Year 2002 Archives
Here we archive
"Here's A Thought" items from the year 2002.
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December 29, 2002
We are walking in the light of love.
Zulu song "Syahamba"
Quoted in Ellsworth American
12/26
December 22, 2002
Books are mirrored wisdom, often distorted. Don't get lost in all the books. Nobody can teach you. Truth is within.
December 15, 2002
The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
December 8, 2002
My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own.
William Orville Douglas
December 1, 2002
A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson
November 24, 2002
Life is essentially ridiculous. When you understand that, you can start enjoying yourself.
The movie Daisies in December
November 17, 2002
There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good". And one says, "This is new, and therefore better".
November 10, 2002
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
November 3, 2002
Many a doctrine is like a window pane.
We see truth through it, but it divides us from truth.
October 27, 2002
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
October 20, 2002
Everything you've learned in school as 'obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
October 13, 2002
So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
When just the art of being kind
Is all this sad world needs.
The World's Need
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
October 6, 2002
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste they hurry past it.
September 29, 2002
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
September 22, 2002
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?
September 15, 2002
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
September 7, 2002
To sum up all in a word: Nothing has separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God.
September 1, 2002
Not all those who wander are lost.
August 25, 2002
Won't you come into the garden?
I would like my roses to see you.
August 18, 2002
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
August 11, 2002
The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body is different.
August 4, 2002
I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
July 28, 2002
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
July 21, 2002
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.
July 14, 2002
It is not enough for us to say, "I love God". But I also have to love my neighbor. St. John says that you are a liar if you say you love God, and you don't love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? And so it is very important for us to realize that love, to be true, has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me, and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.
Mother Teresa
July 7, 2002
A man does not show his greatness by being at
one extremity,
but rather by touching both at once.
Blaise Pascal
June 30, 2002
It's hard to let go, isn't it?
What can I tell you ...
that's life
The movie Meet Joe Black
June 23, 2002
Often devotees make up extraordinary stories about their gurus to impress others, and lend themselves credibility — if their teacher is great, then they must be great too, or at least destined for greatness. Such devotees create a guru cult, contaminate the sublime tradition of the guru-disciple lineage, and in the process they misguide the novice seekers.
Swami Rama
quoted in At The Eleventh
Hour
See also here
June 16, 2002
This is why you get sick and die, for you love what deceives you.
The Gospel of Mary, 3:7-8
in Complete Gospels
June 9, 2002
There are in this struggle three factors.
(1) The unchanging light of Eternal Reality: that Pure Being "which ever
shines and nought shall ever dim".
(2) The web of illusion, here thick, there thin; which hems in, confuses, and
allures the sentient self.
(3) That self, always changing, moving, struggling — always, in fact, becoming
— alive in every fiber, related at once to the unreal and to the real;
and, with its growth in true being, ever more conscious of the contrast between
them.
... One only of the three is constant: the Absolute to
which the soul aspires. Though all else may fluctuate, that goal is changeless.
Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism
June 2, 2002
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.
May 26, 2002
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
May 19, 2002
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
May 12, 2002
I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.
May 5, 2002
Every saint has a past and every sinner a future.
April 28, 2002
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
April 21, 2002
We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.
April 14, 2002
People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
April 7, 2002
Blame is for God and small children.
The movie Papillon
March 31, 2002
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
If there is nothing in this world for me, then there must be something in me for this world; else, I am in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is unlikely, as the Divine does not err!
March 17, 2002
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul, producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
William Shakespeare
A Merchant of Venice - I, iii
March 10, 2002
Will the real me please stand up.
"Smashed"
Mose Allison
March 3, 2002
Until lions have their historians,
tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.
An African Proverb
February 24, 2002
I can't believe God allows us to do this to each other.
A visitor to the Oklahoma City National Memorial
quoted in Bangor Daily News, 5/14/01
February 17, 2002
If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.
February 10, 2002
He who thinks that God has any quality, and is not the One, injures not God, but himself.
Philo
Judaeus
in Complete
Guide to World Mysticism
February 3, 2002
Man builds no structure that outlasts a book.
At a public library,
in the movie Stanley
& Iris
January 27, 2002
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
January 20, 2002
I am the light that is over all things.
I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.
Split a piece of wood; I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find Me there.
January 13, 2002
I feel more like I do now than I did a while ago.
Wayne Manning's Dad
January 6, 2002
If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
