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Friday, August 27, 2010

Phrase of the day August 27th 2010

A wonderful poem by Octavio Paz:

Space

By: Octavio Paz


No center, no above, no below
Ceaselessly devouring and engendering itself
Whirlpool space
And drop into height
Spaces
Clarities steeply cut
Suspended
By the night's flank
Black gardens of rock crystal
Flowering on a rod of smoke
White gardens exploding in the air
Space
One space opening up
Corolla
And dissolving
Space in space
All is nowhere
Place of impalpable nuptials

Octavio Paz

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Phrase of the day August 26th 2010

A beautiful poem by Pablo Neruda:

Always

By: Pablo Neruda

I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!




Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Phrase of the day August 25th 2010

"A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets." Steve Jobs.


Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Phrase of the day August 24th 2010

"The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching." Jean Piaget.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Phrase of the day August 23rd 2010

A wonderful poem by Walt Whitman:

O Me! O Life!

by Walt Whitman

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more
faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever
renew'd;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.




Saturday, August 21, 2010

Phrase of the day August 21st 2010

Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within which very diverse relations obtain but belonging to a single category: these are associative relations.

It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.

Ferdinand de Saussure.




Friday, August 20, 2010

Phrase of the day August 20th 2010:

"Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap." Hermann Hesse.



Thursday, August 19, 2010

Phrase of the day August 19th 2010

"All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired, although not in the hour or in the measure, or the very thing which they ask. Yet they will obtain something greater and more glorious than they had dared to ask." Martin Luther.




Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Phrase of the day August 18th 2010

"It has shown us all how our faith -- whatever our religion -- can inspire us to work together in friendship and peace for the sake of our own and future generations. This last year has reminded us that this world is not always an easy or a safe place to live in, but it is the only place we have." Queen Elizabeth.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Phrase of the day August 17th 2010

"Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes". Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.




Monday, August 16, 2010

Phrase of the day August 16th 2010

"From that imbalance rose the tragic results of the coming together of two worlds. It was the extermination of an ancient dream by the frenzy of a modern one, the destruction of myths by a desire for power. It was gold, modern weapons, and rational thought pitted against magic and gods: the outcome could not have been otherwise."Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio on The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Phrase of the day August 14th 2010

"We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us."

"Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner."

Walt Disney




Friday, August 13, 2010

Phrase of the day August 13th 2010

"When asked, 'What did God do before he created the universe?' St. Augustine didn´t reply, 'he was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions.' Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe." Stephen Hawking.



Thursday, August 12, 2010

Phrase of the day August 12th 2010

"This is a country which proves that it can make a difficult decision, a democratic decision, without fear, and that it is not afraid of threats and protests, ... On the other hand, it's a democratic country, in the sense that we can also protest, and we can also weep." Shimon Peres.




Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Phrase of the day August 11th 2010

"I've never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and didn't have the right attitude, didn't give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it; wasn't prepared and didn't have the whole program worked out." Ted Turner.





Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Phrase of the day August 10th 2010

"People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn't they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines... There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters."

"Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they'll give you as many chances as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHIN"

Bill Gates.




Monday, August 9, 2010

Phrase of the day August 9th 2010

"I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions."

"Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago."

Barack Obama.



Sunday, August 8, 2010

Phrase of the day August 8th 2010

"Asking how many times one should chant the mantra is like asking how much water should be given to a plant for it to yield fruit. Watering is required, but the amount of water depends on the nature of the plant, the climate, the quality of the soil, and so on. Water alone is not enough. The plant needs sunlight, fertilizer, air and protection from pests as well. Similarly, on the spiritual path, chanting the mantra is just one facet. Good deeds, good thoughts, and satsang [association with virtuous people] are also necessary. When all of these are present, then one gets the benefit according to God's will." Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, "Amma".


Friday, August 6, 2010

Phrase of the day August 6th 2010

"Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence." Jiddu Krishnamurti.




Thursday, August 5, 2010

Phrase of the day August 5th 2010

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." Buddha.




Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Phrase of the day August 4th 2010

"Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it." Patrick Süskind in Perfume: The story of a murderer.



Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Phrase of the day August 3rd 2010

"It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening of custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving poor... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science." Jawaharlal Nehru.




Monday, August 2, 2010

Phrase of the day August 2nd 2010

"These movies are asking sensitive questions about racial intolerance and Middle East politics. It's been an amazing year, very much like 1968, '69 and '70, when you suddenly see all of these political movies coming out at the same time, out of the watershed of politics. Some of it is due to our own insecurity about the voices representing us in government right now. We feel like our government has set us adrift, and we're trying to make our voices heard. We're telling them to be worried about these things." Steven Spielberg.