Quotes

Maybe its often easier to recognise in someone else's words what it was we ourselves wanted to say .... felt all along .... at least had begun to suspect. Then Eureka! We see it put into perfect perspective by others and we quote them. Here is my selection of essential quotes .....

INDIVIDUALITY

"Our individuality is all, all that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route." 
                                                                    ~ Tom Robbins

"To live outside the law, you have to be honest."

                                                                     - Hugh Berger

COMPETENCY

"These are the days when no one should rely too much on competencies.

Strength lies in improvisation.

All the decisive blows are struck left-handed." 
                                                           - Walter Benjamin

LOVE

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone."

                                                                       - Khalil Gibran

MORE ON LOVE

"When Love beckons to you, follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though his sword hidden among his pinions

may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him

Though his voice may shatter your dreams

as the north wind lays waste your garden."

                                                                     - Khalil Gibran

CONFLICT

"The Book of Kells has a picture of the Virgin and Child. The artist has shown the Virgin with two left feet and the Child with two right feet. Has some resolution been completed in them as a unit?

We all have a left and a right side and walking or any action is a cooperation involving both sides. if our right hand would clench , it is the left side of our brain must send the message.

The work of poles in opposition - something totally new would come about if only we could see it through. That is what is possible in community.

Today people shut out the terrible things that happen and call so many things bad. All these things are not so bad - they are really very good things we haven't yet learnt to handle.

Today so many people feel that they are going mad. They are not mad at all - in fact they have probably never been so well. If only they can see it through ( the conflict) to the resolution they will be whole again and more complete."

                                                    - Brother Oliver

                                                       Cistercian Abbey, 

                                                       Mount Mellory, Ireland

COMMUNITY

"Centres like this one are symptoms of a civilisation in its dotage.

When communities existed naturally there was no need to form community centres........... it inevitably attracts the waifs and strays of our society, as well as those who have begun to free their minds from the trammels of materialism."

                                              - Hugh Berger 
                                                 Gentle Ghost Coop London


DIALOGUE

The future of man depends on a rebirth of dialogue - and most especially of genuine dialogue between men of different kinds and conditions.
                                                        - Martin Buber

All great civilisations have been based on loitering. Think of the Greeks for instance. One of the most interesting adventures in history. What were the greeks doing in the Agora? They were loitering - not getting agrophobia - and the result was Plato."

                                                          - Jean Renoir

MANIFESTATION OF SOUL

"The heroes of the epics of India are not individuals, but whole reels of individuals in a series of incarnations. And in modern times there are poetic creations in which, behind the veil of a concern with individuality and character, the motive is to present a manifold activity of soul."

                                                               - Herman Hesse

I would perceive that the Wayside Chapel and the Aquarius 

Drop-in Centre were just such poetic creations. J 

"All ways that men do take are mine." - Krishna

HELPING

"We wish to be used by people seeking joy and fulfillment. We wish to help people with problems. But both are important: without the former dimension we tend to focus morbidly on problems and they soon become a way of life. We note the difference between helping people and being used by people to help themselves."       

                      - Alternative Community Telephone 1973

                                                          

TRAVEL

"A Traveller sees what he sees.

A tourist sees what he came to see."

                                                           - G.K. Chesterton

"Is it not good also to find men of like minds among those who come from afar."                                           - Confucius

                                                             

SIN

"I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him."

                                                         - Saint Teresa of Avila

"To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquired experience."

                                                          - Saint Teresa of Avila

 

"It is here my daughters that love is to be found. Not hidden away in corners but in the midst of the occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater."

                                                           - Saint Teresa of Avila

OLD AGE

"In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone."
                                                       - Saint John of the Cross

"Be very sure what it is you want when you are young, because when you are old you are sure to get it."
                                                        - Somerset Maugham

“Always to be pushing out like this, beyond what I know cannot be the limits – what else should a man's life be ? Especially an old man who has, by a clear stroke of fortune, been violently freed of the comfortable securities that make old men happy to sink into blindness, deafness, the paralysis of all desire, feeling, will. What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.” 

