The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-Edmund Burk
The universe is vast, and we are so small. The only thing we can ever really control is whether we are good, or evil.
-Oma Desala, Stargate SG-1 Season 5 Episode 21 Meridian
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
-Jimmy Hendrix
You deserve a happy ending...and happy endings always start with hope.
-Snow White, Once Upon A Time TV series
As there comes light from heaven and words from breath,
As there is sense in truth and truth in virtue
-William Shakespeare
The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny ... it is the light that guides your way.
-Heraclitus
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!
In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.
By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed, and brutality. Look up, Hannah! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope, into the future! The glorious future, that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up!
-Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator, 1940
*LAW OF LIFE*
When a newspaper reporter interviewed a farmer who grew Award-Winning Corn each year he entered his corn in the state fair, it was revealed that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbours.
Perplexed, the reporter asked, “How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbours when they are entering their corn in competition with yours each year?”
The farmer smiled knowingly and explained, *“The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field.* If my neighbours grow inferior corn, Cross-Pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn.
If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbours grow good corn.
*”So it is with our lives. Those who want to live meaningfully and well, must help enrich the lives of others.*
For the value of a life, is measured by the lives it touches. *And those who choose to be happy, must help others find happiness.*
For the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all.
Call it power of collectivity.
Call it a principle of success. Call it a law of life.
The fact remains, “None of us truly wins, until we all win.”
-Author Unknown
Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.
-Khalil Gibran
To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
-Helen Keller
I sincerely believe that I have been endowed with faculties, powers and perceptions for the use of which I am morally responsible. It is my duty to myself, to my world, and to the Eternal Power by and in which I exist, to govern my temper, subdue my appetites, refine my emotions, inform my mind, and increase my understanding. Failure to advance these causes must leave me a victim to my own intemperances, and expose me to the just censure of my associates. Because I am a conscious being, and not required to follow the immediate instincts and impulses of my disposition, I can be kind, just, gentle, forgiving, compassionate and self-sacrificing even under the most trying and difficult circumstances. Both by observation and experience, and by the testimony of the ages, I inwardly know right from wrong, and good from bad. I may not attain to an absolute definition of these terms, but I understand them as they apply to me and to my own conduct.
-Anonymous
There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others.
-Mandy Hale
All the words that I gather, and all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring, and never rest in their flight. Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night, Beyond where the waters are moving, storm darkened or starry bright.
-W.B. Yeats
May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon. May you respond to the call of your gift and find the courage to follow its path.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul. May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
May the flame of anger free you from falsity. May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may anxiety never linger about you.
May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul. May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
-John O'Donohue
Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let the pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.
Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree
you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
-Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki)
As the bee gathers the honey from the heart of the flower, so each of us should extract the spiritual nectar from each happening, each joy, and each sorrow, and incorporate it into the great beehive of experience - the soul-body of man. In the same way it is said that the spiritual energies in man eternally take the life forces he is transmuting and carry them up into the beehive in the brain, where is kept the honey or oil necessary for the sustenance of life.
-Manly P. Hall - The Occult Anatomy of Man
I am inviting you to go deeper, to learn and to practice so that you become someone who has a great capacity for being solid, calm, and without fear, because our society needs people like you who have these qualities, and your children, our children, need people like you, in order to go on, in order to become solid, and calm, and without fear.
-Thích Nhất Hạnh
This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
-Walt Whitman
Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?
-Anton Chekhov (Book: The Complete Short Novels
As a remedy for these chronic ailments of disposition, we recommend the cultivation of natural optimism, a sense of humor, and constructive interests. A mind that is not thinking forward, generously and idealistically, will soon fall into evil ways. One of the secrets of happiness is to get our minds off our- selves and on to some project large enough and useful enough to keep us cheerfully occupied. If we live too much in our own thoughts, we are likely to lose touch with the realities about us. When we substitute a career of negative imagination for positive endeavor, we are bound to be miserable. Trying to force our ideas upon an unregenerate humanity is a thankless task, but the reformation of ourselves pays large dividends. Anyone who has time enough to involve himself in the affairs of others has time enough to discipline his own temperament. If more people were solving their own problems instead of forcing unproved advice on their neighbors, the world would be far more comfortable.
The Sixty-Four Dollar Question, 1949
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
-Max Ehrmann, 1927
Reclaim the sacredness of this life, the potency and magic of it and your place within this time and space. Each blessed breath, each soul-charged heartbeat. Celebrate the unique facet of your perspective, the temple of your body that is home to your indwelling spirit, that which is also connected and one with the Divine. Breathe, quiet your mind and be still; or dance, laugh, and howl at the moon. Whatever you do, do it with gratitude.
-Autumn Skye
Nearly everyone wants to be told what to do. Folks ask me every day for infallible formulas. Actually, the 'formula' for protecting ourselves from evil has come down to us from the earliest moral and spiritual traditions of the Human race: do ill to no one, give to all that which is justly theirs, think good thoughts, perform kind actions, be patient in all things, and have faith in the Universal Power at the source of Life. The application of these simple admonitions will protect us from most pretensions, and will gradually form our character around constructive principles. When we are reasonable within ourselves, we will not be attracted to the unreasonable ideas of other persons.
It is to this end that we study the basic books that have instructed humanity, observe those lives which have been most truly noble, and try to follow in the footsteps of those gentle and illumined souls whom we all admire. We must study quietly, seeking not easy ways and short cuts, but a vital philosophy that can inspire and lead us to greater efforts in the perfection of ourselves.
Manly Hall, Second Preface - W to W
In the end, the shadow is but a small and passing thing,
there is light and high beauty forever beyond it's reach,
find the light, and the shadow will not find you.
-The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Season 1, Episode 6, Udûn
There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Let us, in this moment, recommit ourselves to remembering and to remaining faithful to our belief in love as a positive force for change. For what we change when we do this is not initially the beliefs of others, but the access to their hearts from which these beliefs come. By remaining true to the principle of light within our deeper heart and soul which is the principle of love, we become agents of change for a world greatly in need of hope and a positive vision of the future. May this be our commitment and our promise to ourselves and to others, then, to remain faithful to love and to believe in its potential for restoring the sacred to our lives.
-Julie Redstone (Extract from Light Omega)
A united attitude of love, of hopeful expectancy, of spiritual demand and of directed will is potent in results and will bring us all that is required.
-Non-Specific Tibetan Reference
Ultimately, there is light and love and intelligence in this universe.
And we are it, we carry that within us.
It’s not just something out there, it is within us and this is what we are trying to re-connect with,
our original Light and Love and intelligence, which is who we are.
So do not get so distracted by all this other stuff,
you know, really remember what we are here on this planet for.
-Tenzin Palmo
From the time you were very little, you've had people who have smiled you into smiling, people who have talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving. So, let's take some time to think of those extra special people. Some of them may be right here, some may be far away. Some may even be in heaven. No matter where they are, deep down, you know they've always wanted what was best for you. They've always cared about you beyond measure and have encouraged you to be true to the best within you. Let's just take a minute of silence to think about those people now.
-Fred Rogers
Never regret anything you have done with sincere affection; nothing is lost that is born of the heart.
-Basil Rathbone