AVALON7 WISDOM CONGRATULATIONS ON DISCOVERING ONE OF THE FIRST HIDDEN PORTALS IN AVALON7. YOU HAVE PROVED YOURSELF WORTHY OF FURTHER ENLIGHTENMENT. READ ON.... One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. - Keshavan Nair "Your arrows do not carry," observed the Master, "because they do not reach far enough spiritually. You must act as if the goal were infinitely far off. For master archers it is in fact common experience that a good archer can shoot further with a medium-strong bow than an unspiritual archer can with the strongest. It does not depend on the bow, but on the presence of mind, on the vitality and awareness with which you shoot...." Zen and the Art of Archery “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. “We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.” And so good night, and good luck." Edward R. Murrow
Voltaire
-Earl Warren (1891-1974)
Booker T. Washington (1853-1915)
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"It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one" George Washington (1732-1799)
The future is something which everyone reaches at the
rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically,
they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new
evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
Imagination is the highest kite one can fly
If government were a product, selling it would be illegal. I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reasons, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. Henri Frederic Amiel Work while you have the light. You are responsible for
the talent that has been entrusted to you. The difference between what we do and what we are capable
of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems. Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion
without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without
moral passion is television. Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision
for the limits of the world. Of course I believe in luck. How otherwise to explain
the success of some people you detest? The horrors which we have seen, and the still greater
horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate,
untamable people are increasing in number throughout the world,
but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of
obedient, docile people. We are never more discontented with others than when we
are discontented with ourselves. Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally
outraged by silence. The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary:
men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born
with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other
virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous,
or honest. With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength
to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is
the foundation of integrity. Courage is going from failure to failure without losing
enthusiasm. I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of
your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten
bargain. The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was
an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes,
but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants
in whom you don't believe?" Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it
is stranger than we can imagine. To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the
ignorant. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in
a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects
all indirectly. One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've
been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of
the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a
charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is
bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone
wrong. Mediocrity doesn't mean average intelligence, it means
an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters. An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that
can be made in a very narrow field. The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love. "For as long as space exists, and sentient beings
endure, Shantideva How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something
but to be someone. Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content. You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for
something, sometime in your life. The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. Hunter S. Thompson In heaven all the interesting people are missing. Friedrich Nietzsche But we must not forget... this ritual expressed... certain ideas which lie at the very root of true religion, the fellowship of the worshippers with one another in their fellowship with the deity, and the consecration of the bonds of kinship as the type of all right ethical relations between man and man.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased William Robertson Smith
Godfrey of Ibelin: |