Quotes, Poems, & Sayings...

[gotoseagrl]

Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better. Henry Rollins

[gotoseagrl]

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. Robert Frost

[Spirit Dancer]

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We
must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.
We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that
this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.

Marie Curie

[MissItalianDiva]

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anaïs Nin

[MissItalianDiva]

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. ~Nelson Mandela

[sara-bera]

"Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary." -Oscar Wilde

[JAGG]

We might call ourselves human, but we're still just animals .-Unknown

Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance. -Confucius

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. -E. Letterman

[Spirit Dancer]

An enlightened mind is not hoodwinked; it is not shut up in a
gloomy prison till it thinks the walls of its dungeon the limits of the
universe, and the reach of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[Spirit Dancer]

The Toltec tradition tells us that we surrender a portion of our life force
when we dwell on any unhealed wounding event from our past. The
unprocessed emotions surrounding these events burden us and weigh
heavily on our hearts. They must be dealt with if we want access to all
of our vitality. Ultimately, what we will find is that forgiveness
is the key to reclaiming all the life force locked in past hurt.

Debbie Ford

[girl_dee]

The Toltec tradition tells us that we surrender a portion of our life force
when we dwell on any unhealed wounding event from our past. The
unprocessed emotions surrounding these events burden us and weigh
heavily on our hearts. They must be dealt with if we want access to all
of our vitality. Ultimately, what we will find is that forgiveness
is the key to reclaiming all the life force locked in past hurt.

Debbie Ford

Amen. ......... the how to is what i struggle with.

[girl_dee]

Thank you Spirit Dancer <3



Making Over Our Partners
Changing the Way We Relate




It is dishonest to enter into a relationship with the idea that you are going to change or fix them.


A relationship, in the truest sense of the word, means relating to another. Usually when we say that we relate to someone, it is because we’ve found common ground. But part of relating is finding ways to make ideas that seem different come together. So often when we choose relationships, we try to fit another person into our predetermined ideal. When they don’t fit perfectly, we may try to make them over, creating our own vision from the raw material they’ve brought. But unless someone asks for guidance and direction, entering into a relationship with someone we want to change is dishonest. Then our relationship becomes with someone we’ve imagined, and anytime our partner steps outside of that imaginary projection, we will be disappointed. An honest relationship is one in which we accept each other as whole individuals, and find a way to share our life experiences together. Then, whenever we want, we can choose as a couple to give the relationship a makeover by renewing the way we interact.

By wanting to give another person a makeover, we are basically saying we don’t accept them for who they are. If we take a moment to imagine the roles reversed, we can get a sense of how it would feel if our beloved only committed to us because they thought we were, or would become, someone else entirely. In such an environment, we are not relating to each other from a real place, and we are keeping ourselves from being able to learn and grow from the different viewpoints that our partners offer.

If we feel that a change is needed in our relationship, the only makeover that we truly have the power to make is on ourselves. By accepting our partners for exactly who they are—the ideal and the not-so-ideal—we will create an energetic shift in our relationships, and we may find ourselves really appreciating our partners for the first time. Working from within, we determine how we relate to the people and the world around us, and when we can accept it and embrace it all, without conditions, we make every act of relating a positive one.
__________________

[lusciouskiwi]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/625641_487282514635128_723790419_n.jpg

[Liam]

Just be yourself, everyone else is already taken.............Oscar Wilde

[Soon]

“While Eeyore frets ...
... and Piglet hesitates
... and Rabbit calculates
... and Owl pontificates
...Pooh just is.”

― BENJAMIN HOFF

[Talon]

The heart of a fool is in his mouth,
but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart. :heartbeat:

[gotoseagrl]

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered. Edgar Allan Poe

[Kent]

"What lies behind us and
what lies before us
are tiny matters compared
to what lies within us."

[JAGG]

The confidence of ignorance will always overcome indecision of knowledge. -Unknown

You can't underestimate the power of fear. -Tricia Nixon


There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result. -Winston Churchill

[kittygrrl]

Serpentine~

You've wound me
tight
In your circle
of delight
Shiny & bright serpentine
extra clean
Your hand sparkles~
in the night
Sweet spot of everlasting
into a scream
Obsession
unending
Love
transcending
never let
go

[ruffryder]

Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Earl Nightingale

[sara-bera]

“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” -Lao Tsu

[gotoseagrl]

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. Winnie the Pooh

[gotoseagrl]

You haven't lost your smile at all, it's right under your nose. You just forgot it was there.

[Spirit Dancer]

Sometimes your nearness takes my breath away; and all the things I want to say can find no voice. Then, in silence, I can only hope my eyes will speak my heart. -- Robert Sexton

[JAGG]

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of inferiority.- Alfred Adler

He who knows the road can ride at full trot.- Italian proverb


Revenge is a confession of pain. -Latin proverb

[Fancy]

“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Talon]

Peace My Heart

Peace my heart,
Let the time for parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still..O Beautiful End..just for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
I bow to you, and hold up my lamp to light you on your way. :candle:


~R. Tagore

[spritzerJ]

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.-- Victor Hugo

[gotoseagrl]

Cats are magical. . .the more you pet them the longer you both live.

[gotoseagrl]

If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

[JAGG]

Action makes more fortunes than academics ever will. - Henry Ford


The man who swims against the stream knows the strength of it. -Woodrow Wilson

The body says what words can not. - Martha Graham

[spritzerJ]

It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time — for we are bound by that — but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.
T.S. Eliot

[Nomad]

you cant hold a man down without staying down with him - Booker T. Washington

[jac]

"You have to stand for what you believe in and sometimes you have to stand alone.” ― Queen Latifah

[Fancy]

Developing the muscles of the soul demands no competitive spirit, no killer instinct, although it may erect pain barriers that the spiritual athlete must crash through.

Germaine Greer

[Kobi]

Socialite Clare Boothe Luce, married to Henry R. Luce who published Time, Life, and Fortune, served in the US Congress from 1942 to 1946 and later as ambassador to Brazil and Italy. She also wrote plays, was a World War II war correspondent, and wrote articles and reviews. She was noted for her quips and wit.
--------------------

• If God had wanted us to think with our wombs, why did he give us a brain?

• They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress, you know that the filibuster was invented by men.

• A man's home may seem to be his castle on the outside; inside, it is more often his nursery.

• A man has only one escape from his old self: to see a different self in the mirror of some woman's eyes.

• Advertising has done more to cause the social unrest of the 20th century than any other single factor.

[lusciouskiwi]

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-ash2/187432_599011395_1535394732_n.jpg

[Nomad]

"when life knocks you down, you get back up, spit the blood outta your mouth and say, 'you hit like a little kid'." Muhammad Ali


"that which does not kill me had better start running before i recover." Jada Pinkett

[spritzerJ]

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
-- Plato

Don't set your wit against a child.
-- Jonathan Swift

Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.
-- W. B. Yeats

When will the public cease to insult the teacher's calling with empty flattery? When will men who would never for a moment encourage their own sons to enter the work of the public schools cease to tell us that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?
-- William C. Bagley

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.
--Amos Bronson Alcott

[Nat]

"I call it 'quiet confidence.' That's when you're truly comfortable with who you are and you can just stand in a place of confidence in the way you are and who you are. That 'quiet confidence' doesn't need to show off. It doesn't need to brag or play-act or make a big stink to let other people know you're worthwhile. True confidence, true self-worth and true beauty and love are quiet. If you live this way, you start healing others. Just by accepting who you are."

