a world created by the dance of my hands, and me.   With grace and humility, I'll perform my dance for thee.    Egotism, beauty, goodness?  I have all three.
				Beauty will save the world. Dostoyevsky Human ingenuity can never devise anything more simple and more beautiful, or more to the purpose, than Nature does. Leonardo da Vinci The world’s greatest thinkers have often been amateurs, for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and for that a professional chair offers no special opportunities. Havelock Ellis Be..., ‘as though the emerald should say: “whatever happens I must be emerald.”’ Marcus Aurelius Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? Emerson The highest service we can perform fr others is to help them help themselves. Horace Mann Believe that you may understand. St. Augustine Love many things. Vincent Van Gogh And these are the two things, tenderness and beauty D. H. Lawrence I’m sure you agree that beauty is the only thing worth living for. Agatha Christie Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect. Emerson I can do anything. Just get me in the room. Then I’ll make it happen. Jennifer Lopez What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. Sigmund Freud Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining thins to them. Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince Rumi was onceso enraptured with God that he clung to a pole outside his house, swinging back and forth in ecstasy. From his lips poured joyous, drunken words about his Beloved, but these words weren’t the ordinary effusions of a lover seeing through rose-colored glasses. Rumi was a lover who had seen something at the depths of life. To him, God was everywhere, and every atom of the universe pulsated with the same divine rapture. The power that created the cosmos poured through Rumi’s veins, and the experience was not all pleasure. It was earth shaking: You go to bed crying and wake up the same, /You plead for what doesn’t come/ Until it darkens yours days./You give away everything, even your mind, / You sit down in the fire, wanting to become ashes,/And when you meet with a sword,/ You throw yourself on it. Rumi May I ask you something? Has jealousy destroyed vital relationships in your life? Do you look at special people as God’s gift to you, or do you look at the ways you don’t measure up to them? Do you recognize how God has blessed others and therefore give Him the praise, or do you see many things others have but you don’t? Or worse, do you consider yourself better than others based on how God has blessed you more? Pride can separate brothers and sisters in Christ as easily as envy. Shannon Ethridge Think, just think. You can, if you exercise will and persistence and mental calmness, think your way through anything. Your great tool is your mind. Norman Vincent Peale Realize that you have reserves of inner force. Let the challenge of your ambitions, of your aspirations, rouse your slumbering and often unused powers into action. Dare to be what your best self knows you ought to be; dare to be a bigger human being than you have ever been. Peale Do not take yourself too seriously, but believe in yourself completely. Work diligently. Think creatively. Do all possible to insure a successful outcome. Apply intelligent thought in depth. Do your homework. Never overpress. Ease up. You have done all that you can. Let it work out. It will, and much better than if you keep fussing with it. Peale The chief duty of a human being is to endure life. Sigmund Freud A veil is interposed between us and the reality of things. The artist, the man of genius, raises the veil and reveals Nature to us. Havelock Ellis He who cannot himself pursue it further had best leave it alone. Ellis A man is what he loves. Meister Eckhart It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. Bertrand Russell Seek the power of enjoying things without being reduced to the need of possessing them. Havelock Ellis Sexual impulse is the raw material from which art springs. Ferrero The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it. Goethe The central purpose of each life should be to dilute the misery in the world. Karl Menninger Everything is, …only because I love. Tolstoy I am an expression of God, a child of God. Barbara D’Angelis The path of the heart requires letting go og the mind, the eye, the ego. Barbara D’Angelis Choose your teachers carefully. Barbara D’Angelis See God in every situation. D’Angelis Make room for silence in your life. D’Angelis Grace is not logical; love is not logical; miracles are not logical. D’Angelis It is hard to love a jailer, but it is much harder to love a judge. Naomi Wolf Redirect your life. Wayne Dyer Love, give, serve. Wayne Dyer The ego holds something other than itself, to which it should abandon iself. In this abandonment consists its transfiguraion. A liberated soul uses his body as a vehicle for the manifestation of the Eternal. The Bhagavad Gita The harm of beauty pornography is that: such imagery represses female sexuality and lowers women’s sexual self-exteen by casting sex as locked in a chastity belt to which “beauty”is the only key. Naomi Wolf The woman is baffled if she tries to articulate her discomfort with soft beauty pornography…. This fear of pornography that cannot speak its name is a quiet dismay that extends across the political spectrum… The woman hurt by it do not have to be convinced of a link between ‘real’ pornography and sexual violence, but they cannot discuss this harm without shame. For the woman who cannot locate in her worldview a reasonable objection to images of naked ‘beautiful’ women to who nothing bad is visibly being done, what is it that can explain the damage she feels within? Naomi Wolf Male or female, we all need to feel beautiful to be open to sexual communication; “beautiful” in the sense of welcme, desired, and treasured. Deprived of that, one objectifies oneself or the other for self-protection. Naomi Wolf Sexual beauty is an equal portion that belongs to both men and women, and the capacity to be dazzled is gender-blind. Naomi Wolf Eventually (bulimics) arrange their lives so they can spend hours each day hunched over like that, their highly trained minds telescoped around two shameful holes: mouth, toilet; toilet, mouth. Naomi Wolf A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Wolf Hunger makes women feel poor and think poor. Wolf Fat is sexual in woman; Victorians called it affectionately their ‘silken layer.’ Wolf Studies consistently show that with dietary deprivation, sexual interests dissipate. Wolf Pleasure in sex, Mette Bergstrom writes, is rare for a bulimic because of a strong body hatred. Wolf Starvation is known to affect people’s minds, (they) become mentally listless, apathetic and constantly obsessed with thoughts of food. Wolf One cannot think well, sleep well, love well, if one has not dined well. Virginia Woolf One must suffer to be beautiful. French Proverb Women must labour to be beautiful Yeats Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy travail, in pain thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Genesis 3:16 The self that existentialism seeks is each person’s individual self, which he must forge for himself out of such senseless circumstances, such meaningless limitations, as are given him. This self-creation—the making of one’s essence from mere existence—is demanded of each of us because, according to existentialism, there is no single essence of humanity to which we may logically turn as standard or model for making ourselves thus or so. Marjorie Grene It is still the choice within the situation, not the mere situation itself, that makes the man. Marjorie Grene …the world into which I am flung,--or rather into which, when I come to any kind of awareness, I have always already been flung—is, nevertheless, a world only through my projection of what I mean to make it. Marjorie Grene, citing Sartre and Heidegger Self and the world are continuously born together… ibid. Man is what he makes himself. ibid. (This) implies not only hope of what I should do, but literal and inescapable responsibility for what I have done. ibid. Of such accomplishment and failure to accomplish I and I alone must bear the credit, the shame, the triumph, and the regret. ibid It is meaningless to say… that my environment has made me what I am; for it is I who have, by the values I read into it, made it an environment. Grene …for if my situation is not myself, neither am I anything apart from it. Grene I am my own nothingness. Sartre as cited by Grene What is dreadful is ‘the awareness of my death as the inevitable end toward which my freedom projects itself. Heidegger as cited by Grene Yet it is only in such resolve as limited by death—in the realization of my existence as essentially and necessarily being to death—that I can rise out of the distracting and deciving cares of my day by day existence to become authentically myself. Heidegger, as cited by Grene Immediacy is reality, language is ideality, consciousness is contradiction. The moment I pronounce reality, contradiction is there, for what I say is ideality. Kierkegaard, as cited by Grene I must of my own single self create the values that make my world a world. Grene Find out what you’re good for, and then do that. Katherine Anne Porter Nothing outside a man can make him unclean by going into him. Rather it is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean. Mark 7:15 If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? Mark 8:34 Only the fruitful thing is true. Goethe Man makes himself, but only in secrecy and solitude—publicity is betrayal or illusion. Kierkegaard as cited by Grene The more oppressed we are externally, the freer we can be in our decisions, in our single lives. Grene Because we were hunted down, every one of our gestures had the weight of a solemn commitment. The circumstances, atrocious as they often were, finally made it possible for us to live, without pretense or false shame, the hectic and impossible existence that is known as the lot of men. Sartre, on the war, cited by Grene Exile and especially death became for us the habitual objects of our concern… At every instant we lived up to the full sense of this commonplace little phrase: ‘Man is mortal.’ ibid. …But the very cruelty of the enemy drove us to the extremities of this condition by forcing ourselves to ask ourselves questions that one never considers in time of peace. ibid. Thus in darkens and in blood, a Republic was established, the strongest of Republics. Each of its citizens knew that he owed himself to all and that he could count only on himself alone. Sartre ’Understanding’ is an operation by which our whole being realizes a situation; you understand a tool by using it; you understand a torture by experiencing it… Heidegger as cited by Grene Man is simultaneously freedom and thing, unity and dispersion, isolated by subjectivity and yet coexistent with other men in the world’s bosom. Simone de Beauvoir as cited by Grene But there are people who are attracted by the permanence of stone… they want to be massive and impenetrable, they do not want to change: where could change take them? It is a matter of an original fear of self and of a fear of truth… it is as if their own existence were forever in suspense. But they want to exist all at once and immediately… they are afraid of reasoning… they want to adopt a way of life… where one never seeks except for what one has already found, where one becomes nothing but what one was already. Sartre as cited by Grene There is no such thing except passion. ibid. Anti-Semitism, in a word, is fear of the human condition. The anti-Semite is the man who wants to be a pitiless rock, furious torrent, destroying thunder; anything but a man. ibid. The revolutionary, by his very choice of revolution, becomes the man who wishes that man freely and totally assume his identity. Sartre as cited by Grene You can excuse every misdemeanor and every crime … but when a man deliberately sets about to debase man into thing, he lets loose a scandal on earth which nothing can make amends for. This is the only sin against man there is, but once it has been brought to pass, no indulgence is allowable, and it is man’s business to punish it. de Beauvoir as cited by Grene A man who finds it natural to denounce man cannot have ‘our conception of the human.’ Sartre as cited by Grene And the common source for all these ills of our time is our forgetfulness of the only part of man that makes him man—his soul. Marcel as cited by Grene So the philosopher mush somehow lead bewildered humanity back to the faith by which it used to livea nd by which I needs to live. Grene …the flesh is… ‘the inevitable shortcoming of a fallen creature.’ Marcel cited by Grene Faith is the recognition of God’s existence, love of his perfection… it is faith that gives meaning and possibility to love, for only faith in God makes love possible… it is only through faith that a promise and, therefore, any genuine approach of oneself to another can be significant. Marcel cited by Grene Without faith, the very idea of a projection of self into the future is meaningless; for the self of desires, of momentary pleasures, of having, cannot depend on itself to feel tomorrow as it does today. Only by God’s support is such permanence or, to put it humanly, such loyalty possible. By nature we are all traitor; only divine grace can make us true. Marcel cited by Grene He does not love at all who loves mankind only; he does who loves this specific person. Jaspers, cited by Grene No one can save his soul alone. Jaspers, cited by Grene I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer. Jim Carrey The only way to have a life is to commit to it like crazy. Angelina Jolie Freedom itself… (is) the source of ultimate value. Grene Treat every person as an end and never as a means. This is the great modern statement of the basic law of morality. Grene Faust by Goethe Who can know/the pangs of woe/that leave their ache in every bone? The prayers I made,/Trembling, afraid,/Sweet saint, are known/To thee alone. Alone then with my fears,/Come tears on tears… I feel the same/thick clinging darkness gather on my soul. The joy will soon be yours And so good-night,/You poor unhappy thing. When love is warm,/Trust no thief’s arm:/Reserve your charm/Until you have a ring! You intrigue with a dozen men,/And all the town can have you then. and then, with muffled eyes and ears,/She hides herself in veils of night. The uglier her features grow,/The more she puts herself on show. I gladly linger, love, when you are near. Alas, alas! Your lips are chill/And dumb!/What is of true-love become? If my grave is there,/And death has vigil there to keep,/Come, I will go to endless sleep,… Dawn softens night, the deepest shades are fled. To roam far lands is sad, without a friend. dear heart, dear heart, now breaks the day We two shall meet again,/but never again in the dance. The world lies mute as a stone He wants my soul, to torture and confound,/He waits my death. Now to the solemn sleep of death I go,/An honest soldier, God receive me so. Into God’s hand my trembling soul I give. Lord, I am thine, oh save me and defend!/Father, let angels now have charge of me,/Encamped around in heavenly company. Goethe What use was it to have lived the past, if behind us it fell away so sheer? Mary Lavin …to the young man who was so vulnerable in his vanity: the legitimate vanity of his art… Lavin She told herself that he dowdy, lumpish, and unromantic figure vouched for her spiritual integrity. Lavin …sufficient or no—itself its own end. Lavin Women who write must continue to voice the unvoiced, to pass on to our children the experience of our world, what we know and believe. Lavin She loves New York because the chances for being invisible are so much greater. Maeve Brennan She is able to bring to life the extraordinariness of the ordinary with a sureness that makes her art seem sacramental. Brennan …she thought if she could just be left alone for a while she would be able to find the right words, so that she could make herself clearly understood—but they wouldn’t leave her alone. Brennan She was not making sense. She could not get her thoughts sorted out. Something was drifting away… Brennan She had found that the more the child demanded of her, the more she had to give. Brennan Above all, love is the main generator of all good writing. Love, passion, compassion are all wedded together. Carson McCullers His eyebrows curved high above his sallow Jewish face as though asking a question, but the lids of his eyes drowsed languorous and indifferent. McCullers You have nothing to cope with but the music. Only music now. McCullers She felt that the marrows of her bones were hollow and there was no blood left in her. Her heart that had been springing against her chest all afternoon felt suddenly dead. McCullers While others, still unmarried, seemed to them arid, self-doubting and likely to make desperate or romantic marriages… Doris Lessing Two people, endowed with education, with discrimination, with judgment, linked together voluntarily from their will to be happy together and to be of use to others—one sees them everywhere, on knows them, one even is that thing oneself: sadness, because so much is after all so little. Lessing …This was life, that two people, no matter how carefully chosen, could not be everything to each other… Lessing Above all, intelligence forbids tears. Lessing …eyes shut, in a dingy armchair with her back to a dingy window. She was alone. She was alone. She was alone. Lessing She turned her face into the dark of his flesh, and listened to the blood pounding through her ears saying: I am alone. I am alone, I am alone. Lessing She was quite content lying there, listening to the faint soft hiss of the gas that poured into the room, into her lungs, into her brain, as she drifted off into the dark river. Lessing Grace Paley says she only writes when she feels like it. Sometimes she writes on the subway. Writing about city life, she speaks with the diverse tongues of a scold, poet, and a prophetic conscience. Susan Cahill on Grace Paley Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles Your own eyes/Must tell you:… Each of you suffers in himself alone/His anguish, not another’s; but my spirit/Groans for the city, for myself, for you. These vague words/leave me still hanging between hope and fear. Whoever killed King Laios might—who knows?—/decide at any moment to kill me as well. So with the help of God,/We shall be saved—or else indeed we are lost. The riddling Sphinx’s song/Made us deaf to all mysteries but her own. Fear unjoints me, the roots of my heart tremble. Now I remember, O Healer, your power and wonder:/Will you send doom like a sudden cloud, or weave it/Like nightfall of the past? …No man fights off death with his mind For the day ravages what the night spares—… If anyone knows the murderer to be foreign/Let him not keep silent… And as for those who fail me,/May the gods deny them the fruit of the earth,/Fruit of the womb, and may they rot utterly!/Let them be wretched… But no man in the world/Can make the gods do more than the gods will. Seer: student of mysteries… Can you use birdflight or any art of divination to purify yourself… Bear your own fate, and I’ll bear mine. No; I will never tell you what I know./Now it is my misery; then, it would be yours. I have gone free. It is the truth sustains me. You child of endless night! You can not hurt me/Or any other man who sees the sun. You weave your own doom. How can God’s will/Be accomplished best? That is what most concerns us. You mock my blindness, do you?/But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind:/You can not see the wretchedness of your life… These evil words are lies. Sophocles West With the Night by Beryl Markham This order of intelligence in a lesser animal can obviously give rise to exaggeration—some of it persistence enough to be crystallized into legend. But you cannot discredit truth merely because legend has grown out of it. The sometimes almost godlike achievements of our own species in ages past toddle through history supported more often than not on the twin crutches of fable and human credulity. page 208 Peering down from the cockpit at grazing elephant, you have the feeling that what you are beholding is wonderful, but not authentic. 212 The world is full of skeptics. 219 I remembered an old Swahili phrase, and I said it: ‘A wise man is not more than a woman—unless he is also brave.’ 233 Rhino—buffalo—where are they? Well, they are here too—somewhere here—just there, perhaps, where that bush thickens or that copse of thorn trees hides the sky. They are here, all are here, unseen and scattered, but sharing with us a single loneliness. 237 Still, I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want. I sit there in the firelight and see them all. 239 Each humid, tropic day is stillborn, and does not breathe, however lustily pregnant the night that gave it birth. 239 A map in the hands of a pilot is a testimony of a man’s faith in other men; it is a symbol of confidence and trust. It is not like a printed page that bears mere words, ambiguous and artful, and whose most believing reader—even whose author, perhaps—must allow in his mind a recess for doubt. 245 A map says to you, ‘Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.’ It says, ‘I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.’ 245 Were all the maps in this world destroyed and vanished under the direction of some malevolent hand, each man would be blind again, each city be made a stranger to the next, each landmark become a meaningless signpost pointing to nothing. 245 The town, the sunrise, and the ship were isolated each from the other by clouds that had no edges and refused to roll. They lay on the earth like sadness come to rest; they clung to people like burial clothes, white and premature. 247 She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation, but yields her own desires gently. 248 To me, desert has the quality of darkness; none of the shapes you see in it are real or permanent. Like night, the desert is boundless, comfortless, and infinite. Like night, it intrigues the mind and leads it to futility. When you have flown half-way across the desert, you experience the desperation of a sleepless man waiting for dawn which only comes when the importance of its coming is lost. You fly forever, weary with an invariable scene, and when you are at last released from its monotony, you remember nothing of it because there was nothing there. 252 No human pursuit achieves dignity until it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade, you see that the other things—the experiments, the irrelevant vocations, the vanities you used to hold—were false to you. 278 The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. 283 And so the little freighter sat upon the sea, and, though Africa came closer day by day, the freighter never moved. She was old and weather-weary, and she had learned to let the world come round to her. 294 < Back