broad look at the entire world while working for humanity.”

“ ‘Extinction is more terrible—is the more radical nothingness—because extinction ends death just as surely as it ends birth and life. death is only death; extinction is the death of death.’”—Jonathan Schell

“Trust in nuclear arms is a negation of trust in humanity. The more people trust in arms, the less they trust one another. Ceasing to put their trust in arms is the only way to cultivate mutual trust among peoples.”

“Poverty is a key cause of conflict, which in turn further aggravates poverty. Severing this vicious cycle would simultaneously lead to the eradication of one of the causes of war and resolve this global justice. Removing the causes of war and poverty that menace human dignity will enhance enjoyment of human rights,”

“The initiative to build a world without nuclear arms and a world without war lies in the hands of every individual. We have to embrace this conviction and be cognizant of our responsibility in that task.”

“Peace is not something to be left to others in distant places. It is something we create day to day in our efforts to cultivate care and consideration for others, forging bonds of friendship and trust in our respective communities through our own actions and example.

            As we enhance our respect for the sanctity of life and human dignity through our daily behavior and steadyefforts toward dialogue, the foundations for a culture of peace will deepen and strengthen, allowing a new global civilization to blossom. When each person is aware and committed, we can prevent society from relapsing into the culture of war and foster and nurture energy toward the creation of a century of peace.

            The human spirit is endowed with the ability to transform even the most difficult circumstances, creating value and ever richer meaning. When each person brings this limitless spiritual capacity to full flower, and when ordinary citizens unite in a commitment to positive change, a culture of peace—a century of life—will come into being.”