- Edward Gutierrez

[Talon]

A heroine doesn't need to speak. When she is gone, the world will speak for her.

[JAGG]

Audacity augments courage.- Publilius Syrus

Character-the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life-is the source from which self-respect springs. -Joan Didion

If you always live with those who are lame, you will yourself learn to limp.- Latin proverb

[spritzerJ]

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
-- Thomas Jefferson

[FeminineAllure]

There are four questions of value in life... What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.
Johnny Depp

[sara-bera]

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” -Anaïs Nin

[Kätzchen]

An excerpt from the liner notes of After the Laughter (Comes Tears): Complete Stax + Volt Rarities 1964-1965 (( Light in the Attic, zine issue 4, winter/spring 2012 )):


"Mama said I could sing. I think all mothers tell their children they can sing, they can act. I believed her," Wendy Rene says, another broad smile creasing her face. "She was the minister of music at our church -- she played piano, organ and violin. Mama had bought me a little organ and I knew how to make some keys on it. Usually, she'd be playing her piano that you'd better not touch. Don't even look at it too hard! While she was playing it, I'd get a feel for her music, but not her music, because I'd be listening to WLOK and I would fall in love with the words, fall in love with the story, and sit out back and write a song. And Johnny would have us doing secular music, although my daddy didn't go for that and mama would be, 'Are you finished with that'?"

~ Wendy Rene

[Kobi]

Mary Daly, a feminist theologian, was noted for her strong critique of patriarchy and of traditional religion, especially the Roman Catholic church.
-------------------

~ 'God's plan' is often a front for men's plans and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil.

~ The fact is that we live in a profoundly anti-female society, a misogynistic "civilization" in which men collectively victimize women, attacking us as personifications of their own paranoid fears, as The Enemy. Within this society it is men who rape, who sap women's energy, who deny women economic and political power.

~ Males do indeed deeply identify with "unwanted fetal tissue," for they sense as their own condition the role of controller, possessor, inhabitor of women. Draining female energy, they feel "fetal." Since this perpetual fetal state is fatal to the Self of the eternal mother (Hostess), males fear women's recognition of this real condition, which would render them infinitely "unwanted." For this attraction/need of males for female energy, seen for what it is, is necrophilia -- not in the sense of love for actual corpses, but of love for those victimized into a state of living death.

~ The gynecological profession and the popularizing media have combined their efforts to make the poisoning of women appear acceptable. Just as popping The Pill is both "normal" and normative for younger women, so is estrogen replacement therapy for their mothers and older sisters.

[Tony]

"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy."

Sorry, don't know the author, but hell, it coulda been me. Lol

[deedarino]

Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly, your wholeness when you are broken, your innocence when you feel guilty, and your purpose when you are confused~Alan Cohen

[Tucker]

‎"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."


http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/480331_10150960293336755_546595866_n.jpg

[sara-bera]

"I’m not a romantic, but even I must concede that the heart does not exist solely for the purpose of pumping blood.." -Violet Crawley (Downton Abbey)

[stargazingboi]

William Wordsworth

Perfect Woman

SHE was a phantom of delight
When first she gleam'd upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.

[Semantics]

She goes out into the cold night
to search for the She
with the guts.
Death is firmest where it is fluid.
A bucket rises with my body in it.
She looks in it and says, Well, there you are,
chopped up in little pieces, and sure enough,
no guts either.


by Stan Rice

[Tucker]

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”


http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ROBwH-cDu08/0.jpg

[deedarino]

Wont you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
~Richard B. Sheridan

[Kobi]

Margaret Fuller, American writer, journalist, and philosopher, was part of the Transcendentalist circle. Margaret Fuller's "conversations" encouraged the women of Boston to develop their intellectual capacities. In 1845 Margaret Fuller published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, now considered an early feminist classic.
------------------------

• Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

• Let it not be said, whenever there is energy or creative genius, "She has a masculine mind."

[Tony]

No good deed goes unpunished.

Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.

Karma is a bitch. (thankfully).

It is what it is. (my life mantra).

[Talon]

A hero is also someone who is branded as being a coward for not doing something when he knows it may hurt others.

[Kätzchen]

"Float like a butterfly: Sting like a bee,"

(Cassius Clay ~>> Muhammad Ali)

[Kätzchen]

Luck exists in the leftovers (literally).

Meaning: There is luck in the last helping.

[Kätzchen]

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way,” ― Charles Bukowski

[Kätzchen]

http://ist1-3.filesor.com/pimpandhost.com/5/8/4/0/58408/E/W/1/7/EW17/3641249742_a1ee485b22_b.jpg


“But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.”
― Pablo Neruda

[Tucker]

"Well-behaved women rarely make history."

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/315441_10151148381887755_188079089_n.jpg

[gotoseagrl]

It is not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left. Hubert Humphrey

[Kobi]

Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist whose early activism including working against the Vietnam War, became a strong voice for the position that pornography is a tool by which men control, objectify, and subjugate women. With Catherine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin helped draft a Minnesota ordinance that did not outlaw pornography but allowed victims of rape and other sexual crimes to sue pornographers for damage, under the logic that the culture created by pornography supported sexual violence against women.

----------------------------------

• Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination.

• The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.

• The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.

• Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity.

• We have a double standard, which is to say, a man can show how much he cares by being violent -- see, he's jealous, he cares -- a woman shows how much she cares by how much she's willing to be hurt; by how much she will take; how much she will endure.

• Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation. The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.

[Tony]

"There, but for the grace of God, go I".

This is something I find myself repeating more than once a day. If I find myself judging someone's situation, their lack of prevention that put them there;
If I see someone in a really bad place.

I believe that we all have the responsibly to take care of our brothers, sisters & strangers. The better place we're in, the more we should do. Be grateful we have what we have & help those with less than.

When we're in a really bad place, remember, someone always has it worse.

"There, but for the grace of God go I".

[Katniss]

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it's your eyes that close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

Katniss

[Spirit Dancer]

The real secret of happiness is simply this: to be willing
to live and let live, and to know very clearly in one's own mind
that the unpardonable sin is to be an unpleasant person.

Galen Starr Ross

[spritzerJ]

The real secret of happiness is simply this: to be willing
to live and let live, and to know very clearly in one's own mind
that the unpardonable sin is to be an unpleasant person.

Galen Starr Ross

Putting this on my "I carry you everywhere binder at work". Thank you!

[Tucker]

“The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.”
― David Rakoff, Half Empty


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mortL9r9cZM/TNzVBoNJ0KI/AAAAAAAACM0/FUZsmiLloh0/s400/rakoff

[Janstevie]

A repair shop:

WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING. (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR - THE BELL DOESN'T WORK)

[DMW]

“We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.”


― Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life

[DMW]

“But it does not seem that I can trust anyone,' said Frodo.
Sam looked at him unhappily. 'It all depends on what you want,' put in Merry. 'You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin--to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours--closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

[DMW]

Loyalty is the pledge of truth to oneself and others.
Ada Velez-Boardley

[Kobi]

Sojourner Truth was born a slave, and became a popular spokeperson for abolition, women's rights, and temperance. Her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech is known in several variants, because Sojourner Truth herself did not write it down.
--------------------------------

• There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again. -- Equal Rights Convention, New York, 1867

• If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!

• Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

• Religion without humanity is poor human stuff.

[spritzerJ]

my choice is what I choose to do
and if I'm causing no harm
it shouldn't bother you
your choice is who you choose to be
and if your causin' no harm
then you're alright with me

burn one down... Ben Harper

[Electrocell]

Kindness is a language we all can speak.

Even the deaf can hear it and the blind

can see it. (Mother Teresa)

[FeminineAllure]

He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity. – William Samuel Johnson.

[FeminineAllure]

Some days there won't be a song in your heart. Sing anyway.
-- Emory Austin


Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one.
-- Chinese Proverbs

What happens to a person is less significant than what happens within him.
-- Louis L. Mann

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
-- Bernice Johnson Reagon

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, un-forgiveness, selfishness and fears.
-- Glenn Clark

Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.
Jack Buck

[sara-bera]

“You can do anything, but not everything.” -David Allen

[Kobi]

Margaret Mead was an anthropologist known for her work on the relationship of culture and personality. Mead's early work stressed the cultural basis of gender roles while later she wrote about the biological influence on male and female behaviors, too. She became a prominent lecturer and writer on family and child-rearing issues.

-----------------------------

• In 1976: We women are doing pretty well. We're almost back to where we were in the twenties.

• Because of their age-long training in human relations -- for that is what feminine intuition really is -- women have a special contribution to make to any group enterprise.

• It has been a woman's task throughout history to go on believing in life when there was almost no hope.

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

• If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.

• If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

• Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.

[Spirit Dancer]

Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert
can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

Taisen Deshimaru

[spiritfemme7]

My favorite saying is, "who cares?!!!!" lol!!

[Katniss]

"Maritime" by Nizar Qabbani

In the blue harbor of your eyes
Blow rains of melodious lights,
Dizzy suns and sails
Painting their voyage to endlessness.

In the blue harbor of your eyes
Is an open sea window,
And birds appear in the distance
Searching for islands still unborn.

In the blue harbor of your eyes
Snow falls in July.
Ships laden with turquoise
Spill over the sea and are not drowned.

In the blue harbor of your eyes
I run on the scattered rocks like a child
Breathing the fragrance of the sea
And return an exhausted bird.

In the blue harbor of your eyes
Stones sing in the night.
Who has hidden a thousand poems
In the closed book of your eyes?

If only, if only I were a sailor,
If only somebody'd give me a boat,
I would furl my sails each evening
In the blue harbor of your eyes.

Katniss

[Nomad]

"nothing gives human beings pain longer or so persistently plagues the human memory than questions which have never been adequately answered. every parent who has survived a child, every lover who is lost to the one they live and breathe for, every person who realizes that they have egregiously harmed another, every culture whose prophets and wise people seem to have abandoned them to chaos has experienced great pain over the same unanswered question: 'why?'

the lack of an answer to that question, an answer we can understand and except, causes a gnawing ache in the chest and a loss of equilibrium from which we never fully recover. we only learn to go on without the sort of balance we had before and hope that one day we will learn not to notice the emptiness left behind in our hearts. this, my dear friends, is where we must come together and embrace compassion for one another with great urgency. compassion for every muslim. for every sikh. for every pagan. for every buddhist. for every jew. for every christian. for every agnostic. for every athiest. for every law abiding citizen and every criminal. for every teacher and every student. for every leader and every working person; for the poorest among us and the richest. for every woman, man and child. for every straight person and gay person. for every race, ethnicity, religion and philosophy, ability, size, shape and kind of human being we should have compassion because each and every one of these people understands the grief that arises from an unanswered 'why'. the blank, painful space of 'why?' is never filled entirely, never heals fully and it is the one thing all humans know. from this commonality all other common threads can be interwoven. we all know the grief of the unanswered 'why?' and so we know too the strength it takes to go on from that void of understanding. it is with this commonality in mind that we should begin our work toward peace. we must begin by acknowledging the grief we have in common over our own painfully unanswered 'why?' " Desmond Tutu

[Arwen]

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

[ruffryder]

"It only takes one person to change your life - You"

[ruffryder]

Explore every thought in depth. Be above the drama of the Situation. Deepak Chopra

[spiritfemme7]

"What you think about, you bring about." I read "The Secret", and watched the movie, it's amazing and so true! (have a vision board too!) I recommend it to anyone and everyone!

[Kobi]

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, worked first as a nurse where she learned first-hand of the health and social problems of too many pregnancies. Margaret Sanger spent time in jail to fight for sex education, and for distributing contraceptive information and contraceptives. Margaret Sanger lived long enough to see the practice of birth control declared a constitutional right (for married couples) in 1965.
---------------------------

• No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

• Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.

• When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race.

The real hope of the world lies in putting as painstaking thought into the business of mating as we do into other big businesses.

• Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.

[The JD]

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." - Noam Chomsky

[Janstevie]

No one looks back on their life and remembers the nights they got plenty of sleep.

[Kätzchen]

“Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic,” — John Henry Jowett


“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude,” — Denis Waitley


”The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.” — Richard Bach


“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust

[Kobi]

Rebecca West (1892 - 1983) was the pen name of Cicely Isabel Fairfield. A feminist, social critic and public intellectual, her range of topics and genres was wide. Her son, Anthony West, was a product of her long affair with H. G. Wells.

---------------

• I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

[Katniss]

Lot's Wife

They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now--every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.


Wislawa Szymbor


Katniss

[FeminineAllure]

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.”
Galileo Galilei quotes

[Kent]

A clear purpose is the starting point of
ALL ACHIEVEMENT..

[Blade]

Proverbs 18:6

A fools lips brings him strife, and his mouth invites a beating.

Yeah this really is in the Bible

[Mrs Arcstriker]

Sunflower Sutra
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves
rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes
Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog
and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays
obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance
of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
modern--all that civilization spotting your
crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs
& sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
grime, while you cursed the heavens of the
railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
flower? when did you look at your skin and
decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?
the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed
by our own seed & golden hairy naked
accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black
formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening
sitdown vision.
Allen Ginsberg

Berkeley, 1955

[Mrs Arcstriker]

Oh, and this is the quote I used in my HS yearbook...

"We can forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato

It would be a couple of decades before I would understand how true this is...

[Kobi]

Journalist, novelist, writer.

