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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Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. Wouldn't you say, she asked, that killings like this are influenced by violent movies? No, I said, I wouldn't say that. But what about 'Basketball Diaries'? She asked. Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun? The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office, and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. Events like this, I said, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; These two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory.
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'Fox Urine: This horrifically produced product is marketed as a way to keep deer out of gardens, but experts say it doesn't work. On urine-collection 'farms,' foxes, coyotes, raccoons and other animals are crammed into tiny cages. They live on feces-encrusted wire cage floors so their urine can be collected in trays below. On one such 'farm,' PETA investigators found animals with open infected wounds and exposed bones. Most huddled together in fear, but others had gone 'cage-crazy' and circled endlessly, seeking a way to comfort themselves. Some chewed and mutilated their own flesh. Owners then killed them for their fur by using agonizing anal electrocution. Some sporting goods stores sell urine collected from deer crammed into tiny pens for use by hunters to mask their human odor and to lure bucks to the hunters' tree stands. Be a 'deer' - and ask managers of local gardening, department and sporting goods stores NOT to sell bottled urine.'
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There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
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Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with life with living populations and all their pressures and counter pressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves. The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no high-minded orientation, no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper. The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modem and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
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Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
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Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it...
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It seems to me that it is these extremists who are advocating a soft approach. Their oversimplifications and their baseless generalizations reflect the softness of those who cannot bear to face the burdens of a continuing struggle against a powerful and resourceful enemy. A truly tough approach, in my judgment, is one which accepts the challenge of communism with the courage and determination to meet it with every instrumentality of foreign policypolitical and economic as well as military, and with the willingness to see the struggle through as far into the future as may be necessary. Those who seek to meet the challengeor, in reality, to evade itby bold adventures abroad and witch hunts at home are the real devotees of softnessthe softness of seeking escape from painful realities by resort to illusory panaceas.
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We are living in a day of self-seeking and irresponsibility, even in Christian circles. Few indeed are the Christian believers who have truly laid their all on the altar for Christ. Few are the spiritual leaders who truly put God FIRST . Rather they think first, albeit subconsciously, of their positions, popularity, salaries and the success of the organizations over which they preside. While professing strong allegiance to God and His Word, they are nevertheless careful not to emphasize those passages from the Word which might ruffle feathers or rock the boat, as we say. In spite of their professed fidelity to God's Word and will, their first objective is actually to keep their organizations running smoothly and pleasantly so that they may continue to grow in numbers. This has become a way of life in Christendom, but in this matter too we should 'search the Scriptures daily,' to determine whether these things have God's approval, for however good and right a thing may seem, if it is at variance with the Word, rightly divided, it is contrary to the will of God and therefore wrong.
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In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be 'seeking the spirit,' but as much its business to be seeking me.
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In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be "seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me.
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According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected. I have heard, however, that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead.
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The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
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The same person has come to Me seeking success at the examination, then a job, then a father-in-law, then a child, then a rise in the salary, a transfer in a cheaper place and a seat in the Medical College for his son - a never ending series of wants, until at last he comes seeking My Grace for an end to worldly pursuits and for initiation into the path of spirituality.
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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
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Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails
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It is evident that the Islamic Republic of Iran is only interested in seeking security and stability in Iraq, and the region.
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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
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Zoning has become a bad word again, but (justices of the peace) need to realize that they've been spending a lot of time this past year taking on all these small component problems with development instead of seeking a big-picture solution.
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The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others it is in yourself alone.
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Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences - 'which is the mostest? which is the leastest?' They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: the heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.
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The family must be democratized in that sense in which each individual within its bond shall be sustained in seeking and in maintaining the conditions of personality. No one human being to live solely for other's service..., but all to seek the utmost perfection of individual life as a contribution to the common life; this is the democratic ideal. There seems to be no other inherited institution in which this spiritual essence of democracy can be so clearly and so well realized as it may be and today often is in the private monogamic family.
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Einstein is an analytical mathematician seeking to give a physical interpretation to the conclusions of his mathematical process. In this he is hampered by a load of contradictory and absurd assumptions of the school that he follows, which throws him into all manner of difficulty. Einstein has such a faculty for embracing both sides of a contradiction that one would have to be of the same frame of mind to follow his thought, it is so peculiarly his own. The whole Relativity theory is as easy to follow as the path of a bat in the air at night.
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Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrong. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
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A credit union is not an ordinary financial concern, seeking to enrich its members at the expense of the general public. Neither is it a loan company, seeking to make a profit at the expense of the unfortunates… The credit union is nothing of the kind; it is the expression in the field of economics of a high social ideal.
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Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.
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People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life... I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.
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Is there something in trade that desiccates and flattens out, that turns men into dried leaves at the age of forty? Certainly there is. It is not due to trade but to intensity of self-seeking, combined with narrowness of occupation. Business has destroyed the very knowledge in us of all other natural forces except business.
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They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last, only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.
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The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
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