The contemplation of things as they are
without substitution or imposture,
without error or confusion,
is in itself a nobler thing
than a whole harvest of invention.
- Francis Bacon
Someone who is about to admonish another must
realize within himself five qualities before
doing so [that he may be able to say], thus:
In due season will I speak, not out of season.
In truth will I speak, not in falsehood.
Gently will I speak, not harshly.
To his profit will I speak, not to his loss.
With kindly intent will I speak, not in anger.
- Buddha
(Vinaya Pitaka
trans F.S. Woodward)
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?
- Buddha
(Dhammmapada
trans Thomas Byrom)
If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain.
If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees.
If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.
- Chinese Proverb
Success is nothing more than going from failure to failure
with undiminished enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
My son, be admonished:
of making many books there is no end;
and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
- Ecclesiastes
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence
over public relations, because nature cannot be fooled.
- Richard Feynmann
(Report on the Challenger
disaster)
As regards the education of children,
I think we should teach them not the little virtues,
but the big ones.
Not thriftiness,
but generosity and indifference to money;
not prudence,
but courage and the despisal of danger;
not cleverness,
but frankness and love of the truth;
not diplomacy,
but love of one's neighbor and self-abnegation;
not the desire for success,
but the desire to be and to know.
- Natalia Ginzburg
To know someone here or there with whom you can feel
there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts
unexpressed -- that can make of this earth a garden.
- Goethe
A fair number of young people thinking about becoming
woodworkers simply say, "Well, I've picked up some of the
basic skills, I know a bit about wood and the equipment
I'll need to work with wood, I have had a little experience,
and now I'm wondering if I should go to a school at all.
I find myself wanting to say to these young people,
"No, I do not think you should go to a school, at least
not a big school. Maybe the best thing would be just to start.
Set up the simplest, least expensive shop you possibly can
and then begin. Work. Start with the kind of things you
can handle -- tiny objects or kitchen interiors or repairs --
and gather experience. Learn as you go along. Get an idea
of what it is you can do well and what you like to do.
What sort of person you are, really."
- James Krenow
The Impractical Cabinetmaker pg 14
...people are emerging who seriously want to express themselves
spontaneously and simply, not necessarily to a wide audience,
but as a form of individual adventure and satisfaction.
They try to find a way of living that allows them to do this
without being pressured or ridiculed, to win a few friends,
gain a small but warm audience...
- James Krenow
The Impractical Cabinetmaker pg 10
Edumund: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our
own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun,
the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity;
fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treach-
ers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and
adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influ-
ence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting
on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his
goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father
compounded with my mother under the Dragon's Tail,
and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows
I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been
that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing.
William Shakespeare
King Lear
Act I, sc ii, 116-130
Symptoms of Inner Peace
1. A tendency to think and act deliberately, rather than from
fears based on past experiences.
2. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
3. A loss of interest in judging others.
4. A loss of interest in judging self.
5. A loss of interest in conflict.
6. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
7. A loss of ability to worry.
8. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
9. Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
10. Frequent attacks of smiling through the heart.
11. Increasing susceptibility to kindness offered, and the
uncontrollable urge to reciprocate.
12. An increasing tendency to allow things to unfold rather
than resisting and manipulating.
- Saskia Davis (?)
Don't try to teach pigs to sing.
You waste your time and the pig is frustrated.
- proverb
Just as I choose a ship to sail in or a house to live in,
so I choose a death for my passage from life.
- Seneca
To me the Christian theories of afterlife are at least as
silly, and powered by the same wishful thinking, as Buddhist
reincarnation, yet I'm a firm believer in immortality.
I think it so obvious as to to be beyond argument. Exactly
as the law of conservation of matter requires the
preservation of the electrons of the body, so does the energy
of the soul live on in its effects on the survivors and their
survivors. Norman's physical self went up in a little smoke
and down in a little wind-blown calcined bone to eventually
become a temporary part of the East Clyde Glacier. His
spiritual self lives on in his ideas, which some of us will
treasure; in the memories his friends will keep and pass on,
by mountain stories, to new generations; and in his
contribution to mountain lore, which may live as long as men
tromp the Sierra.
- Smoke Blanchard
[about Norman Clyde, the Sierra mountaineer]
Walking Up and Down in the World pg 135
In the midst of winter, I found within myself
an invincible summer.
(Au milieu de l'hiver j'ai decouvert en moi
un invincible été.)
- Albert Camus
You don't have a snail problem, you have a duck deficiency.
- Bill Mollsion