A syndicated columnist for the New York Times and later a contributing editor and columnist for Newsweek, Anna Quindlen began her career in more traditional reporting assignments, moving to a column about New York daily life, and then writing her long-running bi-weekly column while spending more time at home raising three children. Anna Quindlen has also written novels, non-fiction books, and children's books. She is notable for her ruminations on life from the perspective of a woman.

--------------------------------

• Just as we fooled ourselves that the end of discriminatory laws would soon lead to racial harmony, so we thought that increased access to education, advancement and male-only arenas would erase the attitudes that have led some men to treat women like children, fools and punching bags.

• This sense of otherness is the single most pernicious force in American discourse. The not-like-us ethos makes so much bigotry possible: Racism, sexism, homophobia. It divides the country as surely as the Mason-Dixon line once did. And it makes for mean-spirited and punitive politics and social policy.

• But never fear, gentlemen; castration was really not the point of feminism, and we women are too busy eviscerating one another to take you on.

• We want things to be easy for our children, and we know from sad experience that the world can be unkind to girls who do not please, who speak out, who go their own way. But we know from experience, too, that the role of the good girl can be a hollow one, with nothing at the center except other people's expectations where your character might have been.

[girl_dee]

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Edgar Allan Poe

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
John Lennon

[JAGG]

It is better to have men ask why you have no statue, than why you have one. -Unknown

What we do not understand we do not possess. -Goethe


It is double the pleasure to cheat a cheater. -Jean de la Fontaine

[Spirit Dancer]

We don't recieve wisdom; we must diiscover it for ourselves, after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

~ Marcel Proust ~

[Fancy]

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

~William Shakespeare

[puddin']

"you don't become great by trying to be great. you become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process." ~madame curie

[Talon]

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins...
It is less difficult to know that it has begun.


~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[Semantics]

Although lovable (her signature tic, that absentminded way of blowing her hair out of her face couldn’t be surpassed in charm by Audrey Hepburn),
also blessed with the enviable properties of a mink coat—
graceful, unreasonable and impractical no matter what she was draped over, whether couches or people
(a quality that didn’t diminish even when she was marginally torn and tatty, as she was now)—
[she] was nevertheless one of those people whose personality proved to be the bane of modern mathematicians.
She was neither flat nor a solid shape.
She showed no symmetry at all.
Trigonometry, Calculus and Statistics all proved useless.
Her Pie Chart was a muddle of arbitrary wedges, her Line Graph, a silhouette of the Alps. And just when one listed her under Chaos Theory—
Butterfly Effects, Weather Predictions, Fractals, Bifurcation diagrams and whatnot—she showed up as an equilateral triangle, sometimes even a square.

Marisha Pessl

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

[Katniss]

I Remember You As You Were
I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.
Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
The leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.
I feel your eyes travelling, and the autumn is far off:
Grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
Towards which my deep longing migrated
And my kisses fell, happy as embers.
Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.



Katniss

[Ascot]

Grammar; the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit.

[spiritfemme7]

I want the butch, the whole butch, and nothing but the butch so help me God! lol!

[spiritfemme7]

oh one more good one: Don't hate me because you ain't me!!!! lmao!!!

[Kobi]

Adrienne Rich was first published as a poet in 1951, when she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. Her poetry has reflected her own life changes and many roles.

Adrienne Rich's feminism emerged in mid-career, and many of her later poems express a political rage and search for sisterhood and creative language.

----------------------

• Women have been the truly active people in all cultures, without whom human society would long ago have perished, though our activity has most often been on the behalf of men and children.

• I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement is saying that we have come to an edge of history when men - insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea - have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included.

• Much male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide the breast, the lullaby, the continuous attention associated by the infant with the mother. Much male fear of feminism is infantilism -- the longing to remain the mother's son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him.

• How we dwelt in two worlds the daughters and the mothers in the kingdom of the sons.

[JAGG]

You are only what you are , when no one is looking. -Robert C. Edwards


To accept a benefit is to sell one's freedom. - Latin proverb


Better to wear out, than to rust out.- Unknown

[Katniss]

VIII
I can see myself years back at Sunion,
hurting with an infected foot, Philoctetes
in woman’s form, limping the long path,
lying on a headland over the dark sea,
looking down the red rocks to where a soundless curl
of white told me a wave had struck,
imagining the pull of that water from that height,
knowing deliberate suicide wasn’t my métier,
yet all the time nursing, measuring that wound.
Well, that’s finished. The woman who cherished
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

Adrienne Rich

Katniss

[Talon]

Love is more than words. It is demonstrated through actions.
Love is manifested in the day-to-day occurrences of small kindnesses and spoken words.
Love is lending a patient ear and taking the time to care. (w)

[spritzerJ]

“Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on giving as good as they get.”--Elbert Hubbard

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”--Mahatma Gandhi

“No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.”--G. K. Chesterton

“The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed- It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.”--William Shakespeare

“The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.”--Henry David Thoreau

[Kobi]

Feminist, writer, and educator bell hooks (she prefers the lower case spelling) is a social critic concerned with issues of sexism and racism.

-------------------------------

• If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching difference to privilege.

• In a culture of domination, preoccupation with victimage is inevitable.

• As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.

• Since our society continues to be primarily a "Christian" culture masses of people continue to believe that god has ordained that women be subordinate to men in the domestic household.

• I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society -- because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not.

• The overall impact of postmodernism is that many other groups now share with black folks a sense of deep alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of sense of grounding even if it is not informed by shared circumstance.

[Fancy]

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

Amelia Earhart

[Spirit Dancer]

Mindfulness makes our eyes, our heart, our non-toothache, the moon, and the trees
deep and beautiful. And when we touch our suffering with mindfulness, we begin
to transform it. Mindfulness is like a mother holding her baby in her arms and caring
for her baby’s pain. When our pain is held by mindfulness it loses some of its strength. . . .
Mindfulness recognizes what is there, and concentration allows you to be deeply
present with whatever it is. Concentration is the ground of happiness.
If you live twenty-four hours a day in mindfulness and concentration, one day is a lot.

Thich Nhat Hanh

[Katniss]

Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning. ”
― Pablo Neruda


Katniss---

[Kätzchen]

So many people
Advised me against you;
How glad I am
We could not resist.


(found on a poetry banner while riding the Train)

[Kätzchen]

"You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you,"

-- Mary Tyler Moore

[Kätzchen]

Diving Into The Wreck

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
....
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

-- Adrienne Rich (1972)

[Kätzchen]

"cosmic oceans

raise your head to the sky

you know we are alive

one burst, and we are breathing, breathing...

drop down your anchor dear

you know we are not lost

the sea it makes us free, free..."

-- Lyrics from Sun Glitters
by Cosmic Oceans (Ft. Steffaloo).

4m_WeVbF1NE

[Reader]

The Brave

Fear can defeat love only if the love lacks faith.
Love, accompanied by faith, is insurmountable.
It is inevitable, most irresistible and certainly not for the faint of heart.

[Soon]

“I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”
― Augusten Burroughs

[FeminineAllure]

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Steve Jobs

[Kobi]

Marilyn French is the author of The Women's Room (), a 1970s feminist landmark novel that drew much criticism for giving women little hope of achieving happiness in relationships with men; Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals, a book of essays; The War against Women, amd a three-volume women's history overview, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women.

