A Dazzling Planetary Nebula

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving…

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

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

A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Never memorize something that you can look up.

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling 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.
- Albert Einstein

And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.

It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away
- Paulo Coelho

Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.
- Alan Moore

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
- Kahlil Gibran

He is not dead who departs from life with a high and noble fame; but he is dead, even while living, whose brow is branded with infamy.”
- Johann Ludwig Tieck

If you are going to tell people the truth, be funny or they will kill you.
- Billy Wilder

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
- Erica Jong

If there’s anything unsettling to the stomach, it’s watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.
- Marlon Brando

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
- Walt Whitman

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
- Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that’s beautiful.

You can’t measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.
- Milan Kundera

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
- Friedrich Nietzsche



The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
- Neil Gaiman

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
- Siddhārtha Gautama

Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man has but little heeded the advice of the wise men. He has been - fatefully, if not willingly - less virtuous, less constant, less rational, less peaceful than he knows how to be, than he is fully capable of being. He has been led astray from the ways of peace and brotherhood by his addiction to concepts and attitudes of narrow nationalism, racial and religious bigotry, greed and lust for power.
- Ralph J. Bunche

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
- Avram Noam Chomsky (Born December 7, 1928)

Peace is a chain reaction of love.
- A First Grader

If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.
- Mohammad Ali Jinnah

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Transparency, info, clarity & interpretation, are required for a deep democracy. That’s why Wikileaks is a challenge to the powers that be.
- Cornel West

The great threat to the young and pure in heart is not what they read but what they don’t read.
- Heywood C. Broun (Born December 7, 1888)

Oh, if a man tried to take his time on earth and prove before he died what one man’s life could be worth, I wonder what would happen to this world?
- Harry Chapin



The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
- Willa Cather (Born December 7, 1973)

I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for.
- Thornton Wilder (Died December 7, 1975)

It’s an alethiometer. It’s one of only six that were ever made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. … It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you’ll have to learn by yourself. Now go — it’s getting lighter…
- Philip Pullman (Quote from The Golden Compass (1995) the movie adaptation opening on December 7, 2007)

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed. - Algernon Sydney (Executed on this date, no birthdate known)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#7

War is fear cloaked in courage.
- William C. Westmoreland

You are a precious gift of God….now go be who you are.
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path
- Morpheus, The Matrix

Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
- A. G. Bell

Literature is a state of culture. Poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.
- Juan Ramon Jimenez

http://themodernword.com

All know the way, but few actually walk it
- Bodhidharma

For beautiful lips, speak words of kindness.
- Audrey Hepburn

There are different wells within your heart. Some fill with each good rain, Others are far too deep for that.

This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love!

The fish needs to say “Something ain’t right about this camel ride- and I’m feeling so damn thirsty”
- Hafiz

During your life, never stop dreaming. No one can take away your dreams.
- 2pac

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
- Basho

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
- Plato

Your life is always perfect: you are always at the right place at the right time.
- Salerno

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The giving of love is an education in itself.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

I’ve discovered that the fastest way “to find God” is to find each other. To
stop hiding out from each other, of course, we must stop hiding from
ourselves.
- Neale Donald Walsch

If I adore You out of fear of Hell,
Burn me in Hell!
If I adore you out of desire for Paradise
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty
- Rabia al-Basri



This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

‎The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

Only from the heart can you touch the sky.

I pretended to leap to see if I could live there. Someday I must actually arrive there or nothing will be left to arrive.

O lovers, lovers it is time
to set out from the world.
I hear a drum in my soul’s ear
coming from the depths of the stars.
Our camel driver is at work;
the caravan is being readied.
He asks that we forgive him
for the disturbance he has caused us,
He asks why we travelers are asleep.
Everywhere the murmur of departure;
the stars, like candles
thrust at us from behind blue veils,
and as if to make the invisible plain,
a wondrous people have come forth.

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

And just the moment
when you are all confused
leaps forth a voice
hold me close
I’m love and
………I’m always yours.

Before a flower can open in His rose garden thousands of thotns come to pierce it. Although the soul has received only grief from Him, Love has made her turn away from all worldly attachments: She has preferred this anguish to all rewards. She has chosen suffering above all joys. In her eyes, His thorn is more glorious than any flower, His lock more precious than all other keys, His tyranny victorious over all earthly happiness. The poison of His anger transforms itself into tenderness, His refusal is worth far more than the agreement of others. Cornelian and happiness of supreme lover of God-All the joys of this world are nothing to it.

Silence
You are the diamond in me
the Jewel of my real wealth!
From your soft earth
grow thousands
of rose gardens
whose perfumes
drown me
in my heart.

