Looks like the Smiler, talks like the Beast.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it... And they will vote for this president no matter what…[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

-- Mitt Romney, at a recent fundraiser, sadly not fictional

Looks like the Smiler, talks like the Beast.

Raised to fear

Raised to fear

  

We have been raised to fear ... our deepest cravings. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for ... many facets of our own oppression.

 

Audre Lourde

Meaningful work

Meaningful work

  

Happiness, peace, and fulfillment come not through carefree idle play, although that is where they are often sought. They can only be found in meaningful work, that establishes worthwhile goals and then in the struggle to achieve them. 

 

Anthony Wallace

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Grace

Postscript

Postscript
by David Lehman 

He wrote the whole novel in his head,

Sentence by sentence. It took him all day.

Then he took out a wide-ruled yellow legal pad

With three pink vertical lines marking the left margin,

And from his breast pocket he extracted

A disposable plastic fountain pen,

And near the top of the page he wrote the word ODE

In black ink, all caps. For a few minutes he did nothing. 

Then he skipped three lines and wrote,

"It was the greatest birthday present he had ever received:

The manual Smith-Corona typewriter

His parents gave him on the day he graduated from high school

After they took him to the Statler Hilton for lunch, 

Where they had cold poached salmon, his father's favorite."

On becoming...

How you treat

  

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be. 

 

Stephen R. Covey

To have succeeded

To have succeeded

 

The definition of success: to laugh much, to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one's self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived ... this is to have succeeded.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson lost my fear

 

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My life has been the poem

My life has been the poem I would have writ
by Henry David Thoreau 

My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

Butterfly effect

Butterfly effect 

 

By carrying out one's duty, whether in the public service, or in business, or in employment, rightly, faithfully, honesty, and justly ... then the welfare of the general body of people of mankind is being cared for. 

 

Emanuel Swedenborg 

Leo Said

Leo Said
by Eileen M

you've gotta

write clearer
so you can
be read
when you're
dead

Poets.org

Cross of the present

 

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die.

 

W.H. Auden

Consumer Economy

June 7, 2012

Consumer economy   A consumer economy only works if consumption of goods provides only temporary pleasure. That is, if happiness is infinitely deferred, so that buyers continue to buy more and more goods and services. By definition, the consumer can never be satisfied, at rest or happy. Which means she will always feel lacking. The pursuit of this sort of happiness creates a vicious circle of growing anxiety and dissatisfaction.    Tirdad Derakhshani

Viva!

Why old hippies?

Collective fear...

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."
— Bertrand Russell, Nobel laureate

Gaining wisdom

Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting that the practice itself will teach them what they need to know.

  

Barbara Brown Taylor

An Altar in the World

Emergent Village

We need a huge, world-changing idea...

Go to Gapingvoid Art and get good stuff.

We don't need no...

If the evil doings of men...

"If the evil doings of men move you to indignation and overwhelming distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evildoers, shun above all thing that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as though you were yourself guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering and bear it and your heart will find comfort, and you will understand that you too are guilty, for you might have been a light to the evildoers and were not a light to them."

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky from,

The Brothers Karamazov

Do not pick the flowers...

Keepers have put up a sign telling visitors not to pick the...

by hikergirl

Keepers have put up a sign telling visitors not to pick the flowers - in the lion enclosure at Longleat Safari Park. Every spring the grassy paddock where the lions are kept gives way to a glorious display of bluebells.