-------------------------------------------------

• Feminism isn't a question of what kind of genitals you possess, it's a kind of moral view. It's what you think with your head and feel with your heart.

• (Feminism defined): the belief that women matter as much as men do.

• My goal in life is to change the entire social and economic structure of western civilization, to make it a feminist world.

• Women are afraid in a world in which almost half the population bears the guise of the predator, in which no factor -- age, dress, or color-distinguishes a man who will harm a woman from one who will not.

[Soon]

A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening us.

--Pema Chodron

[Katniss]

Serenade
Written by Pablo Neruda

With my hand I gather in this emptiness,
the bewildering night, the starry families
a chorus still more silent than the silence,
a moon sound, something secret, a triangle,
a chalked geometry.
It is the night of the ocean, a third solitude,
a quivering which opens doors and wings.
The mysterious and intangible population
trembles and washes over the names of the estuary.

Night, the sea’s name, homeland, roots, rose!




Katniss

[girl_dee]

*Close your legs and open your brain*

SYR

[Prudence]

He who can take advice is sometimes superior to he who can give it. ..........Karl von Knebel

[Prudence]

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves........Will Durant

[puddin']

http://www.mckuen.com/poetry/age.htm

[mustangjeano]

My whole life, My whole soul, My whole spirit is to blow that horn..... Louis Armstrong

[Kent]

Get quotes daily
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Bob Marley > Quotes

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”
― Bob Marley

[Kent]

If you don't have something good to say about someone, don't say anything at all...

[Kent]

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect - you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break - her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”
― Bob Marley

[Kent]

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
― Bob Marley

[Kent]

“He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.”
― Bob Marley

[Kent]

"The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively”
― Bob Marley

[Kent]

“I don't stand for black man's side, I don't stand for white man's side, I stand for God's side.”
― Bob Marley

[Glenn]

There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. ~ Old English proverb

[Kobi]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in a variety of genres, including "The Yellow Wallpaper," a short story highlighting the "rest cure" for women in the 19th century; Woman and Economics, a sociological analysis of women's place; and Herland , a feminist utopia novel. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in favor of equality between men and women.

--------------------------------------------------------

• And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.

• There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver.

• In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed for men and forbidden to women.

[Kätzchen]

Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of soul, but is not compatible with innocence.
-- Angela Carter

[Kätzchen]

Wonder is retained by wise pondering. -- Ravi Zacharias

[Kätzchen]

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. :stillheart: Rachel Carson

[Kätzchen]

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. :stillheart: Marcel Proust

[Kätzchen]

You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build wings on your way down. -- Annie Dillard

[Kätzchen]

The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his incouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there. :stillheart: Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)

[Kätzchen]

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
--Thomas Merton

[Kätzchen]

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

-- Thomas Merton

[JAGG]

Silence is one of the hardest things to refute. -Josh Billings

Do not ask a blind man which is the right way. - German Proverb

There is no wisdom like frankness.-Ben Disraeli

[thedivahrrrself]

" I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
Douglas Adams

[InkSlinger]

"A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there." - Meister Eckhart


"There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence." - Meister Eckhart

[Kobi]

Mary Daly, a feminist theologian, was noted for her strong critique of patriarchy and of traditional religion, especially the Roman Catholic church.

---------------------------------------------
• If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination.

• Tokenism does not change stereotypes of social systems but works to preserve them, since it dulls the revolutionary impulse.

• Women have had the power of naming stolen from us.

• 'God's plan' is often a front for men's plans and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil.

• I had explained that a woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan.

• Patriarchy is the homeland of males; it is Father Land; and men are its agents.

• Women who are Pirates in a phallocentric society are involved in a complex operation. First, it is necessary to Plunder -- that is, righteously rip off -- gems of knowledge that the patriarchs have stolen from us. Second, we must Smuggle back to other women our Plundered treasures. In order to invert strategies that will be big and bold enough for the next millennium, it is crucial that women share our experiences: the chances we have taken and the choices that have kept us alive. They are my Pirate's battle cry and wake-up call for women who I want to hear.

• The fact is that we live in a profoundly anti-female society, a misogynistic "civilization" in which men collectively victimize women, attacking us as personifications of their own paranoid fears, as The Enemy. Within this society it is men who rape, who sap women's energy, who deny women economic and political power.

• Males do indeed deeply identify with "unwanted fetal tissue," for they sense as their own condition the role of controller, possessor, inhabitor of women. Draining female energy, they feel "fetal." Since this perpetual fetal state is fatal to the Self of the eternal mother (Hostess), males fear women's recognition of this real condition, which would render them infinitely "unwanted." For this attraction/need of males for female energy, seen for what it is, is necrophilia -- not in the sense of love for actual corpses, but of love for those victimized into a state of living death.

• Since women on average survive men by a significant number of years, it should not be surprising that gynecology is functioning to remedy this unacceptable situation.

• The gynecological profession and the popularizing media have combined their efforts to make the poisoning of women appear acceptable. Just as popping The Pill is both "normal" and normative for younger women, so is estrogen replacement therapy for their mothers and older sisters.

[Janstevie]

Let’s commit the perfect crime… I’ll steal your heart, and you steal mine.

[Maria]

I like long walks, especially when they're taken by someone who annoys me. (Fred Allen)

[JAGG]

Any idiot can face a crisis. It is the day to day living that wears you out.-Anton Chekhov

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. _ Aristotle

Too many people expect wonders from democracy,when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it. _ Walter Winchell

[UofMfan]

“If you spend too much time trying to find out what is good or bad about someone else, you'll forget your own soul and end up exhausted and defeated by the energy you have wasted in judging others.” ~ Paulo Coelho (Aleph)

[Kobi]

Robin Morgan is known for her feminist activism and writing. She is a poet, a novelist, and has also written non-fiction. Several of her anthologies are classics of feminism, including Sisterhood Is Powerful.

Robin Morgan served as an editor of Ms. Magazine 1990-1993 after serving as a contributing editor for many years.

Robin Morgan, as a child actress, had a radio show and appeared on the television series I Remember Mama.

--------------------------------------------

• It isn't until you begin to fight in your own cause that you (a) become really committed to winning, and (b) become a genuine ally of other people struggling for their freedom.

• We are the women men warned us about.

• And let's put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism -- the lie that there can be such a thing as "men's liberation groups." Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group specifically because of a "threatening" characteristic shared by the latter group -- skin color or sex or age, etc.

• In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men -- but in the short run it's going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily.

• [A] legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, yellow, red, and white women —- with men relating to that the best they can.

[InkSlinger]

"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." - Albert Camus

[Nomad]

"....there is a limit circumscribed to your time - if you do not use it to clear away your clouds, it will be gone, and you will be gone, and the opportunity will not return." --Marcus Aurelius

[Jesse]

“Decide That You Want It More Than You Are Afraid of It” - Bill Cosby

[Kätzchen]

"But nightshirts aren't dangerous," Pippi assured her.
"They don't bite anybody except in self-defense..."

-- Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren).


http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2009/356/c/8/Pippi_Longstocking_by_ORDOS_Kety.jpg

[JAGG]

Avoid a questioner, for he is also a tattller. -Latin Proverb


The timid are frightened before danger, a coward during, the brave are frightened afterwards.- Jean Paul Richter

In doing what we ought, we deserve no praise. -Latin Proverb

[Spirit Dancer]

Your treasure is deep within you: it holds all you need.
Hui-Hai

[Spirit Dancer]

An error is not a mistake until you refuse to fix it.
Anonymous

[Kobi]

Susan Faludi is a journalist who wrote Backlash:The Undeclared War against Women, 1991, which argued that feminism and women's rights were undermined by the media and corporations -- just as the previous wave of feminism lost ground to a previous version of backlash, convincing women that feminism and not inequality was the source of their frustration.

---------------------------------------------

• Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to "choose" between public justice and private happiness. It asks that women be free to define themselves -- instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men.

• The internal qualities once said to embody manhood - sure footedness, inner strength, confidence of purpose -- are merchandised to men to enhance their manliness. What passes for masculinity is being extracted and sold back to men. Literally in the case of Viagra.

• The demand that women "return to femininity" is a demand that the cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful.

• As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it.

[InkSlinger]

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” ― Madeleine L'Engle

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?” ― John Lennon

[SugarFemme]

“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.”

[nycfem]

This is from Lesbian Connection, the Notes from Our Elders (65+) section:

"Don't be afraid of being alone because ultimately, having nothing is better than having trouble. If you feel lonely, remind yourself that when you have nothing, you can put something good there. But when you have trouble, it's all you deal with."

-Toni Armstrong, 86-year-old lesbian

[JAGG]

This is from Lesbian Connection, the Notes from Our Elders (65+) section:

"Don't be afraid of being alone because ultimately, having nothing is better than having trouble. If you feel lonely, remind yourself that when you have nothing, you can put something good there. But when you have trouble, it's all you deal with."

-Toni Armstrong, 86-year-old lesbian

So true. Thanks for sharing .

[JAGG]

Whatever is good to know, is difficult to learn. -Greek Proverb

A person who who commits inhuman acts, invariably excuses himself by saying, " I'm only human after all." - Sydney J. Harris

99% of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.-George Washington Carver

[Medusa]

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”

--Neil Gaiman

[gaea]

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned....

i dont know who said it however i like it...

[Hollylane]

This is from Lesbian Connection, the Notes from Our Elders (65+) section:

"Don't be afraid of being alone because ultimately, having nothing is better than having trouble. If you feel lonely, remind yourself that when you have nothing, you can put something good there. But when you have trouble, it's all you deal with."

-Toni Armstrong, 86-year-old lesbian

This is absolutely true, in my opinion...:) Thank you for posting this!

[Jesse]

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

[Jesse]

Another personal favorite of mine from cummings;

...here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

[cheekyali]

Where we go depends upon where we know. And where we know depends upon where we go - Tess Gerristen

[InkSlinger]

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky." Rabindranath Tagore


"Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come." - Robert Schuller


"It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake." - Frederick Douglass

[FeminineAllure]

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!
Bob Marley

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.
Robert A. Heinlein

[Kobi]

Audre Lorde once described herself as a "black-lesbian feminist mother lover poet." Born to parents from the West Indies, Audre Lorde grew up in New York City. She wrote and occasionally published poetry and was active in the 1960s movements for civil rights, feminism, and against the Vietnam War. She was a critic of what she saw as feminism's blindness to racial differences and fear of lesbians being involved.

-----------------------


• The energies I gain from my work help me neutralize those implanted forces of negativity and self-destructiveness that is White America's way of making sure I keep whatever is powerful and creative within me unavailable, ineffective, and non-threatening.

• What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman's face? What woman's terms of oppression have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold winds of self-scrutiny?

• We welcome all women who can meet us, face to face, beyond objectification and beyond guilt.

• Every woman I have ever known has made a lasting impression on my soul.

• Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me -- so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins.

• I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.

• For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.

• But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.

• Part of the lesbian consciousness is an absolute recognition of the erotic within our lives and, taking that a step further, dealing with the erotic not only in sexual terms.

• We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.

• My Black woman's anger is a molten pond at the core of me, my most fiercely guarded secret. Your silence will not protect you!

• Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.

• As I have said elsewhere, it is not the destiny of black America to repeat white America's mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life. If black men continue to do so, defining 'femininity' in its archaic European terms, this augurs ill for our survival as a people, let alone our survival as individuals. Freedom and future for blacks do not mean absorbing the dominant white male disease.

• As black people, we cannot begin our dialogue by denying the oppressive nature of male privilege. And if black males choose to assume that privilege, for whatever reason, raping, brutalizing, and killing women, then we cannot ignore black male oppression. One oppression does not justify another.

[Fancy]

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.


Martin Luther King, Jr.

[ntxgirl]

Kahlil Gibran - On Love

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

[Jesse]

http://invinciblesummers.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/peace.jpg

[Kobi]

Feminist and journalist, Gloria Steinem was a key figure in the women's movement from 1969. She founded Ms. magazine, starting in 1972. Her good looks and quick, humorous responses made her the media's favorite spokesperson for feminism, but she was often attacked by the radical elements in the women's movement for being too middle-class-oriented. She was an outspoken advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment and helped found the National Women's Political Caucus.
---------------------------------------

• Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.

• The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.

• A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

• We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

• But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, "How can I combine career and family?"

• For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.

[InkSlinger]

"Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone." - Paul Tillich


"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad" - C. S. Lewis


"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt

[JAGG]

If you lend a friend 5 dollars and never see him again, it was well worth it. - Dutch Proverb

I did not attend his funeral; but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it. - Mark Twain

Do not rejoice at my grief, for when mine is old, yours will be new. - Spanish Proverb

[Jesse]

“What day is it?"
It's today," squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day," said Pooh.”
― A.A. Milne (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/81466.A_A_Milne)


If you have one eye on yesterday, and one eye on tomorrow, you're going to be cockeyed today. Anonymous

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
- Abraham Maslow (http://www.essentiallifeskills.net/humanpotential.html)

[Janstevie]

When it comes to thought, some people stop at nothing.

[Kobi]

First Jewish Congresswoman, Bella Abzug was known for her wide-brimmed hats and fiery personality, as well as her work for feminism, peace, and civil liberties.

----------------------------------------

• They used to give us a day--it was called International Women's Day. In 1975 they gave us a year, the Year of the Woman. Then from 1975 to 1985 they gave us a decade, the Decade of the Woman. I said at the time, who knows, if we behave they may let us into the whole thing. Well, we didn't behave and here we are.

• The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened.

• I am not being facetious when I say that the real enemies in this country are the Pentagon and its pals in big business.

• I am not elevating women to sainthood, nor am I suggesting that all women share the same views, or that all women are good and all men bad.

