on Living

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
Will Durant, “What Is Civilization,” Ladies Home Journal (January, 1946)(http://archaeology.about.com/od/quotations/qt/quote84.htm).

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E.B. White; found at http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/03/lifetimes/white-notes.html; Rev. Dr. Matthew Meyer Boulton, President of Christian Theological Seminary, preached this quote and teaching a six year old to ride a bicycle in chapel.

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”
Michel de Montaigne (Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne), French Renaissance writer and philosopher (1533-1592), quoted on Criminal Minds (CBS) episode “Foundation”, aired March 21, 2012

“Teach thy tongue to say ‘I do not know’ and thou shalt progress.”
Maimonides (12th century)

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
Henri Frédéric Amiel, quoted by Dr. Marcus Borg at Christian Theological Seminary’s Shelton Auditorium, October 7, 2011

A Rule offers creative boundaries within which
God’s loving presence can be recognised and celebrated.
It does not prescribe, but invite;
it does not force but guide;
it does not threaten but warn;
it does not instil fear but points to love.
In this it is a call to freedom: freedom to love.
Henri Nouwen

If there is a question, there is a possibilit​y of movement onwards.
Avivah Zornberg

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.
Thomas Merton, “No Man is an Island” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955), quoted in Philip Gulley and James Mulholland’s “If Grace is True”

One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.
Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955)

Second star to the right … and straight on till morning.
Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Paramount, 1991), actually first quoted by Peter Pan in J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” books

If you can’t be a shining example, you can at least be an effective warning.
variously attributed to Garrison Keillor, Red Green and Catherine Aird

Don’t let anybody make you stoop so low as to hate!
Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., quoted by Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel in the UCC’s Stillspeaking Daily Devotional for February 1, 2011

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman, theologian and civil rights leader

If you truly understood a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.
Martin Luther

Do you know the difference between involvement and commitment?  Think of ham and eggs.  The chicken is involved.  The pig is committed.
Martina Navratilova

Deadly is that which I try to say that I do not myself dig and yet inflict on others that they might.
John Hartford (1937-2001 R.I.P.)

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over…Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center…
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Significance has never been about behavior.
quoted at http://windrumors.com/ by William Paul Young, author of The Shack (Windblown Media, 2007)

Mr. Wizard!  Get me the hell out of here!
Neo, The Matrix, (Warner Bros., 1999)

Live every day as if it were your last, and then some day you’ll be right.
Anonymous

Life’s disappointments are harder to take when you don’t know any swear words.
Calvin in Bill Watterson’s comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes”

Don’t take life too seriously.  You’ll never get out alive.
Bugs Bunny

Life may be scary … but it’s only temporary …
“For Now”, Avenue Q (musical)

A man’s got to know his limitations.
Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), Magnum Force (Warner Bros., 1973)

There’s no fool like an old fool – you just can’t beat experience.
Jacob Braude

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.  The opposite of a profound statement may well be another profound statement.
Niels Bohr

Listen: we are here on earth to fart around.  Don’t let anybody tell you any different.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) (interview)

Improvise! Adapt! Overcome!
Gunnery Sergeant Tom “Gunny” Highway (Clint Eastwood), “Heartbreak Ridge” (Warner Brothers, 1986)

Remember, always be yourself … unless you suck.
Joss Whedon

I’ve never had a humble opinion.  If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?
Joan Baez

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard

I came here thinking I had to box with the world.  Now I can dance with it.
Voyageur Outward Bound School student

In the great comedy of life, one day you are a spectator, the next day you may become an actor.
– Garrison Keillor

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.  The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
Marcus Aurelius

If you don’t live on the edge, you’ll never see the view.
Betsy Simpson

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings…
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think, so we become.
From the Dhammapada, Sayings of the Buddha

Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
attributed to Frank Outlaw, actor and supermarket manager

Is it progress if a cannibal learns to eat with a fork?
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain

When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.
Stars, “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” (Set Yourself on Fire, Arts & Crafts, 2004)

The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis, but first of all by living.  For until we have begun to live our prudence has no material to work with.  And until we have begun to fail we have no way of working out our success.
Thomas Merton, Abbey of Gethsemani (Trappist), Thoughts in Solitude

No one song can change the world.  But that doesn’t mean it’s time to stop singing.
Neil Young

Love your enemies, after all, you made them.
Marshall Trimble

The idea is to climb the cleanest line on the steepest part of the face.
Steve House, president of Patagonia, Inc.

Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez

You’re afraid of making mistakes.  Don’t be.  Mistakes can be profited by.  Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people‘s faces.  They beat me with sticks.  By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me.  If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

They’re coming to take me away, Haha,
They’re coming to take me away, Ho ho, hee hee, ha ha,
To the funny farm
Where Life is Beautiful all the time
And I’ll be happy to see
Those Nice Young Men
In their Clean White Coats
And they’re coming to take me AWAY, HA HAAAAA
Napoleon XIV, “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” (The Second Coming, Warner Bros., 1966)

The shortest distance between two points is always under construction.
Rebecca McClanahan, Deep Light: New and Selected Poems

If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures.  He will learn that difference in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.
Gene Roddenberry, from “Inside Trek” by Susan Sackett

Does the person create the journey, or does the journey create the person?… The journey is life itself…
Louis Vuitton “Core Values” Film

At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think.  From the hearth to the field it is a great distance.  It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long.  Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocents in dovecots.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden

We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
Gaius Petrionius Arbiter, Roman General (27-66 C.E.)

It’s hard to fight an enemy that has outposts in your head.
Sally Kempton (Swami Durgananda)

If I have seen farther it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants.
Sir Isaac Newton

And by the way, I’ve about had it with this ‘greatest generation’ malarkey.  You people have one stock market crash in 1929, and it takes you a dozen years to get a job.  Then you wait until Germany and Japan have conquered half the world before it occurs to you to get involved in World War II.  After that you get surprised by a million Red Chinese in Korea.  Where do you put a million Red Chinese so they’ll be a surprise?  You spend the entire 1950’s watching Lawrence Welk and designing tail fins.  You come up with the idea for Vietnam.  Thanks.  And you elect Richard Nixon.  The hell with you.
Patrick Jake O’Rourke

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world, but a world lives in you.
Frederick Buechner, “Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale”

I’m not living with you.  We just occupy the same cage.
Margaret (“Maggie the Cat”) Pollitt, played by Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958)

Do or do not … there is no try.
Yoda in “Star Wars” by George Lucas

I’ve decided to stick with love.  Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight?  Who hath heard the birch log burning?  Who is quick to read the noises of the night?  Let him follow with the others, for the young men’s feet are turning to the camps of proved desire and known delight!
from Rudyard Kipling’s “The Feet of the Young Men”, inscribed on the Wood Badge certificate

Let’s put the FUN back in DYSFUNCTIONAL.
Mary Engelbreit

The act teaches you the meaning of the act.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

We must love one another or die.
W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden, Anglo-American poet (1907-1973)

I would say to young people a number of things… I would say, let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can do — every one — our share to redeem the world despite of all the absurdities and all the frustration and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live life as if it were a work of art. You’re not a machine. When you are young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speaking to NBC interviewer Carl Stern in 1972

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund

Let no one live rent free in your head.
Nicolette (1996)

Unless we live what we know, we do not even know it.
Thomas Merton, Abbey of Gethsemani (Trappist),

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Simone Weil

The greatest privilege of life is to become midwife to the birth of the soul.
John O’Donohue (1956-2008)

The World is not something to look at, it is something to be in.
Mark Rudman

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.
E.M. Forster, English novelist and essayist

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (Ace Books paperback edition, 1988) Page 248.