My love, you are closer to me than myself,
you shine through my eyes.
Your light is brighter than the Moon.
Step into the garden
so all the flowers,
even the tall poplar
can kneel before your beauty.

Let your voice silence he lily
famous for its hundred tounges
When you want to be kind
you are Softer than the soul
but when you widraw
You can be so cold and harsh

The Buraq of love has taken my mind as well as my heart, do not ask me where. I have reached such a realm that there is no moon, nor day. I have reached a world where the world is no longer the world.

And just the moment
when you are all confused
leaps forth a voice
hold me close
I’m love and
I’m always yours.

That barbed wire on your path is the mind
Cut the wire and your path clearly find.
Heart trickster, soul veil and mind bind
To find the path you must put all three behind.
When you transcend heart and soul as well as mind
…It is like giving sight to the blind.

There is no salvation for the soul
but to fall in Love.
Only lovers can escape
out of these two worlds.
This was ordained in creation.
Only from the heart
can you reach the sky:
The Rose of Glory
can grow only from the heart.

‎I want to see you.
Know your voice.

Recognize you when you
first come ‘round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you’ve just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
“more”

Let the beauty we love be what we do

The grapes of my body can only become wineAfter the winemaker tramples me.I surrender my spirit like grapes to his tramplingSo my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy.Although the grapes go on weeping blood and sobbing“I cannot bear any more anguish, any more cruelty”The trampler stuffs cotton in his ears: “I am not working in ignoranceYou can deny me if you want, you have every excuse, But it is I who am the Master of this Work. And when through my Passion you reach Perfection,You will never be done praising my name.

And if every way is closed before you, the secret one will show a secret path no other eyes have seen.

I hear nothing in my ear but your voice.
Heart has plundered mind of its eloquence.

Love writes a transparent calligraphy, so on
the empty page my soul can read and recollect.

My beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be

Do you want to enter paradise?
To walk to the path of Truth, you need the grace of GOD.
We all face death in the end.
But on the way, be careful, never to hurt a human heart

You’ve no idea how hard I’ve looked for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What’s the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the Ocean.
Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient.
It’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.
So- I’ve brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me

Because of love
I have become
the giver of light.

Only You
i choose
among the entire world

is it fair
of you
letting me be unhappy?

The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
…they’re in each other all along.

if you pass your night
and merge it with dawn
for the sake of heart
what do you think will happen?

if the entire world
is covered with the blossoms
you have labored to plant
what do you think will happen?

if the elixir of life
that has been hidden in the dark
fills the desert and towns
what do you think will happen?

if because of
your generosity and love
a few humans find their lives
what do you think will happen?

if you pour an entire jar
filled with joyous wine
on the head of those already drunk
what do you think will happen?

go my friend
bestow your love
even on your enemies
if you touch their hearts
what do you think will happen?

what is it you seek everyday n everynight…..
if it is pleasure it will elude you
if it is contentment pleasure will be at your feet..

Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else.

My sweet heart,
you have aroused my passion,
your touch has filled me with desire,
I am no longer separate from you,
these are precious moments,
I beseech you,
don’t let me wait,
let me merge with you.

Don’t mind the destination,
Don’t mind the end.

Don’t mind the good or bad
or right and wrong.
Grow from the past,
But grab hold of now.
Now is always evolving.
Listen my love,

As you walk this eternal path,
Show courage by remaining guiltless
in the midst of an ever-reaching end.

Don’t expect to find any more in me
Than what you give
Don’t search for Hidden pockets
Because I have shown you that
All I have is all you gave…

Death comes, and what we thought
we needed loses importance.

The living shiver, focused
on a muscular dark hand,
rather than the glowing cup it holds
or the toast being proposed.

In that same way love enters
your life, and the I, the ego,
a corrupt, self-absorbed king,
dies during the night.

Let him go.
Breathe cold new air,
the nothing of roselight.

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there

This is how I would die into the love I have for you:
As pieces of cloud dissolve in Sunlight.

People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.

When I see your face, the stones start spinning.
You appear. All studying wanders.
I lose my place.

Water turns pearly.
Fire dies down and does not consume.

In your presence I do not want
what I thought I wanted,
those three little hanging lamps.

Inside your face the ancient manuscripts
seem like rusty mirrors.
You breathe, and new shapes appear.

The music of a desire as widespread as spring
begins to move like a great wagon.

Drive slowly.
Some of us walking alongside are lame.

Oh soul,you worry too much.

You have seen your own strength.

You have seen your own beauty.

You have seen your golden wings.

Of anything less, why do you worry?

You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul.

Rationality
He who perceives Your chain-like, linked tress-on-tress and then stays “rational” is mad.

Today, like every other day, we wake up emptyand frightened. Don’t open the door to the studyand begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Mevlana Rumi

http://www.facebook.com/mevlana