• The inside operation of Congress -- the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building -- is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.

• I began wearing hats as a young lawyer because it helped me to establish my professional identity. Before that, whenever I was at a meeting, someone would ask me to get coffee.

[InkSlinger]

"I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind." - Emily Bronte


"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." - Oscar Wilde

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." - C. S. Lewis

[JAGG]

The happiest people are those who are too busy to notice. - Unknown

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated. -George Bernard Shaw


The hearts testimony is stronger than a thousand witnesses. -Turkish Proverb

[Jesse]

“What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”
― Walt Whitman (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1438.Walt_Whitman)

[Kätzchen]

House guarded by a shotgun.
(Guess which days)

[Cid]

When the power of love is stronger
than the love of power
there will be peace.

-Jimi Hendrix

[VintageFemme]

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand. -Neil Armstrong

[Duchess]

"Just let me go, we have to be able to criticize what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if you're not trying to make something better, then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way." (http://www.great-quotes.com/quote/2217930)
Ani Difranco (http://www.great-quotes.com/quotes/author/Ani/Difranco)(f)

[girl_dee]

Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

[girl_dee]

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
― Abraham Lincoln

[FeminineAllure]

"Don't change so people will like you.
Be yourself and the right people will love the real you."

Facebook

[FeminineAllure]

~My Love~

My Love,
You have stirred deep inside of me
A place so oddly familiar...
A place where the light in me shines so brightly
Through your boldness at times...
I can see with a clarity so clearly
Your pure intentions...
Like the moon sits upon the backdrop
Of an Indigo sky so peacefully.

I comprehend the many volumes you speak in silences
And each meaning conveyed in your need to withdrawal...
From your musings thoughtfully abstracted the truth is always surrendered.

My love,
I stand right before you
Though miles from your shore.
And yet my soul knows exactly where to look
and how to decipher
the many truths and secrets you have buried
upon the shoreline
deep within each grain of sand
on so many of your solitary walks
Along the beach...
Feeling the breeze
Wisping softly against your face.
Know you do not walk alone
For these are kisses from me.

I am strong enough to look into the depths of your soul
I see past just your eyes...
I remember the times I spent deciphering
Your blank stares. It is the truth of Our story today.

I cherish the memories so foreign to you now.
I long to compliment and complete you.
Like the color of Manganese
One must risk it's toxicity
To truly be able to see and appreciate it's awe. Like the risk in loving what we can't see
We still share the same moon, sun, stars...
Look no further to also find me.

My love,
Try to remember the promise I made to you
for each time we had to depart from here
from one another
I vowed to always return to meet you
At our safe haven.

But only once we learned
How to recognize
And where to look for and find the truth.
The key lies in being ready to hear the truth.

Hidden somewhere between the twilight's gleam
and the early morning dawn
Sparkles so many flickers of light
All vying for your undivided attention.
But only one tiny flicker will endure
Choosing the right one
Finding it...
One must go through many tries first
Many trials. But none were in vain.

Yes, you are bright, bold, and a rarity.
Do you even remember where to look for me?
What to do once you find my slumbering soul?

No matter if you do or not
One thing is certain. No matter how far apart
We are in mere miles physically.
We share the same indigo sky...
Under the same full moon at the end of summer
Seek the beauty of it's simplicity in its complexity.

I hear a symphony speak to me in your silences.
Love...
Feel the purity in my burning passion for you
And with nothing more to test...
Nothing more to question...
Simply feel my beauty as you trust the
feeling of the gentle breeze running through your
Hair, body and being.
For under this Moon and Indigo sky
know that it is I that has kissed your face
Like the wind, like that breeze.
You can't see it...until its a tornado
But you can always feel its stirrings long before it appears.

[Katniss]

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.


Katniss~~ (apparently needing to keep the f*ck quiet for a change)

[SugarFemme]

http://shopittakestwo.com/uploaded/thumbnails/db_file_img_11561_600x600.jpg

[FeminineAllure]

Playing A Violin With Three Strings
Jack Riemer






On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.

If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight.

He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They
remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You
could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.

The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.

Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to
know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us.

Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

[Kobi]

Columnist Erma Bombeck was known for her quick wit and her wisdom about motherhood and family life.

-------------

• We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attaché cases and our three-piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

• I'm going to stop punishing my children by saying, "Never mind! I'll do it myself."

• Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.

• Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.

• When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, "I used everything you gave me."

[JAGG]

He who loses honor can lose nothing else. -Latin Proverb


What you don't know would make a great book. - Sydney Smith


Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.- Thomas Edison

[Katniss]

Playing A Violin With Three Strings
Jack Riemer


He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.


I had never heard this before and it is AMAZINGLY powerful and beautiful. It really touched me. Thank you so much for posting this.

Katniss~~

[Charming Texan]

http://spelb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/famousquotesinspiration-22.jpg

[ntxgirl]

We are all manifestations of a mystic power: the power of life, which has shaped all life, and which has shaped us all in our mother's womb. And this kind of wisdom lives in us, and it represents the force of this power, this energy, pouring into the field of time and space. But it's a transcendent energy. It's an energy that comes from a realm beyond our powers of knowledge. And that energy becomes bound in each of us - in this body - to a certain commitment. Now, the mind that thinks, the eyes that see, they can become so involved in concepts and local, temporal tasks that we become bound up and don't let this energy flow through. And then we become sick. The energy is blocked, and we are thrown off center... So the psychological problem, the way to keep from becoming blocked, is to make yourself transparent to the transcendent...

And one of the problems with the popularization of religious ideas is that the god becomes a final fact and is no longer itself transparent to the transcendent. This is what Lao-Tzu means when he says, in the...Tao-te Ching, "The Tao that can be named is not the Tao." Make your god transparent to the transcendent and it doesn't matter what his name is.

-Joseph Campbell
Pathways to Bliss

[Duchess]

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

~Plato (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/plato109438.html)(f)

[ntxgirl]

The old voice of the ocean, the bird-chatter of little rivers,
(Winter has given them gold for silver
To stain their water and bladed green for brown to line their banks)
From different throats intone one language.
So I believe if we were strong enough to listen without
Divisions of desire and terror
To the storm of the sick nations, the rage of the hunger smitten cities,
Those voices also would be found
Clean as a child's; or like some girl's breathing who dances alone
By the ocean-shore, dreaming of lovers.

[Nomad]

there is no love that lasts forever. everything ends. all relationships should begin with the understanding that love will eventually be lost for some reason. death, at least, comes to us all. the memory of love might last forever but love itself always comes and goes. losing love is the only way we seem to learn to comprehend its worth.


pema chodron

[sara-bera]

"Some cause happiness where ever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

[ntxgirl]

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
- Michel de Montaigne

Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that is gone.
- William Shakespeare

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
- Susan Ertz

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.
- Emerson

[Ginger]

(probably already done here but if so I missed it...)


Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.