                             - David Malouf from An Imaginary Life

WISDOM

"The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. The soul has to proceed rather by unknowing than knowing."

                                                       - Saint John of the Cross

"If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark."

                                                      - Saint John of the Cross

"If you would keep a pearl of great price, throw it away."

                                                       - old Persian proverb


"To philosophise means to think and to examine freely. Namely it is not only free of any fixed science, but it is also free of fixed belief, fixed dogma and the like. To philosophy there is nothing holy, nothing sacred, nothing forbidden. Everything is brought into the examined field of thought."                                          - Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana

HOPE

"And though the last light off the black west went
Oh! Morning at the brown brink eastward springs.
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods
With warm breast and with ah! bright wings."
                                                    - Gerard Manley Hopkins


AYAPPA TEMPLE TRICHY- on tablets in the courtyard the following poems 

                                                             

"I want stars on the ground

I want to fly without wings

I want to walk on the sky

I want ten eyes to admire nature

I want my Mother to be always with me

These things are only my dreams

But I want to make a world without religion -

A dream that I wish would come true."

                                                       - J. Rageswari

"If God and the teacher are standing before you

Who should you worship first? 

The teacher .... Without him

You could never have come to God."

"Let the different faiths exist

Let them flourish and

Let the glory of God be sung

In all the languages -

that should be the ideal.

Note the differences between the faiths

And recognise them all as valid

As long as they do not extinguish

The flame of unity."

And above the tiny Sanctuary now filling with flame and tintinnabulation - 

"Lord make me Clean"

MEN

"Girls find men fascinating.

Women know better."

                                     - Candace Bushnell

THE REAL

"From the unreal lead me to the real!

From darkness lead me to light!

From death lead me to immortality!"

                                       - the Upanishads

VISION

"What can a man do if he has not had his vision"

                                 -Taos medicine man to Carl Jung

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.

I will not reason and compare. My business is to create.

                                                          - William Blake

THE KARASS

"Oh a sleeping drunkard

Up in Central park

And a lion-hunter 

In the jungle dark

And a Chinese dentist,

And a British Queen -

All fit together 

In the same machine.

Nice, nice, very nice.

So many different people

In the same device."

                                       - Calypso by Kurt Vonnegut

The Karass for this great Science Fiction writer is a network of people who, although they usually are not even aware of each other's existence are contributing to effect some great work important to the divine plan. Such a network that consciously or pretentiously claims to have this effect is probably a failure and is not a Karass but a Grand Faloon.

THE CARDINAL WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN POPE

"My own personal opinion is that that there is no theological argument either for or against women priests. The Roman Catholic therefore depends on the authority of the church. As you well know the Roman Catholic Church is not in favour of women priests at this time."
                                        - Cardinal Basil Hume

This impressive man managed the English Catholic Church with great personal conviction, opposing Opus Dei,  advising priests to treat homosexuals with kindness, never relenting in his support of and representation on behalf of the Birmingham Seven and in the above quote doing little to disguise his own position for the ordination of women. His friendship with a fellow Benedictine in India - Bede Griffiths - may have been the bulwark that saved Bede from ever imminent excommunication.

THE GLOBAL FUTURE

"Maybe the most appealing model for the twenty-first century will be neither the American self-determining nation not the Chinese imperial bureaucracy but the creatively chaotic yet,in the circumstances,remarkably peaceful example of democratic India. As India opens to the world its potentially enormous economy and consumer base,so its long traditions of variety, assimilation and a political authority that holds the ring rather than imposing a central will, may diffuse outward to the benefit of everyone." 

                      - Nicholas Boyle  2014 How to Survive the Next World Crisis

DEDICATION

"The Professional - Someone who thinks if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well.

The Amateur - Someone who thinks if something is worth doing, it may be worth doing badly."