I spent millons of years in the world of inorganic things as a star, as a rock... Then I died and became a plant-- Forgetting my former existence because of its otherness Then I died and became an animal-- Forgetting my life as a plant except for inclinations in the season of spring and sweet herbs-- like the inclination of babes toward their mother's breast Then I died and became a human My intelligence ripened, awakening from greed and self-seeking to become wise and knowing I behold a hundred thousand intelligences most marvelous and remember my former states and inclinations And when I die again I will soar past the angels to places I cannot imagine Now, what have I ever lost by dying?
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Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
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I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.
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I died a mineral, and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
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Why shouldn't I work for the NSA? That's a tough one. But I'll take a shot. Say I'm workin' at the NSA and somebody puts a code on my desk, somethin' no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it and I'm real happy with myself cause I did my job well, but maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East and once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels are hiding, fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with get killed.
Now the politicains are sayin' 'Oh send in the marines to secure the area, cause they don't give a shit, won't be their kid over there gettin' shot just like it wasn't them when their number got called cause they were all pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southy over there takin' shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at, got exported to the country he just got back from, and the guy that put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job cause he'll work for 15 cents a day and no bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile, he realises the only reason he was over there in the first place was so that we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price, and ofcourse the oil companies use a little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices, a cute little ancilliary benefit for them, but it ain't helpin' my buddy at 2.50 a gallon. Their takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course maybe they even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martini's and fuckin' play slolum with the icebergs. It ain't to long til he hits one, spills the oil, and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic... so now my buddy's out of work, he can't afford to drive, so he's walkin' to the fuckin' job interviews which sucks cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him cronic hemroids and meanwhile, he's starvin' cause everytime he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special their serving is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State....
so what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while Im at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe, and join the National Guard. I could be elected President.
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Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvellous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.
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What is it about genus arboretum that socks us in the figurative solar plexus We see a logging truck go cruising down the road, stacked with a bunch of those fresh-cut giants, we feel like we lost a brother. Next thing you know, we're in The Brick, we're flopping money down on the bar. Wood. We're under a roof. Wood. We're walking the floors. Wood. Grabbing a pool cue. That's wood. Our friends in the forest carry a set of luggage from the mythical baggage carousel. Tree of life, tree of knowledge, family tree, Buddha's Bodhi tree. Page one of life, in the beginning. Genesis 322. Adam and Eve. They're kicking back in the garden of Eden and boom, they get an eviction notice. Why is that Lest they should also take of the tree of life, eat and live forever. A definitive Yahweh no-no. Be good to yourself, go out and plant a wet one on a tree.
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Of all that Orient lands can vaunt, of marvels with our own competing, the strangest is the Haschish plant, and what will follow on its eating.
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Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
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An understanding heart is everything is a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
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Breast cancer rates are lower in populations that consume plant-based diets.
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Never would it occur to a child that a sheep, a pig, a cow or a chicken was good to eat, while, like Milton's Adam, he would eagerly make a meal off fruits, nuts, thyme, mint, peas and broad beans which penetrate further and stimulate not only the appetite but other vague and deep nostalgias. We are closer to the Vegetable Kingdom than we know; is it not for man alone that mint, thyme, sage, and rosemary exhale crush me and eat me! -- for us that opium poppy, coffee-berry, tea-plant and vine perfect themselves? Their aim is to be absorbed by us, even if it can only be achieved by attaching themselves to roast mutton.
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The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion.
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An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
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If you are planning for a year, sow rice if you are planning for a decade, plant trees if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.
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Confidence is a plant of slow growth; especially in an aged bosom.
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As she came up to the arch Elizabeth saw with a start that it was written on. She went closer. She peered at the stone. There were names on it. Every grain of the surface had been carved with British names; their chiselled capitals rose from the level of her ankles to the height of the great arch itself; on every surface of every column as far as her eyes eyes could see there were names teeming, reeling, over surfaces of yards, of hundreds of yards, over furlongs of stone. She moved through the space beneath the arch where the man was sweeping. She found the other pillas identically marked, their faces obliterated on all sides by the names that were carved on them. 'Who are these, these ...?; She gestured with her hand.' 'These?' The man with the brush sounded surprised. 'The lost.' 'Men who died in battle?' 'No. The lost, the ones they did not find. The others are in cemetries.' 'These are just the ... unfound?' She looked at the vault above her head and then around in panic at the endless writing, as though the surface of the sky had been papered in footnotes. When she could speak again, she said, 'from the whole war?' The man shook his head. 'Just these fields.' He gestured with his arm. Elizabeth went and sat on the steps on the other side of the monument. Beneath her was a formal garden with some rows of white headstones, each with a tended plant or flower at its base, each cleaned and beautiful in the weak winter sunlight. 'Nobody told me.' She ran her fingers with their red-painted nails back through her thick dark hair. 'My God, nobody told me.
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Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.
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There are two modes of criticism. One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drought. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.
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Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow grow, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
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It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.
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If God would choose a plant to represent him, I think he would choose of all plants the cactus. The cactus has all the blessings he tried, but mostly failed, to give to man. Let me tell you how. It has humility, but it is not submissive. It grows where no other plant will grow. It does not complain when the sun bakes it back or the wing tears it from the cliff or drowns it in the dry sand of the desert or when it is thirsty. When the rain comes it stores water for the hard times to come. In good times and in bad it will still flower. It protects itself against danger, but it harms no other plant. It adapts perfectly to almost any environment. It has patience and enjoys solitude. In Mexico there is a cactus that flowers only once every hundred years and at night. This is saintliness of an extraordinary kind, would you not agree? The cactus has properties that heal the wounds of men and from it come potions that can make man touch the face of God or stare into the mouth of hell. It is the plant of patience and solitude, love and madness, ugliness and beauty, toughness and gentleness. Of all plants, surely God made the cactus in his own image?
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Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don't count on harvesting Golden Delicious.
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And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, while the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
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'The drugs Prednisone and Vincristine are often hailed as 'curing' childhood leukemia. Both drugs were rejected by the US National Cancer Institute as 'useless' on the basis of animal tests. Prednisone was developed as a result of clinical observation of the effects of adrenal extract. Vincristine is an alkaloid of 'Vincra Rosea', a type of periwinkle plant, and extracts of periwinkle were used in the Roman Empire to 'dry tumours' (Pliny). They were eventually brought to clinical trials. The children cured of leukemia owe their lives to clinical observations and trials - and not to the animal 'model'.'
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What we have come to consider as 'normal' illnesses of aging are really not normal. In fact, these findings indicate that the vast majority, perhaps 80 to 90%of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet.
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I died a mineral, and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal and I was man. Why should I fear When was I less by dying
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The birthplace of success for each person is in his Inner-Consciousness. The Inner-Consciousness will use whatever it is given. If constructive thoughts are planted positive outcomes will be the result. Plant the seeds of failure and failure will follow. And since the only real freedom a person has is the choice of what thoughts he will feed to his Inner-Consciousness he is totally responsible for the outcomes he gets.
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We are basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant food and minimizing our intake of animal foods. study found a close correlation between meat consumption and heart disease and cancer.
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To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
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