[JAGG]

Let him that would move the world , first move himself. - Socrates


Ingratitude is the daughter of every vice. - French Proverb


Fortune sides with he who dares.- Virgil

[Kobi]

Simone de Beauvoir (http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/de_beauvoir.htm) was a writer on feminism and existentialism. She also wrote novels. Her book "The Second Sex" is a feminist classic. It is based on the idea that, while men and women may have different tendencies, each person is unique, and it is culture which has enforced a uniform set of expectations of what is "feminine," as contrasted to what is "human" which is equated with what is male. Beauvoir argued that women can free themselves, through individual decisions and collective action.

-----------------------------

• This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

• Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

• Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.

• When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

• All oppression creates a state of war.

• However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.

[SugarFemme]

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.
When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.
They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent. His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Author unknown...

[Novelafemme]

Okay, we didn't work, and all
memories to tell you the truth aren't good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep
beside me and never dreamed afraid.

There should be stars for great wars
like ours.

~ Sandra Cisneros

[ntxgirl]

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.
- Norman Mailer

I don't possess these thoughts I have --- they possess me. I don't possess these feelings I have --- They obsess me.
― Ashly Lorenzana

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.
- Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

[ntxgirl]

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.
― Margaret Atwood

Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.
― Jeffrey McDaniel

I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.
― Emily Brontë

I want hym to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb hym and walk around for the rest of my days with hym encased in my skin.

I want.
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

[JAGG]

Even when I was young I suspected that much might be done in a better way.- Henry Ford Sr.

Trust instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kindness consists of loving people more than they deserve.- Joseph Joubert

[Duchess]

MAKE THIS A POSITIVE DAY

"Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words
Keep your words positive because you words become your behavior
Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits
Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values
Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny."

~Gandhi (f)

[Novelafemme]

"Whatever happens to you, don’t fall in despair. Even if all the doors are closed, a secret path will be there for you that no one knows. You can’t see it yet but so many paradises are at the end of this path. Be grateful! It is easy to thank after obtaining what you want, thank before having what you want."

Shams Tabrizi

[JAGG]

If you have 10,000 regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.- Winston Churchill

Laziness is often mistaken for patience. - French proverb


A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[Fancy]

‎"Don't let yourself be weighed down by what other people think, because in a few years, in a few decades, or in a few centuries, that way of thinking will have changed. Live now what others will only live in the future."

- Paulo Coelho, is a Brazilian lyricist, novelist, and author of 'The Alchemist'

[Nomad]

'people who live in glass houses shouldnt throw stones or skimp on the curtains' - mae west

[lusciouskiwi]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/253088_427583927291679_133481615_n.jpg

[Novelafemme]

Love is a river, jump into it. ~ Rumi

[JAGG]

Life consists of what a person is thinking about all day. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The opinion of the majority is not the final proof of what is right. - Schiller


Malice must go under the disguise of plainess, or else it is exposed.- Marquess of Halifax

[Sparkle]

“The people who are the hardest to love are the ones who need it the most.” - peaceful warrior

[Spirit Dancer]

“If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now. And when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.
― Masaru Emoto, The Secret Life of Water

[Kätzchen]

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,"

-King David-
(Psalms 119: 105)

http://www.artfixdaily.com/images/pr/Aug16_Dragonfly_Lamp.jpg

[JAGG]

A lot of folks confuse bad management with destiny. - Kin Hubbard

A sick mind can not endure any harshness. - Latin Proverb

Misfortune does not always come to injure. Italian Proverb

[FeminineAllure]

" No one can make you feel inferior without your permission." --Eleanor Roosevelt

[JAGG]

The trouble with going with the flow is, you might wind up getting sucked down the drain. - Unknown

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it... always. -Mahatma Gandhi


I like a man who grins when he fights. -Winston Churchill

[nycfem]

Cherish what you have rather than what you don't.

-mak ray

[Katniss]

Learning to Float

Relax. It's like love. Keep your lips
moist and parted, let your upturned hands
unfold like water lilies, palms exposed.

Breathe deeply, slowly. Forget chlorine
and how the cement bottom was stained
blue so the water looks clear

and Caribbean. Ignore the drowned mosquitoes,
the twigs that gather in the net
of your hair. The sun is your ticket,

your narcotic, blessing your chin,
the floating islands of your knees.
Shut your eyes and give yourself

to the pulsating starfish, purple and red,
that flicker on your inner lids.
Hallucination is part of the process,

like amnesia. Forget how you learned
to swim, forget being told
Don't panic. Don't worry. Let go

of my neck. It's only water. Don't think
unless you're picturing Chagall,
his watercolors of doves and rooftops,

lovers weightless as tissue,
gravity banished, the dissolving voices
of violins and panpipes. The man's hand

circles the woman's wrist so loosely,
what moors her permits her to float,
and she rises past the water's skin,

above verandas and the tossing heads
of willows. Her one link to earth,
his light—almost reluctant—touch, is a rope

unfurling, slipping her past the horizon,
into the cloud-stirring current. This far up,
what can she do but trust he won't let go?


Katniss~~

[Tommi]

When facing a single tree, if you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others.

When the eye is not set on one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye without limit.

But if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.

Takuan Soto

[Trey339]

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
Buddha

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
Buddha

[JAGG]

I have never been in a situation where having money, made it any worse. -Unknown

A bustling mother makes a slothful daughter.- Latin proverb


The right to speak your mind, doesn't automatically include the right to be taken seriously. Hubert Humphreys

[Mrs Arcstriker]

Even the devil himself does not know where women sharpen their knives.

~Latvian Proverb

[Duchess]

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

~Dalai Lama (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/dalailama166116.html) (f)

(http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/dalai_lama.html#)

[Fatale]

It wasn't good, really, the way it went,
but it was right.
When an end must begin,
I let it.

The smell, the sight, the rasp of it,
I had to relinquish my grasp on it,
The tempestuous tumult portending torpor,

A soul laid fallow
in order to bloom again.

~Fatale

[Fatale]

Crashed on my shores,
shell cracking, she'll shock.
Briny bitch licking salty wounds,
won't take a grain but will litter a mile.

I shall wear the husk of your rattle
at my throat,
Keep the fleshed fangs still.

Gouging your way out to the in,
I am not right or empty.

Suttee on an icy pyre,
muslin lust quickening.
Widowed eventuality anneals.

Sometimes I won't,
sometimes I never will.
Venial vanity,
mortality in vein,
my pulses slam on the altar of your imagined.

Deserted crossroad bearing memories of the traveled,
I add mine to the path.

~Fatale

[Fatale]

That flavor you teased you were,
you're not.
Those flecks are not vanilla bean.

Thank God they're not.

That gentleness you claimed you had,
you don't.
Those passions aren't kind.

Thank God they're not.

The brilliance you try to deny,
you can't.
Such acumen will always shine.

Thank God you do.

Fatale

[Nomad]

sometimes when people are at their lowest, pain makes them do crazy things
sometimes when people do crazy things, they push us away
sometimes when people push us away, they need our love even more
sometimes when people need our love even more, they give us an opportunity to be the best we can be
so go ahead and push, i can take it
you ain't seen anything as strong as me
i'm a girl

- - -

limbo - being pushed away by one hand while being held onto with the other